Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Build the best Linux desktop

    Like all things Linux and open source, users are spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting a desktop environment (or DE). But this choice that many perceive as freedom, others may also see as a little bewildering and confusing.

    Right after making the soul-shaking decision of switching operating systems and installing an unknown system – by hand no less – a new Linux user is then greeted with weird sounding desktops to choose from with names like Gnome (a mini-desktop perhaps?), KDE (Isn’t that a double-glazing firm?) and Xfce (No idea). What veteran users herald as Linux’s crown jewels, to the innocent newcomer it’s like stumbling into a sci-fi convention where everyone is discussing a new TV series that you’ve never heard of but apparently it’s been around for years.

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • Pixman 0.32.6 Finally Updated

      The last Pixman stable release happened in November of 2013 while out this weekend is finally a new Pixman release.

      While it’s been more than a half-year since the last stable Pixman release, the changes for the new v0.32.6 release aren’t particularly compelling but still worth pointing out.

• Applications

  • Open source tools: Five outstanding audio editors

    Whether you’re producing podcasts or creating highly sophisticated sound recordings, one of these open source apps will suit your needs.

  • xmlstarlet: A superstar for XML

  • xprobe2: What’s it running … probably?

  • Bonus: X is for extinct

  • Video Rippers and Transcoders

    There are several programs for video ripping and transcoding in Linux, allowing to choose from a wide number of formats and containers for the output video files. This is an overview of six applications which allow you do transcode videos.

  • Mobile Phone Management Made Easy

    Mobile phone users should not regard their computer only as the means of recharging their phone, or transferring files to and from the phone’s storage. There’s a lot more than you can do with your Linux box. This article illustrates some good open source tools that let you manage your mobile phone.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to convert an EXT3 filesystem partition to EXT4

    • How To Install LightZone 4.0.0 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Qmmp 0.8.0 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Elementary OS

    • How To Install Transmageddon 1.3 On Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems

  • Games

    • Aeon Command Space Strategy Released On Steam For Linux

      Aeon Command has been on Linux for quite some time now, but it’s finally on Steam with hopes of getting more interest. The game is really quite good too, so be sure to check it out.

    • Aeon Command 2D Galactic Battle Game on Steam

    • Playing Heroes III Natively in Linux with VCMI and GOG Installer

      VCMI is an ambitious project that aims to recreate the entire Heroes III engine and add new features, and has been in the works for a few years, and up to now it is in good shape.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • NetworkManagerQt 0.9.8.2 is out

      Plasma NM is going to be part of kde-workspace and as you may know NMQt is a dependency for Plasma NM. Plasma 5 release is approaching and since we may not get NMQt ready for KF5 in time we decided to ship a snapshort of NMQt with kde-workspace so that Plasma NM compiles. In the future we will remove the snapshot and rely on the NMQt in KF5.

    • Final updates to section implementation

    • Calligra 2.8.5 Released

      This is the last but one update to the 2.8 series of the Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active released to fix recently found issues. The Calligra team recommends everybody to update.

      Why is 2.8.4 skipped? Shortly before 2.8.4 release we discovered bug that sneaked in 2.8.2 version and decided to skip the 2.8.4 entirely and quickly release 2.8.5 instead with a proper fix. The bug is related to not showing file formats in Save dialogs.

    • Calligra 2.8.5 Released

      The KDE Community has announced the release of Calligra 2.8.5. “This is the last (and last but one) update to the 2.8 series of the Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active released to fix recently found issues. The Calligra team recommends everybody to update,” says Jarosław Staniek of Calligra community.

    • opportunities presented by multi-process architectures

• Distributions

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Challenge technology competition

      Students from tertiary institutions in seven Asian Pacific countries are invited to attend the 4th Regional Red Hat Challenge – a knowledge-based technology competition.

  • Debian Family

    • I love my MacBookAir with Debian

      I can set the display backlight to zero via software, which saves me a lot of battery life and also offers a bit of anti-spy-acroos-my-shoulder support. WLAN and bluetooth work nicely.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 17 KDE Overview & Screenshots

            Linux Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ KDE and Xfce editions were released late last month, just a few weeks after the main editions (Cinnamon and MATE) were put out. This release will have the same lifespan as the distribution which is based on, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, so it will be supported until 2019, for no less than five years.

          • Deepin 2014 Release——Hold Your Dream and Move Forward

            Linux Deepin Project has been officially renamed as “Deepin Project”.

          • Deepin 2014 Linux Distribution Released

            Deepin Linux 2014 is now available as the popular Chinese-developed derivative to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS that features its own lightweight desktop powered using HTML5 and Go with Compiz. The updated desktop in Deepin 2014 is called Deepin Desktop Environment 2.0.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux Foundation introduces Linux for cars

    The connected car is shifting into high gear, and the Linux Foundation wants an open-source platform in the pole position. The non-profit consortium recently announced the debut of Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a customizable, open-source automotive software stack with Linux at its core.

  • Linux OS Gets New In-Car Interface: ‘Automotive Grade Linux’ Launched

    A common, Linux-based software platform for the ‘connected car’ is one step closer, with the release of Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) this week.

    AGL claims to be the industry’s only ‘fully open’ automotive platform, allowing carmakers to use a standardised single base upon which to build their own user experiences.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Build Android, Chrome apps from the Chromebook

        The app allows you to code through HTML, JavaScript and Dart – Google’s JavaScript-like language, so there is no Java at this time, but you do get Git support.

      • Google Now Is The Killer App For Android Wear

        In the next few months, Google will get some competition from Microsoft, Apple and a few startups in this space. For better or worse, none of them know as much about you as Google does, so it’ll be hard for them to replicate the Google Now experience. That should give Google a bit of an edge against the competition — unless the iWatch turns out to be so amazing that people will buy it even if it just shows the time and phone notifications.

      • Android Circuit: Samsung’s New Galaxy Smartphones, Android Is The Top OS In The US, And The Home Screen On The Front Line

        Taking a look back at the week in news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit focuses on Samsung’s new Galaxy handsets; Android tops the US market share; the Android ‘L’ changes; Google Play Services’ update for Android Wear support; Android Wear apps arrive in the Play Store; the battle for the home screen continues with Aviate; and what happens next in the smartphone world.

Leftovers

• Science

  • The AI boss that deploys Hong Kong’s subway engineers

    Hong Kong has one of the world’s best subway systems. It has a 99.9 per cent on time record – far better than London Underground or New York’s subway. It is owned and run by MTR Corporation, which also runs systems in Stockholm, Melbourne, London and Beijing. MTR is now planning to roll out its AI overseer to the other networks it manages.

• Health/Nutrition

  • More People, Less Water Mean Rising Food Imports For Egypt

    And efforts to make the most of precious farmland have been hampered by decades of urban sprawl, which has accelerated since Y 2011 when the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak led to a security vacuum.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • VIDEO: Calif. officer beating woman on roadside

    A cellphone video depicting a California Highway Patrol office punching a woman along the side of a freeway Tuesday evening has the agency investigating accusations of excessive force.

  • CIA interrupts info about secret overseas nuclear project

    The Washington Post has published an exclusive report about the US National Security Agency’s surveillance activities, but withheld information of “considerable intelligence value,” including a secret overseas nuclear project.

  • Communication breakdown

  • Extend NATO’s umbrella to Montenegro and Macedonia

    In reacting to Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, President Obama has reassured exposed NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of firm U.S. support. But he has shown little inclination to show needed leadership by putting another integral element of NATO policy on the agenda of September’s Cardiff summit — enlargement of the alliance.

  • The Cost of Iraq War Immunity

    If Official Washington were not the corrupt and dangerous place that it is, the architects and apologists for the Iraq War would have faced stern accountability. Instead, they are still around – holding down influential jobs, making excuses and guiding the world into more wars, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.

  • Ukraine’s ‘Terrorists’ Talk.

    A 41-minute documentary has been produced and is online, “Ukraine Crisis Today,” interviewing “terrorists” (as our side calls them) who have been bombed by the Ukrainian Government. We — that is, the United States — installed this Ukrainian government, on February 22nd, in a coup (falsely presented as a democracy movement, but run actually by the U.S. CIA and two Ukrainian fascist parties) against Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych. The government that we installed is now bombing the areas of Ukraine where the voters had voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych, in Ukraine’s last national election, which took place during February 2010. Our side calls the residents of the Yanukovich-supporting areas “terrorists.” Those are the people our Ukrainian regime bombs.

  • Kiev promises war against Russia?

  • NYT Dishes More Ukraine Propaganda

    The mainstream U.S. media continues to sell the American people a one-sided storyline on the Ukraine crisis as the Kiev regime celebrates a key military victory at Slovyansk, an eastern city at the center of ethnic Russian resistance to last February’s violent coup that ousted elected President Yanukovych.

  • The world’s most dangerous ideology

    Halliburton, which offers a myriad of services, including oil field work, plus construction work, benefits when countries are “bombed to the stone age,” since those same countries need to be rebuilt. Angelo Young describes the war-profiteering in Cheney’s Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion On Iraq War…

• Transparency Reporting

  • There’s a war on secrecy, but who is going to win?

• Finance

  • 2014 Job Creation Faster in States that Raised the Minimum Wage

    At the beginning of 2014, 13 states increased their minimum wage. Of these 13 states, four passed legislation raising their minimum wage (Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island). In the other nine, their minimum wage automatically increased in line with inflation at the beginning of the year (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state).

  • It’s time to revive public ownership and the common good

    It might sound like an oxymoron, but this is a positive article about public services. So effectively has the coalition rebranded an economic crisis caused by private greed as the consequence of public ownership, that nationalisation has come to be seen as a universally discredited hangover from bad old Labour. So while current Labour is considering taking back parts of the rail network into public ownership the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, last weekend was intoning the neoliberal catechism: “I don’t want to go back to the nationalisation of the 1970s.”

• Censorship

  • Keith Vaz criticises Home Office for losing sex abuse files

    Files which may be linked to child abuse claims seem to have been lost “on an industrial scale” at the Home Office, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee has said.

    The Home Office has said its own review last year found that 114 potentially relevant files could not be located.

    Keith Vaz MP said it was “a huge surprise” that so much potential evidence had gone missing.

    Lord Tebbit said he hoped any review would be conducted quickly.

    Number 10 has rejected calls for an over-arching public inquiry into historical child abuse claims.

  • What Google isn’t doing with requests for search redaction

    Newspapers are now accusing Google of censoring their articles every time that a search result is being removed in relation to one of their articles. However, what the very lazy journalists are not doing is testing the search results to see if any of the key figures are likely to have gained the redaction, at least not before telling the world about it.

  • Being an annoying person is a crime now, as it should be

    A law against being annoying in public was recently approved by the British House of Commons and sent to the House of Lords, which vetoed it. This was no surprise since Lords themselves are horribly annoying, with their castles and silly titles. (For example, does “Lord Privy Seal” means what it says, which is “Lord Toilet Sea-Mammal”?)

  • Colleges are slowly taking away your First Amendment rights

  • The right to be forgotten will turn the internet into a work of fiction

    We will all die, and we will all be forgotten, in the end. I’m still unsophisticated enough to find that sad. But society seems fairly stoical about it, to say the least. These days thousands are campaigning for “the right to die” and “the right to be forgotten” as if they’re genuinely worried it might otherwise not happen.

• Privacy

  • News team jailed, phone hacking not fixed though

    Noticeably absent from the trial and much of the media attention are the phone companies. Did they know their networks could be so systematically abused? Did they care?

  • Facebook’s dark secrets: What else is the social network up to behind your back?

  • PPP lodges formal protest with US over spying charges

    Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Sunday formally lodged its protest with the United States over the spying of the largest political party by the National Security Agency (NSA), a private TV channel reported.

  • Raja Pervez writes to Olson protesting NSA spying on PPP

  • PPP lodges formal protest with US over NSA spying

  • NSA spying: PPP formally lodges protest with US

  • NSA spying on PPP violation of international laws: letter to Olson

  • PPP lodges protest with US over spying

  • Facebook Going Under Investigation Thanks to Mood Altering Experiment

  • NSA whistleblowers’ testimony electrifies Bundestag committee

    Berlin Letter: Spy scandals have returned a Cold War atmosphere to the German capital

  • Opinion: Much ado about nothing

    In the US, Germany’s NSA scandal doesn’t make the headlines.

  • Germany demands full explanation from US on arrested spy

  • Suspected German double agent works for CIA: report

    A suspected German double agent has worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), German newspaper “Bild am Sonntag” reported on Sunday.

    The case was first uncovered on Friday. A 31-year-old employee of Germany’s Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) was reportedly detained Thursday in suspicion of having spied on a German investigation committee inquiring into U.S. surveillance on behalf of an American intelligence service.

  • Novel Response to the American Failure

    I’ve heard it whispered in certain literary quarters that American novelists have failed to adequately respond to a post-9/11 world. That their fiction lacks sufficient imagination and indignation towards their government and its policies. I think this is a whisper of weak foundations. While the terror of drones, the NSA and the NRA are certainly worthy of tomes, I’m actually more intrigued with the terror of ordinary life. And few American writers I know capture this as masterfully as Joshua Ferris.

  • The Ultra-Simple App That Lets Anyone Encrypt Anything

    Nadim Kobeissi wants to bulldoze that steep learning curve. At the HOPE hacker conference in New York later this month he’ll release a beta version of an all-purpose file encryption program called miniLock, a free and open-source browser plugin designed to let even Luddites encrypt and decrypt files with practically uncrackable cryptographic protection in seconds.

  • US spying on Sri Lanka also

  • Is There a Second NSA Leaker Besides Edward Snowden?

  • NSA intercepts: ordinary internet users ‘far outnumbered’ legal targets

  • The NSA Said Edward Snowden Had No Access to Surveillance Intercepts. They Lied.

    For more than a year, NSA officials have insisted that although Edward Snowden had access to reports about NSA surveillance, he didn’t have access to the actual surveillance intercepts themselves. It turns out they were lying.1 In fact, he provided the Washington Post with a cache of 22,000 intercept reports containing 160,000 individual intercepts.

  • NSA interceptions catch ordinary users

    Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by the Washington Post.

  • Ordinary Americans trapped in NSA data sweeps

  • US embassies act as spy centers across world: Analyst

    “Every single American embassy is an intelligence collection facility. The really second in charge of every embassy is the CIA station chief,” Scott Rickard, former US intelligence linguist, said in a Saturday interview with us.

  • Pakistani party formally protests to U.S. over spying revelations

    Pakistan’s main opposition, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), has formally protested to the United States ambassador in Islamabad over media reports that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on the party in 2010 when it was ruling the country, the party’s spokesman said Sunday.

  • NSA Targets Tor Servers To ‘Spy’ On Users

    Apparently, the NSA has been watching some networks to try to build up their user profile data. The government agency has been targeting the Tor anonymising system to spy on its users.

  • Hackers who claim they can break Tor will give demo at Black Hat 2014

  • Double agent did not spy on German NSA inquiry, says panel chairman

    An alleged double agent did not spy on Germany’s parliamentary NSA inquiry, according to the panel’s chairman. The suspect is accused of selling sensitive documents to a US intelligence agency.

  • Surveillance Lessons From 1971 Still Resonate Today

    They mailed copies of the documents they lifted to Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, who broke the story. NBC News reporter Carl Stern later uncovered the FBI’s illegal Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which sought to destroy, discredit and harass civil rights and anti-war groups and activists.

  • Who Watches The Watchmen?

    In honor of the Fourth of July, let’s talk a little about how horrifically paranoid and counterproductive the US government has become. And I’m not even talking about Congress! Instead I mean our old friend the No Such Agency, who, it turns out, have been singling out for special treatment anyone who displays any interest in tools which might make the NSA’s life more difficult.

  • Hillary Clinton: I Don’t Give Snowden Credit for the Privacy Debate

    The former secretary of state tells The Guardian in a video interview that if whistle-blower Edward Snowden is “serious” about joining the debate over “the tension between privacy and security,” he can come home. “But that’s his decision,” she adds.

    To Clinton, the likely 2016 presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Snowden broke the law; however, as a lawyer she holds that “he has a right to mount a defense. And he certainly has a right to launch both a legal defense and a public defense, which can of course affect the legal defense.” She claims, however, to be unaware of what the former NSA contractor would be charged with upon return since the indictments are “sealed.”

  • Der Spiegel article analyzes NSA spying in Germany

  • NSA Revelation To Drive Alcatel-Lucent Surge

    But this revelation about the NSA is something that appears investors are not paying enough attention to. I’m relatively certain, global buyers of network gear have a different perspective. Obviously, the NSA could have been intercepting gear from all the network providers, but being France based is certainly a positive for Alcatel’s forward orders. No matter how the spotlight has shown on the matter or the fact that Cisco did not appear to work in concert with the NSA, wouldn’t you agree that global buyers of gear, especially those sensitive to privacy, will be more likely to turn to the France based Alcatel-Lucent now, or the Sweden based Ericsson (ERIC)?

• Civil Rights

  • The Silence of American Hawks About Kiev’s Atrocities

    The regime has repeatedly carried out artillery and air attacks on city centers, creating a humanitarian catastrophe—which is all but ignored by the US political-media establishment.

  • CIA agent’s disclosure push ‘destroyed my entire career’

    His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.

  • Here’s What Happens When You Challenge the CIA Through “Proper Channels”

    One of the standard criticisms of Edward Snowden is that he should have tried harder to air his concerns via proper channels. This is fairly laughable on its face, since even now the NSA insists that all its programs were legal and it continues to fight efforts to change them or release any information about them. Still, maybe Snowden should have tried. What harm could it have done?

  • US spying on Muslims smacks of Nazis: Brasch

    An award-winning American journalist says the US government’s spying operations targeting the entire Muslim community is misguided and “smacks of what was done in Nazi Germany.”

  • Suspects held over Palestinian Mohammad Abu Khdair murder

    A number of Jewish suspects have been arrested over the murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammad Abu Khdair, whose death sparked days of violent protests.

  • Palestinian youth burned alive – autopsy

    Initial autopsy findings from the body of an East Jerusalem youth who Palestinians believe was kidnapped and killed by far-right Jews showed that he was burned alive, the Palestinian attorney-general has been reported as saying.

  • US-Palestinian teenager filmed ‘being beaten by Israeli police’ in house arrest

  • Fears loom over CIA report

    Security concerns are complicating the release of a controversial report on “enhanced interrogations techniques,” with officials fearing the document could inflame the Arab Street and put Americans in danger.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Kremlin offers Silicon Valley a Russian Internet with Chinese characteristics

    It’s the latest development in the tick-tock of two stories: the reactions of the world’s governments to the Snowden revelations that the NSA has their entire populations (and leaders) under deep surveillance; and Russia’s steady march to a totalitarian Internet that’s like Iran’s halal Internet, with Putin-authoritarian characteristics.

  • Internet Freedom In Danger According To Recent Study

  • Protect Internet with wise policy choices

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • Lennart: The State & Future Of Systemd

    Lennart Poettering gave a talk recently in Beijing about the state of systemd and its future ahead.

    Lennart keynoted at the joint FUDCon Beijing 2014 with GNOME.Asia 2014 event and he talked about the current position of systemd and its future going forward, while acknowledging it’s evolved more than just being a basic init system to being “a set of basic building blocks to build an OS from.”

  • Graphics Stack

    • NVIDIA Releases 331.89 Long-Lived Linux Driver

      NVIDIA has today released ther 331.89 Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD graphics drivers within their long-lived 331.xx graphics driver branch.

    • AMD’s GL Performance Monitor Gets Wired Up For Nouveau

      While two X.Org GSoC projects already failed this summer, student developer Samuel Pitoiset continues making great progress on his work for implementing performance counter support within the open-source Nouveau NVIDIA graphics driver.

• Applications

  • Rdesktop: Access Windows Desktops Remotely From Linux

  • Transmageddon 1.2 ‘All bugs must die’

    So I finally managed to put out a new Transmageddon release today. It is primarily a bugfix release, but considering how many critical bugs I ended up fixing for this release I am actually a bit embarassed about my earlier 1.x releases. There was for instances some stupidity in my code that triggered thread safety issues, which I know hit some of my users quite badly. But there were other things not working properly either, like dropping the video stream from a file. Anyway, I know some people think that filing bugs doesn’t help, but I think I fixed every reported Transmageddon bug with this release (although not every feature request bugzilla item). So if you have issues with Transmageddon 1.2 please let me know and I will try my best to fix them. I do try to keep a policy that it is better to have limited functionality, but what is there is solid as opposed to have a lot of features that are unreliable or outright broken.

  • Transmageddon 1.2 Fixes Up GNOME Transcoding, Adds VA-API GPU Encoding

  • Corebird, An Alternative GTK+3 Twitter Client

    If you’re like me, you may not have heard much about Corebird, a native GTK+3 Twitter client. Which is a bit surprising really, as Corebird is a very nice and stable application that holds it’s own with any of the other clients out there and deserves more love.

  • PCManFM 1.2.1 File Manager Released with Numerous Fixes

    PCManFM or PCMan File Manager has reached version 1.2.1 earlier today. While there’s no official announcement on the project’s blog or homepage, we’ve dug up the changelog in order to notify our users of what’s new in this release.

  • PCManFM 1.2.1 Released

  • xargs: Obviously first

  • xaric: The simple client with pretty colors

  • xlhtml and ppthtml: Not only Word needs converting

  • xidel: Taking away the pain of XML

  • Proprietary

    • What are the alternatives to Skype on Linux

      It is pretty much acknowledged by now that Skype is evil. Maybe not as evil as a DRM on a brand new game, but very close. To summarize the events, Skype has been bought by Microsoft, has been spied on by the NSA, is now quitting its peer-to-peer protocol for a centralized system, and on top of that, is proprietary software. The worst of it is that just like a DRM on a game, we put up with all of this for the product. It is true that Skype at first did help users go into the VoIP realm. Its interface is intuitive, and its setup is simple. However, it is time to move on. For this, here is a list of six software to replace Skype with on Linux.

    • Pandora FMS 5.1 Released!

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Photos – PicasaWeb integration: Add the Miner

    • How To Install MythTV 0.27.2 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Atom 0.108.0 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, LXLE And Other Ubuntu Derivatives

    • How To Install KKEdit On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • Program more Minecraft Pi

    • Linux Basics: How To Find Size of Directory Commands

    • How To Install EPEL Repository On CentOS And RHEL 7

    • Install Nginx and php-fpm in Slackware 14.1 via Slackbuilds method

    • How To watch Netflix on Ubuntu based distributions

    • Half a dozen things to do after installing openSUSE 13.1

    • Things to do after installing Fedora 20

    • How To Install The NVIDIA 331.89 Driver On Linux Systems

    • How To Install LiVES 2.2.5 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • Transmageddon 1.3 Video Transcoder Released [Ubuntu Installation]

  • Wine or Emulation

    • Wine 1.7.21 released

      The Wine development release 1.7.21 is now available.

      What’s new in this release (see below for details):
      - Support for critical sections in the C runtime.
      - Unicode data updated to Unicode 7.0.
      - Support for interlaced PNG encoding.
      - Initial stub for the Packager library.
      - Various bug fixes.

  • Games

    • Here’s Your July 4, 2014 Indie Game Bundle Update

    • Two Months & Counting, LGP Remains Offline

      At the end of April LGP was migrating servers and expected to “keep downtime to an absolute minimum” while more than two months later the once leading Linux game publishing company remains offline.

    • The Most Popular Linux Gaming Articles For June 2014

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Enlightenment’s Evas OpenGL Now Supports S3TC Textures

    Enlightenment is flying high these days with the great contributions being done by Samsung’s investment into the project.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Calligra sprint in full process

      One week-end of Calligra sprint is currently going on in the old and cozy center of Deventer in the Netherlands.

    • Cutelyst 0.2.0 Released: A Web Framework Powered By Qt 5

      The Cutelyst 0.2 release that happened today is more real-world-ready. This release features framework documentation at Cutelyst.org, a WordPress-like blog has been written using Cutelyst as an example app, API updates, and a variety of other changes.

    • Cutelyst 0.2.0 is out!

      Five months ago I announced the very first release of Cutelyst, a web framework powered by Qt 5. Time passes and I started shaping my real world applications written with it, I should probably release a newer version earlier but it’s not very nice to keep releasing API that changes a lot, however next version (0.3.0) will still contains API changes.

    • Sysadmin update: website migration

      We just finished migrating one of our stacks to a new and powerful piece of hardware. It was a major activity and took about 9 hours with around 2-3 hours of downtime per CMS. The activity is now complete, however there are a few rough edges that we’ll be ironing out over the weekend.

    • KDE HIG: Search refined

      Technically, the functions to reach those goals all bring their own interactions and workflows. For users it is necessary to perceive clearly what happens and how to achieve the desired result. Unfortunately, some uncontrolled growth in KDE applications has lead to non-standardized implementation and application-specific short-cuts.

    • Next Generation Klipper

      A few weeks ago I contacted Thomas Pfeiffer with the idea to design a new user interface for Klipper in Plasma 5.1. Surprisingly he informed me that a discussion was already started in the KDE Forums. Which is awesome as that means there was already some ideas on how the user interface could look like. Last week the number of new bug reports for KWin get lower so I started to look into Klipper for 5.1.

    • KDevelop 4.7 Beta Comes Packed With New Features

    • After Ubuntu, Windows will also follow KDE’s convergence story

      The KDE Community introduced the concept of convergence way back in 2008 with the arrival of KDE 4.x (back then it was still KDE Desktop). If you ever tried KDE on your netbook you would have noticed that the desktop that got installed was different from that you would get when you install the same iso on your desktop.

      That was convergence. KDE knew what kind of form factor you have and would offer an interface optimized for that device.

      KDE community was also developing something called Plasma Active, which was aimed at devices using touch-based interface as found on today’s smartphones and tablets.

• Distributions

  • The Latest Distro Trying For Commercial Success Uses Arch & Wayland

    A new Linux distribution under development is among the latest dreaming of commercial success in hopes of finally conquering the Linux desktop and having their OS pre-installed on systems being sold in brick and mortar stores.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Scientific Linux 7 Alpha Arrives, Based On RHEL 7

      Scientific Linux, the distribution developed by produced by the Fermi Laboratory and CERN as a derivative of the open Red Hat Enterprise Linux code-base, is preparing for their RHEL7 re-spin.

    • Insider Selling: Michael Cunningham Sells 10,000 Shares of Red Hat Stock

    • Fedora

      • Fedora Comes Up With A Policy For Simple Patches

      • Simple Patch Policy

  • Debian Family

    • My Free Software Activity in June 2014

      After having put in place the infrastructure to allow companies to contribute financially to Debian LTS, I spent quite some time to draft the announce of the launch of Debian LTS (on a suggestion of Moritz Mühlenhoff who pointed out to me that there was no such announce yet).

    • Tracker.debian.org is live

      With the help of the Debian System Administrators, it’s now setup on tracker.debian.org!
      This service is also managed by the Debian QA team, it’s deployed in /srv/tracker.debian.org/ (on ticharich.debian.org, a VM) if you want to verify something on the live installation. It runs under the “qa” user (so members of the “qa-core” group can administer it).

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • sUbuntu MATE Remix 14.04 Alpha Now Available for Download

          We are pleased to announce today, July 4, that the Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.04 has reached Alpha stage and is available for download as Live DVD/USB images that can be installed.

          Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.04 Alpha comes as a July 4 surprise to many who believed the controversial project would become reality sooner or later. It beautifully integrates the MATE desktop environment into the latest upstream Ubuntu release.

          The distribution was developed by a few members of the Ubuntu community and provides users with an old-school graphical desktop environment, which reminds us of the good ol’ times of Ubuntu 10.04.

        • Ubuntu 14.04 vs. 14.10 Snapshot Performance Comparison

          For some brief benchmarking during Independence Day in the US, I ran some tests comparing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS stable against a fresh development snapshot of Ubuntu 14.10.

          Over Ubuntu 14.04, the Ubuntu 14.10 “Utopic Unicorn” in its current development state has the Linux 3.15 kernel (but will end up using Linux 3.16), Unity 7.3.0, Mesa 10.2 (10.3 should make it in time for Ubuntu 14.10), and GCC 4.8.3 (while GCC 4.9 should make it for 14.10).

        • The First Early Alpha Version Of Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.04 Is Now Available For Download

          As I have already written a few times already, Canonical’s Alan Pope and Martin Wimpress, one of the leading MATE developers have been working a lot at Ubuntu MATE Remix, a Ubuntu spin which uses Mate as the default desktop environment.

        • Ubuntu MATE 14.04 Alpha 1

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Cinnamon 2.2 in Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ [Overview & Screenshots]

            Cinnamon has come a long way in terms of both usability and responsiveness, and Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ stands proof of this. As mentioned in my review of Mint 17 KDE edition, this release will be supported for five years, and it will also be the base for development of future Mint releases.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Will your next car run Linux? Cars go open-source with Automotive Grade Linux

    Will your next car run Linux? Cars go open-source with Automotive Grade Linux It’s early days, but Automotive Grade Linux already looks better than most proprietary systems

    In-car tech has just gone open source with news of a new automotive-grade build of the Linux operating system. But what does this mean for your next car?

    Linux in various forms is already widely used in cars. But to date, it’s largely been used in embedded systems, the operations of which are mostly obscured from owners and drivers.

  • Automotive Grade Linux brings open source to the auto industry

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Why Android One was Google’s most important announcement at I/O

        Reaching out to the next billion connected users is a phrase that has been tossed around liberally.

        Mozilla used it when they announced their $25 smartphone initiative. Nokia’s (now Microsoft’s) Stephen Elop used it when Nokia launched the revamped Nokia Asha line last year, and again when he announced the Nokia X. Last year Google used the same phrase as it launched Android 4.4 KitKat.

        However, these companies’ efforts are still to leave a mark in the countries where the supposed next billion connected customers reside. Firefox’ $25 smartphones are yet to enter the market, neither Nokia’s Asha nor X line have turned out to be “hot items”, while affordable smartphones running KitKat are still few and far between.

      • Self-signing custom Android ROMs

        The security model on the Google Nexus devices is pretty straightforward. The OS is (nominally) secure and prevents anything from accessing the raw MTD devices. The bootloader will only allow the user to write to partitions if it’s unlocked. The recovery image will only permit you to install images that are signed with a trusted key. In combination, these facts mean that it’s impossible for an attacker to modify the OS image without unlocking the bootloader[1], and unlocking the bootloader wipes all your data. You’ll probably notice that.

      • HTC One M8 Prime to release with Android 5.0 L OS in October-December

        HTC One M8 Prime release date may happen between October and December and is set to come preinstalled with the new Android L OS.

        An XDA member leaked the roadmap of HTC in rolling out the Android L OS for its handsets. It seemed that HTC will offer the upcoming version of Android OS to its two-year-old gadgets. In a leaked document by HTC tipster @LlabTooFeR, smartphones from the past two years have all been marked with the “evaluation” stamp. Their tentative timeline is between October and December.

      • BlueZ 5.21 Adds More Android Features

        A new release is out for BlueZ, the Linux Bluetooth stack, with the developers continuing to work on the same theme of the past few months of adding Android features for BlueZ.

        This week’s BlueZ 5.21 release adds support for the following features from Android: Scan Parameters, Device Information, and Health Device. BlueZ 5.21 also adds a kernel background auto-connection feature, support for storing/loading connection parameters, and also boasts a couple fixes over BlueZ 5.20.

Free Software/Open Source

• CMS

  • How Card.com Is Securing Itself and Its Users With Open Source

    “We’re heavily involved in Drupal. I’m a member of the Drupal security team and the former lead of the team for over two years,” Knaddison said. “So it’s an area where we have a fair amount of expertise and depth, and we feel that our situation is best served by fixing vulnerabilities directly in the software itself.”

• Public Services/Government

  • Open source to help Wales protect environment

    Using open source software solutions is helping a Welsh pilot project to manage flood risks and provide a stepping stone for future research. The Citizen Observatory Web (Cobweb) project involves citizens using their smartphone or tablets, to submit data observations within the Dyfi area in Wales, to help collect environmental data for use in evidence based policy.

  • S Korea to break away from Windows by 2020

    South Korea said that it will move away from Windows in the future to avoid dependency on the Microsoft operating system, citing the fact that Windows XP is no longer supported.

  • Korean govt to turn its back on Microsoft… and use what instead, Hangul?

    Usage of idiosyncratic software could push the Korean government away from Microsoft’s offerings and into open-source OSes like Linux

• Openness/Sharing

  • Automotive Grade Linux, running Android without Google, and more

    In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, we celebrate our digital independence and take a cruise with Automotive Grade Linux. Plus more!

  • Ouya All-Access Plan, Mario Paint on Chrome, and more

• Programming

  • INTERVIEW: DAMIAN CONWAY

    Damian Conway is one of the Guardians of Perl (our term) and one of Perl 6′s chief architects. But he’s chiefly a computer scientist, a brilliant communicator and an educator. His presentations are often worth crossing continents for. He was the Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Melbourne’s Monash University between 2001 and 2010, and has run courses on everything from Regular Expressions for Bioinformatics to Presentation Aikido (and of course, lots of Perl). Which is why, when we discovered he was making a keynote at this year’s QCon conference in London in March, we braved train delays and the sardine travelling classes of the London Underground to meet him opposite Westminster Abbey.

Leftovers

• Google introduces block on porn advertising on AdWords

  Search company extends bans on pornography ads across its network, while conservative US pressure groups claim credit

• Health/Nutrition

  • Why Insurance Companies Are Interested in Facial Recognition Technology

    “We know in the field of aging that some people tend to senesce, or grow older, more rapidly than others, and some more slowly,” Olshansky told the Washington Post. “And we also know that the children of people who senesce more slowly tend to live longer than other people.”

• Security

  • Friday’s security advisories

  • PHP Fixes OpenSSL Flaws in New Releases

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • North Korea not a threat to U.S. security

  • People or War?

    We could have built 120,000 new homes, desperately needed. Instead we spent the money on a bloody big ship. To what purpose? An aircraft carrier is of no use to defend the British Isles – land based planes can do that much better. It is to enable our armed forces to operate elsewhere, far from here. In other words, it is not for defence, it is for attack. It was ordered in the Blairite era of enthusiastic invasion of other countries.

  • Royal Navy’s biggest aircraft carrier to be named by Queen

    The Queen will formally name the Royal Navy’s biggest ever ship on Friday, with whisky replacing the more traditional champagne at the ceremony.

    She will smash a bottle of Islay malt whisky against the HMS Queen Elizabeth at the event at Rosyth dockyard in Fife, where the 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier has been assembled and fitted out.

    The Queen will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh at the naming ceremony, a naval tradition dating back thousands of years that combines a celebration and a solemn blessing.

  • For Wisconsin priest, social justice carries a price

    Murphy was at Volk Field that day protesting drones, unmanned aerial vehicles. It was his first arrest at Volk Field, but his eighth or ninth overall — he lost count.

  • We are a clueless nation: America’s congenital blind spot on Iraq

    As our military contemplates Iraq again, we’re beset by unchallenged magical thinking — and a dangerous narcissism

  • ​Real ‘Battle of Iraq’ is only beginning

    Ideology or religion, nationalism, self-determination, and independence appear lofty notions and goals, but in reality, it is “always … about the oil, stupid!” to paraphrase Professor Schwartz paraphrasing Bill Clinton.

  • US’s Role in Destabilizing Latin America

  • Who are we to presume to call the shots in Cuba?

    This mind-set is especially odious since the United States supported the terrible dictator Fulgencio Batista, and supported businesses and American mobsters who controlled the economy, impoverishing Cuba and its people.

    We tried to bring Castro and his government down repeatedly, attempted to kill him, and placed CIA agents and others there to stir up revolt. These actions are not in the spirit of democracy and in line with our country’s best ideals. They are in line with those who think of power, control, and empire, but who hide behind the empty invocations of manifest destiny, national security, and democracy promotion.

  • CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’

    His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.

  • At CIA, this man’s fight against secrecy ended his career

    A 19-year veteran of the CIA claims he was fired for trying to make hundreds of once-secret documents public. Jeffrey Scudder shares his story about how his career unraveled.

  • Foreign Affairs Misreads Lumumba (the Communist)

    The root of the CIA’s intervention in Congo was an overhyped analysis of the communist threat.

  • Will the United States go to war in Iraq once again?

  • US Should Back Syria’s Assad Against ISIS

    One key to solving the ISIS crisis is hunkered down in the presidential palace in Damascus, and his name is Bashar al-Assad. Demonized by the United States and by neoconservatives long before he waged a ruthless, take-no-prisoners blitzkrieg against the American- and Saudi-supported rebellion that began in 2011, Assad has proved to everyone (with the possible exception of Secretary of State John Kerry) that he’s staying put, at least for the foreseeable future. For all intents and purposes, Assad has won the civil war in Syria, and short of an Iraq-style invasion—which isn’t in the cards— there’s no way for the United States to oust Assad. Which is a good thing, because his ouster would immeasurably strengthen the extremists who’ve led the fight against him, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, now “the Islamic State,” the Caliphate-mongering radicals who are an Al Qaeda offshoot. On the other hand, by ending its support for the Syrian rebels, who don’t have a prayer anyway, the United States would strengthen Assad and allow him to crush ISIS.

  • Training a rebel Syrian army is the wrong way to end the bloodshed

    The revelation that General David Richards, the former head of Britain’s Armed Forces, drew up plans to train a 100,000-strong Syrian rebel army shows just how desperate the British government was to become embroiled in Syria’s brutal civil war.

    During his three-year tenure as Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, as he has now become, was deeply sceptical of the Coalition’s willingness to embark on ill-considered – and potentially catastrophic – military adventures in the Arab world.

  • UK military had secret plan — and U.S. support — to train Syrian rebels to topple Bashar al-Assad

  • Revealed: Britain’s secret plan for 100,000 Syria invasion force

    Britain was considering the option of training a massive, 100,000-strong army in Turkey and Jordan to defeat President Bashar Assad, according to a plan drawn up by a leading British general. The invasion was later scrapped as too risky.

  • Blackwater Story Is Exactly Why NYT’s James Risen Must Be Shielded from DOJ Prosecution

    James Risen of The New York Times, using recently disclosed State Department documents, has written a bombshell-of-a-story chronicling how Blackwater’s top manager threatened to kill the U.S. government’s chief investigator in 2007, thus thwarting an investigation into Blackwater’s operations just weeks before the company’s guards massacred 17 Iraqi civilians.

    The story is characteristic Risen: unflinchingly and thoroughly reported. However, Risen may not be able to write such stories in a matter of months. Instead, he may be sitting in a jail cell as a result of a case being prosecuted against him by the Obama administration.

  • U.S. confronts difficulties in arming Iraqi air forces with missiles and F-16s

    Russia sent several disassembled Su-25 fighter jets to Iraq this week, and Iran has also supplied Su-25s.

  • The Evil That Was Phoenix

    There’s a reason the CIA wanted to prevent the publication of Douglas Valentine’s 1986 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam. This masterwork is more than an exposé of the US pacification program in Vietnam the book is titled after. It is an indictment of a cynical and bloody plan to kill Vietnamese.

  • Appointing ‘Sovietologist’ as a new US ambassador to Russia not the road to peace

    The Cold War against the Soviet Union became an industry in the United States.

  • ANALYSIS: Chechen Fighters Joining Iraqi Jihad is Western Plot

    With an ethnic Chechen Omar Shishani coming to the spotlight in ISIS’s activities in Iraq, analysts say Chechen war was an attempt by the Western countries to destabilize Russia through the Caucasus.

  • Ukraine: The International War-Criminal is Obama, Not Putin

  • The people of the Ukraine were sold a pack of lies

    What we are seeing going on in the Ukraine can be understood from the perspective of American political intrigue. The true elite power in America is rapidly losing power and they are in a state of panic. These people are for the most part the former “cold warriors” in America’s military and intelligence establishments and their political underlings who are handled by them. The former are mainly remnants left over from the first Bush’s reign at the C.I.A. They are “American Firsters” who cloak themselves under the banner of patriotism however their true motivation is simply power for their own self-interests.

  • US Confirms Years-Long “Secret” Military Presence In Somalia

    U.S. “unnamed officials” confirmed to Reuters on Thursday that over a hundred military troops have been operating covertly in Somalia since 2007.

• Transparency Reporting

  • Swedish court sets date for Julian Assange rape case hearing

    16 July hearing is first legal battle in the case since WikiLeaks founder sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London

  • After 2 Years of Confinement, Will Sweden Resolve Assange’s Case? Swedish Foreign Minister Won’t Say

    Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt refuses to address questions from Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman about the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is wanted for questioning in Sweden on allegations of sexual offenses. Assange’s attorneys recently asked the Swedish government to withdraw a warrant that has kept him confined in Ecuador’s London Embassy for two years. Assange has voiced fears he would ultimately be sent for prosecution in the United States if he were to return to Sweden. Assange’s attorneys say the warrant should be lifted because it cannot be enforced while Assange is in the embassy and Swedish prosecutors refuse to question him in London. Although Assange faces a warrant for questioning, he has not been formally charged. Fifty-nine international organizations have submitted reports to the United Nations challenging Sweden’s treatment of Assange. Speaking at the Almedalen political festival in Visby, Bildt refuses to address the case directly, calling it an issue for the Swedish judicial system, not its political one. We get reaction to Bildt’s comments from Assange legal adviser Jen Robinson, who also discusses the parallels between Assange and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. “We are now seeing a trend of whistleblowers, publishers, journalists having to seek asylum and refuge in countries around the world because of their concern about prosecution in the United States,” Robinson says.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Home insulation installs ‘have collapsed because of UK policies’

  • Stopping harmful climate change is surprisingly cheap

    Saving our skins might be surprisingly cheap. To avoid dangerous climate change, the world needs to boost spending on green energy by $1 trillion a year. That sounds scarily large, but we could cover a lot of it using the subsidies currently handed to fossil fuels.

  • May I bring up climate change?

    The GOP delayed raising auto efficiency standards for 25 years, shouting it would “destroy Detroit.” Ironically, when the CAFE standards were finally raised, in Obama’s 1st year, guess what happened? (1) The GOP tried – openly and vociferously – to destroy the U.S. auto industry by refusing loans to GM and Chrysler (loans that are now 90% repaid). (2) The mileage standards are working! Mileage is rising rapidly, American drivers are saving billions at the pump, the automakers are highly profitable, the air is cleaner… a positive sum game with no negative aspects at all…

• Finance

  • Robert Reich: ‘Freedom’ Is Just Another Word For Letting the Rich Get Richer

    On Monday the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Affordable Care Act, ruling that privately-owned corporations don’t have to offer their employees contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the corporate owners’ religious beliefs.

    The owners of Hobby Lobby, the plaintiffs in the case, were always free to practice their religion. The Court bestowed religious freedom on their corporation as well—a leap of logic as absurd as giving corporations freedom of speech. Corporations aren’t people.

  • Does Capitalism Inevitably Produce Inequalities?

    In a recent New York Times op-ed article, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz theorized that capitalism does not inevitably produce inequalities in wealth. Instead, he argued, today’s inequalities result from policy decisions made by politicians on all sorts of matters that affect people’s income: the tax structure that favors the rich, the bailout of the banks during the Great Recession, subsidies for rich farmers, cutting of food stamps, etc. In fact, he concluded, today there are no “truly fundamental laws of capitalism.” Thanks to democracy, people can steer the economy in a variety of directions and no single outcome is inevitable.

  • WikiLeaks, Anonymous, Bitcoin, and the First Amendment Revolution

    Journalist Phillip Dorling traced the impulse behind the Occupy movement back to the release of the U.S. Army helicopter gunship Collateral Murder video and noted how it was strongly based on the work of the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Amnesty International pointed to the role of leaked documents in triggering revolutionary global uprisings. The BBC documentary WikiLeaks: Secret Life of a Superpower also attributed their revelations as the spark for Arab revolutions, showing how U.S. cable leaks shared through social networking sites in 2010 became a powerful force that finally toppled the corrupt Tunisian dictator Ben Ali.

  • US leans on El Salvador to open up its seed market

    Grant by US agency to open markets to ‘competition’ draws protests from Salvadoran farmers and concern from NGOs

• Censorship

  • ENCORE: Internet access tool that monitors the accessibility of webpages

  • Georgia Tech Researchers Target Web Censorship

  • Almost 1 in 5 websites now blocked by censorship filters in the UK

    Browse the web in the UK, and sooner or later there’s a good chance you’ll stumble across a website that’s been blocked. Sites like The Pirate Bay, Fenopy and H33t are no longer viewable due to court orders preventing access, and other sites — many perfectly legitimate — are being blocked by censorship filters.

  • Censorship By The Press

    Censorship, in most cases, is what happens in the newsroom.

  • Google’s removal of BBC article raises censorship fears

    Google — which opposed the court decision — responded by introducing an online form giving visitors to its European sites a formal route to make removal requests. In the first four days after uploading the form, Google received more than 41,000 requests.

  • Google reverses decision to remove news article links after censorship claims over ‘right to be forgotten’

  • BBCtrending: Texas teen hunter in Facebook safari showdown

    Kendall Jones is a 19-year-old from Texas, a university student and a former cheerleader – but those characteristics of her life are not what she posts about on Facebook.

  • Google has become the victim of digital censors

    The European Court of Justice ruling requiring Google to ‘hide’ stories shows the need to defend digital freedom of speech

  • Freedom Of Religion Is Obsolete, Superseded, And Harmful

    Freedom of religion was intended to guarantee freedom from governmental persecution because of private beliefs. Today, that freedom has been twisted and perverted into instead creating persecution against individuals, backed up by governmental force. It is time to abolish it as archaic and obsolete, and let the modern freedoms of opinion and speech take its place.

  • How British Liberals Sold Out Free Speech

    When the actor and comedian Steve Coogan (pictured) was made a patron of the Index on Censorship earlier this month, the British media’s guffawing could be heard round the world. Coogan, you see, is a leading light in Hacked Off, the celeb-packed censorious outfit that has spent the past three years agitating for state-backed regulation of Britain’s raucous tabloid press. For a venerable free-speech group like Index on Censorship to make the celebrity censor Coogan a patron is like the British Humanist Association giving a job to the Pope of Rome.

  • Colleges are slowly taking away your First Amendment rights

    Sept. 17 last year was a pretty bad day for the Constitution on our campuses. Robert Van Tuinen of Modesto Junior College in California was prevented from passing out copies of the Constitution outside of his college’s tiny “free speech zone.” Near Los Angeles, Citrus College student Vinny Sinapi-Riddle was threatened with removal from campus for the “offense” of collecting signatures for a petition against NSA domestic surveillance outside his college’s tiny free speech area. I mention September 17 because that was Constitution Day. – See more at: http://westhawaiitoday.com/opinion/columns/colleges-are-slowly-taking-away-your-first-amendment-rights#sthash.VbYv0a4f.dpuf

• Privacy

  • FBI records: Chilling find in Bradenton dumpster

    Freshly released but heavily censored FBI documents include tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars.

  • Russian Government Will Force Companies To Store Citizen Data Locally

    The law which bans online businesses from storing personal data of Russian citizens on servers located abroad today passed its third and final reading in the State Duma – the Russian parliament.

  • Facebook’s study got it wrong: seeing our ‘friends’ happy can make us sad

    Only a fraction of our connections on social media are people we love. The rest are people we already probably dislike

  • Facebook Denies Timeline Manipulation Was Military Experiment

  • Journal that published Facebook mood study expresses ‘concern’ at its ethics

  • Official complaint filed over Facebook emotion study

  • A Facebook to unlike

    The bare essentials of what happened over a week in 2012 are now clear. A study was conducted, unknown to the millions of Facebook users and to the many directly affected, by researchers from Facebook and from two American universities — Cornell University and the University of California. To carry out this hidden manipulation, Facebook altered the content that appeared on certain users’ news feeds to control the number of posts that contained words with positively or negatively charged emotions.

  • Facebook: More Powerful Than the NSA?

  • No Facebook, no iPhone, no problem: how I declared my digital independence

    Why pledge allegiance to the united tech giants of America – and the surveillance for which they stand? I am one man, relatively invisible, with liberty and justice online

  • NSA targets anyone interested in online privacy

    An article published on July 3 by German public broadcaster Das Erste reveals that the National Security Agency (NSA) is using its surveillance program XKeyScore to target users of the traffic anonymizing software Tor and the Tails operating system, for deep packet inspection, data retention, and heightened surveillance.

    The article is based on “exclusive access to top secret NSA source code, interviews with former NSA employees, and the review of secret documents of the German government.” This is the first leak regarding NSA surveillance, which includes a portion of the programming source code being used by the spy agency.

  • Moscow passes law to force websites onto Russian servers

    Russia’s parliament passed a law on Friday to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, a move the Kremlin says is for data protection but which critics see an attack on social networks.

  • ‘It’s become fashionable to bash GCHQ’ – Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood

    That’s the message from Cheltenham’s Liberal Democrat MP Martin Horwood who believes it has become “fashionable” for people to have a go at GCHQ.

  • Signs That the Supreme Court May Push Back Against the NSA

    This week, Michael Hayden, who headed the CIA and the NSA during the Bush Administration, said that if he’d been on the Supreme Court for the 9 to 0 decision requiring a warrant before cell phone searches, the vote would’ve been 10 to zero. Former Congresswoman Jane Harman also spoke in favor of the ruling.

  • Germany summons American ambassador amid espionage row

    Germany summoned the US ambassador in Berlin on Friday following the arrest of a man reported to have spied for the United States, heightening friction between the two countries over alleged US eavesdropping in Germany.

  • 4th July – Independence From America – NSA Menwith Hill

  • German IT specialist spied on by NSA

    A German student who ran a server that hid people’s IP addresses to help them stay anonymous was targeted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). What are Germany’s means for holding the NSA accountable?

  • German student from Erlangen spied on by NSA

  • German Student Under N.S.A. Scrutiny, Reports Say

  • If you’ve researched online privacy then the NSA may already be tracking you

  • ​XKeyscore exposed: How NSA tracks all German Tor users as ‘extremists’

  • How the NSA Targets Tor Users

  • If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance

  • XCurrency Unveils Cryptographic Privacy Technology In Wake Of NSA xKeyScore Outrage

  • ‘Collect It All’ NSA Targets Those Seeking Web Privacy

  • Tor users are being targeted by the NSA for surveillance

  • NSA likely targets anybody who’s ‘Tor-curious’

  • NSA may be targeting Linux users for increased surveillance

    Linux Journal is reporting that apparently the NSA considers it an “extremist forum” and the NSA may also be targeting Linux users for increased surveillance. Linux Journal’s information is based on reports issues by German media that disclosed details on who the NSA has been targeting.

  • Germans reveal new NSA XKeyScore internet monitoring

  • NSA reportedly tracking any internet users who research privacy software online

  • Privacy-conscious web surfers put on NSA target lists

  • Report: NSA tracking privacy software users

  • NSA whistleblowers testify in Bundestag inquiry, disclose ‘totalitarian’ surveillance

  • Former NSA Technical Director Tells German Committee Spy Agency Has “Totalitarian Mentality”

    Testifying, Binney accused the NSA of having a “totalitarian mentality” and wanting “total information control” over citizens in breach of the US constitution. It was an approach that until now the public had only seen among dictators, he added.

  • Why a country that lived under a police state views digital privacy differently

    When it comes to spying on its own citizens the former East Germany certainly had a lock on things.

  • Crypto thwarts TINY MINORITY of Feds’ snooping efforts

  • Protect Privacy Online for Your Own Good

    Social networking site Facebook made headlines for a recently published study where it modified the emotional content of what appeared in people’s news feeds and studied the after-effect of that change on users. The experiment has been rightly condemned as an intrusion and a manipulation of unsuspecting users of the site. By not seeking informed consent of over 700,000 users in an experiment, Facebook breached broadly accepted ethical guidelines.

  • What do we want? CAT VIDEOS! How do we get them? TOR!

    The Onion Router project has fired back at the National Security Agency, after it emerged that those who use the network – and read Linux magazines – are considered worthy of surveillance.

  • NSA ‘targets’ Tor dark web servers and users

  • ‘Nowhere to hide, NSA owns the network’

  • Spook state: Uncle Sam is keeping a watch on you

  • Loophole means US could spy on Bermuda communications

  • Which Countries Escape NSA Surveillance

  • The NSA authorized to spy on ALBA and Petro Caribes

  • Why the silence on NSA spying?

  • U.S. Spying Allegations Chafe An Already Angry India

    Aiming for a fresh start in troubled U.S.-India relations, U.S. Sen. John McCain met with newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi today in New Delhi. But McCain’s two-day visit was overshadowed by reports that the U.S. National Security Agency was granted permission in 2010 to spy on Modi’s political party.

  • German army to be equipped with drones

  • NSA’s XKEYSCORE dissected: All Tor users marked as ‘extremists’

  • Germany summons US envoy over spy case

    Federal prosecutors say a 31-year-old German man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of spying for foreign intelligence services. They did not identify the suspect or the intelligence services.

  • New spy flap may test U.S., German ties

    In the latest turn in the yearlong tensions with Germany over U.S. spying, a German man was arrested this week on suspicion of passing secret documents to a foreign power, believed to be the United States. The U.S. ambassador, John B. Emerson, was summoned to the Foreign Office here and urged to help with what German officials called a swift clarification of the case.

  • Germany Arrests Man Suspected Of Spying For U.S.

  • Germany spy arrested on suspicion of spying for NSA

  • Lenovo, IBM deal gets nod of Chinese regulators

  • Edward Snowden to speak at HOPE X NYC

    As if there weren’t enough reasons to attend HOPE X in NYC this month, now there’s a killer whistleblower panel.

  • Germany: Spy Arrested ‘is US Double Agent’ in NSA Probe

    A man believed to be a German intelligence operative has been arrested on suspicion of being a double agent for the US.

    A spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had been informed of the arrest but refused to give any further details.

    “The Chancellor was… informed of this case,” Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin.

  • Experts Speculate On Existence of Another NSA Leaker

  • Is There A Second NSA Leaker?

  • The NSA may have another leaker on its hands

  • Reforming NSA ‘is like bailing out a ship that’s already sunk’

  • NSA sued for hoarding details on use of ‘zero day’ exploits

  • Protecting privacy from U.S. spies

    Most of the public and congressional concern about the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance programs has focused on the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone “metadata” under a strained interpretation of the Patriot Act. That’s understandable, given the indiscriminate nature of the program. Fortunately, President Obama has now directed that the government obtain court approval before “querying” or searching the database of Americans’ phone records, and legislation moving forward in Congress would end government storage of the records.

  • Cory Doctorow: Security in Numbers

  • NSA Appears To Be Chaining Calls Using Phone Numbers One Hop Out As New Originating Selectors

    As Wheeler notes, this wording may also indicate the agency’s anticipation of bulk records being maintained and held by service providers, thus further limiting its splashing around in the collected metadata. But it does indicate that the recently-imposed “hop” limitation is nearly useless. Rather than simply searching one hop out from the RAS selector, the agency is having its analysts build contract chains starting from that hop and moving outward. This puts the agency right back where it was prior to the minimal restrictions placed on it by the administration’s reform measures.

  • NSA targets Tor administrators and people searching for privacy tools, reports claim

  • Image of US “overwhelmingly positive” despite the NSA scandal?

    Germans still have an “overwhelmingly positive” image of the US, according to RTL’s Editor-in-Chief Peter Kloeppel, speaking at a round table discussion centered on transatlantic relations in light of the NSA scandal.

• Civil Rights

  • Editorial: Celebrating our freedoms

    INDEPENDENCE WASN’T invented in America on this day in 1776. Freedom and self-rule are concepts that predate George Washington and our other Founding Fathers by centuries.

  • ‘I am not a gun-toting, flag-waving, red-blooded American but a world citizen’: US expats on the Fourth of July abroad

    From tongue-in-cheek London to NSA-wary Berlin and skeptical Dubai, expats are coming to grips with just how unsettling ‘blind patriotism’ can be

  • Rights continue to fade away

    But as much as I’d like to wave a flag and have a grand ol’ time. I know that the land of the free has taken many steps in the wrong direction. In 2012 President Barack Obama signed into law the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). This act gave the U.S. government the right to indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen without trial, forever.

  • FGM in Sweden: School where every single girl in one class underwent procedure exposed

    The shocking scale of female genital mutilation (FGM) in a Swedish school, where every single girl in one class had been subjected to the procedure, has been revealed.

  • Information Commissioner decides Home Office must release report on EU Freedom of Movement

    A controversial report into EU Freedom of Movement, written as part of the government’s review of the balance of competencies within the European Union must be disclosed, the Information Commissioner has decided.

  • Iran 1953: US Envoy to Baghdad Suggested to Fleeing Shah He Not Acknowledge Foreign Role in Coup

    Document Casts Doubt over Accuracy of US Reports from Tehran — and Adds to Debate over Responsibility for the Coup

  • Tribal, aggressive, skilled at violence: why the British army tortured Iraqis to death

    The long history of British abuse and torture in Kenya, Malaya, Aden, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan cannot be explained as the work of a few ‘bad apples’.

  • Women duped by Met undercover officers win high court ruling

    Women claiming damages from the Metropolitan police after being tricked into forming sexual relationships with undercover officers have won a legal victory in the high court in their ongoing battle for compensation.

    Mr Justice Bean said on Wednesday that the Met could no longer rely on issuing a “neither confirm nor deny” (NCND) response to the claims for damages from the women.

  • The end of America as we know it

    Now, in the new post-constitutional America, we, too, torture. For legal purposes we do “a little sidestep” in the tradition of Charles Durning in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” We torture outside the United States and thus our Justice Department contends we are not violating the Constitution.

    It isn’t too late. There are about 50 men and women in this country who run the television industry. They are far more powerful than members of the Federal Reserve or elected officials, such as members of Congress. They and their television companies have the power to open up a debate on all of this. If not, we are in the process of losing the great American experiment without even a chance to say goodbye. It’s the end of America as we know it.

  • Air travellers need targeted protection

    Ministers yesterday said enhanced security would be in place for some time to come, while offering assurances that it will not cause “significant disruption”. It is also noteworthy that the official UK threat status remained unchanged at “substantial” – two rungs below the highest level. None the less, as school holidays begin and families head for the airports, the requirement to arrive at least two hours before take-off is likely to become closer to three hours. So accustomed have we become to removing jackets, belts and shoes that the queues tend to move faster than they once did. But there has been no relaxation in the ultra-strict measures brought in a few years ago which, for instance, prevented significant amounts of liquids being taken through security in hand luggage. Once introduced, they tend to be permanent.

  • Fireworks Are ‘Pretend War’ That Make Us OK With Real War

    Did you know that fireworks are actually a “propaganda campaign that inures us—especially the children among us—to the real wars half a world away”?

  • Letter inspired by 911 call

    The pine-cone POO-lice are doing their jobs with all do vigilance. My cousin was cleaning the pine-cones from the ground, around his motor-home. A call was placed to 911 that a motor-home was emptying its waste in the street. The city police blockaded the street and sent in five squad cars. With palms resting on their semi-automatic pistols, the police were ready for action. A pine-cone mistaken for a human poo. Police ready to shoot an American over poo or pine-cones.

  • Hate Crimes against Muslims in the West – Silence of Mass Media and Human Rights Organizations

  • Tighter airport checks likely to be permanent

  • The Obama years: ‘The trailers were great, the movie was horrible’

    As a poll of American voters ranks Barack Obama as the worst president of all time, Matt Lewis says his presidency has been a disastrous flop – talented and much-hyped but ultimately unsatisfying

  • 238 years later, would Americans still choose freedom over slavery?

    The Fifth Amendment is supposed to ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without following strict legal guidelines. Unfortunately, those protections have been largely extinguished in recent years, especially in the wake of Congress’ passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain Americans indefinitely without due process.

  • Yes, Tony Abbott has ‘stopped the boats’. But the cost is catastrophic

    If you judge political success by delivering on a three-word slogan at any cost, then Tony Abbott’s asylum policy has succeeded. He has for now, as he promised, “stopped the boats”.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • It’s not the NSA that scares Internet experts – it’s business, survey says

  • Four biggest threats to the Internet: Pew study looks ahead to 2025

  • Neither hacking nor cyber crimes, Pew study points to another bigger threat on the net

    This was followed by another question, irrespective of the respondents said yes or no. It asked them what they believed to be the biggest threat that the Internet will face by 2015. The experts canvassed by Pew believe that the government and big online corporations are the biggest threat to the Internet, and not hacking or some other form of cyber war.

  • Threats to ‘open Internet’ loom large: experts

  • And The Biggest Threat To The Internet Is…

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Qualcomm DMCA Notice Takes Down 100+ Git Repositories

      Qualcomm has forced GitHub to take down over 100 Git repositories over alleged copyright infringement.

      Using the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), Qualcomm has forced GitHub to take down over 100 Git repositories on the basis of “Cyveillance has recently discovered the unauthorized publication, disclosure, and copying of highly sensitive, confidential, trade secret, and copyright-protected documents on the below web site. Specifically, we have confirmed that the documents whose locations and filenames identified below are confidential and proprietary to Qualcomm and were posted without Qualcomm’s permission.”

    • Qualcomm fires DMCA shotgun at alleged code thieves on GitHub – including itself

      A company claiming to represent Qualcomm has shut down a number of repositories on source-code sharing site GitHub under provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) – including at least one repository belonging to Qualcomm itself.

    • Twitter Removes Users “Pirated” World Cup Avatars

      Twitter has removed the profile pictures of several of its users after the company received a takedown notice from World Cup organizer FIFA. The football organization forbids the use of any of its official logos and emblems on social media, including pictures of the World Cup trophy.

    • Anti-piracy music industry site hacked, turned into Pirate Bay proxy

      The website of Argentina’s equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America was hacked Tuesday and transformed into a Pirate Bay proxy, serving up torrents instead of industry lobbying affairs.

    • Universal Music Can Delete Any SoundCloud Track Without Oversight

      In a bid to tackle alleged infringement, popular music sharing platform SoundCloud is offering unlimited removal powers to certain copyright holders. Responding to a complaint from a UK DJ the company admitted that Universal Music can delete any and all SoundCloud tracks without oversight.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Switch to Linux in Linux User & Developer 141

  With collected mumbling on Twitter, Windows XP finally took its final beath. Or at least, its security support stopped. Where to go from there though? Do you stay with Microsoft and risk Windows 8 or do you start a life with Linux and escape the walled garden? We have you covered with our complete guide on making the jump from Windows XP to Linux.

  Already on Linux? Then we have our usual selection of excellent tutorials and features to keep you occupied, as well as a big feature on the amazing Kano. It’s a Raspberry Pi kit and OS that’s designed to teach kids all about computers, computing and coding. We love it, and you can find out why in the magazine.

• Desktop

  • 10 tips for a more user-friendly Linux desktop

    The Linux desktop is leaps and bounds from where it was 10, five, even two years ago. Desktop environments that many declared unusable or dead have seen a renaissance in usability. But that doesn’t mean that out of the box, every Linux desktop is ready for every type of user. For each user type there may be many ways to make a desktop more usable. Thankfully, this is Linux — so options are never a problem.

    With that in mind, I wanted to highlight my 10 best tips for creating more user-friendly Linux desktops. Not every one of these tips will apply to your particular desktop (be it GNOME, Unity, KDE, XFCE, Deepin Desktop, Cinnamon… the list goes on). But you should find more than one tip that will go a long way toward improving your experience.

  • Digital independence day: Your guide to DIY, open-source, anonymous free computing

    If Windows isn’t your thing and you don’t want to switch to a Mac, give Linux a try. Ian Paul steps you through three Linux variants that are worth checking out. (Hint: It isn’t as hard as you might think.) And once you feel more comfortable with Linux, check out these tools for tweaking the OS so it works better for you.

• Server

  • CoreOS Gets $8M in VC Cash to Bring Web-Scale Computing to the Masses

    CoreOS, a startup with a Linux OS distribution that can update simultaneously across massive server deployments, announced an $8 million Series A funding round and the release of CoreOS Managed Linux, a commercial version of the open source technology that comes with support.

  • Firms wasting over £1bn per year on Linux-based cloud servers

    Firms that use Linux-based cloud servers are overspending on their cloud capacity by more than £1 billion annually for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas).

    According to cloud provider ElasticHosts, the dominant payment model for IaaS is highly inefficient, and even at its best, companies are overpaying by as much as 50 per cent.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Episode 299: Turnkey Linux

    Turnkey GNU/Linux is a free Debian based library of system images that pre-integrates and polishes the best free software components into secure, easy to use solutions.

• Kernel Space

  • LinuxCon and ELC Europe keynotes revealed

    The Linux Foundation announced keynote speakers for LinuxCon + CloudOpen + Embedded Linux Conference Europe, to be held Oct. 13-15 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

  • Linux 3.14 Is Now A Long-Term Stable Kernel

    Greg Kroah-Hartman has decided to maintain the Linux 3.14 code-base as a long-term stable kernel release.

    By becoming a long-term stable release, the Linux 3.14 kernel will now be supported through August 2016. The previous LTS kernel maintained by Greg KH is Linux 3.10 and is to be supported through September 2015, while Jiri Slaby of SUSE is also maintaining Linux 3.12 as a stable kernel series maintained through some time in 2016.

  • Systemd 215 Works On Factory Reset, DHCPv4 Server Support

    Lennart Poettering announced the release of systemd 215 on Thursday afternoon.

    The new systemd 215 release features a new systemd-sysusers command, a new input system group, systemd-networkd has a basic DHCPv4 server, networkd now supports vxLANs, and there’s an assortment of other updates and new features. Lots of the work happening now within the systemd world is about stateless systems and factory reset support.

  • Intel Linux Driver Trying Bay Trail Aggressive Downclocking

    Intel’s Linux open-source crew is toying with aggressive down-clocking for current-generation Bay Trail hardware for greater power-savings and lower heat output.

  • BFS Scheduler Updated For The Linux 3.15 Kernel

    Con Kolivas has updated his out-of-tree process scheduler for the Linux kernel.

    The Brain Fuck Scheduler has been revised to version 448 and released on Wednesday for the Linux 3.15 stable kernel.

    Besides updating against the kernel interfaces of Linux 3.15, there’s no reports of other changes for the BFS scheduler with the v448 revision. Kolivas continues to have no desire to mainline the Brain Fuck Scheduler.

  • ARM’s 64-bit Juno Platform Should Be Quite Exciting

  • Graphics Stack

    • Linux 3.16 Aims To Enable Radeon BAPM By Default

      A DRM-fixes pull request for the open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver for the Linux 3.16 kernel is going to enable BAPM by default for some APU systems.

      BAPM is a power management feature that handles power budgeting between the CPU/GPUs on APUs. Up to now BAPM has been disabled by default, but for fixing some power-related bugs, this feature is looking to be turned on post-3.16 merge window for some AMD APU hardware.

  • Benchmarks

    • Testing Btrfs On The Linux 3.16 Kernel

      When running my initial Linux 3.16 file-system tests on an SSD I had to skip over Btrfs due to initial problems with the experimental kernel code. Fortunately, Btrfs has been fixed-up in Linux 3.16 and can now serve for some benchmarking.

• Applications

  • Observium: A Complete Network Management and Monitoring System for RHEL/CentOS

  • Linux alternatives to popular Windows Software

    Are you new to Linux, are you finding it hard to adjust to the Linux environment and are wondering where you can get an application for Linux that is similar to the XYZ program on Windows.

  • Top 4 graphical partition managers

    Make sure you can maintain your hard disks and storage in the best way possible as we look at a selection of partition editors.

  • Bonus: W is for washed up

  • wv: From Word to whatever

  • wtime: The laconic task tracker

  • wput: The same, just in reverse

  • Lightworks – Now, A Professional Video Editor For GNU/Linux

  • worm, worms, wtf and wump: bsd-games takes over

  • Easy File Comparisons With These Great Free Diff Tools

  • Pragha 1.2.2 Music Player Released with Several Bug Fixes

    Pragha 1.2.2, a music player written in GTK with a simplistic interface, has been released just a few moments ago. This release brings several bug fixes.

  • Proprietary

    • Doing VFX Work in Linux? Here’s Your Reference Platform

      The Visual Effects Society (VES) has released its Calendar Year 2014 Reference Platform, which specifies versions of different Linux tools and libraries as a target for VFX software. VES said the platform aims to minimize incompatibilities, make it easier to support Linux pipelines, and encourage more software vendors to release tools that run on Linux.

      Anyone who’s done much work on Linux systems knows about the tangles that can arise when different software packages rely on different iterations of crucial libraries. Standardizing a baseline set of tools for installation on a VFX-ready Linux workstation should help, assuming vendors cooperate and users are made aware of the recommendations. To that end, the VES plans to announce the 2015 version of the platform at SIGGRAPH, and is currently inviting industry feedback on its draft version.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • AVC: denied dyntransition from sshd

    • How to create a nifty terminal theme inside a Linux terminal

    • Docking and Undocking with LVM

    • How to find and kill misbehaving MySQL queries

    • How To Install Shotwell 0.18.1 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10 And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Xournal 0.4.8 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Nuvola Player 2.4.1 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS And Other Ubuntu Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Ubuntu Tweak 0.8.8 On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

    • Make VLC Automatically Save / Restore Playback Position With Srpos Plugin

    • Meet Vocal, A GTK+ Podcast Client For Elementary OS 0.3 Freya

    • Manual disk partitioning guide for Linux Mint 17 KDE

    • How to check MySQL storage engine type on Linux

    • How to find and kill misbehaving MySQL queries

    • Setup Your Own Email Newsletter Manager Using phpList On CentOS 6.5

    • Manage two factor authentication in your serverfarm with privacyIDEA easily

    • Control Your Ubuntu/Linux Mint System With Voice Commands (Available in 67 Languages & 95 Action Commands)

    • Make VLC Save And Resume The Playback Position, On Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivatives

    • How To Install Samsung Tools 2.3 On Your Samsung Laptop Running Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10 Or A Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Python 3.4.1 On Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, Pinguy OS 14.04, And Other Ubuntu 14.04 Derivative Systems

  • Games

    • Dino D-Day Source Engine Powered Nazi & Dinosaurs Game Will Come To Linux

    • Steam Hardware Survey For June 2014, Linux Is On The Rise

      It’s nice to see an increase even something as small as 0.07%. I am still hoping games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive and the SteamOS Steam Machines will help it rise.

    • Tormentum Announced For PC, Mac, Linux and Mobile Devices

    • Civilization: Beyond Earth Release Date Confirmed; Coming To Windows, Mac And Linux This October

      According to a new press release from 2K and Firaxis, Civilization: Beyond Earth will make its way onto Windows, Mac and Linux on Oct. 24; a rare Friday release that should help 2K and Firaxis separate their latest project from the myriad other AAA projects also scheduled to hit this October. And the game’s global release date means there won’t be any extra waiting if you live in a certain region.

    • Gods Will Be Watching Releasing For PC, Mac, and Linux On July 24

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • XFDASHBOARD: GNOME SHELL LIKE DASHBOARD FOR XFCE

    While Xfdashboard was created for use under Xfce, it can be used in any desktop environment however, it has a couple of Xfce dependencies: xfconf and garcon.

  • Enlightenment E19 Alpha 2 Released With Better HiDPI Support

  • E19 ALPHA2: NOW WITH 50% MORE EXPLOSIONS!

    Brace yourselves, because this update is hotter than the sand and bigger than the ocean. The second step in the only release process that will be longer than E17 and Duke Nukem 3D combined, The E19 Release Cycle, improves upon the glory of the momentous first step in a number of ways.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDevelop 4.7.0 Beta 1 Released

      Finally, after months of work, the KDevelop team is happy to release a first beta of the 4.7 version. It comes packed with new features, lots of bug fixes as well as many performance improvements.

    • KDevelop 4.7.0 Beta 1 Released

      just a quick announcement: KDevelop 4.7.0 Beta 1 was released!

    • What’s new in KF5 porting script

      As I started to port KDEPIM* to KF5, I started to create script perl to help us to port to KF5.

    • Brand New Kanagram

      Finally, hours of hard work paid off. Kanagram has now a brand new interface which uses QtQuick framework instead of the previous SVG/QPainter based code. The entire interface has been written in QML. The whole process saw a lots of new developments. Previously, Kanagram had multiple interfaces separate for desktop and harmattan devices. There was also a plasma-active interface which had a bit of issues but helped me a lot as a reference, thanks to Laszlo Papp for that. The initial stages included a thorough clean up, which saw all the previous interfaces being replaced by the new qml one. Currently, only a single interface is maintained with the background and other images being kept isolated from the code, so that versatile themes could be implemented for the application in future.

    • Tagging your Files

      In 4.13, we moved away from a monolithic Nepomuk based system to a far more decentralized approach. Some parts of this are called Baloo, but to be honest, Baloo is not really responsible for managing your tags.

    • Final Shape of quick access tree-view

    • multi-process architectures suck

    • What have been done so far with digiKam?

      Some changes took place to the GUI, I decided to separate the Tags and labels tabs into two left sidebar widgets like this:

    • KMyMoney – Port to KF5 has begun

      A couple of days ago I received an email from Cristian, with two screenshots of KMyMoney running on KDE Frameworks 5.

    • Randa Meetings 2014 – KDE

      Did you know that for the 5th year, KDE is planning a Developer Sprint which is going to be held in Randa, Switzerland from the 9th to 15th of August this year?

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Ambiance And Radiance Colors Theme Pack Gets 3 New Colors, Full Cinnamon Support

• Distributions

  • Is it possible to create the ultimate operating system?

    How are the Operating System U team planning to create the ultimate operating system ever.

    Operating System U will use Arch Linux as the base distribution and the desktop will be a customised version of MATE with less bugs and more features.

    In addition, Operating System U will be dispensing with the XOrg system and will instead be using Wayland which is apparently less clunky and it directly renders with applications.

    OSu (A shorter name for Operating System U) will also have something called Startlight which is akin to the Windows Start button fused with Apple’s Spotlight. According to the website this will make the system easy to use and familiar to most users.

    OSu will be a partial rolling release and the main concept appears to be around consistency. The look and feel won’t ever change based on the developer’s whims unlike certain other operating systems such as Windows.

    Possibly the most ambitious plan is that the developers plan to have OSu pre-installed on laptops and available for sale in shops.

  • New Releases

    • Calculate Linux 13.19 Ends The Last Of CL13

      The last release before Calculate Linux 14 is now available with various updates to the Gentoo-based Linux distribution.

  • Screenshots

    • antiX MX-14.2

  • Red Hat Family

    • Docker and Linux containers: Red Hat opens up on the issues

    • Scientific Linux 7 Alpha released – LiveDVD and OS Templates built

      One of the Scientific Linux developers sent out an announcement to the SL-devel mailing list just a couple of hours ago about SL 7 Alpha being released. They have a netinstall CD iso and a 6GB DVD. I got the entire tree downloaded in about 30-ish minutes… and got to work building a LiveDVD as well as OpenVZ OS Templates… using the scripts I had used for CentOS and Oracle… again with a tiny bit of editing.

    • Red Hat Delivers Beta of Satellite 6 Admin Toolset

      If you happen to manage a Red Hat Enpterprise Linux (RHEL) envronment, you may want to download Red Hat’s new Satellite 6 beta version of its management solution. It’s now available here. You can also find an informational video on it here.

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL7) Installation Steps with Screenshots

      Redhat has recently released RHEL7 Operating system. Some of the Changes in RHEL7 are listed below as compare with RHEL 6 .

    • Fedora

      • Wayland in Fedora Update

        As we are approaching Fedora Workstation 21 we held a meeting to review our Wayland efforts for Fedora Workstation inside Red Hat recently. Switching to a new core technology like Wayland is a major undertaking and there are always big and small surprises that comes along the way. So the summary is that while we expect to have a version of Wayland in Fedora Workstation 21 that will be able to run a fully functional desktop, there are some missing pieces we now know that will not make it. Which means that since we want to ship at least one Fedora release with a feature complete Wayland as an option before making it default, that means that Fedora Workstation 23 is the earliest Wayland can be the default.

      • Wayland Is Moving Along Well For Fedora 21

      • Wayland Is Almost Ready For Fedora 21

        As you may know, the Fedora developers have officially announced that Fedora 21 will be using Wayland as the default system compositor. They wanted to make the switch even earlier, but GNOME 3.14 (which will be used on Fedora 21) is the first iteration of the desktop environment with Wayland support.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • HP Delivers Reference Architecture for OpenStack Running on Ubuntu

          HP has been emerging as more and more of a partner to Canonical in the OpenStack arena. Canonical announced the opening of its Ubuntu OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL) late last year, and it features some really heavy-hitting tech partners, including HP.

          Now, HP has vouched for Ubuntu Linux as a platform for deploying OpenStack with the release of a complete reference architecture providing detailed instructions on setting up an OpenStack cloud using Ubuntu and other tools from Canonical, including Juju and MAAS.

        • Geary 0.6.1 Released! Install In Ubuntu Via PPA

          Geary is a lightweight email client also developed by the Yorba team, Geary 0.6.1 is the latest stable release, announced on July 1 , 2014. It is highly recommend all users upgrade to this release.

        • 100,000 App Downloads

          It was less than a month that we announced crossing the 10,000 users milestone for Ubuntu phones and tablets, and we’ve already reached another: 100,000 app downloads!

        • Ubuntu Touch Passes 100,000 App Downloads

        • The Number Of The Ubuntu Touch Downloaded Apps Has Passed 100.000

          Not long after they have announced that Ubuntu Touch has been installed on 10.000 devices already, the Ubuntu Developers bring us another interesting statistic: The number of downloaded Ubuntu Touch applications has passed 100.000.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Six Linux home automation clicks

    Long before people were talking about the Internet of Things, Linux-based home automation systems were available. Here are some of today’s most interesting Linux-powered home gadgets.

  • Wayland: tomorrow’s graphics tech today (by way of the Raspberry Pi)

    It already powers the hardware behind some set-top boxes and in-car infotainment solutions, but few realise that some development work on Wayland, the proposed display server replacement for X, is thanks in part to the Raspberry Pi…

  • Wink’s Linux Hub and Mobile App Take on Home Automation

    The flood of Linux-based home automation hubs that has arrived over the last two years is now being joined by a wave of intermediary solutions that integrate multiple ecosystems. One of the most promising is Wink, a spinoff from crowd-investment firm Quirky. A week after announcing its Linux-based Wink home automation hub and mobile app, the well-heeled startup demonstrated the technology in a model smart home launch event in New York City, and announced 15 partners and 60 compatible devices.

  • There’s Now An Automotive-Grade Linux For Open-Source Cars

  • Now it’s easier to boot Linux on an RK3188 Mini PC (with a microSD card)

    Want to run Android apps on your TV but don’t want to wait for the official Android TV launch? No problem — Chinese companies have been offering pocket-sized sticks with HDMI ports and ARM processors that lets you run Android on a TV for the past few years.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Android L developer preview released on AOSP

        Since the official introduction of Android L last week at I/O, the news about the new operating system keeps on rolling in. Last week we reported the official launch of Android L and this was followed by a stream of leaked L features which were quickly modified for use by third party developers. Now it seems we are here again.

      • What the Blackphone Means for Mobile Security

        The new secure Android phone has arrived, but what does it say about Android itself and what can security-conscious individuals do to get the same security today?
        The world needs a secure Android phone like the Blackphone. Not only will it protect users against privacy violations, but it potentially will always be fully patched, too.

      • Rhodri Marsden: The Blackphone comes with the promise of ‘peace of mind’

        A pleasure that I indulge in which other people might conceivably describe as “guilty” is to sit up late watching the QVC shopping channel. Not to buy anything, you understand – merely to watch people doing free-form verbal improvisation around, say, a diamonique bracelet.

      • Watch out iPad, Nvidia will soon launch a Shield Tablet

        After releasing its Android-powered Shield portable console last summer, Nvidia is now all set to announce a new device called the Nvidia Shield Tablet.

      • Google launch Android Wear Apps on Play Store

        After the official unveiling of Android Wear devices last week Google have now finally uploaded a selection of Wear Apps to the Play Store. In total there are currently 33 apps available to download to your wear device although Google do insist more will follow soon.

      • A Closer Look at Android RunTime (ART) in Android L

        With the latest I/O conference, Google has finally publicly announced its plans for its new runtime on Android. The Android RunTime, ART, is the successor and replacement for Dalvik, the virtual machine on which Android Java code is executed on. We’ve had traces and previews of it available with KitKat devices since last fall, but there wasn’t much information in terms of technical details and the direction Google was heading with it.

      • Linaro ports open source Android to 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture

      • Linaro Announces Android Open Source Project port for ARMv8-A

        Linaro announces Android Open Source Project port for ARMv8-A Architecture is ready and running on a 64-bit multi-core SoC

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Improve Literacy – Open Source Software with Lowest Cost Tablet, Aakash

      A “Spoken Tutorial” is a ten minute audio-video tutorial for K – 12 lessons and modules on “Aakash” (meaning Sky in Sanskrit), the world’s lowest cost device at $50. The spoken part of Tutorials is dubbed in all Indian languages, to help kids weak in English.

Free Software/Open Source

• Land of the Free, or Home on the Open Range?

  Here in the Linux community, there’s never any shortage of opportunities to wax philosophical about the success of our favorite operating system. After all, the traditional (read: proprietary) model had nothing to do with it, strictly speaking, so FOSS fans can’t be blamed for wanting to extol the virtues of the free and open source model instead.

• Netflix goes open-source with AWS security tool

  Known as one of the biggest customers of Amazon Web Server (AWS), Netflix’s use of custom tools aimed at enhancing its AWS capabilities – known as the Simian Army – are well-known, and now they’re going open-source with one aimed at security monitoring.

• Netflix open sources its Amazon cloud security enforcer

• Managing passwords the open source way

  At this point, I have more usernames and passwords to juggle than any person should ever have to deal with. I know I’m not alone, either. We have a surfeit of passwords to manage, and we need a good way to manage them so we have easy access without doing something silly like writing them down where others might find them. Being a fan of simple apps, I prefer using pass, a command line password manager.

• Old school: I work in DOS for an entire day

  Hall’s “PD-DOS” project eventually became FreeDOS, which today supports an ecosystem of developers, retro gamers, and diehards who will give up their WordStar when you pry the floppies from their cold, dead fingers.

• Bitcoin ATMs Beef Up Their Financial Services

• Lamassu Releases Open Source Software For Their Bitcoin ATM Network

  New Hampsire-based Lamassu — the manufacturer of one of the leading bitcoin ATMs available today — has announced the release of something they are calling Rakía, a brand-spanking-new open source back-end system that will redefine how the company’s network of ATMs in use around the world are utilized by customers.

• Lamassu Introduces Open-Source Software for Bitcoin ATM Network

• Events

  • Release Management Work Week

    One thing unique about this work week is we also took some time to participate in Open Source Bridge a local conference that Mozilla happened to be sponsoring at The Eliot Center and that Lukas Blakk from our team was speaking at. Lukas used her keynote talk to introduce her awesome project she is working on called the Ascend Project which she will be piloting soon in Portland.

  • The Linux Foundation Announces Early Keynote Speaker Line Up for LinuxCon + CloudOpen Europe

  • OSCON 2014: Speaker interview series

    To promote this influential open source conference, put on by Tim O’Reilly and O’Reilly Media since 1999, Opensource.com is interviewing some of the speakers from the line-up prior to the event.

  • Live open source security lab coming to Cyber Security EXPO

    Cyber Security EXPO, part of IP EXPO Europe, is calling for contributors to the Cyber Hack, a live open source security lab arriving at the show this October.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla’s Rust programming language at critical stage

      At this year’s Great Wide Open conference, Steve Klabnik gave a talk about Mozilla’s Rust programming language. Klabnik previously authored an introductory Rust tutorial entitled Rust for Rubyists, and this talk serves a similar purpose. However, instead of being Ruby focused, this talk was aimed at programmers in general. Hence the talk’s title: Rust for $LANGUAGE-ists.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Getting everyone on the same open-source cloud page

    At June 2014′s Linux Enterprise User Summit on Wall Street, Alan Clark, SUSE’s director of industry initiatives and open source and chairman of the OpenStack Foundation, explained why and how to deploy open-source clouds in your business.

  • Survey: Hadoop Not the Answer for Big Data Diversity

    The problem with Big Data today is not its scope, but rather the diverse forms it takes. That’s according to a survey out this week from database vendor Paradigm4, which also said Hadoop may not be as useful as all the hype suggests.

  • Opposites attract: The necessary marriage of open source and enterprise software

    The Map-Reduce batch jobs take time. Hadoop works best with long-running batch jobs – a 20 second start-up time on a 5 hour batch run is immaterial, but a 20 second start-up time on a 5 second query is a serious disadvantage. Hadoop really is not the right technology for real-time analysis.

  • Creating an OpenStack community locally

    Learning is easier with a community of practice. For some in the open source world, community is something that takes only a virtual form, but there’s still a lot of value in good old fashioned face-to-face communities to share and learn together. Taking a page out of the book of Linux User Groups (LUGs), several advocates for open source projects have found the population of interested users in their area to have reached the critical mass necessary to build and sustain local user groups of their own.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • No, modular Java isn’t dead. It’ll be in Java 9 – honest

    Despite significant delays, Oracle is once again moving forward with Project Jigsaw, a major undertaking that aims to allow Java developers to break their programs down into independent, interoperable modules.

• CMS

  • What’s New in July for Open Source CMS [Infographic]

• BSD

  • Intel Is Trying To Support The x32 ABI For LLVM/Clang

    While adoption of the Linux x32 ABI hasn’t really taken off with most developers and end-users doing just fine with x86_64-compiled software, Intel is trying to get things back on track for supporting x32 by LLVM and Clang.

• Public Services/Government

  • Apache open source enhancements for Dutch government

    Auckland consulting company Sosnoski Software Associates Limited is please to announce the completion of enhancements to ApacheTM CXFTM open source software as commissioned by the government of the Netherlands. These enhancements have fixed several errors in the Apache CXF implementation of Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM), brought it into compliance with the latest WSRM 1.2 version, and also corrected long-standing problems in how the Apache CXF implementation combines WS-Security with WSRM. The changes provide greatly enhanced interoperability for exchanging messages with other software packages.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Local Motors Working on Open-Source Lightweight Sports Car

  • Open Data

    • Is open data living up to the hype? One data journalist weighs in

      Journalism is one profession that has embraced open source. Open source enables smaller organizations with little or no budget to effectively extend their news gathering capabilities. It’s not just smaller news organizations who’ve been adopting open source—The New York Times recently unveiled a new open source content management system.

    • Study: Open Data Produces Twice the Growth of TTIP

      Open data has been discussed here on Open Enterprise for years, and it’s probably true to say that it has entered the mainstream, at least as far as the readership of Computerworld UK is concerned. Nonetheless, it’s always good to have more studies of its impact, and of its potential for wider use in the future. A new report commissioned by the Omidyar Network from Australian researchers is particularly welcome because it focuses not on the wishy-washy virtues of sharing, or even its efficiency, but on the economic benefits of open data.

  • Open Access/Content

    • Doctors unite to increase access to quality health information

      Six years ago, Dr. James Heilman was working a night shift in the ER when he came across an error-ridden article on Wikipedia. Someone else might have used the article to dismiss the online encyclopedia, which was then less than half the size it is now. Instead, Heilman decided to improve the article.

  • Open Hardware

    • The Novena Open Hardware Laptop: A Hacker’s Dream Machine

      That said, the Novena laptop’s experimental technology has the potential to offer new options to a sluggish computer industry. Novena is an open-hardware computing platform that is flexible and powerful. It is designed for use as a desktop, laptop or standalone board.

      Two engineers cofounded Sutajio Ko-usagi, an operations-oriented company focused on the manufacturing and sales of hardware to OEMs and hobbyists.

      Since Sutajio Ko-usagi is difficult to pronounce in English, the Novena developers shortened it to “Kosagi,” noted cofounder Andrew “Bunnie” Huang. Huang also runs the IP-oriented Bunniestudios…

• Programming

  • Python Foundation uncoils as membership opens up

    By relaxing its rather constrictive membership process, The Python Software Foundation is starting to uncoil. And Nick Coghlan, Provisioning Architect in Red Hat Engineering Operations, couldn’t be happier.

Leftovers

• 220 People Attend David Cameron “Rally for the Union”.

  That the Prime Minister of the UK cannot fill a hall, at least to not embarrassingly empty, at an event billed as a “rally” to “save” his country, at which he stated that to lose the referendum would “break his heart”, is astonishing.

• Health/Nutrition

  • PhRMA Wants US To Use TAFTA/TTIP To Stop EU Releasing Basic Drug Safety Information

    What’s worrying is that there’s already been one attempt to water down these requirements. Der Tagesspiegel suggests this may have been as a result of pressure from the European Commission, concerned about US reaction to them. It will be interesting to see how the Commission reconciles any US demands during the TAFTA/TTIP negotiations to remove the requirement to publish drug safety information with the new EU regulation that requires it.

  • Domino’s Pizza staff pictured buying 59p Aldi potato wedges to sell as their own for £3.49

    Domino’s Pizza staff have been caught buying potato wedges from Aldi and fobbing them off as their own.

    A worker at the Domino’s branch in Linlithgow, West Lothian, was photographed buying bags of wedges for 59p each from a nearby branch of the budget supermarket.

    Domino’s then sold these to their customers for a massively marked-up £3.49 a portion

• Security

  • Oh SNAP! Old-school ’80s Unix hack to smack OSX, iOS, Red Hat?

  • Security updates for Thursday

  • OpenSSL speeds up development to avoid being “slow-moving and insular”

  • Serious Flaw Found in Popular WordPress Plug-in

  • Hackers now targeting your router

  • Private crypto key stashed in Cisco VoIP manager allows network hijacking

    Cisco Systems has released a security update that closes a backdoor allowing attackers to control software that large organizations use to manage voice over IP (VoIP) calls and messaging over their networks.

  • Hardcoded SSH key gives backdoor access to Cisco communications manager

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Israeli Settlers Blamed for Murder of Abducted Palestinian Teen; Dozens Wounded in West Bank, Gaza

  • Polish-American alliance worthless

    The publication of Radoslav Sikorski’s comments in the Polish weekly magazine Wprost will not help his bid to become the European Union’s foreign policy chief, but there are senior foreign policy officials elsewhere who might be tempted to make similar remarks (though perhaps not in alcohol-fuelled conversations in well-known restaurants where they might be overheard). And there are those in Washington who are saying the same thing.

  • Permanent War

    A bipartisan panel of high-profile figures from the national security establishment recently completed its report on the United States’ policy surrounding drones. Of the panel’s several conclusions, the one that understandably received the most attention in the media was the concern that the ease with which the U.S. is able to conduct drone operations creates a “slippery slope” that could lead to a state of permanent war. In this scenario, no longer will there be clearly defined periods of war and peace, but rather a vague, endless conflict, whereby the U.S. Government can and will assert the right to target and kill anyone, anywhere, with virtually no meaningful legal, political, or ethical constraints. The panel also criticized the “secret rationales” behind this “long-term killing” and the “lack of any cost-benefit analysis” conducted by the government regarding the entire enterprise.

  • The Errant Drone and Other Tales

    One camera operator gave a chronically nervous pilot of a predator drone a helpful piece of advice while the pilot was waiting to take off: “Stop saying ‘uh oh’ while you’re flying. It’s never good. Like going to the dentist or a doctor. . .oops. What the f—you mean oops?” According to the Post report, shortly after this exchange the drone “rammed a runway barrier and guardhouse. “Whoa” the pilot said. “I don’t know what the hell just happened.”

    It would be interesting to know what the pilots who have accidentally killed civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other places say when they realize their mistakes. Probably something more than “oops” or “I don’t know what the hell just happened.” We will probably find out as the number of drones continues to climb and kill.

  • An Eye for An Eye

    Interesting. Seems Obama’s forgotten Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the teenager and US citizen on his Kill List, incinerated in a CIA-led drone strike. Obama can’t imagine the indescribable pain that this young man’s parent (singular) feels. That’s singular because the boy’s father, Anwar al-Awlaki also was on Obama’s Kill List and droned two weeks before the death of his son. The attack in Yemen on Oct 14, 2011 that killed the young al-Awalaki also killed his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians as they sat in a restaurant. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was 16, the same age as two of the Israelis, but the murder of al-Awlaki was, well, sensible, to Obama.

  • From Bannu: Writing the saddest lines…

    These children have seen beheadings, target killings, drone attacks, bombings, shelling and the closure of their schools. I pondered upon how these innocent children have spent their entire lives witnessing terrible violence that adults my age have not seen.

  • Trial venue for military killing sparks outrage

    An American soldier charged by the military with the murder of a 26-year-old woman in Panama will be tried in the United States, sparking protests by women’s groups and outraged family members.

  • Chilean court rules US played key role in Pinochet murder of Americans

    A Chilean court issued a ruling Monday that the commander of US military forces in Chile played a pivotal role in the murder of two US citizens following the September 1973 coup that overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet as dictator.

  • The U.S. National-Security State’s Murder of Two Americans

    A Chilean court ruled this week that the U.S. national-security state conspired to murder American citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi in Chile in 1973. The brutal act occurred during the violent military coup in which the Chilean military, with the full support of the U.S. government, ousted the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, and replaced him with an unelected brutal military dictatorship headed by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.

  • Modern Terrorism: An American ‘Success’ Story

    In 2000, terrorism – at least as we know it today – didn’t exist in the Middle East, particularly not in Iraq and Syria. However, the American invasion of ancient Mesopotamia absolutely changed the existing order. In addition to its introduction into the region, it has transformed into a radicalizing cross-border scourge. That was only possible, and is this really a paradox? – through the logistical and strategic support of the United States, to what would become al-Qaeda, to Islamist movements operating in Afghanistan from 1980-1990, and for movements trained by the CIA and financed by Saudi Arabia. If we don’t go back to the origins of what is now a global scourge, and if we fail to properly define this phenomenon, we can neither understand its international expansion let alone eradicate it.

  • About Iraq

    You do not fix history with a drone. What we are witnessing today in Iraq is the slow collapse of a century-long geopolitical partition drawn up in a secret document by United Kingdom and France, in one of their last acts as imperial powers.

  • Iraq: Policy failure, not intelligence failure

    Declassified portions of both National Intelligence Estimates on Iraq in 2007 highlighted concerns about stability, violence and the Iraqi army. In November, the intelligence community noted, “However, the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively.”

  • On US TV, Israel is ‘Striking Back’

    It should go without saying that the killings of the Israeli youths do not justify the killing of innocent Palestinians, any more than the six Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military so far this year legitimize the murder of the Israeli teens.

  • Right-Wing Mythology Creeps Into Washington Post Benghazi Timeline

    The Washington Post misleadingly described the timeline of the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 Benghazi attacks by privileging the conservative media myth that President Obama did not immediately identify the attacks as an act of terror.

  • German defence minister backs ‘European armed drone’

    Procurement of so-called fighter drones to protect German armed forces remains controversial, but Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has finally disclosed her plans for the aircraft: The German military should receive drones, she said, but these can only be deployed with parliamentary approval. EurActiv Germany reports.

  • NYC Bar Association Releases Report on Legality of Drones

    Interested readers can access the report and the executive summary from the NYC Bar Association’s website. The press release accompanying the report’s release is also copied below the fold.

  • Blair embodies corruption and war. He must be sacked

    Now he’s advising the Egyptian dictatorship, his removal as Middle East peace envoy is a moral and democratic necessity

  • The Battle Behind the Lens

    Almost 5,000 American troops were killed in the Iraq War, and it’s estimated that from 100,000 to more than 600,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, died. Many more combatants and noncombatants alike were physically or emotionally wounded.

  • OP-ED: Pay No Attention to the Apocalypse Behind the Curtain

    In 8 days, on July 10th Mary Ann Grady-Flores, a grandmother from Ithaca, NY, is scheduled to be sentenced to up to one year in prison. Her crime is violating an order of protection, which is a legal tool to protect a particular person from the violence of another particular person. In this case, the commander of Hancock Air Base has been legally protected from dedicated nonviolent protesters, despite the protection of commanding his own military base, and despite the protesters having no idea who the guy is. That’s how badly the people in charge of the flying killer robots we call drones want to avoid any questioning of their activity entering the minds of the drone pilots.

  • Kurdistan

    An independent Kurdistan is a difficult sell because it is supported by such horrible people – Benjamin Netanyahu and every far right Republican in the US you can think of. Tony Blair is probably holding back on his endorsement until offered a huge consultancy fee or preferential access to “commercial opportunities” in the country.

  • Why Is The Media Taking These ISIS World Domination Maps So Seriously?

    In a rush to sensationalize growing violence in Iraq at the hands of religious extremists, media have circulated dubiously sourced maps which purport to illustrate plans for a future Islamic caliphate that extends from Spain to the southern and easternmost reaches of India.

  • Drones, Accidents, and Secrecy

    The Washington Post recently ran some amazing articles on the safety record of drones. The three-part series focuses on the more than 400 large U.S. military drones that have crashed overseas, domestic U.S. crashes of military drones inside and outside military airspace, and the record of incidents of small drones coming dangerously close to civilian aircraft within the United States. Fortunately nobody has been killed in any crashes yet, but it all makes for gripping reading.

  • Secret U.S. memo suggests no legal basis to charge Omar Khadr with war crimes

  • Drone memo should reverse Guantanamo Bay convictions

    Omar Khadr was only 15 years old when he was captured by American forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and taken to the Bagram Air Base, then Guantanamo, where he later pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war — according to military prosecutors, Khadr tossed a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer.

  • Omar Khadr war crimes charges lack legal basis, U.S. memo suggests

  • Secret memo on CIA drone killings reveals U.S. had no legal basis to charge Omar Khadr with war crimes: lawyers

    A previously secret memo on CIA involvement in drone killings is casting new doubt on whether the American government had any legal basis to prosecute Canada’s Omar Khadr for war crimes.

    In fact, Khadr’s lawyers argue in new filings to the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review, the document by the Dept. of Justice emphatically rejects any such legal foundation, and say his convictions at Guantanamo Bay should be set aside immediately.

  • US drone policy: Little prospect of rethink

    A new report on the consequences of America’s increasing use of drones as a counter-terrorism tool caused quite a stir in US national security circles last week, largely because it was written by a task force made up of many individuals who formerly reported to the Obama Administration.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Intel Report Targets Green Groups

    India’s intelligence agency has targeted an adviser to the Prince of Wales as well as British environmental activists in a campaign against foreign groups that it claims are a threat to its economy.

• Finance

  • Income and Wealth Inequality in England

    First of all, there are some advantages to living in the U.K. that people at all income levels share. One can be outside in the summer time without getting eaten alive by mosquitoes (but bring an umbrella!). Restrictions on architecture and building mean that a lot of towns are beautiful and/or charming. Consider the value of a stroll around Paris compared to a stroll around a typical U.S. city. Due to a more or less free market in air travel and short distances, flights to interesting locations in Europe are affordable to everyone.

  • Fox Business Host: Jobs Report Might Be “Too Good”

    Fox Business host Charles Payne tried to put a negative spin on the news that the unemployment rate fell in June, tweeting that it might be “too good for the stock market.”

  • The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats

    You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I’m talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family’s business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough—and that time wasn’t far off—people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene’s. And Borders. And on and on.

  • More Abuse Of Presidential Power-Operation Choke Point

    This is the type of political corruption we would expect from a banana republic

  • Meet the CEO Bold Enough to Kill Thousands of Jobs

    And what about the workers who are shown the door? Well, there’s no nightly newscast report about them.

  • Bitcoin quietly goes legit

    The US Marshals Service doesn’t normally make economic policy but this week they apparently did so by auctioning 30,000 Bitcoins, a crypto currency I have written about before. This auction effectively legitimizes Bitcoins as part of the world economy. Am I the only one to notice this?

    My first column on this subject was a cautionary tale pointing out the two great areas of vulnerability for Bitcoin: 1) the US Government might declare Bitcoins illegal, and; 2) someone might gain control of a majority of Bitcoins in which case their value could be manipulated. While number two is still theoretically possible it becomes less likely every day. And number one seems to have been put to rest by the U.S. Marshals.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Public Service

    I had an impeccable source that Obama’s anti-Scottish statement was orchestrated not only with him, but with the BBC who planted the question. I have no doubt it is true. I want to take this further with the Electoral Commission and the BBC Trust, but to do that I need confirmation of my whistleblower’s account.

  • Liquid Lies Revisited

    There never was a liquid bomb plot. It was proven in court not to exist. It was a fabrication of the minds governing a Pakistani torture chamber.

• Censorship

  • Rieder: Don’t make reporter testify against a source

    The New York Times ran a story the other day about a dilemma facing the Obama administration: whether to pursue its efforts to force Times reporter James Risen to testify in its prosecution of a former CIA agent suspected of leaking classified material.

  • Google begins era of web censorship

  • Media censorship accusations against Google’s removal of some search results in Europe

  • Google’s removal of BBC article raises censorship fears

  • Google bans porn from its ad network

  • One year on, the U.K.’s Internet porn filters are still an epic disaster

    Who could have predicted that strong-arming ISPs into hastily implementing content filters intended to stamp out pornography would be a disaster? Well actually, pretty much everyone could except for the architects of the policy itself — one of whom, ironically, was just charged with allegedly possessing child pornography. Now The Guardian is reporting that “nearly one in five of the most visited sites on the Internet are being blocked by the adult content filters installed on Britain’s broadband and mobile networks.”

  • UK “Porn Filter” Triggers Widespread Internet Censorship

    A new tool released by the Open Rights Group today reveals that 20% of the 100,000 most-visited websites on the Internet are blocked by the parental filters of UK ISPs. With the newly launched website the group makes it easier to expose false positives and show that the blocking efforts ban many legitimate sites, TorrentFreak included.

  • Getting TalkTalk’s filter categories right

    Yesterday’s launch of blocked.org.uk has had an excellent response. Over 10,000 sites have been tested for blocks, and no doubt many problems have been found and reported. However, we will need to change the way we calculate results for talkTalk.

  • Austrian Tor Exit Node Operator Found Guilty As An Accomplice Because Someone Used His Node To Commit A crime

    Three years ago we wrote about how Austrian police had seized computers from someone running a Tor exit node. This kind of thing happens from time to time, but it appears that folks in Austria have taken it up a notch by… effectively now making it illegal to run a Tor exit node. According to the report, which was confirmed by the accused, the court found that running the node violated §12 of the Austrian penal code…

  • American Universities Are Restricting an Important Right — And Students Are Fighting Back

    A free speech crackdown in modern day America: We expect to hear stories on repressing freedom of speech in countries like Russia, not in the U.S. But right here in the land of the free, American universities, the pillars of protest movements and open dialogue, are suppressing free speech.

  • Free speech: Isn’t that what college is supposed to be about?

    College campuses ought to be — but often aren’t — bastions of free speech. Sometimes it’s students who choke off debate, as occurred last year when hecklers at Brown University drowned out a speech by New York City’s police commissioner. But some college officials also suppress speech. According to a lawsuit filed this week, that was the case at Citrus College in Glendora.

• Privacy

  • NSA ‘totalitarian,’ ex-staffer tells German parliament

    A former NSA technical chief has told Germany’s parliament that the US agency has become a “totalitarian” mass collector of data. German public broadcasters say the NSA targets individuals who use encryption services.

  • Use Tor or ‘EXTREMIST’ Tails Linux? Congrats, you’re on an NSA list

    Alleged leaked documents about the NSA’s XKeyscore snooping software appear to show the paranoid agency is targeting Tor and Tails users, Linux Journal readers – and anyone else interested in online privacy.

  • NSA’s XKeyscore Source Code Leaked! Shows Tor Users Classified As ‘Extremists’

    We learnt about the NSA’s XKeyscore program a year ago, and about its incredibly wide reach. But now the German TV stations NDR and WDR claim to have excerpts from its source code. We already knew that the NSA and GCHQ have been targeting Tor and its users, but the latest leak reveals some details about which Tor exit nodes were selected for surveillance — including at least one in Germany, which is likely to increase public anger there. It also shows that Tor users are explicitly regarded as “extremists”…

  • NSA Targets the Privacy-Conscious for Surveillance

    It’s hard to tell how extensive this is. It’s possible that anyone who clicked on this link — with the embedded torproject.org URL above — is currently being monitored by the NSA. It’s possible that this only will happen to people who receive the link in e-mail, which will mean every Crypto-Gram subscriber in a couple of weeks. And I don’t know what else the NSA harvests about people who it selects in this manner.

  • NSA targets the privacy-conscious

    The investigation discloses the following:

    Two servers in Germany – in Berlin and Nuremberg – are under surveillance by the NSA.

    Merely searching the web for the privacy-enhancing software tools outlined in the XKeyscore rules causes the NSA to mark and track the IP address of the person doing the search. Not only are German privacy software users tracked, but the source code shows that privacy software users worldwide are tracked by the NSA.

  • If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance

    America’s National Security Agency gathers unfathomable mountains of Internet communications from fiber optic taps and other means, but it says it only retains and searches the communications of “targeted” individuals who’ve done something suspicious. Guess what? If you read Boing Boing, you’ve been targeted. Cory Doctorow digs into Xkeyscore and the NSA’s deep packet inspection rules.

  • NSA: Linux Journal is an “extremist forum” and its readers get flagged for extra surveillance

    A new story published on the German site Tagesschau and followed up by BoingBoing and DasErste.de has uncovered some shocking details about who the NSA targets for surveillance including visitors to Linux Journal itself.

  • On NSA Watchlist, Dream Machines, and Ten Tips

    Yikes, our top story tonight is we are all on the NSA watchlist.

  • A Bundle of Tor

  • Tails above the Rest: the Installation

  • Tails above the Rest, Part II

  • Snowden Awarded For Telling The Truth

  • Remaining Snowden docs will be released to avert ‘unspecified US war’ – ‪Cryptome‬

  • NSA snooping

    The U.S. has assumed the role of a self-appointed human rights champion of planet earth and arrogates to itself the right to keep vigil over nations of its choice, especially those that have fallen out of favour with it for one reason or other (“Government to seek U.S. explanation after reports of snooping on BJP,” July 2).

  • U.S. spying claims throw wrench into India diplomatic efforts

    Recent revelations by American whistleblower Edward Snowden are casting a pall over nascent U.S. efforts to reenergize relations with India. On Wednesday, the Indian government summoned a top American diplomat in response to reports that the U.S. National Security Agency had conducted surveillance on the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi .

  • Snooping row casts shadow over India and US ties

  • Pesek on Asia: Snowden Effect Hits India

    The Edward Snowden effect has infiltrated India-U.S. relations. News reports citing documents from the former NSA contractor have prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party to demand explanations from Barack Obama’s White House. Coming just the U.S. seeks closer ties with India’s new leader amid China’s meteoric rise, this latest spying scandal deserves a prominent mention In the annals of bad timing.

  • It’s Time to Shut the NSA’s Backdoor Used to Spy on Americans

    Just because the initial collection of intelligence is legal doesn’t mean it should be if it catches American citizens’ communications. A bill in Congress would fix that.

  • ISPs File Legal Complaint in Europe Over Spying

    Seven Internet service providers and non-profit groups from various countries have filed a legal complaint against the British spy agency GCHQ. Their issue: that the clandestine organization broke the law by hacking the computers of Internet companies to access their networks.

  • U.K. Government Sued by 7 Internet Companies Over Spying

  • UK surveillance agency GCHQ sued by ISPs

  • GCHQ sued by ISPs and worldwide organisations over network spying

    A coalition of ISPs and communication providers from around the world filed a legal complaint against the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), calling for an end to its alleged attacking and exploitation of network infrastructure to gain access to potentially millions of people’s private communications.

  • International ISPs targeting GCHQ because of spying activities

  • ISPs, Parliament Launch Lawsuit Against Britain’s GCHQ Over Spying

  • ISPs file legal action against GCHQ over illegal surveillance

  • UK’s GCHQ Faces Court Action Over ‘Illegal’ Surveillance

  • ISPs take legal action against GCHQ

    The ISPs claim that alleged network attacks, outlined in a series of articles in Der Spiegel and the Intercept, were illegal and “undermine the goodwill the organisations rely on”.

  • 7 Things You Should Know About Tor

    We posted last week about the Tor Challenge and why everyone should use Tor. Since we started our Tor Challenge two weeks ago we have signed up over 1000 new Tor relays. But it appears that there are still some popular misconceptions about Tor. We would like to take this opportunity to dispel some of these common myths and misconceptions.

  • New “Smart Lights” Allow NSA To Spy on You Using LED Technology

  • US hopes NSA surveillance on BJP not to impact bilateral ties

  • US Senator John McCain Calls Snooping Row ‘Embarrassing’ during India Visit

  • US Senator John McCain wants Narendra Modi to address US Congress

    Even as US Senator John McCain’s two-day trip to Delhi being overshadowed by India’s protest against the NSA snooping on BJP, the former American Presidential nominee sought to expand Indo-US defence and strategic partnership ahead of the bilateral strategic dialogue end July and PM’s Washington trip.

  • Newly Revealed Snowden Docs Expose Near Global Reach of NSA

  • Algeria, Ethiopia assist NSA surveillance programme – report

  • Secret US military presence in Somalia confirmed

    Senior US military officials Wednesday confirmed reports that American military advisors have been clandestinely operating in Somalia since 2007.

  • Israel Among 193 Countries Certified For NSA Monitoring

  • NSA could be spying on Serbian officials – daily

  • NSA spying “not good, Serbia powerless” – FM

  • US possible tapping mission in Serbia not incredible to Serbian foreign minister

    Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic is not surprised by the fact that Serbia is on the list of countries where the US National Security Agency (NSA) could have carried out a tapping mission, the B92 TV and radio company reports on Wednesday.

  • US spying on Bahrain is revealed

    AMERICA’s top intelligence agency has been spying on the Bahraini government – one of its closest allies in the region – along with 192 other countries, it has emerged.

    A document marked Top Secret reveals that a US surveillance court approved the snooping.

  • PPP asks govt to take up NSA spying issue with US

  • Pakistan’s major opposition party condemns U.S. spying

  • NSA spying on PPP is a violation of international law: FO

  • US spying on PPP is violation of international law: FO

  • PPP concerned at reports of NSA spying

  • FO condemns NSA surveillance, calls it violation of international laws

    Pakistan condemned on Thursday the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance programme for spying on the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in 2010, calling it a violation of international laws.

    Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Tasneem Aslam said that the matter was being taken up with the US administration.

  • ​’Like Hoover on MLK’: Greenwald to expose NSA spying on US Muslims

    Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists with access to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, will soon expose massive NSA spying on American Muslims, the ACLU has announced.

    The leaked data indicate that in public life American Muslims were “subject to the kind of surveillance that Hoover did on Martin Luther King,” ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told an Aspen Ideas Festival panel Wednesday.

  • Government Privacy Panel: One Step Behind Congress, the Courts, and the American People

  • Independance from America – peaceful protest at Menwith Hill

    The Campaign for the Accountabilty of America Baes – CAAB is holding a peaceful outside the Menwith base on 4 July 2014.

    The event will see a number of speakers at the event including former GCHQ intelligence office and whistle blower, Annie Machon who will be travelling from Berlin.

  • Glenn Greenwald’s Big NSA Story Gets Squashed

    On Monday, Pulitzer prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald let the news slip via Twitter that his long-awaited NSA story was to be published on The Intercept at midnight. By Tuesday morning, much to the dismay of myself and many others it appeared that the site – which since its rollout has been disappointly devoid of new material – has caved to government pressure tactics did not post the story. According to a rather cryptic Tweet by Greenwald later on Monday, “After 3 months working on our story, USG today suddenly began making new last-minute claims which we intend to investigate before publishing”. Might any of those claims be based on trumped up charges that publication would play right into the hands of the “terrorists” and could a permanent delay be in the works?

  • India seeks assurance from the US that spying acts will not be repeated

  • Justices sometimes do agree: Your privacy matters

    Supreme Court justices found more common ground than usual this year, and nowhere was their unanimity more surprising than in a ruling that police must get a judge’s approval before searching the cellphones of people they’ve arrested.

  • EFF Sues NSA Again Over Failure To Release Procedures For Dealing With Zero Days

  • Watchdog Demands Records From NSA

  • EFF sues the NSA to disclose use of software security flaws

  • US digital rights group files freedom of information lawsuit against NSA

  • The EFF Sues The NSA For Details On How The Government Discloses Security Flaws

  • CIA, FBI Follow NSA Through ‘Backdoor’ Searches Of Americans

    A letter to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden revealed that last year, thousands of Americans became targets for government spying through “backdoor” warrantless electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

  • FBI, CIA Join NSA In “Backdoor” Searches On Americans

  • Rising Use of Encryption Foiled the Cops a Record 9 Times in 2013

  • Facebook Emotional Manipulation Study Not Scientific

    The social media giant is once again under fire for a recent experiment on its users to see how the tailoring of the feed could sway their moods. While the Facebook’s little emotional manipulation study might be legal, according to their terms and services, it might not be entirely scientific. Shadows of doubt have been cast both on the methodology and the significance of its outcome. Perhaps all the fear and anxiety have been wasted on a flawed study.

  • How to delete Facebook from your life completely

    Start typing in the letters “dele” into Google and you’ll see “delete Facebook account” as a top suggestion. Whether it’s to alleviate privacy concerns or avoid digital distractions, more people are trying to figure out how to fully disconnect themselves from the social network giant that we live and breathe.

  • Sheryl Sandberg not sorry for Facebook mood manipulation study

    On Wednesday, Facebook’s second-in-command, Sheryl Sandberg, expressed regret over how the company communicated its 2012 mood manipulation study of 700,000 unwitting users, but she did not apologize for conducting the controversial experiment. It’s just what companies do, she said.

  • Exposing the secrets of unaccountable power

    British journalist and WikiLeaks editor Sarah Harrison, who helped NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden get to safety on his flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, discusses the “Battle against unaccountable power.”

  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An unfortunate story on the non-review of U.S. surveillance authority in Section 702

  • HOLD THE FRONT PAGE: US govt backs mass spying by US govt

  • NSA programme skirts close to being unconstitutional, oversight board says

  • ACLU Chief: Greenwald Will Reveal Spying on U.S. Muslims

    Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told an Aspen Ideas Festival panel Wednesday that forthcoming revelations about the NSA will provoke new debate about the propriety of government spying. According to Romero, Glenn Greenwald will reveal that Muslim Americans in public life were “subject to the kind of surveillance that Hoover did on Martin Luther King.” In a question-and-answer session, I asked for details.

  • ACLU Chief: NSA Spied on U.S. Muslims

    The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that Glenn Greenwald will reveal that the National Security Agency spied on American Muslims. The group represents Edward Snowden, whose documents Greenwald is using, but the ACLU not working on the story. Nevertheless, Anthony D. Romero said Muslims were “subject to the kind of surveillance that Hoover did on Martin Luther King.” Romero had few details to share regarding the story, such as why Muslims were targeted and how deep the surveillance went. Greenwald said he was going to publish a major NSA story a few days ago but paused to report on additional claims made by the government.

  • This Amazing Chart Shows All The Ways The NSA Spies On You

  • Britain is part of a secret Anglo-Saxon world conspiracy. How can it also be part of Europe?

    I’m not a great believer in the ‘special relationship’, a concept that exists almost entirely in the mind of British journalists, especially during those occasional moments when the English-speaking nations have to bomb some awful former colony.

  • NSA man says agency can track you through POWER LINES

    Forensics and industry experts have cast doubt on an alleged National Security Agency capability to locate whistle blowers appearing in televised interviews based on how the captured background hum of electrical devices affects energy grids.

• Civil Rights

  • Air travellers need targeted protection

    As we face tightened security at airports, it is questionable whether mass screening is a sensible use of resources

  • Hike in airport security may be permanent, says Nick Clegg

    Increase in security measures are not a ‘blip’ but reflect the evolving threat of terrorists and extremist groups from around the world, says Deputy Prime Minister

  • NYPD brutally arrest man on subway ‘for sleeping on way from work’ (VIDEO)

    A video has recorded a violent altercation erupting between a man on a New York City subway and police officers, who apparently arrested him for the crime of nodding off while commuting home for work.

  • UK airport security stepped up after new US bomb terror threat

    Airport security is being increased at British airports after the United States called for heightened precautions amid reports two terror networks are working together on a bomb that could evade existing measures.

  • Open government is vital, but beware the deep state

    On the other hand, the currency of the anti-surveillance movement is distrust: it sees governments as adversaries, and thus it fights not just for greater disclosure of what the surveillance state is doing, but rallies the public to fight back by hardening themselves against spies. The problem is that we actually appear to have two governments under one roof. There is the one we elect and the one that does its best to ignore elections.

  • Independence Day, 2014

  • This Independence Day, America Again Has a Monarch

    Then the government shot itself in the foot when it surreptitiously released a portion of its secret memo to NBC News. This infuriated the panel of federal appellate judges hearing the Times’ appeal, and they ordered the entire memo released. Either it is secret or it is not, the court thundered—and the government, which is bound by the transparency commanded by the First Amendment, cannot pick and choose which parts of its work to reveal to its favorite reporters and which to conceal from the rest of us.

  • Reflecting on the History of America’s Wars, Trying to Feel Patriotic on the Fourth of July

    My high school textbooks totally ignored the real histories of the conquistadores, the genocide of Native Americans and their cultures, and the truth about the actual brutality of the enslavement of Black Africans. My history books glorified America’s wars, and never mentioned America’s use of propaganda or how it was involved in fascist movements world-wide. The cold realities of sexism, militarism, poverty, corporate abuse, the banking system, etc. were glossed over. Sadly, my relative ignorance about the (obviously censored out of our consciousness) painful and unwelcome truths about what really happened in history is probably the norm.

  • Guest Opinion: Independence Day should celebrate liberty, not government overreach

    The mainstream media and opportunistic politicians have turned Independence Day into the opposite of what was intended.

  • NAPOLITANO: From an inherited tyrant to an elected one

    The Obama administration had successfully resisted the efforts of The New York Times and others to induce a judge to order the release of the memo by claiming that it contained state secrets. The judge who reviewed the memo concluded that it was merely a legal opinion, and yet she referred to herself as being in “Alice in Wonderland”: The laws are public, and the judicial opinions interpreting them are public, so how could a legal opinion be secret? Notwithstanding her dilemma, she accepted the government’s absurd claims, and The New York Times appealed.

  • ACLU’s Report on Police Militarization Finds Weapons and Tactics of War Used Disproportionately Against People of Color

  • Highly Placed Media Racists

    For his part, Brooks praised a Sailer article in the American Conservative (12/20/04) promoting a movement that saw white people, as Brooks would have it, flouting Western trends toward declining birth rates by having lots of children and leaving behind the “disorder, vulgarity and danger” of cities to move to “clean, orderly” suburban and exurban settings where they can “protect their children from bad influences.”

  • Street Talk: Celebrating the Farce of July with illumination

    But what are we celebrating, exactly? We’re living in a time when the government spies on us without abandon. They listen to our calls, read our emails and watch us with drones. We’ve got our NSA, your DHS, your NDAA and your Patriot Act nudging us toward a police state and what lies beyond. Your government, the one you celebrate with firecrackers and 12-packs of beer, can jail you any time, without reason and for as long as they’d like, thanks to the mother of all un-American laws passed quietly, with very little protest or discussion, at the start of 2012.

  • Thailand deports ex-resistance leader to Laos

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • EFF Changes Position On Net Neutrality: Recognizes FCC Must Act, But Narrowly

    For years, the EFF has pushed back against the FCC’s attempts to preserve net neutrality, reasonably worrying that it might open the door to the FCC further meddling in the internet where it had no real mandate. We here at Techdirt have been similarly concerned. As we’ve noted, net neutrality itself is important, but we were wary of FCC attempts to regulate it creating serious unintended consequences. However, over the past few years, the growth in power of the key broadband internet access providers, and their ability to degrade the internet for profit, has made it quite clear that other options aren’t working.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • The European Commission Wants to Bring Back ACTA Through the Back Door!

    As the current European Commission sees out its last days following the European elections, it has just published an “Action Plan to address infringements of intellectual property rights in the EU” reusing some of the major concepts of the ACTA agreement that was rejected by the European Parliament in 2012 following an important citizen mobilisation. Its contents are also inspired by proposals pushed by France at the European level1, letting fear an increased implication of technical intermediaries in the enforcement of copyright and their progressive transformation into a private copyright police force.

    By reusing the objective of fighting against “commercial scale” counterfeiting, the Commission has chosen to reactivate one of the worst mechanisms of the anti-counterfeiting agreement ACTA. This vague expression threatens to include non-commercial online sharing activities and introduces the same legal uncertainty which was at the heart of the citizen mobilisation against ACTA, right up to its final rejection by the elected representatives of the Parliament.

    The same commissioners who pushed ACTA, Karel de Gucht and Michel Barnier, now seem to be considering bypassing the European Parliament to implement this fight against “commercial scale” counterfeiting. They are in fact planning to introduce “non-legislative measures” implying the signature of simple agreements between representatives of the cultural industries and technical providers, like advertising agencies and online payment services.

    These measures are directly inspired from the May 2013 Lescure Report and from the Imbert-Quaretta Report [fr] recently published in France, which La Quadrature has already denounced as potentially leading to an exra-judicial application of copyright law, converting these intermediaries in a private copyright law police force [fr]. The Commission wishes that such a system be generalized in the European Union through “Memoranda of Understanding”, providing a framework for contractual agreements negociated by private players.

    Such methods will lead to the bypass of democratic procedures of control. But the Commission also proposes to reinforce the protection of intellectual property at an international level with multilateral negociations. Such statements give good reason to fear that, once again, as with the ACTA agreement, or as foreseen for the CETA and TAFTA agreements, “intellectual property” questions will be treated in an opaque way during free trade agreements, leaving elected representatives with hardly any leeway.

  • Airbus submits patent application for windowless jet cockpit

    An article published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer yesterday evening describes a patent application from European aerospace company Airbus in which pilots fly aircraft entirely through electronic means. The patent application, number US20140180508 A1, is titled “Aircraft with a cockpit including a viewing surface for piloting which is at least partially virtual” and notes that while an aircraft’s cockpit must be located in its nose to afford its pilot forward visibility, the physical requirements of the cockpit’s shape and the amount of glass required are aerodynamically and structurally non-optimal.

  • Copyrights

    • One-Percent Authors Want To End Destructive Conflict, Bring Order to the Galaxy

      Amazon is not boycotting anyone. All books by all Hachette authors are available in the Amazon store. In the face of this, to claim there’s a “boycott” is either ignorance or propaganda.

    • Hollywood Goes After Korean Fans Subtitling Soap Operas, Pressing Criminal Charges

      We’ve written a few times in the past about the movie and TV industries irrationally freaking out over fans in other countries providing subtitles for works that aren’t being released locally in that language. These are always labor-of-love efforts by fans who want to share the work more widely by providing the subtitles that the studios themselves refuse to offer. And yet, because of standard copyright maximalism, these efforts almost always end up leading to legal action.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• July 2014 Issue of Linux Journal: Mobile

• Linux World Domination Complete: Why It’s Foolish To Bet Against Open Source Communities

  Ten years ago Unix claimed five the top-10 fastest computers on the planet and 44% of the overall supercomputer market. Today? Unix, the once indomitable performance powerhouse, doesn’t make the top-10 list of the world’s fastest computers. Heck, it can’t even crack the top 50. Not since Linux took over, that is.

  Buried in these sobering statistics on the rise of Linux and the fall of Unix is a reminder to proprietary infrastructure software vendors that hope to compete with open source: you can’t win. Not when the community gets involved.

• Will Bitcoin’s regulatory future resemble Linux?

  Like Bitcoin, no one regulates Linux. But since the latter has its ecosystem highly regulated, we wonder whether Bitcoin will follow suit?

• Server

  • Linux steps in as a managed Service; thanks to $8m fund raised by CoreOS

  • Linux-based CoreOS raises $8 million, launches world’s first ‘OS as a Service’

    CoreOS, an open source lightweight Linux-based operating system designed for massive server deployments, yesterday announced that it has secured $8 million in venture capital funding in series A round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with follow-on investments from existing investors Sequoia Capital and Fuel Capital.

  • CoreOS Raises $8 Million and Launches Managed Linux as a Service

  • CoreOS launches new Manages Linux monthly subscription service which updates itself continually

  • CoreOS takes the fight to Red Hat with Managed Linux

  • CoreOS: Linux for the cloud and the datacenter

  • How Linux containers can solve a problem for DOD virtualization

• Kernel Space

  • The Companies That Support Linux: Nextiva

    Google’s announcement last week of new work-friendly features in its forthcoming Android L release, along with its big tent foray into the enterprise, underscores just how much businesses are turning to mobile devices and the cloud for operations and communication. Nextiva is right in the thick of this trend as an industry-leading provider of cloud-based business phone services.

  • Linux Kernel 3.15.3 Is Now Available for Download

    Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of announcing earlier today, July 1, that the third maintenance release for the current stable 3.15 branch of the Linux kernel is available for download, urging users to upgrade as soon as their Linux distributions update the respective packages on the official software repositories.

  • Stable kernel updates

  • kGraft Being Discussed For Inclusion Into Linux-Next

    The SUSE method for live kernel patching, kGraft, is being proposed for possible inclusion into the linux-next branch in hopes it will be merged into an upcoming Linux kernel release cycle.

    The kGraft patches for live kernel patching continue to be revised and reviewed but at the same time there’s still Kpatch that’s been developed by Red Hat with some different design principles for updating the running kernel in real-time. To date there’s been no general consensus on the superior solution nor any agreement to try to merge Kpatch and kGraft.

  • Graphics Stack

    • GLX DRI3 GPU Offloading Lands In Mesa

      The GLX DRI3 GPU offloading support has landed in Mesa with a solution that’s superior to the DRI2 GPU offloading model.

    • [ANNOUNCE] libvdpau 0.8

    • VDPAU Library 0.8 Released

• Applications

  • QEMU 2.1 Steps Closer To Release

    A pre-RC test release is out for the QEMU open-source processor emulator.

    QEMU 2.1.0-rc0 was tagged in Git today by Linaro’s Peter Maydell. At the time of writing, a release announcement has yet to be issued for this development milestone.

  • Note-Taking / PDF Annotation Tool `Xournal` 0.4.8 Released With New Export To PDF Code, Other Changes

    Xournal was updated to version 0.4.8 today, bringing new Export to PDF code, a horizontal view mode along with other changes.

  • wkhtmltopdf and wkhtmltoimage: The clever twins

  • worklog: Work on, work done, work sum, work today

  • Screencasting App `Simple Screen Recorder` 0.3.0 Adds Profile Support, New OpenGL Recording System And Lots More

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to get [unofficial] Android L keyboard for your Android device!

    • Create Your Own Linux, Android and iOS Apps Using “LiveCode” in Linux

    • How to create sosreport in linux (RHEL 5.X / RHEL 6.X)

    • How to install Raspberry Pi camera board

    • Allow students to upload assignment files in Moodle

    • How To Install XiX Media Player 0.33c On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Simple Screen Recorder 0.3.0 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install My Weather Indicator 0.6.8 On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr And Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander

    • Using KDevelop QML/JS in real life

    • How To Install Fotoxx 14.07 On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander And Their Derivative Systems

    • Configuring GNUstep

    • 14 Command line tips & tricks

    • Manage Linux Containers with Docker on Ubuntu

    • Fotoxx 14.07 Image Editor Adds Support for RawTherapee

      Fotoxx, a complex and free image manipulation software for GNU/Linux platforms, has reached version 14.07 on June 30 and is now available for download from Softpedia or via the default software repositories of your Linux distribution.

  • Games

    • There’s No Business Like Goat Business, Goat Simulator Now Out On Linux

      One of the funniest games around is now fully available and out of beta for Linux. Goat Simulator is pretty popular and for good reason, as it’s just insanely stupid.

    • Steam Linux Usage Was Up Slightly In June

      With the start of a new month brings our monthly recap and it also brings Valve’s updated Steam hardware/software survey numbers.

      For June 2014, the overall Linux market-share using this randomly-sampled Steam survey was at 1.20%, an increase over May’s 1.13%. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit continued gaining ground as did Linux Mint 17 Qiana. The 32-bit Linux distributions continue to be (fortunately) declining.

    • Speed Dreams 2.1 Is Planned For Release Next Week

    • How To Play Classic Quake on Linux

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Is XFCE the best Linux desktop ever?

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Developers in Randa

    • Just a teaser

    • multi-process architectures rock!

    • KDE’s Krita gets 100% funding through Kickstarter

      It’s an interesting day for the KDE community. At one hand they announced the death of two projects – Vivaldi tablet and Improv board, on the other hand Krita (a KDE software) has reached its goal of raising Euro 15,000 on Kickstrater. The project can now hire the developer, designer they need to further improve the sketching and painting software. The campaign is not over yet and there are eight more days left so the project will continue to get more money.

    • Success!

      With 518 backers and 15,157 euros, we’ve passed the target goal and we’re 100% funded. That means that Dmitry can work on Krita for the next six months, adding a dozen hot new features and improvements to Krita. We’re not done with the kickstarter, though, there are still eight days to go! And any extra funding will go straight into Krita development as well. If we reach the 30,000 euro level, we’ll be able to fund Sven Langkamp as well, and that will double the number of features we can work on for Krita 2.9.

    • Where KDE is going – Part 2

      This is the second half of the ‘where KDE is going’ write-up. Last week, I discussed what is happening with KDE’s technologies: Platform is turning modular in Frameworks, Plasma is moving to new technologies and the Applications change their release schedule. In this post, I will discuss the social and organizational aspects: our governance.

    • Qt HiDPI Support Is On Hold For A Few Months

      Discussed at the Qt Contributor Summit and now turning into an Internet discussion is that the Qt High-DPI support is on hold.

      The Qt High-DPI support process allows setting a scale factor (via platform plug-ins, a user environment variable, or potential per-screen configuration files), layering changes to accomodate scaling, QWindow and other platform changes, etc. The HiDPI support is of course centered around new monitors that have very high pixel densities (Retina MacBook Pro, many smaller 4K displays, etc) and improving the experience for end-users by avoiding unbearably small text. Qt developers have been working on HiDPI support for several months.

    • The KDE Improv Project Has Announced Its End

      The team behind the KDE Improv ARM development board that was supposed to run Mer and be a great open-source piece of hardware is no more. The developers have sent out an email to their backers that they’ve thrown in the towel.

    • KDE’s Vivaldi tablet, Improv project are dead!

      It’s a sad day for free software as one of the most ambitious free software projects, Improv, is officially dead. Along with the board also dies the promising Vivaldi tablet.

    • Black Lab Linux KDE 5.0.2 Released

    • KDE Vivaldi Dead, To Know Tor, and New Mint ISOs

      The top story tonight is the sad news that the KDE Plasma tablet project has given up while Krita announces a financial success. Bloody Disgusting has a peek at the upcoming gaming title “Frozen State” and the EFF has 7 things you should probably know about Tor. The Linux Mint guys have announced updated images for the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Mint 17 and the latest review isn’t the love letter the others were.

    • Gluon Project Update

      Hey KDE people! I’m Claudio and, again, I’m the only student doing GSoC and improving Gluon Project. This does mean there’s a lot to do but often this translates in a lot of fun.

      My project basically consists in mantaining the Gluon Player and all the distribution service in general from the server to player library that handles OCS requests to the actual QML client. This meant in porting the Qt4 player to Qt5, which led to a partial rewrite and rearchitecturing After the porting I started implementing “friends” features. This means that YOU, with a Gluon account, can ask an other Gluon user for friendship and he can accept. This is the basis of the social features we’re introducing.

    • Analysing QtQuick apps with GammaRay or “Why is my button gone?”

      This is a typical situation when you program a GUI for an application. You have just created a new control, you start your application and… no control. But now: Is it obscured? Is it misplaced? Is it completely transparent or set to ‘invisible’? Is my custom OpenGL-stuff broken or is the item actually not created for some reason? Checking all these cases manually can be a time-consuming and exhausting task.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GPN 2014 in Karlsruhe

      The Gulash Programmier Nacht (GPN) took place in Karlsruhe, Germany. The local subsidiary of the Chaos Computer Club organised that event, which apparently took place for the 14th time. So far, I wasn’t able to attend, but this time I made it.

    • Keep working on GNOMECAT

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • HandyLinux 1.5.1 Adds Text Mode Installation

      The development team behind the HandyLinux operating system had the pleasure of announcing on June 30 that version 1.5.1 has been released and is now available for download. This build introduces several new features, updated packages, and fixes various bugs.

    • antiX 14.2 MX Linux Distribution Brings LibreOffice 4.2.5

      This is a maintenance release that fixes major bugs discovered and reported by the community from the previous stable version, antiX MX 14.1.1, and updates various packages.

      According to the quite small changelog, antiX MX 14.2 updates the powerful LibreOffice suite to the latest stable version, 4.2.5, updates the documentation, and adds support for Broadcom wireless devices on the CD image.

    • Calculate Linux 13.19 released

      We are happy to announce that Calculate Linux 13.19, the last of the 13th, has been released. CL 14 is coming soon after, with many new features such as totally rewritten assemble & compilation utilities, GUI and/or commande line updater, automatic update check, new approach to profiles, etc.

    • Calculate Linux 13.19 Released with Support for exFAT Filesystems

    • Clonezilla Live 2.2.3-25 Is Now Powered by Linux Kernel 3.14.7

      The stable channel of the Clonezilla Live Linux distribution, an open source operating system designed for hard disk drive cloning operations, has been updated to version 2.2.3-25, as announced by its developer, Steven Shiau.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Adds Cloud-Management Certification for OpenStack Partners

      Red Hat (RHT) is introducing a new incentive for enterprises to adopt its open source OpenStack cloud computing solutions. Now, the company will certify cloud-management solutions for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

    • Cloud management certification added for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform

    • Satellite 6 Adds More Control For Red Hat Linux

      Red Hat has followed up the roll out of the latest version of its mainstay Enterprise Linux operating system with the beta release of the Red Hat Satellite 6 management suite.

    • Fedora

      • Election announced for the Fedora Engineering Steering Commitee

        Matthew Miller just announced that there is to be an election later this month for 3 positions in the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo). FESCo is a fully community elected body and represents the technical leadership in Fedora. The nomination period starts tomorrow (July 2nd), with the election scheduled to be held from July 15th to the 22nd.

      • Preview: Fedora 20 Updated vs. Fedora 21 Rawhide Benchmarks

        While Fedora 21 remains under heavy development, for some new benchmarks to get July started I ran some tests of a stock Fedora 20 installation versus Fedora 20 with all stable updates versus Fedora 21 in its “Rawhide” state.

  • Debian Family

    • LAVA in Debian unstable

    • Goofying-with-Debian: debmake — checking source against DEP-5 copyright

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu phone release date: on track for 2014 launch

          In 2013, Canonical – the company behind Ubuntu – attempted to raise $32m via crowdfunding for its Ubuntu Edge smartphone. It didn’t make it, but the Ubuntu phone isn’t dead. In fact, development is well under way and the Ubuntu phone operating system is very much alive. If you’re brave enough, you can download and install the developer version on certain Android smartphones and tablets by following the instructions here.

        • HP and Canonical Document OpenStack Cloud Deployment for Ubuntu

          Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) signaled its endorsement of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux as a platform for deploying the OpenStack cloud operating system with the release this week of a new reference architecture, which provides detailed instructions on setting up an OpenStack cloud using Ubuntu and other tools from Canonical, such as Juju and MAAS.

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Will Not Ship With Open-Source OpenCL Support

          While Fedora 21 is planning for open-source OpenCL support “out of the box”, the same can’t be said for Ubuntu 14.10. Ubuntu developers aren’t looking for any stock OpenCL support be made available in the next distribution release.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Quick Look: Peppermint Five

            Peppermint Five, the latest release of the distribution formerly called Peppermint OS, features a brand new Control Center to manage settings, as well as a rebuilt Ice SSB (Site Specific Browser) manager. Since it’s built on the Ubuntu 14.04 code base, Peppermint Five is also a long term support release.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux turns the crank on code for cars

  • Automotive Grade Linux Hits the Road

    The first release of Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) is out today, providing car vendors with an open-source platform on which to embed applications and features. AGL officially started in September 2012 as a collaboration project operated by the Linux Foundation and currently has 32 members, including Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Jaguar and Intel, on its roster.

  • Automotive Grade Linux Released for Open Source Cars

    Linux, the open source operating system, shifted gears into a relatively new ecosystem this week with the first release of Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a Linux distribution tailored for cars in the Internet of Things age.

  • Open Linux HummingBoard SBC goes on sale starting at $45

    SolidRun has launched three Linux- and Android-ready, open source “HummingBoard” SBCs based on 1GHz Freescale i.MX6 SoCs, with a Pi-like 26-pin I/O connector.

  • Toradex launches Open Source “Viola”, a new concept for ultra-low cost customized single-board computers (SBC), starting at $55.00

  • BrickPi Bookreader 2 interview

    A robotic, mechanical reader of printed books that melds together the Raspberry Pi and Lego Mindstorms.

  • First standard Linux-based software platform for the connected car arrives

  • Chumby back from the dead with 1,000 apps

    Chumby, which sold Linux-based tabletop devices that ran Flash-based apps, is back in business under Blue Octy, with an overhauled website and 1,000 apps.

  • Phones

    • What is the future of mobile? Q&A with Tomi Ahonen

      The speed of change and level of innovation in mobile is mind-boggling. One thing is for sure: mobile is, and will continue to be, the communication platform of choice for people across the globe. But what will a mobile device look like and how will people use it?

    • Ballnux

      • Samsung announces Galaxy S5 mini, retains S5 gimmicks

        Samsung enthusiasts who are eagerly waiting for the next Samsung device have some news in store. Samsung has announced the Galaxy S5 mini, the mini version of its 2014 flagship smartphone. While the pricing of the device has not been revealed yet, the specifications surely tell a story.

      • LG is the first smartphone maker to join Google’s Open Automotive Alliance

        Google hasn’t yet released details on what specific handsets will work with Android Auto — but it seems like a safe bet that LG’s future smartphones will work with the new system. And if the company keeps putting out phones as good as the G3 we reviewed last month, Android Auto support will be another point in favor of LG.

    • Android

      • Android Wear: The Next Major Mobile Platform?

        At the recent Google I/O conference, Android was the star of the show, and, in particular, Android Wear devices were all the rage. Google even handed out prototype smartwatches running Android Wear, purportedly to encourage developers to begin creating apps for the wearable computing platform.

      • Android Wear Review: Putting the Smartphone on Your Wrist

        I used to believe that in the next stage of evolution we’d grow a third arm. That would be a sign that our bodies have adapted to one of the greatest physical impediments in human history: constantly having to pull out our smartphones to see if we have important messages.

        But there’s a less genetically drastic solution. A smartwatch can now deliver the most important and timely information straight to one of your existing wrists. And where Samsung 005930.SE +1.53% and some smartwatch startups have failed to gain momentum, Google’s new Android Wear may be the first viable wrist-top platform.

      • ​Blackphone lands: World’s most spy-resistant phone sold out

        Blackphone, the much-ballyhooed collaboration between anti-NSA encryption powerhouse Silent Circle, and Geeksphone, a company owned by a former tech prodigy, has begun shipping around the world. The initial inventory has already sold out.

        While security-conscious phones have been sold in the past, the idea took off after the revelations of global NSA surveillance leaked by former security agent Edward Snowden.

      • VLC for Android available on Google Play Store

        VLC is the most popular Open Source video player which can play virtually any video and audio formats on the desktop PCs. It beats every video player out there whether it be QuickTime or Windows Media Player. When we talk about Android, the situation is not much different as due to ARM’s mess, its really tricky to get all videos to play. There are some apps but they are either paid, proprietary or they just don’t work that well. In a nutshell, we need VLC for Android.

      • CyanogenMod users may not see Android L anytime soon

        Over the last week all the news has revolved around L with early leaks of its features and images. This morning we also reported of L’s source code released as a developer preview. This immediately led to many news articles incorrectly reporting that third party ROM builders will be able to soon offer L based ROM builds.

Free Software/Open Source

• 6 things to consider when building an open source community

  At Kaltura, we took the open source road partly because of curiosity and passion, and partly because we entered a market where competition was already getting fierce and there was a clear lack of an open source and standards oriented solution.

• Exclusive: Leaked ‘Inception’ Document Fleshes Out Open-Source NFV Plans

  Plans for an open-source NFV platform are moving forward, as leading carriers and vendors in the NFV movement were scheduled to hold an “inception meeting” Monday and Tuesday.

• Events

  • The Linux Foundation Announces Early Keynote Speaker Line Up for LinuxCon + CloudOpen Europe

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox and Gtk+ 3

      Folks from Collabora and Red Hat have been working on making Firefox on Gtk+ 3 a thing. See Emilio’s blog post for some recent update. But getting Firefox to build and run locally is unfortunately not the whole story.

      I’ve been working on getting Gtk+ 3 Firefox builds going on Mozilla build infrastructure, and I’m proud to announce today that those builds are now going through Mozilla continuous integration on a project branch: Elm, and receive the same automated testing as mozilla-central.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • 6 fresh guides for managing OpenStack

    Looking for a guide to walk you through the creation, care and upkeep of your open source cloud running OpenStack? We’ve collected some of our favorite tutorials and technical how-tos from the past month all here in one place. Be sure to visit the official documentation for OpenStack if you need further guidance.

  • BYO-LHC: Bring Your Own Large Hadron Collider

    Rackspace’s involvement with OpenStack and CERN at the Large Hadron Collider surfaced again late last month when the cloud hosting provider staged a London-based gathering to discuss what, when and where its cloud hosting intelligence is being deployed.

  • How a little open source project came to dominate big data

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • 3 open source tools to make your presentations pop

    Love them or hate them, presentations are a major part of life in both academia and business. Traditionally, creating a presentation meant using Microsoft’s PowerPoint, but Apple’s Keynote and LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org’s Impress are solid alternatives. The problem with all those applications (aside from the closed source nature of the first two) is that you need those applications installed in order to view the presentations you’ve created. You can try your luck opening the file in Google Drive or the like, but your success will vary.

• Funding

  • MapR Gets Big Money for Big Data

    $110 million funding round underscores high-value potential for Big Data applications.

  • Google Capital, Others Commit $110M to MapR Hadoop

    Apache Hadoop vendor MapR has received the blessing—and financial backing—of Google (GOOG), whose investment fund, Google Capital, led the latest, $110 million financing round for the Big Data company.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • flow analysis in guile

    Greets, and welcome back to the solipsism! I’ve been wandering the wilderness with my Guile hackings lately, but I’m finally ready to come back to civilization. Hopefully you will enjoy my harvest of forest fruit.

  • Denemo – News: Release 1.1.6 is out.

  • GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 23 new GNU releases!

  • Seattle free software event this fall: Call for Participation now open

    The Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (SeaGL) has just announced Karen Sandler, executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy, as a keynote speaker and opened its Call for Participation. SeaGL is a free software conference in downtown Seattle, taking place on October 24 and 25, 2014. The Seattle Central Community College is hosting the event, so expect plenty of opportunities for students, as well as professionals and free software enthusiasts.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Hardware

    • ARM Jumps on Open-Source Sensors

      ARM Semiconductors announced last week it would jump into the open-source sensor hubs game by teaming with sensor algorithm company Sensor Platforms to produce an open-source software for sensor hub applications. Sensor Platform’s Open Sensor Platform (OSP) is designed to simplify the use of sensors in applications and hardware by providing a flexible framework for more sophisticated interpretation and analysis of sensor data.

    • Creating an Open-Source Multiband RC Transmitter

• Programming

  • Big data influencer on how R is paving the way

    Revolution Analytics supports the R community and the ever-growing needs of commercial users. Recently named a top 10 influencer on the topic of Big Data, I asked David Smith, the Chief Community Officer at Revolution Analytics, to share with me what keeps this programming language ticking. Though R has been around since the 90s, released in 1995 as under GPLv2 by two statistics professors looking to develop a new language for statistical computing, a new breath of life has energized a rowdy team of innovators around R.

  • SparkR is an R package that enables the R programming language to run inside of the Spark framework in order to manipulate the data for analytics.

    SparkR is an R package that enables the R programming language to run inside of the Spark framework in order to manipulate the data for analytics.

  • Trying out Julia

    This is a fairly quick post, though I previously considered making it longer and more trollish. A handful of my friends have told me about Julia, the amazing programming language made for numerical computations and other scientific computing uses.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Serverless WebRTC, continued

    Around a year ago, in WebRTC without a signaling server, I presented an simple app that can start a chat session with another browser without involving a local file server (i.e. you just browse to file:///) and without involving a signaling server (instead of both going to the same web page to share “offers”, you share them manually, perhaps via IM).

Leftovers

• Who Goes to an Azov Battalion Charity Concert? Here’s 10.

  The Azov Battalion was formed on May 5th, 4 days later they were involved in still one of the most shocking actions of this Ukraine crisis, the Mariupol massacre. They were the battalion sent out of the Mariupol police hq first, into the streets, shooting, killing unarmed civilians. Since then, involvement in further atrocities across the former east of Ukraine has had them labelled ‘men in black’ (their uniform is all black, unmarked), even a ‘death squad‘. Part of their funding reportedly comes from oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. How many of them are there? Some have reported 70, but the group itself are secretive about exact numbers, with speculation it could be in the hundreds. Their official Facebook page has over 8000 ‘likes’.

• The Risk of a Ukraine Bloodbath

  Pressured by neocons and the mainstream U.S. media, the Obama administration is charting a dangerous course by seeking a military solution to Ukraine’s political crisis and possibly provoking Moscow to intervene to protect ethnic Russians, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern warns.

• Asylum seekers in standoff with police at Berlin protest

  Kreuzberg, the heart of countercultural Berlin, is no stranger to protests. But a tense standoff between police and protesters over the past six days has set a new standard.

  Since last Wednesday, hundreds of police officers have been surrounding a former school building in which a group of mainly African asylum seekers are protesting against their treatment in Germany.

  On Monday morning, around 20 officers lined up behind barricades on the junction of Ohlauer and Reichenberger Strasse, some of them deep in conversation with locals who wanted to get trolleys full of food and medicine through to the protesters.

  The press are refused entry to the school building, allegedly because of a fire hazard.

  While some local politicians are trying to negotiate an agreement that would allow the asylum seekers to permanently remain in the building while their cases are being processed, Germany’s police union is advocating an evacuation of the building.

  In a call from the roof of the building, a 32-year-old Sudanese refugee who would only give his name as Adam said: “The police try to give the impression that we are criminals and crazy people, but we only want to fight for our rights.”

• Mobile roaming charges halved as EU introduces new caps

  Call, text and data charges in more than 40 EU countries are slashed by European leaders

• Science

  • NASA may send small drone to explore Saturn moon

• Health/Nutrition

  • The Assault on Organics

    The New York Post loves a good villain, but you’d think it would be hard to cast a bad light on the group of people profiled in an April 19 story: moms who feed their kids organic food.

• Security

  • Tuesday’s security updates

  • Wednesday’s security advisory

  • Exclusive: U.S. companies seek cyber experts for top jobs, board seats

    JPMorgan Chase & Co, PepsiCo Inc, Cardinal Health Inc, Deere & Co and The United Services Automobile Association (USAA) are among the Fortune 500 companies seeking chief information security officers (CISOs) and other security personnel to shore up their cyber defenses, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • US Intimidated by Its Own Mercenaries

    Even the mightiest have their come-uppance when their internal logic spews out destructiveness returning on the self—“blowback” in a way perhaps not seen before. I refer to James Risen’s extraordinary article in the New York Times, “Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater,” (June 30), in which the customary meaning of “blowback” refers to policies, e.g., the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, the “pivot” of military power to the Pacific intent on the encirclement, containment, isolation of China, produce unintended, or if intended, still unwelcome, consequences for the initiator of the policy or action.

  • Blackwater Iraqi chief threatened to kill US govt. inspector – newspaper

  • The Return of Ahmad Chalabi

    Back in 2004, US troops in Iraq raided Chalabi’s headquarters. The accusation: he had leaked classified US intelligence to the Iranians, letting them in on the secret that we had cracked Tehran’s interagency code. For years, Chalabi had been on the CIA payroll, but now it looked like he was in reality a double-agent acting on behalf of Iran. The real shocker, however, was that Chalabi had access to this kind of closely-guarded intelligence in the first place. The FBI wanted to know how the wily Iranian exile leader got his hands on the information.

  • Iraq invasion was a huge mistake: US Secretary of State

    US Secretary of State John Kerry has admitted that the US-led invasion of Iraq eleven years ago was a serious mistake.

  • U.S.-Jihadist Relations (Part 1): Creating the Mujahedin in Afghanistan

    To President Carter and Brzezinski, the end justified the means. The end goal was the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to achieve it, Islamist fundamentalists had to be used. Osama bin Laden and people like him were dispatched to Afghanistan to fight the “godless” communists. It was during this time that the Quran’s surah on jihad attracted attention.

  • So, You Think You Know Iraq? – OpEd

    Such is the absence of quality in the current debate on Iraq, that absent is the presence of British observers in the first elections, to nominate a Government for the Kurdish Autonomous Region, after the 1991 failed US/UK backed uprising to remove Saddam Hussain from power.

    The clear absence of such minor details, which any self respecting sociologist or politician would describe as vital, to the “cause and affect” of the current situation, has now resulted in a political narrative, which has excluded the internal and external Iraqi community.

  • Filing vague on Benghazi suspect’s role

    A legal filing prosecutors submitted in advance of a hearing set in federal court in Washington on Wednesday for Libyan militia leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah is vague about his role in the 2012 attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

    Abu Khatallah was captured in Benghazi last month by U.S. military special forces and FBI personnel. He was brought across the Atlantic in a Navy ship before being helicoptered into Washington on Saturday morning for an arraignment in federal court on an indictment charging him with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists in connection with the assault on the U.S. compound two years ago.

  • Abu Khattala, suspect in Benghazi attacks, held without bond

    A suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans was ordered held without bond during a Wednesday hearing in D.C. federal court.

  • Repeal the Bill Kristol Permanent Punditry Act!

    The only other possibility is that ABC is being forced to comply with a law that requires Bill Kristol appear on national television. If that’s not the excuse, then what is?

  • Crazed Bombers Support Bombs Shock

    Why “Establishment figures endorse status quo” is news beats me. The only news is that the estrangement of ordinary people from the moribund political establishment means nobody cares what these old troughers and sycophants think. In Scotland the referendum has given an impetus to a popular will to take back the power kidnaped by an unrepresentative political class. These old fogeys may need to have the power (with American permission) to kill billions of their human beings, in order to feel potent and important. But if they want to keep these appalling devices, they are going to have to look for somewhere new to keep them. The Pool of London?

  • Court Tells DOJ To Cough Up The Other Secret Memos That Justify Killing People By Drone

    Last week, we wrote about how the DOJ finally released (a heavily redacted) copy of its memo authorizing drone use for killing Americans (though, some have pointed out that the memo was written well after the US started trying to kill Americans with drones). More importantly, we noted that the memo actually pointed to another secret memo as part of the justification. It’s secret memo on top of secret memo, all the way down. The ACLU went back to court to see about getting its hands on that other memo, and the court has now ordered the DOJ to cough up any such memos related to killing people with drones. Specifically, the judge has ordered the DOJ to provide…

  • A Band-Aid Approach to Fixing the V.A.

    Despite promises from the Bush-43 administration that the Iraq War would pay for itself, the price tag keeps soaring with the predictable impact on V.A. hospitals struggling to care for wounded warriors. But the political solution has been to make a change at the top, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.

  • Iraqi ‘Caliph’ on U.S. Kill List

    Currently, several hundred U.S. troops are providing security in Baghdad and assessing Iraq’s security needs, Dempsey said on NPR on June 28. The military is preparing “additional options” including the targeting of “high-value individuals,” he said.

  • McCain meets Syrian rebels, presses for military aid to fight ISIS

    Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pressed for increasing aid to moderate rebel groups after meeting Syrian opposition leaders in Turkey Wednesday, warning that delays would “fuel the growing danger” to U.S. security.

    McCain said pro-Western Syrian forces were fighting a “two-front war” against both Syrian strongman Bashar Assad and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a Sunni militant group that has captured huge swaths of both countries.

  • US Court: Mexicans Can Sue Border Patrol Agent Who Killed Their Rock-Throwing Son

    The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that the parents of Sergio Hernandez, a 15-year-old Mexican teenager who was shot and killed by Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa on June 7, 2010, could sue Mesa in U.S. civil court for alleged excessive use of force. This was a reversal of the initial judgment made in Mesa’s favor in the lower Western District Court in El Paso, TX.

  • Germany considers introducing armed drones

  • The era of American drone supremacy is fading – but the threat of drone multipolarity is real – and potentially endless

    However, though America has only deemed the UK fit to buy their UAVs, others, including Iran, whose drones patrol the same Iraqi skies as their US counterparts, have reverse engineered the unmanned aerial vehicle with relative ease.

  • Intel chairman: Drone strikes on Americans abroad ‘legitimate’

    Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said al Qaeda affiliated fighters targeting the U.S. should not be handled by the court system, regardless of whether they are American citizens.

  • America needs a rulebook

    Americans are troubled by the lack of accountability surrounding US use of targeted strikes far from traditional battlefields

  • Peace talks failure led to drone strikes: Report

    The London-based Bureau of Investigating Journalism quoting a source close to peace talks between the government and TTP said Islamabad had asked the US to stop drone strikes during the peace deal.

  • Win Mott: Deja Vu all over again for U.S. in Iraq

    7. We are still lost. The gates of hell are still wide open. You now understand what is happening. You are ahead of our leaders, of both parties, who in attempting to protect economic interests have lost any sense of foreign policy direction, or of the costs to America in blood and dollars. It is hard to believe that future U.S. leaders could make it worse, but it is possible.

  • Rachel Marsden: Is US being duped into funding jihadist startup?

    Unless the end goal is to foment Islamic terrorism from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, what exactly is this administration hoping to achieve? It’s getting its backside handed to it by the jihadist version of a startup, and Obama risks becoming its venture capitalist in chief.

  • US plans to increase airport security after new threat

    The US is reportedly planning to overhaul security at its airports and to demand its overseas partners do the same, after receiving intelligence that militant groups in the Middle East are preparing a new generation of non-metallic explosives that could be carried undetected on to commercial flights.

  • Rights activists protest ‘Human Rights Watch’

    Human rights activists marched from the New York Times offices to the Empire State Building — which houses Human Rights Watch — to protest both institutions as tools of the CIA, specifically in their role attacking the Bolivarian government of Venezuela.

  • Cuba Cooperated with US in Search for Missing Americans

    Starting 1998, the Cuban government provided the United States with intelligence to help it track down US citizens who had disappeared in the field during the Cold War, a former CIA agent revealed.

    Chip Beck, a retired CIA agent and former Department of State official, revealed that, between 1998 and 2001, he traveled to Cuba officially on five separate occasions to look for information on US citizens who had disappeared during missions in Indochina, Africa and Central America during the years of confrontation between the West and the communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union.

  • Cuba – down but not out

    The US still does not have formal diplomatic relations with Cuba and maintains an embargo that makes it illegal for US corporations to do business with Cuba.

  • EDITORIAL: Close loopholes, open documents

    Earlier this year, the CIA blocked the release of a decades-old internal report on the Bay of Pigs. It is hard to imagine why such information on a 1960s operation would not be public information now.

  • The death by drone memo: a throwback to U.S. terrorism in Nicaragua

    While the Contras claimed responsibility, to the Sandinistas such actions bore all the hallmarks of the CIA. Immediately, they lodged a formal complaint before the International Court of Justice.

    For its part, the State Department assured it had “no further information on the incident,” adding: “We have received a protest from the Soviet Union charging U.S. responsibility, and we reject that charge.”

    On April 8, unauthorized leaks revealed that the CIA (specifically, its so-called Unilaterally Controlled Latino Assets or UCLAs) had in fact been directly involved in laying these mines. As shown by a March 2, 1984 secret memorandum written by Oliver North, the agency had made prior arrangements asking the Contras to “take credit for the operation” to cover up its involvement.

  • Mercury News: Drones need better justification

    Thirteen months ago, during a speech at the National Defense University, President Barack Obama promised greater transparency and new guidelines for drone use as part of his counterterrorism strategy.

  • Thailand deports ex-resistance leader to Laos

    Thailand deported a former ethnic Hmong resistance leader whose group fought for the US in Laos in the 1960s, Thai officials and rights groups said Wednesday, raising concerns that he will face persecution in his homeland.

    Moua Toua Ter and fellow Hmong led a desperate existence on the run in the jungles of Laos for more than two decades. He had been sheltering in Thailand for eight years while seeking resettlement in a third country.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • How Business Media Covered “Risky Business” Climate Report

    Refusing to act on climate change will be bad for business, according to a major recent report assessing the alarming risks of unchecked global warming on the U.S. economy. But while some top business media outlets recognize global warming as a serious issue for their audience, others are still stuck in denial.

• Finance

  • The AP’s Newest Business Reporter Is an Algorithm

    Journalistic earnings stories can feel robotic, even when written by a news organization as prestigious as the Associated Press. Acknowledging this fact, the AP has decided that it will just have robots produce stories on companies’ earning reports.

  • New Haven boy, 12, takes mission to end homelessness to Detroit’s streets

    The young boy smiles and looks into the eyes of the homeless man with bent shoulders and worn shoes.

    He carefully places a scoop of potato salad next to the grilled hot dog and beans on the man’s plate.

  • Editorial: Mentally ill, chronically homeless

    Even the most sequestered suburbanite visiting downtown Detroit can see that cuts in mental health services have pushed mentally ill people onto the street. During the day, more and more of them share the sidewalks with nicely dressed people who walk by them, often without a glance, on their way to the offices, lofts, condos, restaurants and clubs that signal Detroit’s downtown revival.

  • Neoliberalism’s Slippery Slope

    Freidman, as one of the founders of neoliberal thought, and theory, in the late 1940s, became synonymous with “monetarism” and eventually with “neoliberalism,” and as follows, significantly, very significantly, his theory spread all across the earth from the shores of Melbourne to Sri Lanka to Cape Town to Cape Horn to Tokyo; it’s a neoliberal world.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • The Deeply Held Religious Principle Hobby Lobby Suddenly Remembered It Had

    The Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case might not have been surprising, but there’s at least one aspect of the media coverage of the company that fails in a big way: Few outlets note that the company was providing the very type of health coverage it finds impossible to reconcile with its religious beliefs before the Affordable Care Act existed.

  • John Oliver rips Supreme court, argues companies shouldn’t be treated as people

• Censorship

  • EU’s right to be forgotten: Guardian articles have been hidden by Google

    Publishers must fight back against this indirect challenge to press freedom, which allows articles to be ‘disappeared’. Editorial decisions belong with them, not Google

  • ORG’s Blocked project finds almost 1 in 5 sites are blocked by filters

  • ORG’s Blocked project finds almost 1 in 5 sites are blocked by filters

  • Almost one in five websites blocked by filters

    Almost one in five websites are being blocked by overzealous filters, a project has found.

    Open Rights Group’s Blocked project has created a free checking tool, which returns information on whether a site is being blocked by filters.

  • Lawsuits challenge free speech restrictions of four colleges

    Four lawsuits were filed Tuesday, challenging free speech restrictions at college campuses. The lawsuits were spearheaded by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a Philadelphia-based group that promotes free speech and due process rights at colleges and universities. FIRE aims to eliminate campus policies that restrict expression.

  • First Amendment defender FIRE coordinates four free speech lawsuits against public universities

  • The 17th Annual Muzzle Awards

    These are just a few of the cases that comprise the 17th Annual Muzzle Awards — a Fourth of July round-up of outrages against free speech and personal liberties in New England during the past year.

  • Why the US Record on Free Press Won’t Inspire Cairo

    On July 5, 2005, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller made an honorable sacrifice by accepting a jail sentence rather than exposing her confidential source through testifying before a grand jury. Miller’s story is a stark reminder of the nation’s own war on press freedom and a chilling foreshadowing of the United States’ own struggles of respecting and obeying the rights of journalists.

• Privacy

  • Arguing With Michael Hayden in Aspen

    Hayden’s analysis is mistaken.

  • Silicon Valley’s Spy Problem

    The resulting relationship between Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, is remarkable for its longevity and depth. For example, the database software giant Oracle has been rumored to maintain close ties with the CIA. Similarly, the partly CIA-funded Keyhole, Inc., was among the acquisitions that produced Google Maps. The CIA’s Silicon Valley venture-capital operation, In-Q-Tel is meant to ensure that the interests of America’s national security apparatus are implanted in technology startups.

  • Are More Snowden Leaks on the Way?

    New York-based site Cryptome says it will publish the remaining NSA documents that Edward Snowden swiped

  • Court gave NSA broad leeway in surveillance, documents show

    Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries, according to top-secret documents.

  • PayPal freezes out NSA-proof, encrypted ProtonMail

  • ProtonMail and Paypal: Do we need government approval to encrypt email?

  • PayPal locks out ProtonMail, asks if encrypted email service has government approval

    We previously looked at the huge demand for ProtonMail, an easy-to-use and free NSA-proof email service created by CERN and MIT scientists. It is based in Switzerland, meaning the U.S. government can’t just hoover it up without an enforceable Swiss court order, which is hard to come by since the Swiss legal system has “strong privacy protections.” The demand for the end-to-end encrypted email service was so high that ProtonMail ran out of a month’s worth of server capacity in three days.

  • Internet providers file legal complaint against GCHQ snooping

  • ISPs to take GCHQ to court over malware use during ‘illegal’ snooping

    A GROUP of seven internet service providers (ISPs) from around the globe are looking to take the UK’s GCHQ to court over its alleged use of “malicious software” to attack their respective network infrastructures.

  • ISPs take GCHQ to court in UK over mass surveillance

    Seven international web providers lodge formal complaint to court alleging breach of privacy and breaking into their networks

  • U.K. Government Sued by Internet Service Providers Over Spying

  • Activist communications providers sue UK spies over surveillance

  • Indian govt to protest against NSA snooping on BJP

  • Stronger action on US spying needed

    While the external affairs ministry has done what is expected of it in such circumstances — summon a senior US diplomat to express outrage, and say that spying on an Indian entity is unacceptable — it is evident that the ruling BJP is not frothing at the mouth following the revelation that America’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had permitted the National Security Agency in 2010 to spy on the saffron party.

  • India summons US envoy on spying claim: official source

    India summoned the top diplomat from the US embassy Wednesday to complain for the third time about spying following new allegations that the National Security Agency targeted the ruling party.

  • India summons US envoy over spying claim

  • India summons U.S. diplomat over report of NSA spying

  • India summons US diplomat over American agency snooping on BJP

  • U.S. spying row overshadows McCain’s trip to India

  • Snooping BJP Issue: Modi government reacts sharply against USA

    Amid the latest revelation about the US National Security Agency NSA spied the BJP; party has lodged its protest and criticized the move. On the whole episode, Narendra Modi-led NDA govt today summoned a top US diplomat in this regards and said that it can’t be accepted.

  • Facebook Has Become A Manipulative Boyfriend

    Two years ago, I broke up with Facebook. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Like any big break up, I had complex reasons, but the biggest was that I simply did not trust Facebook. The relationship started out with the euphoria of new love, but over the years turned to something resembling abuse.

    Facebook eerily insists on invading your life.

  • NSA reformers dismayed after privacy board vindicates surveillance dragnet

  • Flawed Oversight Board Report Endorses General Warrants

    The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) issued a legally flawed and factually incomplete report late Tuesday that endorses Section 702 surveillance. Hiding behind the “complexity” of the technology, it gives short shrift to the very serious privacy concerns that the surveillance has rightly raised for millions of Americans. The board also deferred considering whether the surveillance infringed the privacy of many millions more foreigners abroad.

    The board skips over the essential privacy problem with the 702 “upstream” program: that the government has access to or is acquiring nearly all communications that travel over the Internet. The board focuses only on the government’s methods for searching and filtering out unwanted information. This ignores the fact that the government is collecting and searching through the content of millions of emails, social networking posts, and other Internet communications, steps that occur before the PCLOB analysis starts. This content collection is the centerpiece of EFF’s Jewel v. NSA case, a lawsuit battling government spying filed back in 2008.

  • EFF sues NSA over snoops ‘hoarding’ zero-day security bugs

    Intelligence agencies are among the most prolific buyers of zero-day computer security flaws that can be used to spy on enemies foreign and domestic, or so it’s claimed – and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a lawsuit to find out what exactly they are doing with them.

    “Since these vulnerabilities potentially affect the security of users all over the world, the public has a strong interest in knowing how these agencies are weighing the risks and benefits of using zero days instead of disclosing them to vendors,” said EFF global policy analyst Eva Galperin.

  • NSA sued over online security flaws

  • Is General Alexander Worth $30K A Day?

    Congressman Alan Grayson made waves last week when he sent letters to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association(SIFMA), the Consumer Bankers Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable assailing former head of the NSA, Keith Alexander. In each letter Grayson cited a Bloomberg article that revealed that Alexander’s new consulting firm was commanding hefty fees of anywhere from $600K to $1 million per month.

  • US digital rights group files freedom of information lawsuit against NSA

    United States (US)-based digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

    The group hopes to gain access to documents showing how American intelligence agencies made use of “zero day attacks” to gain access to a target’s computer.

    Zero days are exploits that have been discovered by researchers but have not yet been patched by developers and can provide backdoor access into a user’s computer.

  • Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

    Last night, the Russian State Duma (parliament) passed the first bill requiring that the personal data of all Russians should be stored inside the country.

    The effects of the bill, if passed, would be wide-ranging, touching just about every international service used by Russians. Essentially, it would mean that Facebook, Google or any other international online service – including apps – used by people in Russia would need to have physical servers inside Russia’s borders.

  • Angry How Facebook Uses Your Data? Here’s What to Do

  • Time for the emperors-in-waiting who run Facebook to just admit they’re evil

    Facebook’s emotion study reveals it is hopelessly disconnected from emotional reality: that people get upset when people they care about are unhappy

  • 9 questions you should ask before putting your data in the cloud

    Cloud computing has been an industry buzzword for some time now, but has continued to evolve at quite a pace. Despite this, one of the predominant themes of discussion that remains is how to take advantage while still avoiding the risks of ‘the cloud’.

  • A Zombie Bill Comes Back to Life: A Look at The Senate’s Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014

    The Senate Intelligence Committee recently introduced the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014. It’s the fourth time in four years that Congress has tried to pass “cybersecurity” legislation. Unfortunately, the newest Senate bill is one of the worst yet. Cybersecurity bills aim to facilitate information sharing between companies and the government, but they always seem to come with broad immunity clauses for companies, vague definitions, and aggressive spying powers. Given such calculated violence to users’ privacy rights, it’s no surprise that these bills fail every year.

  • What Happened to Glenn Greenwald’s Big Scoop?

    That hint sent the webs atwitter, especially since the NSA-centric Intercept—a fledgling media startup that’s published in fits and starts—hasn’t put out a new story since June 18.

  • Greenwald Halts Publication of US Citizens Who Are NSA Targets

    If it wasn’t for last minute US government intervention, occurring last night just before the clock hit midnight, we would know the names American’s being spied on by the National Security Agency.

    [...]

    Greenwald’s release of the names of US citizens – including controversial political activists – who the NSA was targeting was halted for reasons still not fully explained. The announcement came on Greenwald’s Twitter feed hours before the scheduled release when he said “After 3 months working on our story, USG (US Government) today suddenly began making new last-minute claims which we intend to investigate before publishing.”

  • Secret documents reveal NSA had authority for broad surveillance

  • NSA Was Authorised To Spy On Iceland, Snowden Reveals

  • NSA Permitted to Spy in Iceland

  • U.S. spying by the numbers — and leeway

  • It Is Now Confirmed That the NSA Has Permission to Spy on Your Dog

  • The N.S.A. Can Spy on These 193 Foreign Governments

  • Secret documents say NSA could spy on Israel

    The US National Security Agency has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries worldwide, top-secret documents say, according to The Washington Post.

  • U.S. intelligence traces Azerbaijan Government

    CIA has received approval for collection of intelligence information in 193 countries.

  • Denmark caved to NSA’s threats, security demands

    Documents obtained by a Danish broadcasting company show that American officials put “significant pressure” on the European country to allow for communication surveillance, according to The Local, an English-language European news outlet. The documents also show that the Danish Defense Intelligence Service cooperated with the NSA to tap undersea internet cables.

  • Recommendations on rolling back government surveillance

    This report was compiled by 4 former senior NSA staff:

    – William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center.
    – Thomas Drake, former Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service, NSA
    – Edward Loomis, former Chief, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
    – J. Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

  • NSA Allowed to Spy On Pretty Much Anyone, Anywhere, Documents Reveal

    Ever since stories about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying began pouring out last year, courtesy of Edward Snowden’s release of classified information about the secretive intelligence agency, speculation has been rife about the extent of domestic surveillance, the legal parameters within which the NSA operates, and the degree to which it respects those parameters. Newly released documents suggest that limits on the NSA’s authority to intercept communications are few, and the executive branch’s interpretation of the NSA’s jurisdiction doesn’t limit surveillance to the far side of the nation’s borders.

  • FBI, CIA can query US communications collected by NSA

    The FBI doesn’t track the number of US searches it does on data collected for foreign intelligence purposes

  • Panel divides on surveillance reforms

    PCLOB Chairman David Medine and member Patricia Wald — a former D.C. Circuit judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter — said the FBI should generally have to get approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before searching the 702 data for information about an American, except in emergencies. Medine and Wald also recommended that CIA or NSA personnel seeking to search 702 data using an identifier related to a U.S. person be required to get advance court approval in most instances.

  • FBI “Has No Idea” How Many Warrantless Searches It’s Done

    The FBI and the CIA admit they spied on countless emails and phone calls of private U.S. citizens.

  • CIA, FBI Follow NSA Through ‘Backdoor’ Searches Of Americans

    The director’s office sent the disclosure to Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden in response to a question asked during an intelligence committee hearing on the USA FREEDOM Act NSA reform bill. The office went on to explain such surveillance was not justified by exploiting a legal “loophole,” which the House voted to close last week.

  • FBI & CIA Join NSA, Admit To ‘Backdoor’ Spying On Americans

  • Two US citizens arrested in North Korea may be CIA agents: Eric Draitser

    Baku-APA. The two US citizens arrested in North Korea may be CIA agents doing espionage activities in the Asian country, an American geopolitical analyst says, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

• Civil Rights

  • 238 Years Later, Would Americans Still Choose Freedom Over Slavery?

  • Land of the free? Not so much. Americans’ sense of freedom drops, poll finds.

    This Independence Day, Americans will celebrate the nation’s core values, especially freedom. But according to a new international poll, Americans have become significantly “less satisfied with the freedom to choose what they want to do with their lives.”

    Seventy-nine percent of US residents are satisfied with their level of freedom, down from 91 percent in 2006, according to the Gallup survey, released Tuesday.

    That 12 point drop pushes the US from among the highest in the world in terms of perceived freedom to 36th place, outside the top quartile of the 120 countries sampled, trailing Paraguay, Rwanda, and the autonomous region of Nagarno-Karabakh.

  • The One-Sided Culture War Against Children

    Have a look at the unsigned editorials in left-of-center newspapers, or essays by columnists whose politics are mostly progressive. Listen to speeches by liberal public officials. On any of the controversial issues of our day, from tax policy to civil rights, you’ll find approximately what you’d expect.

  • Colleges are slowly taking away your First Amendment rights

    September 17 last year was a pretty bad day for the Constitution on our campuses. Robert Van Tuinen of Modesto Junior College in California was prevented from passing out copies of the Constitution outside of his college’s tiny “free speech zone.” Near Los Angeles, Citrus College student Vinny Sinapi-Riddle was threatened with removal from campus for the “offense” of collecting signatures for a petition against NSA domestic surveillance outside his college’s tiny free speech area.

  • Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush Totaled 672 Executive Orders. Obama has 182. Boehner’s Lawsuit is Frivolous.

    In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Ted Cruz accused the president of breaking the law by claiming, “Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat.” Unfortunately for Sen. Cruz and like-minded citizens, there’s nothing unprecedented about Obama’s recent activities. According to C-Span’s Congressional Glossary, an executive order is defined as, “a presidential directive with the force of law. It does not need congressional approval.” While many conservatives have labeled Obama’s unilateral decisions as imperial, or the actions of a “monarch,” the truth is that U.S. history is filled with Republican presidents who have been far more willing to take matters into their own hands.

  • Why Congress and the CIA Are Feuding

  • CIA and Congress Clash Over Classified Report on Interrogation Program

    Partly as a result, relations between the CIA and Congress are more fraught than at any point in the past decade. The source of the tension is the Senate intelligence committee’s classified report on the CIA’s controversial post-9/11 interrogation program—and the agency’s response to it.

    [...]

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairman of the committee, was angry. The document was part of the committee’s investigation of the CIA interrogation program. Mr. Brennan’s investigation, she felt, was an affront to the Constitution’s separation of powers. She wanted an apology.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Nobody cares about the future of the Internet

    John Oliver told us that “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something that sounds incredibly boring,” and there’s no domain in which that is more true than the world of Internet governance.

  • Will a more powerful FCC ensure net neutrality? EFF thinks so!

    EFF has taken a U-turn from its stand on giving FCC too much power to regulate the internet services. Now EFF is recommending that FCC reclassify internet services as Title II services which will give the commission more power to regulate the industry.

  • The FCC and Net Neutrality: A Way Forward

    EFF has long been critical of the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to regulate digital technologies and services. We’ve warned against FCC rules and strategies that threatened to (or actually did) give the agency too much power over innovation and user choice. And with good reason: the FCC has a sad history of being captured by the very industries it’s supposed to regulate. It also has a history of ignoring grassroots public opinion. In the early 2000s, for example, the commission essentially ignored the comments of hundreds of thousands of Americans who opposed media consolidation.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Dotcom Encryption Keys Can’t Be Given to FBI, Court Rules

      In 2012, New Zealand police seized computer drives belonging to Kim Dotcom, copies of which were unlawfully given to the FBI. Dotcom wants access to the seized content but the drives are encrypted. A judge has now ruled that even if the Megaupload founder supplies the passwords, they cannot subsequently be forwarded to the FBI.

    • The Pirate Bay Now Blocked in Argentina

      Argentina has become the first country in Latin America to block The Pirate Bay on copyright grounds. A court order obtained by the country’s leading recording labels compels eleven ISPs to block 256 Pirate Bay IP addresses and 12 domains. According to early reports from the region, some ISPs have already implemented the ban.

    • The Troubling Truth of Why It’s Still So Hard to Share Files Directly

      It’s not always easy to spot the compromises in the technology we use, where we’ve allowed corporate interests to trump public ideals like privacy and press freedom. But sometimes new developments can cast those uneasy bargains into relief—and show that the public may not have even been at the table when they were made.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• CoreOS Unveils Linux Containers As A Service

  CoreOS is considered by some observers to be a fork of Google’s Chrome OS system, customized for Linux server management. The system is so small because container workloads contain part of the Linux operating system themselves, the user-space parts needed by the application. But all kernel functions, such as scheduling processes and memory management, are the function of the host system and shared by whatever number of containers is running on the host. Containers also leave each workload isolated from the others in a manner that’s sometimes described as “lightweight virtualization.”

• CoreOS Linux does away with the upgrade cycle

• Distributed Linux OS wizards CoreOS release first commercial product

• CoreOS gets $8 million to bring a specialized Linux OS for server deployments to the mainstream

• CoreOS Launches Managed Linux Operating System as a Service

  The move toward a services-based approach for all IT is taking another step today with the launch of the CoreOS Managed Linux operating system as a service offering. CoreOS is an open-source Linux startup that has been developing a Docker container-based virtualization platform since August 2013. CoreOS first released a beta of its platform in May and is now announcing the first commercially supported release.

• CoreOS Announces Managed Linux, World’s First “OS-as-a-Service”

• CoreOS Linux Released as ‘World’s First OS as a Service’

• CoreOS Raises $8M Series A Round, Launches Managed Linux As A Service

• New Docker-enabled Linux distro wants to rival Red Hat

• Linux Top 3: CoreOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux 7 and Ubuntu 14.10

• New Commercial Rolling Linux, Xfce the Best, and More Mint

  Our top story in tonight’s Linux news recap is the announcement of CoreOS, a new commercial Linux distribution. Over at Datamation, Matt Hartley explains why Xfce is the best Linux desktop. Also today, WorldOfGnome.org has a short review of GNOME 3.13.3, eWeek has a slideshow of newly released Peppermint 5, and the Mint 17 reviews just keep on coming.

• Server

  • SME Server 9.0 Adds Support for Windows 8 Domain Joining

    The official announcement reads, “We dedicate this release of SME Server 9.0 to Chris. Without him it would be nowhere near ready. If you download and use it, please remember him and his work, and that of all the other contributors who work tirelessly to make Koozali SME as good as it is.”

  • How Docker used open-source ideals and excellent timing to become a cloud darling

    The container management company’s rise to prominence has generated a lot of buzz within the tech world, and in an interview with Gigaom, CEO Ben Golub explains why its open source platform has the potential to grow further.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux Kernel 3.16 RC3 Brings Few Driver Updates

  • Linux 3.16-rc3 released

  • Kernel prepatch 3.16-rc3

  • The People Who Support Linux: Hacking on Linux Since Age 16

    Pretty much all of the projects in software developer Yitao Li’s GitHub repository were developed on his Linux machine. None of them are necessarily Linux-specific, he says, but he uses Linux for “everything.”

    For example: “coding / scripting, web browsing, web hosting, anything cloud-related, sending / receiving PGP signed emails, tweaking IP table rules, flashing OpenWrt image into routers, running one version of Linux kernel while compiling another version, doing research, doing homework (e.g., typing math equations in Tex), and many others…” Li said via email.

  • Graphics Stack

    • User Ptr Support Proposed For AMD’s Radeon DRM Driver

      Christian König has proposed user pointer support for the Radeon DRM driver to match the Intel driver’s recent feature.

• Applications

  • My Weather Indicator Released With Numerous Bug Fixes

    My Weather Indicator, an Ubuntu AppIndicator for displaying the current weather on the panel, was updated to version 0.6.8 today, receiving numerous bug fixes as well as a few other changes.

  • WebODF v0.5.0 released: Highlights

    Today, after a long period of hard work and preparation, having deemed the existing WebODF codebase stable enough for everyday use and for integration into other projects, we have tagged the v0.5.0 release and published an announcement on the project website.

  • The Development Of Xnoise Has Been Dropeed

    Recently, Shuerhaaken, the Xnoise developer, has announced that he no longer maintains Xnoise, due to that the project has lost its development contributors. But since Xnoise is open-source, everybody can fork it and keep the media player alive.

  • who and whoami: Two more quick Five Ws

  • whohas: A good idea, in theory

  • whois: Accuracy, brevity, clarity

  • CrashPlan: Multi-platform Onsite, Offsite And Cloud Backup Solution

    CrashPlan is an open source backup software developed by Code42, an American software company. Code42 was founded as an IT consultancy company, but finally ended up focusing on online storage solutions, and released the very first version of CrashPlan on 2007. CrashPlan is an ideal backup solution for small medium to large enterprise organizations. It can backup data between remote systems, local systems, and external devices and CrashPlan Cloud.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Retrieve hard drive’s age and general health information using Linux

    • Install and dual-boot SteamOS

    • Add a mQtranslate language selector to your header

    • Advanced Geoblock evasion with OpenBSD pf and rdomain’s

    • Installing Seafile (Secure Cloud Storage) with MySQL Database in RHEL/CentOS/SL 7.x/6.x

    • Is Xiki the most powerful command shell ever created?

    • CBT Nuggets Announces New Linux Training Course

    • VNC Server Installation on CentOS 6.5

    • How to repair a crashed WordPress database table

    • How to Reduce hard drive’s acoustic noise level

    • How To Install Python 3.3.5 On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Slingscold 1.2.1.6/Slingscold Launcher 1.0.1 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10 And Derivative Systems

    • BorderImage is for Scaling! Scalable UIs 2.2.

    • Locked Settings : A Proxy Pattern Based Design

    • Dual-boot Windows 8 and Linux Mint 17 on a PC with 2 disks and UEFI firmware

    • Free software on Hacker Public Radio

      An advocate for software freedom for more than a decade, O’Brien has written and recorded dozens of tutorial podcasts for people wanting to learn how they can make use of open source software. His long-running series on LibreOffice is quickly approaching a 40-episode milestone. Another series on privacy and security, which helps everyday computers users take advantage of encryption technologies, runs concurrently (one recent episode features O’Brien at a conference giving—what else?—a talk). Learning new software can make casual users feel lost in a sea of new procedures, techniques, icons, and settings. O’Brien’s voice is the lighthouse that keeps them firmly and confidently on course.

    • Maynard Is A Wayland-Based Desktop Environment For Raspberry Pi. How To Install Maynard On Raspian

      As you may know, Maynard is a desktop environment for Rapbian (the Debian system for Raspberry Pi) developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Callabora, but it can also run on a regular Linux desktop system. It uses GTK+, runs on Wayland and provides a backend for the Weston reference compositor, using GNOME Web as the default internet browser, mimicking the Gnome Shell experience.

  • Games

    • The Pit: Gold Edition arrives for Mac and Linux in July!

    • The Pit: Gold Edition Coming to Linux and Mac

    • SteamOS Alchemist Beta Includes The Latest GPU Drivers: NVIDIA 337.19, AMD 14.10.1006 And Intel Mesa 10.1.6+

      As you may know, Valve, now a member of The Linux Foundation, has initiated some ambitions projects: the SteamOS, a Linux operating system optimized for gaming, the Steam Machine, a gaming colsole that will run with SteamOS and the Steam Controller, a game controller specially designed for SteamOS and the Steam Machine.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • LXQt Now Has Full Qt5 Support

    The “LXQt” desktop that’s a Qt version of the lightweight LXDE desktop can now be compiled using Qt5 where as previously there were still Qt4 dependencies.

  • LXQt Got Full Support For Qt5. Wayland Support Will Be Soon Added

  • Xfce App Launcher `Whisker Menu` Sees New Release

    Whisker Menu is an application menu / launcher for Xfce that features a search function so you can easily find the application you want to launch. The menu supports browsing apps by category, you can add applications to favorites and more.

  • Why XFCE is the Best Linux Desktop

    I have used various Linux desktop environments over the years: GNOME, KDE, LXDE and XFCE. As for the best Linux desktop? Each experience has its advantages. Some Linux desktops offer lots of glamour and neat effects, while others provide a solid (be it simpler) user experience without making the end user feel like they’re using a desktop from the late 20th century.

    In this article, I’ll explain why I still feel that XFCE remains the best Linux desktop available, even after trying other desktop environments.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Plasma Next: All for one, and one for all

      I haven’t been directly involved in Plasma development in the past a lot, only since very recently, because of my job at BlueSystems. Ever since I started working on the Plasma Desktop Shell, I’ve had 2 important concepts in mind that I’ve tried to follow:

      The desktop is the place people go when they want to be performant.
      Let the user focus by offering simple concepts that just work.

    • two things plasma has yet to achieve

      There are two technology goals that Plasma hasn’t yet achieved that I hope it will one day. Neither of these were primary goals at the outset of Plasma’s design or development, but as the code base matured and I watched the strengths and weaknesses of various design decisions, they made it onto my radar.

      Erasing the boundary between remote and local in user interfaces

      Component-centric design providing stability and performance improvements

    • Akademy-es 2014: Great success in KDE’s return to Málaga

      The ninth edition of Akademy-es was held last month in Málaga at the Telecommunications School of University of Málaga. Akademy-es had never been held in the city before but it is where the idea of Akademy-es began, during Akademy 2005, resulting in the first Akademy-es in 2006 in Barcelona. KDE old timer Antonio Larrosa is the link between both editions, being the local organizer of Akademy-es 2014 and Akademy 2005.

    • digiKam Software Collection 4.1.0 released…

    • digiKam Software Collection 4.1.0 released

      digiKam is the closest thing you can get in GNU/Linux based systems (also on proprietary operating systems) which costs nothing. It’s one of the many extremely polished and feature rich open source applications developed by the KDE community. The digiKam community has announced the release of version 4.1.0 which include many bug fixes for the 4.0.0 release.

    • Last week in Krita — weeks 25 & 26

      This last two weeks have been very exiting with the kickstarter campaign getting closer and closer to the pledge objective. At the time of writing we just crossed 13k! And with the wave of new users, drawn by the great word spreading labor of collaborators and enthusiasts, we have been very busy bringing new functions and building beta versions for you.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOMEPERUFEST2014 was celebrated in IBM Perú

      I’m pleased to announce that the GNOME PERU FEST 2014 has been held in the IBM Perú campus according to the plan I presented to the GNOME Foundation at the beginning of this year. “Let’s use Linux” was the mark for this year. I want to thank to all the people who helped me to accomplished this project, my family and friends in Lima were so kind to support the job. The GNOME Foundation, IBM and INFOPUCP were the organisations that sponsored this year the event. Thanks also La Republica, a well-know newspaper in Lima, because they published a post of our event in their Webpage

• Distributions

  • Screenshots

    • Chitwanix OS 1.0

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat adds new cloud management certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform

      Red Hat is working with several management solution providers, including BMC and HP. As members of the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network, these vendors have provided key insight, feedback and support for the management certification, and are all in various stages of the certification process.

    • Red Hat Delivers Cloud Certification Plan, and Teams with HP

      When Red Hat announced very solid quarterly earnings a few days ago, CEO Jim Whitehurst was quick to attribute part of the strong performance to his company’s new focus on cloud computing. In discussing the enterprises that pay Red Hat for subcription support and services, he said: “These are some of the most sophisticated IT organizations in the world, and many continue to increase their purchases from Red Hat to modernize their IT infrastructure with cloud enabling technologies.”

    • Red Hat Introduces Cloud Management Certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform

    • Fedora

      • 3.15 Fedora ARM kernel status

        There’s been quite a bit of water under the bridge since my post on the 3.14 kernel status. With 3.15.x due to land in Fedora 20 shortly I thought I’d give an overview of changes for 3.15 and what’s happened since the last post.

  • Debian Family

    • Removal of (some) PHP related software from Debian

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu phone release date: on track for 2014 launch

          In 2013, Canonical – the company behind Ubuntu – attempted to raise $32m via crowdfunding for its Ubuntu Edge smartphone. It didn’t make it, but the Ubuntu phone isn’t dead. In fact, development is well under way and the Ubuntu phone operating system is very much alive.

        • Canonical Has Created “The Ubuntu One Downloader Script”, That Allows The Users To Easily Download Their U1 Data, Before The Service Shutdown

          Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Canonical could not provide a storage service that could compete with Google Drive or Dropbox, so they have decided to drop the project.

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Now Uses Kernel 3.16 RC2 As Default, On The Unstable Branch

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Alpha 1 Has Been Released In The Traditional Flavors

        • While A Mate Flavor Of Ubuntu 14.10 Is Already Under Works, Cinnamon Will Be Available Via The Default Repositories Of Ubuntu 14.10

          For those who don’t know, both Cinnamon and Mate are GNOME2 forks used a lot on Linux Mint systems that provide the users alternatives to the GNOME 3 desktop environment.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Lubuntu 14.04: Missing Network Manager Icon Bug Finally Fixed [Quick Update]

            Quick update for Lubuntu 14.04 users: the bug that caused the Network Manager icon not to show up on the panel by default was finally fixed today.

          • Peppermint Five Linux Brings the Cloud to Linux Desktop

            As the world increasingly moves to cloud-based infrastructure and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, the needs of traditional desktop users are changing. The Peppermint OS Linux platform is an effort to integrate the cloud SaaS world with the desktop in a seamless hybrid approach. Peppermint had its 1.0 release back in 2010, and the technology has been steadily updated ever since. The Peppermint Five Linux distribution was officially released on June 23, providing an updated software base and new features for Peppermint OS users. Peppermint Five is based on the recent Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Linux release that debuted on April 17.

          • Linux Mint 17: Fresh and Long-Lasting

            Linux Mint 17 is very impressive, but it is often said that the devil is in the details. With Linux Mint 17, the accumulated details are very devilish indeed. The development team did a hell of a job making this Linux distro smoother and better. The GUI for System Settings has a more consistent look. The categories are better organized and separated into subsections.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Automotive Grade Linux Delivers Open Automotive Software Stack for the Connected Car

  • TI spins Cortex-A9 Sitara SoC

  • Automotive Grade Linux group releases Tizen-based IVI stack

    The Linux Foundation released an Tizen-based Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) stack for in-vehicle infotainment, with the UI written in HTML5 and JavaScript.

    We’ve seen Tizen-based smartwatches and phones, among other form-factors. Now Tizen is heading for the car. The Linux Foundation’s Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project released its first open source IVI stack based on the Tizen IVI version of the Linux-based operating system.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • HTC Roadmap Leaked with Android 4.4.4 and Android L Plan for One M8/One M7/One Mini 2/One E8

        Most of the HTC handsets listed in the roadmap have already received the Android 4.4.2 KitKat with Sense 6.0. The only device which is yet to get the software taste is HTC One Mini M4. As LlabTooFeR claims, the update has been in the testing phase for One Mini and is expected to roll out next week, sometime between 30 June and 6 July.

      • Android L developer preview available for Nexus 5 and Nexus 7

        Rumors about Android 5.0 Lollipop have been floating around since the beginning of the year, but at the I/O conference, Google presented the next version of their operating system only as Android L. While they didn’t want to reveal the full name just yet, they did make a very interesting announcement regarding the operating system. The company released a developer preview (or beta) version of Android L and you can already test it out if you happen to own a Nexus 5 or Nexus 7 (2013). Before you get too excited though, we do need to mention that this version is aimed at developers and the average consumer might have some trouble installing it. If you want to check it out follow the instructions below (via Times of India), but please be cautious as the original article warns that Android L might cause some problems to your device. And again, this reportedly only works for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013).

      • Android Wear review: the everything inbox

        It’s not just email either, though it tends to take the brunt of everybody’s anger. There are dozens of apps sending us hundreds of notifications; managing all that incoming information is a genuine hassle. Looking at the notification center on our phones, it’s hard not to imagine some harried, 1930s office worker. His tie is loosened, sleeves rolled up, sweat beading on his forehead underneath a green visor as he looks at the metal tray marked “INBOX” on his desk. It’s piled high with a stack of paper, sent to him from people he doesn’t know and doesn’t love.

      • Android Wear, Android Auto and Android TV to be free from OEM skins

        The showstopper for this year’s Google I/O was Android wear, with the unveiling of first Android Wear devices : Samsung Galaxy Live and LG G watch. All the lucky Google I/O attendees will be able to take one of them home too. We are expecting to see some detailed review of the smart watches soon from people who have already got their hands on them.

      • Blackphone preorders ship; new orders to open 7/14

      • New, security-minded Blackphone is ready to ship, and it’s packing Nvidia hardware

        What’s also interesting about the Blackphone is that it’s the first device (or one of the first, at least) to be based on Nvidia’s Tegra 4i. The Tegra 4i was announced 18 months ago, but was held up almost indefinitely due to manufacturing delays and then modem validation issues. Details have been extremely scarce regarding the fate of the product, so it’s interesting to finally see some shipping silicon.

      • The Blackphone is Here and the NSA are Not Happy

      • Blackphone now shipping to the tune of $630

      • Blackphone preorders ship; new orders to open 7/14

      • Spy-busting Silent Circle-powered Blackphone launches, sells out

        SGP Technologies has begun shipping its privacy-focused Blackphone, claiming the handset will protect users from intelligence agencies’ and criminal groups’ espionage campaigns.

        The Blackphone is the first smartphone released by SGP Technologies and is a joint project between security firm Silent Circle and hardware company Geeksphone.

      • Blackphone Now Shipping To Paranoid Android Fans

      • Blackphone, a new encrypted smartphone built from scratch, is now market ready

      • Privacy focused Blackphone starts shipping

        Blackphone, an Android-based smartphone developed by Silent Circle, SGP Technologies and Geeksphone, is now shipping. The phone became a sensation during Mobile World Congress as it offered extreme privacy of communication. After the NSA revelations made by Edward Snowden, there is a huge demand for services or devices which offer privacy from NSA and other surveillance agencies. However even the Blackphone doesn’t offer any protection from NSA. Phil Zimmermann, one of the creators of the phone, said that Blackphone doesn’t make you NSA proof.

      • Why You Shouldn’t Have To Buy The $630 Super-Secure Blackphone In Order To Protect Your Privacy

      • Privacy-optimized Blackphone is now shipping with anti-surveillance features

        The Blackphone is something that had debuted back in February as an anti-surveillance device in the wake of the severe NSA threats which had emerged around that time. This device has been priced at $629 and it comes equipped with an Android-based operating system which kicks in an array of security traits.

      • Privacy Freaks Rejoice! Blackphone – The Privacy-Focused Android Smartphone Finally Began Shipping

      • You Can Finally Get Your Hands On The New Anti-Surveillance Blackphone

      • Want To Communicate Anonymously Without Being Monitored Or Tracked? ‘Blackphone’ Now On Sale

      • Stop Congress from allowing Obama’s NSA to collect more of your personal data

      • Full Release of Remaining Snowden Leaks Slated for July, Says Cryptome

Free Software/Open Source

• Open source support gives older software a fighting chance

  It would be difficult to find someone who could provide more insight into what is happening in the world of the Eclipse IDE than Wayne Beaton, the director of open source projects at The Eclipse Foundation. So what is new with Eclipse, beyond the obvious excitement surrounding the latest Eclipse Kepler release and the recently announced support for Java 8?

• SaaS/Big Data

  • ownCloud Client 1.6.1

    The recommendation is to update your installation to this version. The previous version 1.6.0 had great new features, first and foremost the parallel up- and download of files and a way more performant handling of the local sync journal. That required a lot of code changes. Unfortunately that also brought in some bugs which are now fixed with the 1.6.1 release.

  • A path to OpenStack contributions, bug reporting, and more

    Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for what’s happening right now in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

• Databases

  • MongoDB: A showcase for the power of open source in the enterprise

    Big trends in the No Design Database era and other takeaways from MongoDB’s first user conference.

  • The day I finally drank the open source Kool-Aid

    The combination of the Internet, Moores Law and hyper fast commoditization changed that, but not as quickly as you might imagine. At least not until the most recent times (perhaps the last five years) when vendors emerged who upended the old models and presented us with a fresh way to look at everything compute related. Infrastructure, Database, Software, Platform…Pretty Much Everything is rapidly being converted to a Service. Witness Citi recently talking MongoDB as a Service.

• CMS

  • 3 open source content management systems compared

    Whether you need to set up a blog, a portal for some specific usage, or any other website, which content management system is right for you? is a question you are going to ask yourself early on. The most well-known and widely used open source content management system (CMS) platforms are: Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal. They are all based on PHP and MySQL and offer a wide range of options to users and developers alike.

• Healthcare

  • 7 Open source Electronic Medical and Health record (EHR) System Tools

    These Tools helps you track medical data, create electronic medical records, deploy medical billing apps and lots more

• Business

  • Netflix’s newest open-source project, Security Monkey, hunts for vulnerabilities atop Amazon’s cloud

    Read the blog post about Security Monkey to learn more about the project, and if you use Amazon’s cloud, you might want to check out Security Monkey on GitHub.

• Funding

  • Quality Software Costs Money – Heartbleed Was Free

    About the only thing GNU Project founder Richard Stallman and I can agree on when it comes to software freedom is that it’s “Free as in free speech, not free beer.”

    I really hope the Heartbleed vulnerability helps bring home the message to other communities that FOSS does not materialize out of empty space; it is written by people. We love what we do, which is why I’m sitting here, way past midnight on a Saturday evening, writing about it; but we are also real people with kids, cars, mortgages, leaky roofs, sick pets, infirm parents, and all kinds of other perfectly normal worries.

    The only way to improve the quality of FOSS is to make it possible for these perfectly normal people to spend time on it. They need time to review patch submissions carefully, to write and run test cases, to respond to and fix bug reports, to code, and most of all, time just to think about the code and what should happen to it.

  • base Raises $60 Million to Fuel NoSQL Database Effor

    It takes a lot of money to build a database company in an industry dominated by a giant like Oracle. It’s a lesson that open-source NoSQL database startup Couchbase know well as it continues to raise funding to build its business.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Introducing Alex Patel, our summer Campaigns intern

    My name is Alex Patel, and I’ll be working as an intern with the campaigns team at the Free Software Foundation this summer. This fall, I will be a sophomore at Harvard College in Cambridge, MA, at which I’m pursuing a joint degree in computer science and philosophy.

  • Learn How to Protect Your Email Communication in Less Than 30 Minutes

    Email Self-Defense, a beginner’s guide and infographic to email encryption by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), was released in six new languages [fr, de, jp, ru, pt, tr] on June 30, 2014. More languages are underway.

• Openness/Sharing

  • “Open Source” seed released to nurture patent-free food

  • Open Hardware

    • Ai.Frame Open Source Humanoid Robot Kit (video)

• Programming

  • Governance for the GitHub generation

    In software, this is epitomized by the GitHub generation, but I believe it’s a characteristic of any aspect of culture touched by the Internet. For those still trapped in the worldview of the Industrial Age, a hierarchy of mediators collects dues in return for providing permission to pass. But the Internet connects everyone to everyone else, peer to peer without discrimination…

  • The D Language LLVM Compiler Updated With Numerous Changes

    LDC that’s the LLVM-based D language code compiler has been updated. LDC 0.13.0 was released last week with new features.

Leftovers

• Science

  • In Hobby Lobby Case, the Supreme Court Chooses Religion Over Science

• Health/Nutrition

  • Nurses Accuse Hospital Giant of Pulling Billboards Exposing Price Gouging

    CHS hospitals charges some of the highest costs in the country and aggressively targets many patients for money.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • US to arm Syrian moderates, but who are they?

    Whereas previous aid to anti-Assad forces was handled by the CIA, the newest round will fall under the purview of the Department of Defense, which is frequently more hands-on

  • Obama’s Half-Billion to Syria’s ‘Moderates’

    President Obama’s plan to spend another half-billion dollars on Syria’s “moderate” rebels will add more fuel to the destructive violence just as the killing was finally dying down. It’s also hard to see how this investment will promote serious negotiations, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

  • Obama snubs MI5, sends CIA to investigate threat of radical Islam in UK

    As radical Islam spreads through the United Kingdom, US President Barack Obama has sent a special CIA unit to interrogate senior British security experts. The move is seen as a snub of Britain’s MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies.

  • Unconventional Warfare: The Political Destabilization Campaign continues in Venezuela

    Since February, continuing protests, many of them violent, against the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro have claimed more than 40 lives in Venezuela and injured more than 800 people. Most were victims of opposition supporters who have also set fire to universities, public buildings and bus stations – even the buses themselves have been burned. The scale of the protests has decreased since the start of April when the government and opposition leaders held talks to end the conflict. Much of the unrest had until then taken place in richer neighbourhoods, led by students attending private schools. But recently demonstrations have been restricted to opposition strongholds, such as Táchira state on the Colombian border. The protestors cite high inflation, and shortages of food and other goods as the source of their frustration. The latter is almost certainly the result of hording by opposition-owned and controlled distribution chains.

    [...]

    President Maduro calls the protests “the revolt of the rich.” Asked by a Guardian U.K. reporter in April whether his government should accept responsibility for some of the killings, he proposed that 95 per cent of protest-related deaths were the fault of “right wing extremist groups” at the barricades. Maduro mentioned three motorcyclists who were beheaded by a wire strung across the road by protesters. In the same exclusive Guardian interview, Maduro, a former bus driver and unionist, emphasized the considerable increases in social services and reduction in inequality over the last 15 years.

  • What Should Obama Do to Save Iraq?

    Instead of sending military to Iraq, the Obama administration should espouse critical factors for objectively serving the Iraqi people, reports Abbas J. Ali.

  • Iraq crisis: US steps up drone flights amid intelligence blame game

  • ‘BARACK OBAMA: THE CHIEF SPONSOR OF ISIS’

    Did the Islamic State of Iraq, the main predecessor of ISIS, not emerge after the U.S. invasion of Iraq? Did not many ISIS militants escape the U.S.-controlled Abu Ghraib Prison in 2013? And just how many weapons that the U.S. issued to the Syrian opposition end up in ISIS hands? Seriously, though, you cannot just get away with all this simply because you do not share a 550-mile land border with Syria

  • Keep calm and trust Iraqis with Iraq

    The Iraqi resistance brought an end to the formal military occupation of their country; the resistance is now seeking to rid itself of the occupation-installed government and its bloody sectarianism. It is this resistance that is taking control of northern Iraqi cities. Witnesses on the ground in Iraq say that multiple groups with significant political differences have set those divisions aside to unite against the sectarian government of Nuri Al-Maliki. The Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) is one of those groups, but they are playing a smaller role. Mosul and Tal Afar are in the hands of the General Military Council of the Iraqi Revolutionaries, liberated from Maliki’s brutal sectarian rule. Only a strong, coordinated military organization—not 1000 or even several thousand undisciplined extremists—could take and hold a city the size of Mosul (1.4 million) and continue to advance.

  • Why are 6,000 reporters keeping a US nonsecret?

    I know a “secret.” I know the identity of the man who was CIA chief of station in Kabul until one month ago. The name of the top spook in Afghanistan was disseminated via email to 6,000-plus reporters as part of an attendance list of senior U.S. officials participating in a meeting with President Barack Obama during his surprise visit with U.S. troops. The government spotted the error and asked journalists not to post it. They agreed. Still, it’s all over the Internet. What I found via Google during a few hours of searching made me 98 percent sure it was him; sources in Kabul covered the 2 percent of doubt. Until the week before last I was working on this story for Pando Daily, where I was a staff writer and cartoonist. We intended to publish the name — not to endanger him (which in any case would not have been possible since CIA headquarters at Langley had yanked him off his post), but to take a stand for adversarial media.

  • A look at the last nine US reporters who faced the possibility of jail time

    Each protected sources while under threat of imprisonment

  • US drone strike leaves 3 Taliban militants dead in Kunar

  • Drone strike in Kunar kills three Taliban: Afghan media

  • Iraq live: US to send another 300 troops as ISIL declares caliphate

    The US is sending another 300 troops to Iraq to beef up security at the US Embassy and elsewhere in the Baghdad area to protect US citizens and property, officials said Monday.

  • Six-month update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

  • Our View: War on terror has too much secrecy

    Our war on terror is nearly 13 years old. And while we are thankful there have been no large-scale attacks on our homeland since 9/11, we are troubled by how little we know about what is being done to protect us. Consider two developments last week:

    • Monday, the U.S. Justice Department declassified the legal memo used by President Barack Obama to justify a 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed an American citizen who had become an al-Qaida leader. Targeted killings using unmanned drones have been a major weapon abroad, with literally thousands of attacks; hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed.

  • Could Australia stay independent if the US went to war in the Pacific?

    In the last 25 years Australia has become enmeshed in the US military machine. We need to re-assert our independence for the sake of the nation and the Asia-Pacific region

  • The future for America: cold wars without end

  • Mercury News editorial: U.S. use of drones needs better justification

  • US government needs to conduct comprehensive strategic review of lethal drones, new report says

  • Press Obama Administration for Additional Transparency on U.S. Drone Policy

    “We Believe that Every American Has the Right to Know When Their Government Believes it is Allowed to Kill Them.”

  • High-Level Bipartisan Report Slams Obama’s Drift towards Permanent War

  • Letter: Walkers confirm city as a target

    While Battle Creek was celebrating its annual cereal festival, peace walkers who began their journey from the Boeing Company Headquarters in Chicago (Boeing is the company manufacturing drones) arrived in our city along with supporters who joined them along the way to stage a vigil to end drone warfare outside the Air National Guard complex where a drone command center is planned.

  • Blackwater Iraqi Chief Threatened to Kill US Government Inspector

  • Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater

    Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

  • US Embassy Blamed State Dept Investigator For Upsetting Its Relationship With Blackwater After Investigator Complained About Death Threat

    The “private security” contractor formerly known as Blackwater has often been accused of being engaged in what might normally be seen as a level of evil and depravity normally reserved for over-the-top movie villains. And yet, every time new news comes out about the company, it only seems to either live up to that reputation or take it even further. Blackwater is today known as Constellis Holdings as of a few weeks ago. Before that it was Academi. And before that it was also known as Xe Services for a while, as the company keeps trying to get further and further from its Blackwater reputation. NY Times reporter James Risen — who the DOJ is currently trying to put in jail — has an astounding report about how a Blackwater exec threatened to kill a State Department investigator, telling that investigator that nothing would be done if he were killed, because it happened in Iraq. Believe it or not, this was over the State Department investigator merely investigating claims of unsanitary conditions in a dining facility, rather than anything more serious…

  • New York Times Reporter, Author Faces Jail Time If He Refuses to Testify About Book Leak

    New York Times journalist Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days for refusing to testify about a CIA leak in 2005, the last time a reporter was imprisoned for not divulging information.

  • Iraq’s ISIS sends letter of praise to US Supreme Court

    ISIS spokesman also congratulated the US Supreme Court for giving mega companies of the US complete control over the government. “Elites ruled the world in middle ages which changed with the arrival sins like democracy, by giving back the power to elites, the US supreme court has given us the assurance that our dream will one day come true.”

  • U.S. vows not to produce any more anti-personnel land mines

    The United States is on a course to eventually join a 1997 international treaty, championed by Princess Diana, which bans anti-personnel land mines or APLs. During a conference in Maputo, Mozambique, U.S. officials announced that the country’s military would stop producing and buying anti-personnel landmines.

  • Key changed views on Iraq after special briefing

• Transparency Reporting

  • Exclusive: WikiLeaks Editor Sarah Harrison on Helping Edward Snowden, Being Forced to Live in Exile

    In the latest revelations from documents leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Washington Post has revealed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court secretly gave the National Security Agency sweeping power to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries around the world. A classified 2010 document lists 193 countries that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. Only four were protected from NSA spying — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The NSA was also given permission to gather intelligence about the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency. As we broadcast from Bonn, Germany we are joined by Sarah Harrison, investigative editor of WikiLeaks, who accompanied Snowden on his flight from Hong Kong to Moscow last June. She now lives in exile in Germany because she fears being prosecuted if she returns to her home country, the United Kingdom. Harrison describes why she chose to support Snowden, ultimately spending 39 days with him in the transit zone of an airport in Moscow then assisting him in his legal application to 21 countries for asylum, and remaining with him for about three more months after Russia granted him temporary asylum. She has since founded the Courage Foundation. “For future Snowdens, we want to show there is an organization that will do what we did for Snowden — as much as possible — in raising money for legal defense and public advocacy for whistleblowers so they know if they come forward there is a support group for them,” Harrison says.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • BP seeks to recoup excess Gulf oil spill payments

    In a Friday court filing, BP asked US District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans to require businesses to make restitution plus interest of excess payments, which it called “windfalls.” It also requested an injunction to stop the businesses from spending these excess sums.

• Finance

  • Rebekah Brooks

    The ultra-rich are not like you or me. They are treated by totally different standards. They also behave differently. They have no problem with being cuckolded. Charlie Brooks sent his best wishes to Coulson in jail. If I were Brooks, I would be sending money in to pay very large men to help him find the soap in the shower. Although presumably like Aitken and Archer, Coulson is going to one of those jails for posh people where you can play golf and go home at the weekend. I never understood Brigadier Parker Bowles either, though apparently his wife’s shagging was good for his military career. Funny people, toffs.

  • Paypal Freezes ProtonMail Campaign Funds

    This morning, we received an email and telephone call from PayPal notifying us that our account has been restricted pending further review. At this time, it is not possible for ProtonMail to receive or send funds through PayPal. No attempt was made by PayPal to contact us before freezing our account, and no notice was given.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • BBC Bias – The People Have Noticed

  • New v old media — RT Crosstalk debate

    I recently took part in a debate about the old versus the new “altern­at­ive” media and their rel­at­ive mer­its on RT’s Crosstalk with Peter Lav­elle:

• Censorship

  • Anyone re-tweeting or sharing posts judged ‘extremist’ in Russia faces jail

    Anyone retweeting or sharing posts judged “extremist” by the Russian Government now face years in prison.

  • Swiss Won’t Ban Downloading But Will Block Sites

    A draft bill for the modernization of Swiss copyright law will be presented for public consultation in the coming months. While downloading for personal use will remain legal, uploading infringing content via BitTorrent will not. In addition to infringement warnings for Internet subscribers, the blocking of “obviously illegal” sites is also on the table.

  • Get OpenVPN up and running, enjoy your privacy

    We are fanatic supporters of privacy. Not so much because we have super secrets to hide, but because we consider privacy as a basic human right. So we believe that anytime anyone chooses to exercise that right on the net, then they should have unencumbered access to all the necessary tools and services. OpenVPN is such a service and there are also many tools (clients) which allow us to utilize and enjoy that service.

• Privacy

  • One handy chart shines light on all of the NSA’s once-secret spy programs

  • The NSA revelations all in one chart

  • Google to shut down social networking service Orkut in September

    “Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut’s growth, we’ve decided to bid Orkut farewell,” Google said in a post on the Orkut blog on Monday.

  • White House Ignores Snowden Petition for Full Year

    Edward Snowden is still waiting to hear if he’ll get a presidential pardon.

    He probably won’t get one after embarrassing President Barack Obama with revelations of massive U.S. government surveillance programs, but 100,000 of the exiled whistle-blower’s fans nonetheless earned the proposal an official White House response on June 24, 2013.

    They did so by signing a whitehouse.gov petition that quickly cleared the six-figure threshold for feedback.

  • 5 Secure Alternatives to WhatsApp

    Ever since WhatsApp, a massively popular messaging app was acquired by Facebook, many of its users have started looking for alternatives to the service. Facebook, which itself, doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to privacy, is the only reason users are on the lookout for good replacements to the service.

  • Support grows for a Nobel Peace Prize for Snowden

  • New NSA chief says Snowden did not irreparably damage national security

  • New NSA chief says damage from Snowden leaks can be contained

  • Sky Isn’t Falling After Leaks by Snowden, NSA Chief Says

  • New NSA Chief: Sky Not Falling Over Snowden Revelations

  • The new NSA director downplays damage from the Snowden leaks

  • Sky isn’t falling after leaks by Snowden, says new NSA chief Michael Rogers

  • NSA chief downplays damage caused by Snowden leaks

  • New NSA chief says ‘sky not falling down’ after Snowden revelations

  • NSA chief says Snowden leaks damaging but ‘sky is not falling’

  • Ex-NSA chief: The sky is falling! New NSA chief: The sky is NOT falling

  • NSA flip-flops on Snowden leaks, from hyperbolic to “measured” response

  • NSA Director Downplays Damage From Snowden Leaks

  • Quoted: on NSA spying and the sky not falling

  • Spy Agencies Disclose Data on ‘Backdoor’ Spying of Americans

  • FBI, CIA Use Backdoor Searches To Warrentlessly Spy On Americans’ Communications
    

  • U.S. officials disclose data on ‘backdoor’ searches of Americans’ phone calls, e-mails

  • FBI, CIA Join NSA In “Backdoor” Searches On Americans

  • Number of Backdoor Searches of NSA Data Too High to Keep Track Of

  • Sen. Ron Wyden: NSA Report Shows ‘Inadequate Oversight’ of Searches

    The Office of the Director National Intelligence has released data on the scope of its foreign intelligence-gathering efforts, but a senior senator says the so-called transparency report only raises additional questions.

  • Wyden Continues to Blast Obama Administration on ‘Backdoor’ Surveillance (Video)

  • Senators slam agency report on NSA spying

  • Senators question US surveillance transparency report

  • US’ NSA spied upon BJP, reveals Snowden

    It has come to light that the United States National Security Agency had been authorised to spy on India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which is now in power.

    The BJP was among six non-US political parties for which authorisation was given to NSA to spy upon, a leading Indian English daily reported on Tuesday.

  • US NSA spied upon BJP, 5 other foreign political parties and 193 governments

  • US’ NSA Spied On BJP In 2010, Says Edward Snowden

  • Court Allowed NSA To Spy On All But 4 Countries

  • US authorised NSA to spy on 193 countries including Pakistan

  • US authorised NSA to spy on BJP, claims Snowden

  • US authorized NSA to carry out surveillance on BJP in 2010

  • US authorised NSA to spy on BJP and six other foreign parties

  • US’ NSA spied upon BJP, reveals Snowden

  • US sanctioned NSA to spy on foreign and international bodies

  • South Africa on NSA spying list

  • Secret document shows South Africa on NSA spying list

  • NSA may have had access to European Central Bank emails

  • German Contract Loss a Big Blow to Verizon, May Benefit European Competitors

  • NSA STILL ABLE TO TRACK MERKEL’S CALLS

  • Backbytes: Will Facebook make lab rats of us all?

  • Does Cell-Phone Case Imperil NSA Spying?

    Though the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court often splits 5-4 on partisan and ideological issues, a consensus is emerging against the government’s electronic intrusion on personal privacy, which could portend trouble for NSA spying, says Marjorie Cohn.

  • NSA allowed to spy on Africa since 2010 – report

  • US authorised NSA to spy on BJP: Snowden papers

  • NSA searched data troves for 198 ‘identifiers’ of Americans’ information

  • Secret documents say NSA had broad scope, scant oversight

    The National Security Agency has been authorized to intercept information concerning all but four countries worldwide, top-secret documents say, according to The Washington Post.

    “The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,” the paper reported. Yet “a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through US companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about its targets as well.”

  • All but four nations are subject to NSA surveillance

  • All but four nations are subject to NSA surveillance – new Snowden leak

  • Government can exploit loopholes for warrantless surveillance on Americans

  • Report: Secret Loopholes Allow NSA To Bypass 4th Amendment Protections

  • Legal loopholes could allow wider NSA surveillance, researchers say

    Secret loopholes exist that could allow the National Security Agency to bypass Fourth Amendment protections to conduct massive domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens, according to leading academics.

    The research paper released Monday by researchers at Harvard and Boston University details how the U.S. government could “conduct largely unrestrained surveillance on Americans by collecting their network traffic abroad,” despite constitutional protections against warrantless searches.

  • Surveillance Capitalism

    Monopoly-Finance Capital, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the Digital Age

  • New FISC Memorandum Says Bulk Metadata Program Still Good To Go Until Congress Or Supreme Court Says Otherwise

    As was noted in the writeup of the ODNI’s First Ever Transparency Report, this tentative and forced step into transparency was a step forward for No Such Agency, even if each document release has been accompanied by the unmistakable sound of gritting teeth and a nearly universal refusal to acknowledge that most of the “openness” had been compelled by court orders following FOIA lawsuits.

  • Chinese authorities publish a book to expose the United States’ surveillance against China

    The Internet Media Research Center has compiled The United States’ Surveillance Record of China and Other Countries across the World under the authorization of the Office of the Central Network Security and Informatization Leading Group and the State Internet Information Office. According to a report by China National Radio (CNR), in the newly-published book eighteen experts expose the surveillance conducted by the U.S.

  • Libertarian Candidate for Governor Visits Waco

    In her speech Glass attacked Washington politics, the NSA, and Texas Republicans saying their decades of control has resulted in nothing. Glass added that anyone thinking there’s no room for a third party in the Texas political landscape better get ready for a fight.

  • NSA and Big IT Tech

    The Government of Germany just announced that it will be cancelling an information technology project with Verizon. The announcement makes clear Germany is doing this because they do not trust that Verizon will or even can safeguard Germany’s data and telecommunications from spying by the National Security Administration (NSA).

  • NSA admits it lets the FBI access its warrantless spying database

    Two weeks ago the House of Representatives voted to bar the Obama administration from engaging in a controversial surveillance practice that insiders call a “backdoor search.” A Friday letter from the Obama administration gives some hints about how common the practice is.

  • FBI Doesn’t Know How Many Americans It Spies On

  • Is NSA Surveillance Mastermind Keith Alexander Selling US Secrets to Wall Street?

    Perhaps you already assume that there’s some kind of twisted marriage between Wall Street megabanks and the US global surveillance regime. Why wouldn’t there be? But not even a total cynic could have anticipated spymaster Keith Alexander cashing in this hard, this fast.

  • The ‘Open Informant’ badge: A high-tech protest against high-tech surveillance

  • If the US government tapped Cisco routers, will your tech company be next?

    When former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden met with journalist Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong, he arguably changed the face of US intelligence forever. After the release of Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide in May, even more was learned about the NSA’s alleged controversial actions.

  • Government Still Waiting On Us To Answer Cellphone Spy Row Claims

    THE government still has not received a formal report from the United States regarding the National Security Agency’s reported surveillance of mobile phone calls in the country, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell said yesterday.

  • Efforts to detect terrorism hampered by mass surveillance, says former NSA technical director

    The US National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting too much intelligence data to analyse, one of its former technical directors has warned.

    As a result, the agency could be missing indications of the very terrorist threats it is attempting to counter.

  • Bill Binney, the ‘original’ NSA whistleblower, on Snowden, 9/11 and illegal surveillance

    He started his career as a patriot and ended it as a patriot – and he thinks Ed Snowden is a patriot as well. Computer Weekly talks to Bill Binney, the senior NSA official who blew the whistle before Snowden.

  • The Urgent Need to Shield Journalism in the Age of Surveillance

    The media landscape has been transformed by NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s decision to leak a vast cache of documents to select journalists, notably at the Guardian and the Washington Post, which made global headlines a year ago this month. And “the new challenge this year is how to maintain the Internet as somewhere for free expression and innovation,” as Michael Maness, VP of journalism and innovation at the Knight Foundation, said.

  • Google aiming to collect healthcare data in the future and save 100,000 lives: But what about your privacy?

  • Google’s Larry Page wants to save 100,000 lives but big data isn’t a cure all

• Civil Rights

  • Guantanamo Prisoners Were Granted Access to US Courts Ten Years Ago Yet Indefinite Detention Continues

    The CIA recommended prisoners captured in the Afghanistan War be imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay because officials were convinced prisoners would be outside the jurisdiction of US courts. The secret jail would potentially be able to hold prisoners forever. However, just over ten years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had a right to challenge their detention in US courts and opened up the pervasive lawlessness at the facility to lawsuits by prisoners.

  • 9/11 trial dealt blow as defendant asks for alleged CIA torture records

  • Records Sought on CIA Fight With Senators

    Reporters sued the CIA for records on its fight with Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairwoman Diane Feinstein over the CIA’s alleged coverup of an internal review of its rendition program.

  • Judge rules no-fly appeals unconstitutional; ISIS vows to avenge U.S. airstrikes: Spy Games Update

    A federal judge in Portland issued an opinion last week that people on the government’s no-fly list have a constitutional right to know why.

  • Snitch Paranoia and Uncle Sam’s Very Big Ears

    Whatever you think of the accomplishments of the American Indian Movement, Indian-on-Indian violence is a lasting stain on the organization. It was not good for health or longevity to be “bad-jacketed,” talked about as a “snitch.”

    In the end, AIM’s penchant for brandishing and sometimes using firearms made it a target of FBI infiltration for the twin purposes of gathering intelligence and sowing paranoia. Instead of taking over tribal governments or building lasting institutions outside of tribal governments, AIM devolved into a criminal defense committee.

  • Workplace secrecy agreements appear to violate federal whistleblower laws

    In November 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy asked contract employees at the Hanford plutonium processing plant in Washington state to take an unusual oath.

    The DOE wanted them to sign nondisclosure agreements that prevented them from reporting wrongdoing at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear facility without getting approval from an agency supervisor. The agreements also barred them from using any information for financial gain, a possible violation of federal whistleblower laws, which allow employees to collect reward money for reporting wrongdoing.

  • SEE IT: ASU police throw professor to the ground, arrest her for jaywalking (VIDEO)

    Ersula Ore was stopped in May while walking in the middle of a Tempe, Ariz., street to avoid construction — and when she refused to show her ID, she was wrestled to the ground, dashcam footage shows.

  • Salt Lake City Council wants answers from chief over shooting death of dog

  • Don’t You Dare Criticize Officers For Shooting Dogs, Whines SLC Top Cop

    Perhaps feeling a bit besieged after dog owner Sean Kendall posted a video of his impassioned confrontation with Salt Lake City police after one of their fellow officers entered his yard and shot his dog, Geist, Police Chief Chris Burbank stepped in front of a camera—and acted pissy that anybody would dare criticize his officers.

  • Peru now has a ‘licence to kill’ environmental protesters

    Law exempts soldiers and police from criminal responsibility if they cause injuries or deaths

  • Bracing for an Attack by Veterans

    The Pentagon’s transfer of war equipment to local police forces lacks a rational explanation.

  • Aaron Swartz Documentary Steers Clear of Suicide Conversation

    A new documentary about a young man who took his own life while facing charges on computer crimes skips a much-needed conversation about suicide

  • ‘The Internet’s Own Boy’ documentary puts spotlight on Aaron Swartz life and death

    “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz” depicts the life and death of Reddit’s co-founder and an Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

    The documentary is written, directed and produced by Brian Knappenberger. On January 20 this year, the documentary premiered in the competition category of U.S. Documentary Competition program at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

  • Aaron Swartz’s story inspires and infuriates in ‘The Internet’s Own Boy’

    Filmmaker Brian Knappenberger recently spoke to chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown about his new film, “The Internet’s Own Boy.”

  • Aaron Swartz Movie Charts Rise And Demise Of ‘The Internet’s Own Boy

    Where to begin with the saga of Aaron Swartz? His life, cut short by suicide at age 26, continues to resonate strongly online and off because it was devoted in equal measure to technological innovation, social justice and free thought. While so many Silicon Valley billionaires blithely state their desire to change the world, Swartz truly meant it and truly did. His accomplishments include co-founding Reddit, crafting key elements of the RSS feed and Creative Commons, and helping lead the successful protest against federal copyright law PIPA/SOPA in 2012. He killed himself in January 2013, just before he was to have faced trial for several counts of computer hacking stemming from his theft of a trove of license-protected academic research documents controlled by the digital library JSTOR. No one disputes that Swartz broke the law in nabbing the documents, an act likely related to his passionate, stated belief in de-commercializing research and reforming copyright law, but several forces elevated it from a pedestrian hacking case to a national story. The Dept. of Justice, stung by Wikileaks and empowered by the Patriot Act and an outdated 1986 statute criminalizing computer misdeeds, threw the book at Swartz. As reported in the film, they spoke freely of making an example out of him for would-be anarchists, hack-tivists or cyber-terrorists. Relentless prosecutors spent two years making sure Swartz would do years of hard time for a crime whose victims appeared more than willing to look past.

  • The story of Internet icon Aaron Swartz comes to life in a new documentary

    Aaron Swartz is remembered as many things — an early partner and creator of Reddit, a self-made millionaire by the age of 19, and a hacktivist who ushered in a huge wave of opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act.

  • Facing 25 Years in Prison for Circulating a Petition

    Green Party member and 2008 Congressional candidate Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan is once again battling political persecution. On July 21, he will stand trial for circulating recall petitions against Benton Harbor’s pro-corporate Mayor James Hightower.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Latest Cybersecurity Bill Could Actually Be A Backdoor To Destroying Net Neutrality

    Earlier this year, we wrote about the Senate’s latest attempt at a cybersecurity bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), which tries to distinguish itself from the toxic attempts to pass CISPA over the past few years. We and many others have already detailed how CISA, like the CISPAs before it, has a tremendous problem in creating perverse incentives for companies to help the government spy on people, but as a bunch of public interest groups are noting, the definitions are so broad, that the bill could actually be a backdoor way to undermine net neutrality. That’s because it has an incredibly broad definition of a “cyberthreat” such that an ISP could declare, say, Netflix to be a cyberthreat, allowing it to throttle Netflix’s bandwidth. Here are two key paragraphs from a letter sent by CDT, EFF and a bunch of other group…

• DRM

  • How to Disappear (almost) Completely: a practical guide

    Maybe you’ve seen Into the Wild, or (gasp) have actually read it. It’s the true story of an ordinary person who, one day, decided to abandon society, pack some rice and a rifle into a bag and head off into the wilderness never to return. It’s the sort of drastic move you rarely hear about in our modern life. But in next week’s final installment of How to Disappear, we’ll meet some people who’ve literally done just that: gone “off the grid.” For now, though, let’s take a (tongue-in-cheek) look at how you can take some first steps toward undoing the digital ties that bind, and get a little closer to the exit door.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • TTIP Update XXXI – The ISDS Consultation

    In my last update, I focussed once more on the Investor-State Dispute Settlement element of TTIP, this time in the light of the European Commission’s consultation on the subject, which closes this week, on 6 July, and which is open to everyone – not just EU citizens. Alongside that column, I also wrote a similar post over on Techdirt, which contains yet more information about ISDS and the consultation.

  • Copyrights

    • Copyright Troll Malibu Media Allowed To Get Six Strikes Info From Comcast

      A few weeks ago, we wrote about how Malibu Media was up to its old tricks again, demanding six strikes data from Comcast as part of its evidence gathering for its copyright trolling. Apparently, no one fought the request, so a magistrate judge has granted Malibu Media’s request and told Comcast to comply with the forthcoming subpoena. When the six strikes plan was first put into place, many people worried that the information from it would be used in lawsuits, but people hadn’t realized that it might also get abused by copyright trolls.

    • As Amazon slugs it out with the big publishers, authors are left cowering

      And whoever comes out on top, you can bet the poor old writer won’t be any better off

    • Pirate Bay Founders’ File-Hosting Site Wiped From Google

      Google has removed all links to Bayfiles, the file-hosting service created by the Pirate Bay’s founders. For reasons unknown, people searching for the site can no longer reach it through the search engine. The site’s operators are puzzled, but say that the change has very little impact on visitor numbers.

    • The File-Sharing Wars Are Anything But Over

      The past year, the copyright industry appears to have calmed down a bit, thinking it won the file-sharing wars. At the same time, people sharing culture and knowledge have done the same thing. This conflict is far from over.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • LG Chromebase now available on Amazon for $329

    Google’s Chrome OS was back in the spotlight this week due to its upcoming ability to run Android apps. One of the newest Chrome OS devices is LG’s Chromebase, a low-cost Chrome OS all-in-one PC. Now, the Chromebase is on sale on Amazon for the low price of just $329, making it one of the cheapest full-sized PCs to date.

    The Chromebase doesn’t require hefty internals which cuts down the cost significantly. The specs include a 22-inch 1080p IPS display, 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Celeron processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD, USB 3.0 port, three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI port, and an ethernet port. Before you start bashing the Chromebase for its meager spec list, remember that it uses Chrome OS which requires very little power to run. Cloud storage is also emphasized with a free 100GB of Google Drive storage bundled with the Chromebase. A mouse and keyboard are included.

• Server

  • Review of the Thecus N5550 NAS device

    How is the device as an HTPC replacement? After doing some research online, I found that video output was supported only after installing the “Local Display,” and that the app only gave access to a Firefox browser inside of the Linux OS. If you wanted to stream any media, you also needed to install XBMC, and figuring out where to get these apps is as difficult as the other apps.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 3.16-rc3

    We’re back on a Sunday release schedule, and things are looking
    reasonably normal.

    There’s perhaps relatively less driver updates than usual, with most
    of them being pretty small, but that is probably just a timing thing
    (ie Greg didn’t send his USB/staging changes this week, so driver
    changes are mostly gpu, networking and sound).

    As a result misc architecture updates (mips, powerpc, x86, arm)
    dominate the diff, and there are various random other updates. We’ve
    got filesystem updates (aio, nfs and ocfs2), a small batch of mm fixes
    from Andrew, some networking stuff.etc.

    The shortlog gives a feel for the changes. The most noticeable to
    actual users are probably the unbreaking of direct block device read
    accesses on 32-bit targets, and some x86 vdso regression fixes that
    caused problems. The rest probably didn’t end up affecting very many
    people, but it’s all proper fixes..

    Linus

  • Linux 3.16-rc3 Kernel Released

  • Benchmarks

    • Benchmarking Linux 3.16 File-Systems On An SSD

      With the Linux 3.16 kernel coming along nicely, here’s our first tests of this forthcoming major kernel upgrade when it comes to the mainline file-systems and their performance from a solid-state drive.

• Applications

  • Easy File Comparisons With These Great Free Diff Tools

  • kSar sar grapher – A Graphical interface for sysstat sar data

    sysstat sar provides command line based monitoring data. Those who are new or migrating from Windows or MAC and used to the graphical output, it might get confusing and boring. Hence the development of kSar sar grapher. kSar sar grapher is a graphing tool that can graph for Linux, MAC and Solaris sar outputs. Using KSar you can output graphs to a pdf file. kSar sar grapher is developed by Alexandre Cherif and uses a BSD license for distribution.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • when: A sleeper hit for the median demographic

    • whisper: On the right track, not yet at full speed

    • Linux system administration part 2

    • Setup Light Weight X Windows environment (Enlightenment) on Fedora 20 Cloud instance

    • How To Install And Test KDE Plasma 5 On Kubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

    • Install Ajenti (A Web Based Control Panel) for Managing Linux Server

    • GTG plugin: Refactoring, improving and bug-fixing

    • Starting KF5 using the I3 window manager

    • How to create sosreport in linux (RHEL 5.X / RHEL 6.X)

    • Install and set-up JAVA & Grails on an Ubuntu 14.04 Linux VPS

    • Install Odoo (formerly OpenERP) with Nginx on an Ubuntu VPS

    • How To Install Profile Sync Daemon 5.50 On Debian Wheezy, Debian Sid And Debian Jessie

    • How To Install Profile Sync Daemon 5.50 on Arch Linux, Manjaro, Gentoo, Fedora And OpenSUSE

    • How To Install Skype 4.3 On Arch Linux And Manjaro

    • How To Install Profile Cleaner 2.30.1 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04 And Derivative Systems

    • Bash If statements, Exit Status and Comparison Operators, A beginners guide to bash scripting part 2

  • Games

    • DayZ Coming To Linux And Mac?

    • Catlateral Damage knocks its funding goal off the shelf

      We’ve got another game to be added to the rapidly-expanding genre of animal simulator games: Catlateral Damage, which started as a game jam project and charmed its way into our hearts back at the beginning of the year with a limited demo build, has met its $40,000 Kickstarter goal. The feline festivities are anticipated to make their way to Mac, Linux, PC and Ouya in Q4 of this year.

    • Valve Brings Big In-Home Streaming Improvements for NVIDIA and Steam Users

      Valve developers have released a new update for the beta Branch of the Steam client and they have implemented a number of important improvements for the In-Home Streaming feature.

      In-Home Streaming is a feature that allows the Steam users to stream games from a Windows-based operating system to a Linux one, thus enabling Linux user to play games that don’t have support for the open source platform.

    • There’s No Business Like Goat Business, Goat Simulator Now Out On Linux

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Connect turns your Android phone into a touchpad for your PC

    • Help make Plasma 5 real!

      Maybe you already know that the new version of the desktop by the KDE people, called Plasma 5, is in the makings. I totally believe that this forthcoming release will be amazing, and that’s why Aleix Pol and myself have already started porting KDE Connect to this new Desktop Environment.

      Porting every application in KDE, though, requires a huge amount of work. This is one of the reasons why some of the best hackers in KDE will meet this summer in Randa, Switzerland: to work hard in the next version of the best desktop environment ever!

    • About Free Software and Sponsorship June 29, 2014

      In 2008 I joined the KDE Community devoting much of my free time, my paid time, my girlfriend time, gathered friends to help, did hacking sessions, translation sprints, spend in one year more than 3k euro to help free software – And here in brazil 3k euro is what one gain in 9 months of work, so it wasn’t really easy for me to just give away that cash

    • KDE Commit-Digest for 11th May 2014

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • MyPaint + Wacom screen tablet + GNOME3 = ♥

      The colouring process was improved and sped up quite a bit when I bought an inexpensive USB Wacom graphire tablet a few years ago; I moved away from “cell shading” and achieved smoother results, quicker. Why Wacom? They’re the industry standard, their stylus/pen uses electromagnetic induction (no batteries required), and their hardware works out of the box with GNU/Linux and GNOME.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • SparkyLinux 3.4 MATE, Xfce, and Base Distros Officially Released

    • Robolinux 7.5.4 Wants to Be the Ultimate Windows Replacemen

      Robolinux uses a piece of technology called Stealth VM Software, which allows users to create a clone of a Windows Operating System with all the installed programs and updates. It should work, in theory, but there isn’t enough feedback to see how good this particular solution really is.

      Besides this important feature that is one of the most important ones implemented in this distribution, the developer has also made a few other major changes and he has added quite a few new packages.

  • Screenshots

    • Ubuntu 14.04 KDE 5 20140627

    • StartOS 5.1

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • PCLinuxOS Magazine: July 2014

      1. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner
      2. KDenLive, Part Six
      3. ms_meme’s Nook: Boogie Woogie Tex
      4. Improve Battery Life On Your Android Device
      5. Inkscape Tutorial: Reinvent The Wheel
      6. PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: pinoc
      7. Game Zone: Monochroma
      8. Just Digging It With DIG
      9. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions
      10. Don’t Install Pipelight, It Helps Infect the Web With DRM and Microsoft
      11. Inkscape Tutorial: Create a Candle
      12. Programming With Gtkdialog: Part Four
      13. Handy Utilities To Organize Your Life, Part Four
      14. Screenshot Showcase

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Software application gets support for add-ons

        The latest development version of the Software application (the graphical tool for searching and installing new applications in Fedora) now has support for browsing and installing add-ons.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Alpha 1 now available

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Cinnamon and MATE Flavors Get Second Release with Major Fixes

            Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” was released only a month ago, but in all that time some important issues have been fixed by the developers. In order to make the life of the users a little bit easier, the Linux mint devs have decided to regenerate the ISO images with the new fixes.

            According to the changelog made available today, MDM no longer crashes with non-xrandr compatible GPUs, an option in the installer which stated “Replace $OS and install Linux Mint”has been removed because it was considered ambiguous, and the Driver Manager has been fixed because it assumed the user was running a manually installed driver when in the presence of a device which required the installation of “linux-firmware-nonfree”.

          • Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon And Linux Mint 17 Mate Have Received Updates

            Linux Mint 17 has been released at first in the two traditional flavors: Linux Mint 17 Mate and Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon, followed by the releases of Linux Mint 17 KDE and Linux Mint 17 XFCE.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Jolla Launcher unofficially ported to Android 4.2

    • Ballnux

      • The Samsung Galaxy Z: Tizen OS a big Risk? Specifications and Comparison

        The Samsung Galaxy Z is the wave of the future. It’s Tizen OS is cutting edge and will be the standard for smartphones in the future. It is a quality phone that is worth every penny.

      • Samsung Likely To Launch Galaxy S5 Prime Soon

    • Android

      • The Promises and Perils of Android TV

        Android TV is more ambitious than its simple interface lets on; the question is whether it can live up to its goals.

      • Why Android Wear is the new iPad

        But Android Wear watches are the first smartwatches to cross the line from awkward to awesome, because they’re the first to completely abandon the smartphone’s icons, menus and widgets paradigm and massively leverage subtle contextual cues, images, icons and colors to present tiny nuggets of information in their most essential and quickly graspable form.

      • Android L 5.0 Brings RAW Support, Manual Controls and More to Mobile Shooters

      • A Tiny Chinese Startup Has Made My Favourite New Smartphone Of The Year

        The best smartphones you can buy today don’t come cheap. The iPhone 5S, the HTC One, and the Samsung Galaxy S5 all cost at least $US600 without a contract from your carrier.

        But there are a few startups trying to disrupt the model of charging a premium for the best smartphone components and features — big and bright screens, gorgeous designs, and zippy processors.

      • Google: No OEM skins for Android Wear, Android Auto, or Android TV

      • Google says OEM skins won’t dilute Android Wear, Android TV and Android Auto

      • WTF is up with Google’s war on SD cards?

        I’m firing up for a rant, so strap yourselves in kids, it’s Google-bashing time! This week the thing that’s been bugging me revolves around the whole war on SD cards that Google is perpetrating in the latest versions of Android. I get why cost-cutting means the Nexus 5, Nexus 7 etc don’t have a microSD card slot, but Google is now telling us that their microSD vendetta is because SD cards are insecure and corruptable. You know, the exact thing that companies are not.

      • Apple vs. Google: The race is on for the wrist, TV, car

      • ASUS Reportedly Launching Inexpensive Android Wear Smartwatch In September

      • ASUS Android Wear smartwatch to be priced at $99-$149, debut in September

      • ASUS to launch Android Smartwatch just for $199

      • Xiaomi to make India debut on Flipkart

        Touted as the ‘Apple’ of China, Xiaomi had launched its official website in India earlier this month, announcing its entry into the fiercely competitive Indian smartphone market in the next few weeks.

      • Asus ZenFone 5 in India looks AWWWsome

      • Exclusive: A review of the Blackphone, the Android for the paranoid

        Based on some recent experience, I’m of the opinion that smartphones are about as private as a gas station bathroom. They’re full of leaks, prone to surveillance, and what security they do have comes from using really awkward keys. While there are tools available to help improve the security and privacy of smartphones, they’re generally intended for enterprise customers. No one has had a real one-stop solution: a smartphone pre-configured for privacy that anyone can use without being a cypherpunk.

Free Software/Open Source

• the struggle of open social networks

  identi.ca did not move the needle against Twitter at all. Diaspora still doesn’t show up as even a blip in the social networking audience. Why is this? I think that there are good reasons, and then there are the real reasons.

  The good reasons include network effects (particularly as a late-mover), good-but-not-excellent implementations, few if any “killer features” (for the common person), and a lack of marketing resources. These all contribute in one way or another to preventing open social network alternatives from flourishing.

  [...]

  Is it imaginable to have (truly) decentralized social networks that are not server-centric? Can we imagine ways of delivering some or all of the features of today’s social networks without having everyone talking through server software? Can we imagine a fully decentralized system that not only allows but encourages deep local app integration? Could a system be developed that does not imply the topic in the implementation (e.g. professional networking versus restaurant reviews)?

• Paying With Your Time

  Nicole Engard takes that phrase that you Get what you paid for with open source head on at Opensource.com. The phrase is normally used in a derogative fashion, but Nichole accepts the phrase and makes it her own by explaining how everyone benefits when you pay with your time.

  In the world of standard economics, nothing is ever truly free of cost. If something is given to you for nothing, someone had to pay for it at some point along the line. In the modern, advertising based economy, If you are not paying with your money, than you are most likely paying with your personal information. Another example of would be public services, which are normally paid for with taxes. In the world of open source, the phrase is normally meant to imply that the program you are obtaining for free is of such low quality that it has little to no value. “Oh, you are having a problem with that open source app? Well, you get what you paid for!” Laughter ensues.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla at work: See the web evolve with VR

      He provided links for Windows and OS X builds in his blog, and he said Linux is coming soon. Although only the Oculus Rift is currently supported, other devices, he said, will come soon, including Google’s Cardboard.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Hacking LibreOffice in Paris

    Less technical particpants (such as yours truly) had the opportunity to work on the Bern Conference planning, the messaging of the upcoming LibreOffice releases, and explain how the LibreOffice project works to our guests. And of course, food and drinks were not forgotten during the Friday evening…

• CMS

  • How websites are smarter in the background than you thought

    Basle-based open source web content management system (WCMS) company Magnolia International has released the 5.3 version of its core product with functionality now delivered through a series of task-focused apps.

• BSD

  • FreeBSD 9.3 RC2 Released with Numerous Improvements

    The second Release Candidate of FreeBSD 9.3, an operating system for x86, ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures, is now available for download and testing.

• Public Services/Government

  • The government says, “we will break away from OS dependency with open source software by 2020”

    As the support for the Microsoft (MS) Windows XP service is terminated this year, the government will try and invigorate open source software in order to solve the problem of dependency on certain software. By 2020 when the support of the Windows 7 service is terminated, it is planning to switch to open OS and minimize damages. Industry insiders pointed out that the standard e-document format must be established and shared as an open source before open source software is invigorated.

  • What would you do with millions of pounds?

    There’s a lot that you can do with £5.5m. You could employ a couple of hundred people for a year for starters, or set up some small businesses. You could be sensible and invest in technologies, or you could pay for lots of operations. Alternatively, you could buy lots of sweets or several million copies of the Adam Sandler movie of your choice.

  • Why The Korean Government Could Go Open Source By 2020

    A similar suggestion that Korea might embrace more open source (but couched more cautiously, with more “should” and “may”) is reported on the news page of the EU’s program on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations, based on a workshop presentation earlier this month by Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning. (And at a smaller but still huge scale, the capitol city of Seoul appears to be going in for open source software in a big way, too.)

  • Seoul, South Korea, plans new cloud platform to share data

  • Government Of Korea Is Into FLOSS For The Long Run

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Hardware

    • Billions To Soon Be Invested In 3D Printing Research and Development

    • Open Source 3D Printer Blasts Through Kickstarter Goal

Leftovers

• Science

  • Why a little country like Paraguay is launching a space program

    Think about the future of space travel for one moment.

    Chances are Paraguay did not come even remotely to mind.

    But now this little, landlocked South American country is determined to put itself on the intergalactic map.

    When the Paraguayan government announced earlier this year that it was forming a space agency, that got us at GlobalPost thinking: Why, and how, would this poor, isolated country invest in space exploration, of all things?

    It turns out there are all sorts of reasons why developing nations should be looking to the skies to see the future, as we will now explain.

• Hardware

  • Massachusetts SWAT Teams Claim They’re Private Corporations To Get Out Of Transparency Requests

    I’m no conspiracy theorist, generally speaking, but I have to admit the apparent systematic militarization of domestic police forces throughout the country scares the hell out of me. You’ve seen it, too. Officers, once clad in powder blue uniforms, are suddenly dressed in blues that are so dark they might as well be black. Small-town police forces are gobbling up military-style equipment for god-knows-why. Regulatory agencies are sending out armed forces to rescue wildlife. Whatever your politics, it’s pretty clear that there is some kind of imbalance on display here.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Monsanto’s ‘Roundup Ready’ GM maize could be growing in Europe next year.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • The era of American drone supremacy is fading

    The US would not tolerate another country operating with the same scope and secrecy

  • How many drones kill how many people? Questions Remain about Drone Program

    …comprehensive research that does exist – albeit not from the government – shows that drones are more effective at creating terrorists than destroying them…

  • Cannes loves Pakistan’s hatred for drones

  • U.S. inches closer to landmine ban

    The Obama administration pledged Friday to stop producing or purchasing landmines, but it stopped short of signing an international treaty that requires countries to destroy their stockpiles, saying it was “diligently pursuing solutions” that would allow it to eventually sign the agreement.

  • US takes major step towards banning landmines

    US is the only member of Nato not to have signed an international treaty banning the use of anti-personnel landmines, a cause championed by Princess Diana

  • Washington Post Columnist Demands Accountability From Iraq War Architects

  • CNN’s Toobin: Americans should be ‘grateful’ that Cheney is back on TV talking about Iraq

  • Obama asks for 500 million to equip Syrian rebels

  • Robert Fisk scoffs at Obama’s double standard view of terrorists in Syria and Iraq

  • Point of View: Never forget blunders that got us into Iraq

    It is unthinkable that a news agency would bestow any credibility on Cheney concerning the Iraq War. His comments were ignorant and illusory. In addition, a letter-writer writes that former President George W. Bush and Cheney did not lie to us. They were merely “incorrectly informed by the prevailing intelligence.” (“Iraq War received bipartisan support,” June 23.)

  • Iraq news to top Sunday talk shows

    The Iraq crisis will dominate most of Sunday’s political talk shows, featuring interviews with lawmakers on key committees and others, including James Jeffrey, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

  • The Lies That Lead to War

    As the exploding crisis in Iraq spotlights once again the tragic record of American policy in the Middle East, Bill speaks with investigative journalist Charles Lewis, whose new book, 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity details the many government falsehoods that have led us into the current nightmare.

  • Iraqi forces drive back insurgents in Tikrit

    The Iraqi army on Saturday drove Islamic extremists from the center of a major city in central Iraq, for the first time mounting a concerted assault against insurgents who had charged to within 50 miles of Baghdad.

  • Iraq troops advance on Tikrit in counter-attack

    Iraqi forces pressed a campaign yesterday to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with Sunni fighters nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far.

  • Iraq army makes gains in fight to retake Tikrit

  • Sunday talk show tip sheet

  • Ruling a win for digital privacy

    The justices — every last one of them, in a seldom-seen 9-0 ruling — recognized that in the 21st century, a cell phone, iPad or other tablet is not just a form of communication, but a storage place.

  • BIGGER BROTHER? Spike in NSA phone-data surveillance, report says

  • NSA phone searches increased by 50 percent in 2013, report finds

  • US NSA Continues Telephone Metadata Spying

  • After Verizon, Germany mulls axing foreign tech

    First Verizon got the boot, now the German government is considering pulling the plug on foreign companies that provide hardware for official communication networks.

    An Interior Ministry spokesman says Germany is examining which devices can be used if it wants to keep critical IT infrastructure safe from cyberthreats.

  • Death in Shati

    Yesterday, shortly after three o’clock local time, two men were killed in their car. Two missiles struck it only about 100 meters from former prime minister Ismail Haniyeh’s residence in Shati (“Beach”) refugee camp. Ambulances soon arrived and took the two men to al-Shifa hospital, where both were immediately pronounced dead.

  • Soldiers reportedly executing Sunni detainees in Iraq

  • Are uprisings in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine plus tension in North Korea pushing world to the brink of war?

  • Who Violated Ukraine’s Sovereignty?

    The West has accused Russia of violating a 1994 pledge to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its surrender of Soviet-era nuclear weapons. But the West’s political and economic interference might also represent a violation, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

  • America Seems to Be Losing Ukraine’s War

  • Another Murderous Milestone: 60 Years of Carnage

    …CIA sent twelve planes to drop bombs and propaganda on towns in Guatemala in support of a coup…

  • Kerry in Syria opposition talks as U.S. moves to arm rebels

    The US top diplomat headed for talks with the Syrian opposition and its key backer Saudi Arabia Friday after the White House asked lawmakers for $500 million to train and equip vetted rebels.

    The move would mark a significant escalation of US involvement in the three-year-old civil war in Syria, which is now increasingly interlinked with a jihadist-led Sunni Arab insurgency in neighbouring Iraq.

  • Seeking solution, Kerry turns to Saudis

    Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here Friday as part of a delicate attempt to enlist the support of the Saudi monarch for the formation of a multisect government in Iraq.

    Kerry also met with Ahmad Assi al-Jarba, the head of the moderate Syrian opposition, at the start of his visit here. That meeting came one day after the White House announced that it was seeking $500 million from Congress so the Pentagon could train and arm “vetted elements” of the Syrian opposition.

  • Report: Israel tells U.S. it would act to save Jordan from Islamists

    The threat posed to Jordan by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) which has already taken over wide swathes of Iraq and Syria, is of deep concern to the Obama administration and was the subject of a confidential briefing by administration officials to senators last week, according to the online news site.

    The chief concern is that an attack on Jordan would inevitably drag Israel and possibly the United States into the fighting.

  • Russia sends Sukhoi fighter jets to help Iraq counter extremists’ offensive

    Iraq received the first batch of Sukhoi warplanes from Russia as it pressed a counter-attack on Sunday against a Sunni militant onslaught that threatens to tear the country apart.

    Witnesses reported waves of government air strikes Sunday on the city of Tikrit, overrun by the insurgents when they swept across vast areas of north and west Iraq earlier this month.

  • Iraq receives Russian Sukhoi warplanes as it takes fight to militants

  • Iraq receives ‘first batch of Russian fighter jets’

  • Iraq receives first Russian jets

  • Robert Fisk Slams US Plans for Aiding So-Called Syrian ‘Moderates’ Aren’t So Moderate in Iraq

    In an analysis in the British Independent daily on Friday, Fisk wrote: Well, God bless Barack Obama – he’s found some “moderate” rebels in Syria. Enough to supply them with weapons and training worth $500mln. Congress wants to arm these brave freedom fighters, you see. And Obama, having sent his 300 elite Spartan lads to Iraq to help Nouri al-Maliki fight the rebels there, needs to send help to the rebels in Syria – even though most of them are on the side of the rebels in Iraq whom Obama wants Maliki to defeat.

  • Special CIA Unit Sent to UK to Investigate British Islamists

• Transparency Reporting

  • Report: Julian Assange will model on catwalk during London Fashion Week

    “The Wikileaks founder will reportedly model for Ben Westwood, son of Dame Vivienne, at a fashion show at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London – where he has been holed up for two years,” reports Yahoo News.

  • Wikileaks shed light on GOP Senate candidate Sullivan’s State Dept. career

    A trove of more than 100 of the leaked Wikileaks diplomatic cables in 2010 provides an unvarnished view of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan’s career at the U.S. Department of State, where he spent two-and-a-half years holding high-level meetings on oil and gas, climate change, and a host of other issues, even lobbying a head of state on a secret surveillance program.

  • Showing Solidarity With Whistleblowers and Defending Our Right to Know

    Sarah Harrison: In the United States they are aggressively going after whistleblowers and truth tellers. When you look at the Jeremy Hammond case, he exposed abuses by the private intelligence organization, Stratfor, that was spying on Bhopal activists. He was aggressively prosecuted by U.S. courts and sentenced to ten years in prison. You see persecution against individual journalists and publishers as well. Anyone that is speaking truth to power in any real manner is being come down upon by the US government to try and set examples and to stop the truth from being exposed in the future.

  • WikiLeaks Reveals True Intent of Secret TiSA Trade

    A WikiLeaks exposé has revealed the true intent behind secret 50-country negotiations on a new “financial services” chapter of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) at the WTO in Geneva. The draft agreement being discussed by government officials is aimed at weakening financial regulation and giving extra market access to hedge funds, banks, insurers and other providers.

  • US pressured Denmark to close Kurdish TV so Rasmussen would become NATO chief – lawyer

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • David Cameron warned NHS in danger of collapse within five years

    Senior Tories have called on David Cameron to increase NHS spending significantly as a former coalition health minister forecasts a collapse in the service.

    A slew of bad news over the NHS has raised Tory fears that the health service could again prove to be a toxic issue just 10 months before a general election.

• Finance

  • Congressional Candidate B.J. Guillot talks Bitcoin and Politics – Interview

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Murdoch editors told to ‘kill Whitlam’ in 1975

    News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch directed his editors to “kill Whitlam” some 10 months before the downfall of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government, according to a newly released United States diplomatic report.

    The US National Archives has just declassified a secret diplomatic telegram dated January 20, 1975 that sheds new light on Murdoch’s involvement in the tumultuous events of Australia’s 1975 constitutional crisis.

  • FBI seizes 80,000 emails from Murdoch’s News Corp

    A probe of media mogul Rupert Murdoch might soon take shape in the United States upon reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has 80,000 emails in its possession seized from the servers of the tycoon’s News Corp headquarters.

    The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday this week that “the FBI has copies of at least 80,000 emails taken from the servers at News Corp in New York,” prompting Britain’s Daily Mail to allege that new hacking allegations could be lobbed at Murdoch in the US as matters on the other side of the Atlantic near wrapping up.

    According to reporters Nico Hines and Peter Jukes at the Beast, this correspondence is contained on a single compact disc and was obtained by the FBI during the just resolved, high-profile phone hacking case in the UK surrounding journalists employed by Murdoch’s since-shuttered News of the World paper. The journalists also allege that the message include communications sent up the chain of command by Murdoch protégée Rebekah Brooks, who was spared by a jury in London this week of involvement in the NOTW hacking scam.

  • Rupert Murdoch under FBI spotlight as 80,000 company emails are investigated

  • Despite London acquittals, U.S. probe of News Corp continues

    More than a year after asking for and receiving emails from News Corp’s U.S. operation related to allegations of phone hacking and bribery, the FBI is still investigating whether British-based representatives of the media company may have broken U.S. law…

  • Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.’s woes will continue

  • Stirling Shenanigans

    1,600 people attended British Armed Forces Day in Stirling. 20,000 attended Bannockburn Live, 1 mile away. Guess which the BBC covered?

    [...]

    So today the BBC News lead item was the Stirling Armed Forces Day commemoration, with David Cameron parading about with his soldiers in front of every Tory in Scotland (1,800 people). The BBBC had three crews at the Armed Forces Day plus two radio crews. Not one of them managed even a mention of the ten times larger Bannockburn commemoration just down the road.

  • What 2,000 People Look Like

    Various unionist nutters have tried to claim that the outrageous BBC/MOD propaganda lie of 35,000 people at Armed Forces Day in Stirling is true. This picture was taken at 1.30pm when the crowd was largest.

    There is a lot to give scale in this photo. Look at the vehicles. Look at the marquees.

• Censorship

  • ‘Hate, censorship are political tools of suppression’

    When you look at film history, whether it’s McCarthyism, Stalinism or religious fundamentalism, in the struggle with all adversaries, film-makers were forced to find new forms of storytelling to communicate with the audience, which brought out the best in their creativity. Film-makers like Howard Hawks, John Huston, Andrei Tarkovsky, Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf were able to smuggle their ideals without compromising their vision. Fred Zinnemann replied to McCarthy’s witch-hunt by making a film about his era in the form of a western called High Noon.

  • Britain First’s Facebook page taken down for ‘hate speech’ – but not for long

  • Britain First’s Facebook Page Banned For ‘Hate Speech’… Then Put Back Just An Hour Later

  • Banned But Not Forgotten: Book Censorship In The U.S.

    Under the First Amendment, the U.S. government cannot outright ban literature in the United States, but as Mark Crispin Miller, author and professor of media studies at New York University, explained, books can be hidden from public view or written off as conspiracy theory in order to prevent people from reading them.

    While censorship is often conducted by corporations and governments to prevent words, images or ideas from entering the mainstream, censorship of literature has been around as early as 399 B.C. and has affected intellectuals and philosophers such as Socrates.

  • The case against censorship

    If the City of Toronto silences street preachers because they make him feel uncomfortable, he may be among the next group silenced for making others feel uncomfortable.

  • US Religious Groups Concerned About Internet Censorship

    Falun Gong, a spiritual movement with Buddhist and Daoist influences, has been banned in China since 1999.

  • MPAA Issues Overly Broad Takedown Of Little Used Reddit Film Community; Creates Much Bigger Reddit Film Community

    Oh that wacky MPAA. Earlier this week, TorrentFreak noted that the MPAA issued a massively overbroad DMCA takedown to Google, asking it to remove an entire subreddit from its search results. The subreddit in question was r/FullLengthFilms, which really wasn’t that popular.

• Privacy

  • Facebook manipulated 689,003 users’ News Feeds to ‘prove’ emotions are contagious

  • Facebook users react angrily to a ‘creepy’ experiment

    Users of Facebook have reacted angrily to a “creepy” experiment carried out by the social network and two American universities to manipulate their emotions. The US technology giant secretly altered almost 700,000 users’ news feeds to study the impact of “emotional contagion”.

  • Facebook gives with one hand and takes with the other

    As part of a psychology experiment, the news feeds of over 600,000 people were “manipulated”. Researchers tweaked the content of thousands of news feeds to give them a more positive or more negative slant. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was found that people exposed to more upbeat content were themselves more positive, and vice versa. An interesting experiment, most would agree, but in an age where honesty and transparency are so highly valued, the fact that the chosen thousands were not informed about what was happening is a little underhanded — to put it mildly.

  • Facebook modified news feeds of 689k users for a week

  • Facebook manipulated users’ moods in secret experiment to show bad moods spread

    Facebook manipulated the emotions of hundreds of thousands of its users, and found that they would pass on happy or sad emotions, it has said. The experiment, for which researchers did not gain specific consent, has provoked criticism from users with privacy and ethical concerns.

  • Sad status update? Facebook reveals it’s been manipulating our emotions

  • Facebook conducted secret psychology experiment on users’ emotions

  • 600,000 Facebook users unknowingly take part in psychological experiment

  • Shoppers tracked as they go wild in the aisles

    ON YOUR last trip to the supermarket, where did you walk, what did you look at, and which products did you ultimately buy? Proximus, a start-up based in Madrid, Spain, wants to know.

  • Google’s Larry Page wants to ‘save 100,000 lives’ by analyzing your healthcare data

    Talking up the power of big data is a real trend at the moment and Google founder Larry Page took it to new levels this week by proclaiming that 100,000 lives could be saved next year alone if we did more to open up healthcare information.

  • Germany NSA’s main target, claims ex-staffer

    Germany became the NSA’s “number one” spying zone after the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda on New York, says a former NSA staffer. Thomas Drake told the news magazine Spiegel that the US saw it could no longer rely on Germany.

  • NSA Whistleblowers to Testify Before German Parliamentary Committee in July

  • NSA Collected Data on Millions of Americans Just to Investigate 248 People

    The National Security Agency was interested in the phone data of fewer than 250 people believed to be in the United States in 2013, despite collecting the phone records of nearly every American.

  • How paranoia became The Way We Live Now

    The National Security Agency has password-cracking software that is capable of guessing at 1 billion passwords a second, according to documents pilfered and made public by Snowden. Every day, according to those documents, the NSA and other federal agencies intercept, read or listen to up to 20 billion emails, phone calls and other communications, many of them sent by or to Americans.

  • Massive mobile malware network used by cops globally

    A probe by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and computer security firm Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a massive network of mobile malware for all phone types that is sold by an Italian firm to police forces around the world.

    The malware, dubbed Remote Control System (RCS), was produced by a company called Hacking Team. It can subvert Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry devices. The study found 320 command-and-control (C&C) servers for RCS running in over 40 countries, presumably by law enforcement agencies.

    Kaspersky has developed a fingerprinting system to identify the IP addresses of RCS C&C servers and found the biggest host is here in the Land of the Free, with 64 discovered. Next on the list was Kazakhstan with 49, Ecuador has 35, just beating the UK which hosts 32 control systems.

  • How is your member of Congress doing on NSA reform? Check StandAgainstSpying.org

    A coalition of 22 organizations from across the political spectrum today launched StandAgainstSpying.org, an interactive website that grades members of Congress on what they have done, or often not done, to rein in the NSA.

  • Edward Snowden inspired anonymity software, OnionShare, launches

    A recently released open-source software, created in response to the controversy surrounding Edward Snowden’s release of classified NSA documents, claims to allow users to securely send large files over the internet with complete anonymity.

  • Transparency Report From Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence Shows Government Issuing 50 NSLs Per Day

  • With One Sentence Fox News Has Completely Sabotaged Boehner’s Lawsuit Against Obama

    What started out as an interview to champion John Boehner’s lawsuit against Obama turned into an act of sabotage with one sentence from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

  • The ACLU and the NSA’s ex-director will debate spying on June 30th

  • Public Defender wants proof of legal WPD surveillance

    The Wilmington Police Department’s use of Stingray surveillance equipment is causing concern for local attorneys. The technology can track a person’s location by acting as a cell phone tower.

    The New Hanover County Public Defender’s Office recently said it would be probing the surveillance methods.

  • NSA fears hit US business in Germany

    Shades of the Stasi. The German Government is not renewing its contracts with giant US telco Verizon because it doesn’t trust its data with a US company.

  • Steve Wozniak’s brief, mysterious meeting with Edward Snowden

    “To me Edward Snowden is a hero”

  • New N.S.A. Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable

    The newly installed director of the National Security Agency says that while he has seen some terrorist groups alter their communications to avoid surveillance techniques revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the damage done over all by a year of revelations does not lead him to the conclusion that “the sky is falling.”

• Civil Rights

  • Ron Paul: Celebrate Independence Day By Opposing Government Tyranny – OpEd

    This week Americans will enjoy Independence Day with family cookouts and fireworks. Flags will be displayed in abundance. Sadly, however, what should be a celebration of the courage of those who risked so much to oppose tyranny will instead be turned into a celebration of government, not liberty. The mainstream media and opportunistic politicians have turned Independence Day into the opposite of what was intended.

    [...]

    The evidence is all around us.

  • Being an ANNOYING PERSON is now a crime in some places

    There are now 5,000 laws on annoying behavior in statutes in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported.

  • College Reacts To Negative Press By Attempting To Seal Court Documents Exposing Its Ridiculous Actions

  • Occidental Expels Student for Rape Under Standard So Low That the Accuser Could Have Been Found Guilty, Too

    Does all drunken sex constitute rape? Obviously not, but that’s the argument Occidental College administrators must make in their zeal to prosecute a male student for sexual assault—even after police acquitted him.

  • This Is Why Your Local Police Department Might Have a Tank

    Forget Officer Friendly. A new report finds that local police departments are becoming excessively militarized, equipped with weapons, uniforms and even vehicles formerly used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan

  • Five torture myths debunked

    However, the focus on torture and other ill-treatment in what the US authorities then called the “war on terror” at the beginning of the century may have skewed the global picture. What our research also clearly shows is that most victims of torture and other ill-treatment worldwide are not dangerous terrorists but rather poor, marginalized and disempowered criminal suspects who unfortunately seldom draw the attention of the media and public opinion, either nationally or globally.

  • Torture – An unnecessary evil

  • Human Rights Watch Says Saudi Govt Targeting Dissidents with Malware

    Human Rights Watch on Friday demanded a clarification from Saudi Arabia over allegations from security researchers that the kingdom is infecting and monitoring dissidents’ mobile phones with surveillance malware.

  • What to do if police try to search your phone without a warrant

    In a profound win for digital privacy rights, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police officers must obtain a warrant before searching your phone. If they don’t, the search is illegal—a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

  • The Special Relationship: Uncovered; Charles Paris Mystery; The First Time With… Jimmy Page – radio review

    I bow to few in my admiration for Peter Hitchens’s unerring determination to grasp wrong ends of sticks, too often persuading himself that the end grasped represents the bravely unpopulist when both meanings could better be reversed. But I have to say he made a wonderful fist of a fierce, lucid, timely programme on US-UK relations. The Special Relationship: Uncovered was scripted and voiced with clarity, the perfect pace for radio, some great interviewees and the minimum of intrusive noise – apart from a bizarre but briefly welcome horned-up version of Funky Nassau.

  • The Age of Compromises and the Compromises of Age

    Regarding war and civil rights, Hillary Rodham and HRC share scant common ground. The heart of the 22 year-old liberal lies buried deep beneath the travel-worn head of the 66 year-old pragmatist. In 2008 Barack Obama promised Hope and Change. But he failed to deliver. As would Hillary.

  • Aaron Swartz’s father: He’d be alive today if he was never arrested

  • The brief but bright life of Aaron Swartz – R.I.P.

    But Swartz was within the system’s grasp, and it appears the DOJ was determined to make an example of him. Faced with economic ruin and imprisonment for years by a vengeful administration — the Obama regime has been extraordinarily vindictive toward whistleblowers, charging more people with the Espionage Act than all previous U.S. administrations combined — the free-spirited Aaron appears to have been pushed over the edge on January 11, 2013. But on March 6, an unrepentant Attorney General Holder defended Swartz’s prosecution before a Senate committee.

  • Massachusetts Town Nullifies NDAA Indefinite Detention

    Another American town has decided its citizens will not be denied due process by the president of the United States.

  • India: Targeting NGOs

    The timing and contents of the I.B. report naming select NGOs and individuals as working against the national interest exposes the Narendra Modi government’s pro-corporate plan to target organisations championing people’s causes that have not been taken up adequately by the political class.

  • Referendum on democracy in Hong Kong draws 740,000 votes

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • The Peace Prize for Snowden

    Awarding Snowden the Nobel Peace Prize would be an extremely bold and very controversial, but in our opinion also a correct choice.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Server

  • Six clicks: History of supercomputers — fast, faster, fastest

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • AMD Radeon VDPAU Video Performance With Gallium3D

      After earlier this week posting some fresh NVIDIA VDPAU video playback performance tests, here is some testing of the open-source AMD Radeon driver with R600 and RadeonSI Gallium3D drivers while using the VDPAU state tracker for open-source, accelerated video playback using the graphics cards’ UVD engine.

• Applications

  • Xnoise Media Player Development Stopped

  • Telegram Connection Manager (Still Under Development) Will Bring Telegram Support To Telepathy, Empathy And Other Multi-Protocol IM Clients

    Telegram is a an instant messaging service similar to WhatsApp. While there isn’t any official Telegram client for Linux systems, the users can use Telegram via the Unity Webapps Telegram Application (on Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 13.10 only) or via Sigram, a Telegram client developed in Qt.

  • wgetpaste: A healthy collection of features

  • whatis, whereis and which: In moments of indecision

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Exploiting wildcards on Linux

    • How To Install Awesome (Window Manager) 3.5.5 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, LXLE And Other Ubuntu Derivatives

    • How To Install Git 2.0.1 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivatives

    • How To Install Midori 0.5.8.1 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, LXLE, Debian, Crunchbang, Kwheezy And Other Ubuntu/Debian Derivatives

    • Convert Audio / Video Files With Selene Media Encoder

    • How To Install I-Nex 0.7.0 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pinguy OS, Fedora And OpenSUSE

    • Create Bootable Linux Sticks Via LiveUSB 2.5.2

    • How to upgrade from Lubuntu 13.10 to Lubuntu 14.04

    • How To Install Guake Terminal And Guake Indicator On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr And Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander

    • Wget for fun Linux article

    • How To Install Wine 1.7.21 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS And Other Ubuntu Derivatives

    • How To Install Wine 1.7.21 On Fedora 20, Fedora 19, CentOS 6, OpenSUSE 13.1 And OpenSUSE 12.3

    • How To Install Brackets 0.41 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install QCAD 3.6 On The Most Popular Linux Systems

    • How To Install Qt 5.3.1 (And Qt Creator 3.1.2) On Linux Systems

    • Get Support For Your Xbox Controller Via The Ubuntu-Xboxdrv 20140626 Driver, On Ubuntu And Derivatives

    • How to check MySQL storage engine type on Linux

  • Wine or Emulation

    • Wine 1.7.21 Supports Unicode 7.0, Interlanced PNG Encoding

    • Valve Updates SteamOS With the Latest NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel Drivers

      The Beta version of SteamOS, a Debian-based distribution developed by Valve to be used in its hybrid PC / console, has just received an update and numerous packages.

    • Wine 1.7.21 Brings Fixes for Office 2013 Web Installer and Wolfenstein

  • Games

    • Valve Has Greenlit 36 More Linux Games For Steam

      Valve are pushing really quickly recently and have gathered together another list of games to allow on Steam. 36 of which are confirmed for Linux.

    • Gaming the Steam Summer Adventure, playing Together on Linux, and more

      In this week’s edition of our open source games news roundup we delve into the Steam Summer Adventure, hope that Together hits its Linux milestone, and more.

    • SteamOS Alchemist Beta 120 Updates Intel/AMD/NVIDIA Drivers

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Marble 1.8.3 Installer for Windows

    • KDE is running on innovation’s treadmill

      Jack Wallen addresses the stagnant, yet solid, state of the KDE desktop.

    • First alpha of Kubuntu 14.10 released along with other Ubuntu flavors

      That time of the year is arriving when we see major releases of GNU/Linux based systems. Ubuntu flavors have just announced the first alpha of for version 14.10 aka Utopic Unicorn. Only exception being Xubuntu which has not made any alpha’s available.

    • Wallen on KDE, Quiet Revolution, and Ryan Gordon on Gaming

      Our top story on this Friday night is Andrew Smith’s blog post titled Linux is the quiet revolution that will leave Microsoft eating dust. Next up, Jack Wallen is probably answering Jos Poortvliet’s Where KDE is going in his post today on KDE. And finally today, Ryan “Icculus” Gordon speaks about the Linux gaming industry.

    • Awesome contributions to KDE Connect

      Today we are releasing a new version of KDE Connect for Android phones and the Plasma desktop. This shiny new release includes some nice features contributed by great people in the KDE Community (and outside it). You guys are awesome!

      The first feature I want to show you was contributed by Ahmed Ibrahim, and allows you to use your phone screen as a touchpad for your computer. Do you have a mediacenter or another setup where you don’t want to have a mouse and a keyboard always attached? With KDE Connect we will make you able to use your phone as a wireless input device!

    • Wallpaper Challenge – winners

      After two weeks and almost 1400 casted votes we’re finally ready to announce the 3 winning wallpaper submissions:

    • 10 more days – we can do it

      You can tell everybody that they will get even better KDE software, software that runs on almost all platforms and in the future on even more and software that everybody can use and share. Concretely this means that at the end of September 2014 you will get an updated KDE Book that helps you to work with KDE Frameworks 5, a more stable Kdenlive, a first port of KMyMoney to KF5, a glimpse at Amarok 3, another beta of GCompris based on Qt, a reinvigorated Gluon Games Framework, at least a first idea of the KDE SDK and much more. Isn’t that worth it?

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Webconverger 25 Kiosk Linux Distribution Is Out

  • Red Hat Family

    • SEC docs reveal Red Hat’s $28.9M fundraise

      We do know open source giant Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) raised $28.9 million in equity. The company disclosed the news in a securities filing today.

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 21 may come with Gnome 3.14, Gnome 3.13.3 released with major improvements

        The Gnome team has announced the release of version 3.13.3, which is now available for download and testing. Those who don’t know, these snapshots are released as the team works toward the final release of the next version so 3.13.x branch is actually the development work going towards 3.14 branch.

  • Debian Family

    • Elive 2.3.0 Beta Brings Together Debian and Enlightenment

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu MATE Remix Now Works Under Virtualbox. Let’s Hope An Ubuntu 14.10 Mate Flavor Will Be Released

          Martin Wimpress (Mate developer) and Alan Pope (Canonical developer) are working at creating an Ubuntu image that uses MATE as the default desktop environment (called Ubuntu MATE Remix), but the project is only in its early development stage.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Ballnux

      • Samsung exec says Apple cannot fool people anymore as they know better

        The war between Samsung and Apple is nothing new. But here comes a fresh attack! According to Jae Shin, Vice President of Samsung’s Knox mobile security group, the situation when people would just go by the looks of something and not give importance to what’s inside is on the brink of being passé. He feels that people have changed and now have something he called know-how.

      • Apple ditches Aperture and iPhoto app

    • Android

      • Restricting Android Wear To Newest Android Phones Is Google’s Biggest Mistake

        These smart watches as well as all devices running Android Wear only works with smartphones running Android 4.3 or newer, representing less than 24% of all the Android devices on the market today (as of early June 2014). In contrast, Sony’s SmartWatch 2 – which uses a proprietary software – is compatible with older Android 4.0 devices.

      • Google L’s ‘HeadsUp’ already (unofficially) available on Google Play

Free Software/Open Source

• Open Platforms Fuel Startup Ecosystems

  Companies face an inherent tension between being open or proprietary, but we’ve seen, again and again, that open systems can act as catalysts for entirely new businesses built on top of a popular platform.

• SF Parking App Warned By SF City Attorney Open-Sources Its Code

  Parking app Sweetch has open-sourced its code this morning in an effort to solve the parking crisis in San Francisco. The free, open-source project, called Freetch is open to any developer willing to work on solving parking problems for the city.

  City Attorney Dennis Herrera called out Sweetch and other parking apps earlier this week in a cease-and-desist letter it sent to MonkeyParking. The letter specifically warned Sweetch and ParkModo, both of which the city believes “…similarly violate local and state law with mobile app-enabled schemes intended to illegally monetize public parking spaces.”

• SaaS/Big Data

  • How YARN Changed Hadoop Job Scheduling

    Scheduling means different things depending on the audience. To many in the business world, scheduling is synonymous with workflow management. Workflow management is the coordinated execution of a collection of scripts or programs for a business workflow with monitoring, logging and execution guarantees built in to a WYSIWYG editor. Tools like Platform Process Manager come to mind as an example. To others, scheduling is about process or network scheduling. In the distributed computing world, scheduling means job scheduling, or more correctly, workload management.

  • Dataguise Introduces Security, Compliance Suite for Big Data Governance

• BSD

  • Testing LLVM Clang 3.5′s Code Generation Optimizations

    or those curious about the performance of LLVM Clang in its current development form when testing the common code generation options for optimizing the performance (and in some cases size) of the resulting binaries, here’s some fresh compiler benchmarks.

    Just as some extra benchmarks for the weekend while finishing out the month, I ran some new benchmarks comparing common optimization levels for LLVM/Clang with the latest 3.5 development code as of earlier this month. The configurations tested for this article included.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • FreeIPMI 1.4.4 Released

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition

  • Four new polio cases emerge in Pakistan in one day

    Even before those revelations, the Taliban in Pakistan had already opposed Western-backed vaccination campaigns, claiming that they were secret efforts to sterilize Muslim children. But the CIA’s actions helped fuel an armed backlash against immunization workers, reportedly killing 56 people between December 2012 and May 2014. The victims include not just medical workers but police officers assigned to guard them.

• Security

  • LZO & LZ4 Security Vulnerabilities Disclosed

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Toothpaste Terrorism? Been There, Done That

    Posada, a longtime CIA asset, escaped after being arrested for the bombing in Venezuela, surfacing in El Salvador, where he helped oversee the Reagan administration’s illegal efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Since 2005, he’s been living in the United States, which refuses to extradite him to either Venezuela or Cuba.

    Though it remains the deadliest act of air terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, Cubana Flight 455 is rarely brought up as a precedent for threats against air travelers. Perhaps that’s because corporate media like to maintain the fiction that terrorism is always something done by “them” against “us.”

  • Congress Must Speak Up in the Drone Debate

    Until now, the information available publicly about the targeting and killing of American citizens abroad came to us through leaked documents and unauthorized statements by government officials. As a result of these leaks, President Obama’s drone policy has been hotly debated.

  • Eugene Robinson: US drone use sets bad precedence

    Imagine that Vladimir Putin began using drones to kill Ukrainians who opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea. If Putin claimed the targets were “members of anti-Russian terrorist groups,” what credibility would the United States have to condemn such strikes?

  • Ron Wyden says Americans deserve to know when U.S. drones can kill them: Oregon politics today

  • Moral outrage was what motivated the 7

    On March 17, about 50 people staged a protest at the Iowa Air National Guard base in Des Moines and attempted to deliver a statement and talk with someone there about the use of drones for warfare. No one was willing to talk with the group or receive the statement, and the seven were ultimately arrested for civil disobedience.

  • INVADING IRAQ 2.0: ISIS Propaganda, Proxy Wars & NATO’s ‘Blitzkrieg’

    The Western-backed Al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS, has made its way to Iraq through Turkey and over the northeastern border of Syria. This new terror campaign appears to have been rolled out with a decades old objective, which is wrought with violence, propaganda and destabilization funding from the usual sponsors…

  • Armed Drones Now Patrol Iraq

    The U. S. military has confirmed that some surveillance drones in Iraq have been armed with air to surface missiles. The purpose of arming the drones is to provide protection for U. S. military who are in the country. Confirmation came from Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby. He noted that some U. S. personnel were venturing outside the embassy to assist Iraqi military, exposing the U. S. personnel to increased risk.

  • US sends armed drones to Iraq ‘to protect its troops’

    The US military says it has deployed armed manned and unmanned aircraft over Iraq to protect its soldiers, and may consider targeting “high value individuals”.

  • Reaping the Seeds of Iraqi Hatred

    The uproar in the mainstream U.S. news media over the barbarity of Islamic militants in Iraq downplays or ignores the brutality of the U.S. invasion and occupation that unleashed the ethnic and sectarian hatreds in the first place, as Danny Schechter notes.

  • Drones locks on, arms, and misfires

    Drones was not a half-bad idea for a low-budget film. I can see what the filmmakers were trying to do here. It had the potential to be a compelling, Rear Window-esque story, told entirely from inside a little drone operating center somewhere in Nevada with a real-time window into a world on the other side of the planet. Given the setting, the premise is predictable but compelling: two drone pilots (Eloise Mumford and Matt O’Leary) are monitoring the home of a high-priority terrorist operative. People start showing up at the house and the action begins as they try to decipher who is there, what their intentions are, and where the bad guy is. As they sift through possible explanations and try to make the best judgment possible, they confront the moral-quandary side of the coin. Just how sure are they that this is their man, that he’s a threat, and that taking him out is justifies killing his family in the process? Human lives hang in the balance, drama runs high.

  • How the Skunk Riot Control Copter could usher in a brave new South Africa

  • Ground the drones: Obama’s secret strikes could put the United States on a path to perpetual war

  • US drones risk continual war, says report

  • Former National Security Officials Criticize Obama’s Drone Policy

    The new report, issued through the nonpartisan Stimson Center, a think tank specializing in global security, concludes that U.S. drone policy, however well-intentioned, creates potentially troubling precedents in the areas of strategy, international law and human rights. Other states could follow the U.S.’s lead by adopting U.S. arguments for drone use and engage in their own targeted strikes, the task force said.

  • Killer drone report downplays “PlayStation mentality” of pilots

    Drone attacks are not turning “killing into a video game,” study says.

  • ‘Rogue drone’ report blames range, glitch for November crash

    A new report faults a control glitch and the drone’s operators for an unusual November mishap where the telemetry target crashed into the cruiser Chancellorsville during at-sea testing, sidelining the ship for months and causing millions in damages.

  • A Boy and His Dog

    Din’s parents were both killed in a drone strike approximately two years ago—shortly after he adopted Moti as his pet. “We [siblings] were sleeping in a different room when we heard an explosion in our house,” he said. “When we looked, it [drone] had killed both my parents.” Din, who has three younger brothers, said his father had been a vegetable vendor when he was killed. “We moved in with our uncle and his family after that,” he added.

  • US Now Flying Weaponized Drones over Baghdad

  • Support for Maliki Slips Within His Own Party as Armed U.S. Drones Start Flights

  • Kerry Goes to Egypt to Support Murderous Dictator Sisi: 5 U.S.-Funded Nations That Torture, Execute and Jail With Impunity

    The United States has long funded governments that systematically abuse human rights. Over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry showed how that is still true when he visited Egypt and pledged American support for a regime that came to power in a coup.

  • Kerry: Syrian opposition ‘very important’ in settling Iraq unrest

  • Kerry, Personification of Team Obama

    On June 22 he meets with Sisi, who overthrew Morsi in a military coup, and in his short term thus far as Egyptian president has murdered and imprisoned large numbers of the Muslim Brotherhood, cracked down heavily on liberal and dissenting demonstrations, and the day after Kerry’s departure jailed three reporters from the Al Jazerra network for alleged subversion. Morsi remains in jail. This is a suitable background for the renewal of military aid to the government and the whitewashing/legitimation of its actions. We find Kerry, from Swift Boat fame to toadying to military dictatorships, Obama indulgently looking on—no, authorizing, as is his wont and prerogative in the case of drone assassinations, support for repression. Here the New York Times, in a surprisingly balanced statement, offers context for the visit, in David Kirkpatrick and Michael Gordon’s article, “Kerry Says U.S. Is Ready to Renew Ties With Egypt,” (June 22), which begins, Kerry “signaled Sunday that the Obama administration was ready to repair relations with Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former general who led last year’s military takeover.” Given The Times’s sympathies in the matter, be thankful for the last clause.

  • Tensions Continue to Simmer as Attacks in Gaza Escalate

    Two Palestinian men suspected of being militants were killed in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza on Friday, according to the military and witnesses, and Israel’s minister of defense warned that he would not tolerate rocket fire from Gaza against Israel or any other attempt to harm Israeli civilians and soldiers.

  • Two Palestinians killed, two injured in Israeli drone raid on Gaza

    In new wave of Israeli escalation against Gaza Strip, an Israeli air strike targeting a car in Gaza City on Friday, killed two Palestinians and wounded two others, Palestinian medical and security sources said.

    [...]

    The spokesman for the Israeli army for his part said in a statement that “Militants like Hassumi and Fasih, attacking Israel from Gaza, are not safe, do not have immunity, and will not be free to plan, plot and operate. We will continue to strike the instigators and agitators with patience, determination and precision. Gaza rocket terrorism does not pay.”

  • Heinrich, other Senators send letter to Holder on drones

    While the three are Democrats, they have been critical of the Obama administration on a number of issues related to intelligence, including the bulk collection of data by the NSA and more openness on drone attacks.

  • Al-Qaeda Propaganda Video Undermines Obama Drone Strike Memo

    On the day Awlaki was killed in the strike, President Obama referred to him as “the leader of external operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” claiming that it was Awlaki who was responsible for a failed underwear bomb attack on an airliner while it was flying over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

  • OPINION: US Drone Attack on New Zealander was ‘Extra-Judicial Killing’

    David Small, a lecturer at Canterbury University in New Zealand, said the killing of his countryman, Muslim bin John, who used the alias Abu-Suhaib al-Australi, by a US predator drone in Hadramout in November 2013 was not lawful.

  • No, North Korea Did NOT Threaten War Over Seth Rogan Movie

    Media reports claiming the DPRK threatened war over a Seth Rogan and James Franco movie are flat out wrong.

  • Hey Look! It’s John McCain And His “Terrorist” Friends

    TODAY’S “FREEDOM FIGHTER” IS TOMORROW’S “RADICAL JIHADIST”

    One of the occupational hazards of being a hypocritical warmonger slavishly serving the needs of the American military-industrial complex is you have to surrender pretty much every shred of credibility you ever had …

  • Syrian fighters can play role in Iraq: Kerry

  • Will the US go to war in Iraq again?

    The question is a good deal more complicated and involves answers to future questions that we might not know the answer. In the 1980s, Osama bin Laden rose to power partly because of the vacuum of power left by the U.S. in Afghanistan and the CIA who supported young jihadists, who included bin Laden, to fight the Soviets. Who is to say a similar event could not happen in Iraq?

  • Obama Seeks $500m To Support Syria’s

    President Barack Obama is seeking $500m from US lawmakers to train and equip “vetted” Syrian rebels, the White House says.

  • White House Requests Funds to Help Train Syrian Rebels

  • Obama Seeks $500 Million to Aid Syrian Opposition

  • $60 billion For War: Obama Requests Money From Congress To Arm And Train Syrian Opposition, Fight ISIS

    With the threat of Sunni extremists associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) taking over more land in the Middle East, President Obama requested $500 million from Congress Thursday to train and arm the moderate opposition in Syria. The request was part of the 2015 war-funding request, which totaled nearly $60 billion.

  • Former CIA Agent: U.S. Should Not Take Sides in Iraq

  • Obama Proposes $500 Million to Aid Syrian Rebels

  • Obama Requests $500M to Train, Equip Syrian Rebels

  • Kerry: Syrian militants can help us in Iraq

  • Syrian rebels retreat from al-Qaida group

    The U.S. hopes to use $500 million to train and arm ‘moderate’ factions of rebels, but some say it is too late.The U.S. hopes to use $500 million to train and arm ‘moderate’ factions of rebels, but some say it is too late.

  • All this talk of Syrian moderates is a bit extreme

    Enough to supply them with weapons and training worth $500 million. The US Congress wants to arm these brave freedom fighters, you see.

  • Stop the Next Iraq War Before It Starts

    Events are moving rapidly in Iraq. Before the Obama administration gets involved any further, Congress and the public should be consulted. Nearly three-quarters of Americans think the last Iraq war was a mistake. Let’s not repeat it by sliding into a new military intervention in Iraq under the guise of sending advisers.

  • Obama seeks $500M to train Syria rebels

  • President Obama Has Finally Learned the Limits of American Military Power

    But I don’t think Obama believes that anymore, and I think he’s far more willing to stand up to establishment pressure these days. This is why I’m not too worried about the 300 advisors he’s sent to Iraq. A few years ago, this might very well have been the start of a Vietnam-like slippery slope into a serious recommitment of forces. Today, I doubt it. Obama will provide some limited support, but he simply won’t be badgered into doing more. Deep in his heart, he now understands that Iraq’s problem is fundamentally political. Until there’s some chance of forging a genuine political consensus, American troops just can’t accomplish much.

  • “After America Comes North America,” Gen. Petraeus Boasts

    Former general and CIA chief David Petraeus (shown), a key figure in the globalist Council on Foreign Relations and the shadowy Bilderberg network, boasted at a recent conference that the United States of America is set to be merged into the continental regime being erected under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Speaking at the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty last week in London, the ex-commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq essentially celebrated the end of U.S. independence — and by extension, the demise of the Constitution.

  • Iraq’s Thirty Years War, And Counting

    Today’s Iraq is divided in three parts: Kurdistan, in the northeast, an autonomous and mostly peaceful haven; from Baghdad southwards, the country of Shia Muslims; in the west and northwestern parts, that of the Sunni Arabs. As the French political specialist Pierre-Jean Luizard says of the state created by the British from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire in 1921, it was “built against its society,” 55% Shia, 25% Kurdish and 16% Sunni.

  • US to aid both sides in Sunni-Shia war

    I bet that headline stopped you short. It’s not exactly true – yet. But with the announcement by the president yesterday that he is seeking $500 million for “vetted” Sunni rebels in Syria, the US risks becoming the Shia air force in Iraq and a major patron of Sunni militias in Syria.

  • Kerry: Syrian rebels can play role in helping Iraq

  • Obama Seeks $500 Million to Train ‘Appropriately Vetted’ Syrian Rebels

  • Kerry arrives in Saudi to discuss Syria, Iraq

    In what would be the biggest boost yet by US President Barack Obama’s administration to the rebels in the three-year conflict, the White House has asked US lawmakers to release $500 million to train and equip the moderate opposition led by Jarba. The assistance would go to what the White House has called “appropriately vetted” members of the Syrian opposition. Although the US has provided some $2 billion in humanitarian aid, Obama has so far shied clear of providing heavy weapons, fearful they could fall into the hands of jihadists on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border. Jarba visited Washington in May to plead for arms, especially anti-aircraft missiles, to help the rebels defend themselves from air strikes and barrel bombs being unleashed by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. While US officials normally refuse to comment on details of training for opposition groups, National Security Adviser Susan Rice acknowledged early this month that the Pentagon was providing “lethal and non-lethal support” to Syrian rebels. About $287 million in mainly non-lethal support has been cleared for the rebels since March 2011, and the CIA has participated in a secret military training programme in neighbouring Jordan for the moderate opposition.

  • CIA Let Iraq Spy Network Degrade After Occupation Ended

    Officials familiar with the situation are faulting the CIA’s lack of intelligence on Iraq in the lead-up to the ISIS offensive, saying the agency let most of its huge spy network rot on the vine after the occupation ended.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • WATCH: On Fox News, Climate Change Is Still Up For Debate

• Finance

  • Globalization is, finally, working in Michigan’s best interest (guest column)

    In the first quarter of this year, General Motors sold significantly more cars in China than it did in North America. And high time, too, if we are to believe a report by the global consulting firm McKinsey. It notes that the flows of goods, services and finance across international borders has increased by some 50% since 1990, and now accounts for more than a third of global GDP. The report predicts that such international transactions could double or triple by 2025.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • World Cup fever really has hit America – Ann Coulter thinks football is socialist

    Team USA may be through to the last 16, but for some, the suspiciously popular game with the round ball is leftie nonsense

• Censorship

  • Reporter’s Case Poses Dilemma for Justice Dept.

    On Dec. 31, 2005, the C.I.A.’s acting general counsel, John A. Rizzo, received an urgent phone call from the White House about a chapter in James Risen’s coming book, “State of War,” detailing a botched C.I.A. operation in Iran.

    The administration wanted Mr. Rizzo to contact Sumner Redstone — the chairman of Viacom, owner of the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster — and ask him to keep the book off the market.

  • Hong Kong pro-democracy referendum hit by CIA rumors

    Supporters of a pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, known as Occupy Central with Love and Peace, may be unwittingly revealing their personal information to the CIA, reports the local Wen Wei Po

• Privacy

  • Chicago to host high-tech lamp posts to keep track of people

    The streets of Chicago will soon host high-tech lamp posts to track where people are walking. As part of a program called Array of Things, the city will begin collecting data through automated sensors installed on light poles this summer.

  • NSA Protest Blimp Flown Over Headquarters In Utah

  • What Activists Did Near the NSA’s Massive Data Center in Utah to Demand an ‘End to Mass Spying’

  • EFF and Greenpeace protest NSA with 135-foot blimp

  • ‘Illegal Spying Below’: Blimp Flies over NSA Data Center to Protest Surveillance

  • ‘Illegal Spying Below’: blimp flies over NSA data centre in surveillance protest

  • Anti-surveillance protesters fly internet freedom blimp over NSA facility in Utah

    Standagainstspying.org, a coalition that includes The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and other groups, flew a 135-foot thermal airship over the million-square-foot NSA facility in Bluffdale, Utah today.

  • VIDEO: Blimp flies over NSA’s Utah Data Center to protest ‘illegal mass surveillance program’

  • Protesters Just Sent the NSA This Massive Message About Illegal Spying

  • Letter Boehner’s hypocrisy

    These examples demonstrate the higher one’s elective or appointive position, the more immune one is to lawbreaking. Speaker Boehner’s track record of blindness about “ faithfully executing the laws of our country” is evidence his motive for the lawsuit is not what he says.

  • Is this the beginning of the end of the age of legal government spying?

    The US supreme court’s unanimous 9-0 opinion this week requiring police to get a warrant before searching your cellphone is arguably the most important legal privacy decision of the digital age. Its immediate impact will be felt by the more than 12m people who are arrested in America each year (many for minor, innocuous crimes), but the surprisingly tech-savvy opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts may eventually lead to far more protection than that.

  • “Snowden Street” and other names people in China want to give the road outside the US embassy

    Internet users in China are rallying to retaliate against the United States Congress, which is threatening to rename part of the street in front of the Chinese embassy after the political dissident Liu Xiaobo. The most common Chinese counter-suggestion is to name the street where the US embassy in Beijing is located after the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, but there are many more.

  • German government cancels Verizon Communications Inc deal in wake of NSA spy scandal

  • German Official: U.S. Spying ‘Biggest Strain’ in Relations Since Iraq War

    As U.S. and German officials meet this week to discuss privacy and security in the cyber realm, a German official is calling recent revelations of NSA spying on his country the “biggest strain in bilateral relations with the U.S.” since the controversy surrounding the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

  • Steinmeier urges clearer regulations in NSA-inspired US-German ‘cyber dialogue’

  • Germany cools towards US and UK

  • Merkel gets NSA-proof cellphone

  • Verizon gets da boot from Germany thanks to NSA activities

  • Merkel reportedly gets NSA-proof phone with chip costing 2.5k euros

  • Germany Mulls Axing Foreign Tech

  • Germany Fires Verizon Over NSA Spying

  • Germany Gives Verizon The Boot Over NSA Spying Scandal

  • U.S. releases foreign-surveillance data

    The release of the “transparency report,” issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, follows an order a year ago from President Barack Obama to declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive surveillance programs.

  • Feds release NSA’s first ever transparency report on domestic spying

    The word “targets” has multiple meanings, according to the document. The reports identifies targets thus: “For example, “target” could be an individual person, a group, or an organization composed of multiple individuals or a foreign power that possesses or is likely to communicate foreign intelligence information that the U.S. government is authorized to acquire by the above-referenced laws.”

  • Too Late To ‘Pologize For NSA Revenge Porn Leak

    Schindler might be advised to keep his dick in his pants, but he should keep his apology between him and his wife. Because his enemies—and his online mistress—don’t deserve one.

  • Revenge porn hits two high profile boyfriends where it hurts

    Kuhn was chief of staff to Ohio GOP Rep. Steve Stivers, at least until a former porn actress – who describes herself as a “Pornstar Pundit and debate lover” – posted an explicit photo of him online.

  • Snowden, Meet Godwin: British Ambassador Says Leaks Would Have Helped Hitler

    Westmacott’s comments follow a long line of detractors, who have claimed Snowden’s leaks have turned the US (and other Five Eyes partners) into terrorists’ playgrounds, when not trawling through history in an attempt to compare leaks spread worldwide by journalists to the selling of sensitive documents to unfriendly nations. That’s when they’re not suggesting Snowden’s residence in Russia will inevitably turn him into an alcoholic.

  • Gov Oversight Board Will Weigh In On The Legality Of PRISM

    On July 2nd, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) will release a report on the government’s use of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to execute surveillance. The NSA’s PRISM program, for example, is legally grounded in Section 702.

  • The NSA’s 2013 transparency report is more opaque

    Moreover, numbers are given for business records requests; instance where business records were specifically requested by the US government. While only numbering in the hundreds (178), the word “target” is used once again, which the US defines in an extremely loose way. As such, once more, it’s unclear exactly how many US citizens were affected and how.

  • L.A. Fights Back Against Cops and NSA Spying on the Innocent

    We already know that the Los Angeles Police Department, the Sheriff, and police departments including Long Beach’s use rooftop vehicle-mounted cameras that have collected millions of photos of the license plates and precise locations of innocent SoCal drivers. That info sits in a databank that law enforcement can use to track your car’s movements over a period of years.

  • NSA Transparency Report Offers More Questions Than Answers

    The NSA isn’t disclosing in its transparency report how much metadata it is actually collecting.

  • Surprise! NSA’s first ever ‘transparency’ ‘report’ is anything but

    The US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has published the NSA’s first “transparency report”, revealing the number of “targets” spied on by the agency.

    Its definition of the word transparency, however, makes the data somewhat hard to fathom.

    “Within the Intelligence Community, the term ‘target’ has multiple meanings,” the report [PDF], published today, notes.

    “For example, ‘target’ could be an individual person, a group, or an organization composed of multiple individuals or a foreign power that possesses or is likely to communicate foreign intelligence information that the U.S. government is authorized to acquire by the above-referenced laws.”

  • A New Cybersecurity Bill Could Give the NSA Even More Data

    Privacy groups are sounding the alarm that a new Senate cybersecurity bill could give the National Security Agency access to even more personal information of Americans.

  • Facebook facing contempt of court charges?

  • PRISM, Local Edition: NY DA Employs 381 Secret Orders to Gather Complete Digital Dossiers from Facebook

  • Facebook lifts the lid on its battle against New York court’s ‘unprecedented’ user data request

  • US government is still demanding Facebook bulk user data, despite PRISM outcry

  • Facebook reveals gag-order over hundreds of user requests by US government

  • Spy row as agency steps up Facebook checks

    Opposition politicians on Friday demanded government clarification of reports German secret services spied for the NSA. It came as intelligence chiefs confirmed closer surveillance of social network users.

  • Groups fear bill would allow free flow of data between private sector and NSA

    A draft U.S. Senate bill aimed at making it easier for organizations to share cyberthreat information poses serious threats to personal privacy, several rights groups said in a letter to Congress on Thursday.

  • NSA Denies Snowden Ever Emailed Superiors Over Concerns

    The National Security Agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request repeated its assertion this week that former contractor Edward Snowden never raised any legal or ethical concerns to agency superiors before leaking classified intelligence documents last year.

  • NSA data collection in Bahamas fails to make a splash – IT security expert

    One month after Snowden revelations alleging NSA phone call surveillance, the US government has given generic replies and the story has had little impact.

  • Secret message app Wickr moves to Wall Street

  • Not So Fast on the Use of Google Glass in Britain

    For tech-savvy Britons, the debut in this country of Google’s Glass headset on Monday was greeted with much fanfare.

    Yet less than a week since the release, the device has run into potential trouble with Britain’s tough data protection rules.

  • Google Glass runs into data protection issues in the UK

  • NSA-proof messaging app Wickr gains £17m in funding

    A free app that promises to help you send surveillance-proof, self-destructing, encrypted messages has just secured $30m (£17m) in funding.

  • Greenwald: NSA is attack on our dissent

    “Good people don’t hide; bad people have to hide because they are planning evil things like trying to bomb this auditorium,” said Glenn Greenwald during a presentation at Carnegie Hall in New York City earlier this week.

    He explained that he took that line from former CIA director Michael Hayden, who kept on repeating that warning during a debate in Toronto a couple months ago.” In that debate, Greenwald took on two grumpy old men, one who looked like Eric Forman’s father from That ‘70s Show and the other who claimed to be a liberal democrat who believes that we can have enough surveillance that is consistent with liberty. Needless to say, Greenwald destroyed them both with his secret weapon: the NSA’s own files, which he received from Edward Snowden in what has become one of the greatest government leaks in history.

  • Naming NSA Victims? Greenwald Says Game-Changer “Imminent”

  • FBI Issued More Than 19k National Security Letters in 2013

    The United States federal government issued more than 19,000 National Security Letters–perhaps its most powerful tool for domestic intelligence collection–in 2013, and those NSLs contained more than 38,000 individual requests for information.

  • Meet Onionshare, The File-Sharing App The Next Snowden Will Use

    A small software app called Onionshare offers the most secure file sharing available. So why hasn’t anyone heard of it? Well, mostly because it was released with just a tweet from its creator, and you have to go to Github to download it. But don’t let its underground status fool you — this is a very important app.

  • From Ancient Egypt to Modern America: Spying has Always been used to Crush Dissent

    By “libel”, the court is referring to a critique of the British government which the King or his ministers didn’t like … they would label such criticism “libel” and then seize all of the author’s papers.

  • From Ancient Egypt to Modern America, Spying Has Always Been Used to Crush Dissent

  • Cloud surveillance and encryption lessons from Edward Snowden

    It has been a year since NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden began dominating the headlines around the world after he leaked information on the vast amount of programmes of electronic surveillance conducted by the US government, the UK and other nations.

  • NSA & recent Supreme Court ruling a good opportunity to build coalition with the left

    Former US presidential candidate and Congressman Ron Paul called on Libertarians to “work with the left” on certain issues, saying that the NSA issue and recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of privacy are two excellent examples. Ron Paul, however, disagreed with a key tenet of a Supreme Court Justice’s opinion on “sacrifice of anything” to protect constitutional liberties.

  • Alan Grayson Accuses Former NSA Chief Of Disclosing Classified Information ‘For Profit’

    Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) doesn’t trust that former NSA director Keith Alexander is reportedly being paid $600,000 a month by the largest banking trade groups in the country merely for his advice on cyber security issues.

  • White House struggles with honesty

    This administration will be remembered for redefining terms like “open” and “transparency.”

• Civil Rights

  • Military Judge Upholds Order to Release Details on Secret CIA Prisons

    A U.S. military judge has upheld a ruling ordering the Obama administration to release tightly held secrets about the CIA’s covert prisons overseas. The government had appealed an April ruling ordering the CIA to release details about its treatment of USS Cole bombing suspect Abd al-Nashiri, including the names of personnel at the so-called “black sites” where he says he was tortured. But in a newly disclosed ruling, Judge James Pohl upheld his original decision calling for the information to be released to defense attorneys. The Obama administration could now decide to bring the case before a military appeals court rather than comply.

  • UN rights officials call for end to torture

    Senior UN officials urged [press release] the international community on Thursday to end the practice of torture in celebration of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture [official website]. “As we honour the victims on this International Day, let us pledge to strengthen our efforts to eradicate this heinous practice,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official website].

  • Guantánamo Bay: a report from the inside

  • Google to sell humanoid robot soon

    A Google-owned robotics company is withdrawing an award-winning rescue robot from a military competition to concentrate on getting it ready for sale.

  • Racism in Politics Too Often Goes Unreported

    Evidence that racism is thriving in the US arrives on a regular basis. There are the ongoing stories of institutional racism that media often fail to frame as being about racism are there: underfunded schools, drug wars, sentencing differentials, stop and frisk, lending disparities–the list goes on and on.

  • In defense of Bolivian President Evo Morales

    In what has been billed as an anti-colonial protest, the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales has changed the direction of the clock hands on the Congress building in La Paz. It will now go widdershins.

  • It’s now illegal in some places to be an annoying person (The Funny Side)

    There are now 5,000 laws on annoying behavior in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported.

  • Elbit: Exporting Oppression from Palestine to Latin America

    Surveillance. It’s in the headlines and on the tips of tongues. As technology offers new possibilities for connection, it also offers new means to keep tabs on people. Surveillance has become seemingly ubiquitous, from the NSA reading emails to drones in the skies. As a nation that has for 66 years been ruling over an indigenous population by force, one of the main countries practicing surveillance is Israel. And it is the Israeli defense industry that has been reaping the profits off of the oppression and surveillance of the Palestinian people.

  • Shredding the Fourth Amendment in Post-Constitutional America

  • ‘Boy’ blames Swartz’s death on persecution

    Was the programming prodigy, Reddit partner and information activist Aaron Swartz hounded to death by the U.S. government? Did the government’s legal drone attack and threat of a 35-year prison stretch drive Swartz to take his own life at age 26 last year?

    If you see Brian Knappenberger’s provocative and gripping documentary “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz,” you’ll believe it. You’ll also think it’s no wonder NSA bete noir Edward Snowden fled the United States rather than face such legal persecution.

  • “Internet’s Own Boy” pays tribute to hacker who cut his life short

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Houston, We Have A Copyright Problem

      Parker Higgins has a troubling story over at Medium about how he received a bogus copyright takedown on a recording of the famous “Houston, we have a problem” audio snippet from the Apollo 13 mission, which Higgins had uploaded to his Soundcloud page. As Higgins notes, the audio is clearly, without any doubt, in the public domain and free from any and all copyright restrictions — yet it was still taken down. This is particularly stupid on a variety of levels.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Linux is the quiet revolution that will leave Microsoft eating dust

  But the fact is, even if you think you are bound to Windows or some other proprietary operating system, you are probably already a Linux user too. When you visit a website, the chances are that it is using an Apache2 webserver. This is free and designed to integrate with the security and operating system features of Linux. Currently more than 60% of webservers are known to be hosting via Apache.

• Desktop

  • xGNU/Linux Is Not That Other OS, Again…

    I came across a post in a forum challenging GNU/Linux experts to find a file-manager in GNU/Linux that would allow the authour to use GNU/Linux exactly the way he uses that other OS:“1. Search selected network drives / partitions / directories for files by name using wildcards

• Kernel Space

  • Stable kernels 3.15.2, 3.14.9, 3.10.45, and 3.4.95

    Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of four stable kernels: 3.15.2, 3.14.9, 3.10.45, and 3.4.95. As usual, they contain changes throughout the tree and users of those kernel series should upgrade.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel Haswell HD Graphics Benchmarks With Linux 3.16

      While nothing was explicitly stated with regard to 3D performance changes with the numerous Intel DRM improvements for Linux 3.16, I ran some basic OpenGL benchmarks on a Intel Core i7 4790K Devil’s Canyon box with Ubuntu 14.04 to look out for any performance changes when using the latest drm-next code merged into Linux 3.16.

    • X.Org Server 1.15.2 Released

    • Sadly, Two X.Org GSoC Projects Already Failed

      At the X.Org Board of Directors’ meeting yesterday, it was confirmed about two projects already failing. “Unfortunately we had to fail two students, one that disappeared right after the program start and one who failed the mid-term evaluations.” Sadly, this isn’t too uncommon for these student open-source projects funded by Google.

  • Benchmarks

    • Mac OSX 10.10 Yosemite beta vs 10.7.5 vs Ubuntu 14.04 on Macbook Air 2011

      The new OSX will be released this fall but a Mac OSX Yosemite beta is already available online. I don’t care much about the “wow” effect around the new Apple products, so I tested this new Operative System comparing the old OSX Lion 10.7.5 and the current Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS for the stuff I care: the UNIX and the Web performance part, because I fear the upgrade OSX dilemma.

• Applications

  • Meet Xiki, the Revolutionary Command Shell for Linux and Mac OS X

    Command-line lovers, allow me to introduce you to Xiki, the incredibly interactive, flexible, and revolutionary command shell. I do not use the word “revolutionary” lightly. The command shell has not advanced all that much since the ancient days of Unix. Xiki is a giant leap forward. If you’re looking for the Next Big Thing in FOSS, Xiki is it.

  • Download Videos From Youtube and Other Sites Using ClipGrab

  • Calibre 1.42 Is the Best eBook Editing Tool on Linux

    A new version of the Calibre eBook reader, editor, and library management software, has been released and features even more options to edit books.

    Calibre is mostly used as an eBook converter and reader, but it can do a lot of other things as well. One of the latest features added to the application is the ability to edit books, which is something that very few other apps can do.

  • Popcorn Time Review – Watch the Latest Movies and TV Shows for Free

    Popcorn Time is a P2P media player built for one purpose – to allow its users to watch the latest TV shows and Movies directly from torrent sources, without downloading the actual files. It sounds illegal, but the developers say it’s not.

    Most people would say that downloading a movie from a P2P website and watching it without paying anything is illegal, but that is actually debatable and depends from country to country. Whether this is moral has nothing to do with the way the application works, so we won’t dwell on it any longer. It’s your duty, as a user, to decide if you want to employ this application or not.

  • Web Application Development in Linux Environment

  • wendy: Under wendy’s watchful eye

  • wget: And that which wget begot

  • Avidemux Review

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to install Android 5 (L) developer preview on Nexus 5 and Nexus 7

    • How to Install the Android L Beta Now

    • Install Debian packages without starting daemons

    • How to Install the Android L Beta Now

    • Create flowcharts with yEd

    • How To Install MyNotex 1.3.0.1 On Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia And OpenMandriva

    • Install Debian packages without starting daemons

    • Easily Manage / Connect To SSH Hosts With Guake Indicator

    • How to access popular search engines from the command line on Linux

    • Convert Audio / Video Files With Selene Media Encoder

    • Two factor authentication with OTP using privacyIDEA and FreeRADIUS on CentOS

    • Create forms easily with Drupal’s Webform module

  • Games

    • Whatever Happened To Torchlight On Linux UPDATED

      Torchlight came out for Linux in September of 2012 via Humble Indie Bundle 6. It has since been available for Linux users only in the Ubuntu Software Centre which hardly encompasses all Linux users.

    • Mount & Blade: Warband Now In Beta For Linux

    • Day 8 of Steam Summer Sale 2014 Brings Discounts for Three Major Linux Games

    • SteamOS: interviews and review

      After years of rumours, months of teasing and weeks of waiting, SteamOS is finally here. The beta release of the gaming distro signalled the start of Valve’s tentative entry into the hardware market. The same day as the release, the first wave of Valve’s own Steam Machines went out. These beta units, while never truly meant to grace store shelves, are the first examples of many more third-party offerings to come. This massive step from Valve is making waves around the tech and games world, so we decided to talk to a few of the people that could help us truly understand the position Valve is in, and what their next move might be.

    • Unreal Tournament Is Coming Along, New Video Update

      The developers of Unreal Tournament have another update in store for us and it sounds like it’s all coming together very nicely. If you have been living under a rock the new one is confirmed for Linux.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • UT Update and the Futures of Fedora and KDE

    • Randa Meetings Interview Three: Vedant Agrawal

      Thanks again for your further support of the Randa Meetings fundraising. We have now reached almost 40% of the our goal and there is still time to go. Please help even more and spread the word. If we reach our goal we can have an even more stable Kdenlive, more applications ported to KDE Frameworks 5, further progress on Phonon, a look at Amarok 3, even better KDE educational applications, a finished port of GCompris to Qt and KDE technologies, an updated KDE Book, more work on Gluon and a new and amazing KDE SDK!

    • Where are my systray icons?

      One of the features no longer available in the upcoming Plasma 5 release is the xembed based system tray (for explanation see my previous blog post). This can result in some applications missing a system tray icon, but it shouldn’t happen. There are patches around for various toolkits which will turn the xembed icon into a status notifier item. Our KDE packagers were informed back in March about the upcoming change and which patches should be applied to which components.

    • Kubuntu 14.10 Alpha 1 (Utopic Unicorn) Is Out, Users Can Test the Plasma 5 Desktop

      Kubuntu14.10 Alpha 1 (Utopic Unicorn) is based on KDE 4.13.2, but the developers are tracking the upcoming KDE Frameworks 5, which is now in the works. It’s been a long time since a Kubuntu development version didn’t integrate an unstable version of KDE, but it looks like users will still be able to test what the makers of this distro are preparing.

      “Plasma 1 is our recommended stable offering and what you get from the default download, but is now in maintenance mode. It runs the software you are familiar with and will be getting updates and bugfixes but not new features from now on.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME 3.13.3

      I’ve done the release team duty for the GNOME 3.13.3 release this week. As I often do, I took some screenshots of new things that I’ve noticed while smoketesting.

      There is quite a bit of good new stuff in this release, starting with an rewritten and improved Adwaita theme that is now part of GTK+.

    • The GNOME 3.13.3 Changes Are Exciting

    • In praise of Jim Hall | As far as I know

      Fast forward to the present day, and Jim has conducted a set of user tests on GNOME 3.10 and 3.12, which he has analysed and presented to Jakub and me. I have started filing bugs so we can fix the usability issues he discovered. More bug reports are on their way, and we’re pushing to use Jim’s testing data to increase GNOME’s usability for the next release. (Check out the bugs if you’re interested in helping out with this!)

    • The GNOME Shell Challenge

      The mission: use GNOME Shell as the primary desktop for an entire week. Do I choose to accept it? Yes. It’s easy enough to try something for a short time and discard it in a negative manner, which has been the case for me with GNOME Shell in the past, but perhaps it can be fun to challenge yourself to try something properly and for a longer time. Or perhaps you’re a masochist! Either way, feel free to join me…

• Distributions

  • Is Antergos Arch Linux Really Faster Than Ubuntu, Fedora?

    Frequently within the Phoronix Forums it is requested to do benchmarks with Arch Linux since its users tend to be adamant that it’s the fastest Linux distribution. In the past I’ve run benchmarks of the Arch-based Manjaro to look for speed differences as an easy and quick to deploy variant. Today the latest Arch Linux variant I am benchmarking is Antegros Linux.

  • New Releases

    • SparkyLinux 3.4 MATE, Xfce & Base is out

      SparkyLinux 3.4 “Annagerman” MATE, Xfce and Base (Openbox) is out.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Preview: Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 In Amazon’s EC2 Cloud

      For those in need of a quick and easy place to experiment and trial Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0, which was released as stable earlier this month, it’s easy to do so within Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. It’s running well using a Xen HVM instance and so I have run some preliminary benchmarks against SUSE Enterprise and Ubuntu Linux.

    • The curious case of why Red Hat won’t certify on HP’s OpenStack distro

      HP has the ability to run Red Hat’s distribution on its Helion OpenStack platform and welcomes a certification for it. So, why won’t Red Hat certify it on HP? At HP Discover 2014 in Las Vegas earlier this month, Saar Gillai, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for HP Cloud, joined John Furrier and Dave Vellante on theCUBE and talked about his bewilderment of why Red Hat won’t certify on HP’s platform.

    • Red Hat’s OpenStack strategy progresses with eNovance buy

      Red Hat has made a series of moves in recent months to make headway in the cloud as it once again seeks to successfully productize an open source platform.

      Red Hat Inc. has agreed to acquire Paris-based OpenStack cloud integrator eNovance. The new acquisition will help customers architect a cloud strategy, as well as set up, deploy and manage private clouds, according to the Raleigh, North Carolina-based company.

    • Fedora

      • Tools for diagramming in Fedora

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) alpha-1 released!

          The first alpha of the Utopic Unicorn (to become 14.10) has now been released!

          This alpha features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin and the Ubuntu Cloud images.

        • Ubuntu 14.10 “Utopic Unicorn” Alpha 1 Released

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Alpha 1 Flavors Officially Released

          Unlike the previous development branch for Ubuntu 14.04, fewer developers chose to participate in the first Alpha release of 14.10. This is not something to worry about and it’s likely that the second Alpha will have more exposure.

          Canonical stopped releasing Alpha versions for its operating system for some time now, and only a few of the flavors have decided to keep doing this kind of releases. Ubuntu 14.10 will only get a Beta version right before launch so, until then, users can only expect the flavors to have intermediary builds.

        • Canonical Supporting IBM POWER8 for Ubuntu Cloud, Big Data

          If Ubuntu Linux is to prove truly competitive in the OpenStack cloud and Big Data worlds, it needs to run on more than x86 hardware. And that’s what Canonical achieved this month, with the announcement of full support for IBM POWER8 machines on Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu Server.

        • Ubuntu’s Ties to OpenStack Bring it to IBM’s Servers and Beyond

          POWER8 is IBM’s platform for wooing enterprise users interested in Big Data and fast performance. In early June, Canonical announced the official general availability of Power8 servers running Ubuntu.

        • Linux Format 186 – Fix Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Alpha 1 released

          The next version of Ubuntu is due out in October, but you can take an early build of the open source operating system for a test drive at any time by grabbing the latest nightly.

          Or you can try the first Alpha release of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. While there’s not an official Alpha build of the main branch of Ubuntu with the Unity desktop, there are builds for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, and Ubuntu Cloud, which are all variations of Ubuntu with custom desktop environments and other features.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 17 Xfce released

          • Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Xfce released!

          • Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Xfce Final Version Is Out – Screenshot Tour

            With the release of Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Xfce, the collection of Mint flavors is now complete. Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, and Xfce are the main versions, but the developers have been dabbling for some time in a Mint release based on Debian. We’ll have to wait a little more until those experimental OSes make their entrance in this branch.

            Just like all the other releases in the new 17 “Qiana” series, the Xfce flavor is also based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, a distribution that will be supported until 2019. This extended support period will also be adopted by Linux Mint developers and the next three editions of this distro will use the same base, 14.04 LTS

          • Ubuntu MATE Remix Is Making Good Progress, Now Runs in Virtualbox

            Ubuntu has quite a few flavors under its belt, but there are still a few ones missing, like MATE for example. A few developers, including one from Canonical, are working to make Ubuntu MATE Remix a reality and so far they have done a great job.

            MATE is a desktop environment aimed at users who really enjoyed the old GNOME 2, but who also want something different from what everyone else is doing. Most of the major desktop environments are going through big changes, like GNOME and KDE, but the MATE developers are working to keep things the way they were.

          • Cinnamon Desktop Now Available For Ubuntu 14.04 via PPA

          • Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Xfce Final Version Released!

          • Mint 17 Xfce

          • Linux Mint 17 Xfce quick screenshot tour

            Linux Mint 17 Xfce was released today. Let’s look at what it offer to the user. This is not going to be a full-blown review, rather a quick screenshot tour in the Live session.

          • Linux Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ Xfce is here — breathe new life into an older PC

            Linux is great for a litany of reasons, but one of the most important is refurbishing. You see, an operating system based on the open-source kernel can breathe new life into an older computer, and effectively turn it into a new machine. This is because the operating systems are typically less system intensive than Windows.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Smartwatch Battle: Pebble Steel vs. Galaxy Gear 2

    Before Google comes in with its own smartwatches, consumers have two mainstream devices to choose from. On one hand, there is the Galaxy Gear 2, coming from a reputed brand like Samsung and there’s Pebble Steel by Pebble Technology Corporation that gained popularity after a successful Kickstarter funding campaign for their first watch.

    When we consider the turf of wearable devices, there’s nothing much to boast of, except, of course, Google Glass. Apart from Pebble and Gear, the tech industry is impatiently waiting for the Motorola smartwatch, which will be made in collaboration with Google. The wait, however, doesn’t have to be this hard. If you are someone who wants to get their hands on a smartwatch right now, both the Pebble and the Gear 2 are excellent choices. Both have their own merits, and also their own demerits. But then, which to choose between the two? Well, that’s why we are here. In this article, we’ll be doing a quick comparison between the Pebble Steel smartwatch and the Galaxy Gear 2. Let’s see who wins.

  • Rugged, shape-shifting handheld runs Android

    Motorola Solutions unveiled a rugged, enterprise handheld that runs Android 4.1, 1D or 2D scanning, and offers a choice of brick, gun, or turret styles.

    When Motorola split into Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions back in 2011, Motorola Mobility was supposed to be the Android company and Motorola Solutions the Windows company. Yet, the latter, which produces a range of enterprise solutions including 4G wireless equipment, has done quite well with its Android-ready enterprise handhelds.

  • Raspberry Pi motion controller

  • Yocto part IV – going on a diet

  • Raspberry Pi becomes an industrial web server

    A Polish start-up company is claiming to have created the first industrial computer based on the new Raspberry Pi Compute Module.

    Techbase, said the device which it has dubbed ModBerry is designed to be used in automation and installation markets providing multi-level user access cloud management.

  • Phones

    • Flashing Tizen Common on to the Intel NUC

      Exciting times are ahead of application and platform developers with the release of Tizen Common as it has the ability to run on the Intel NUC DE3815TYKHE, which was one of the giveaways at the Tizen Developer Conference (as well as the Samsung Gear 2)

    • Android

      • Google I/O 2014 keynote shows why Android should replace Chrome OS on Chromebooks

        The keynote of Google I/O was only and only about one thing – Android. This Linux-based operating system has become the center of Google’s universe. From cars to smartwatches, it was only about Android. That makes one wonder where was the other Linux-based platform, Chrome OS, Google has been developing for a while!

        Chrome was not absent, Google did talk about Chrome OS at the event, but it was more about Android than the Chrome OS. You can see Sundar Pichai talking about Chromebook at the event, but was more about Android than Chrome OS.

      • Android apps are coming to Chromebooks

      • Android apps are coming to Chromebooks, but there’s a catch

        Google’s Sundar Pichai had a lot to share on stage the Google I/O 2014 keynote on Wednesday. Between Pichai and another half-dozen Googlers, the keynote ran for about 2.5 hours, bombarding attendees with information on new features for Android, Chrome and other initiatives. So it makes sense that some things only got a few minutes of attention, and one of items that was actually the most interesting came when Pichai said Android apps are coming Google’s Chrome OS.

      • Google will NOT discontinue its Nexus devices

        There have been rumours doing rounds suggesting the end of Google’s Nexus line of Android devices. Well, here’s some piece of ‘real’ news for those who are worried about this. Google will be launching a new Nexus device along with the release of its Android L by the end of this year.

        It is also a fact that Google is reforming the way it will be rolling out high-end Android devices. Reportedly, the search giant is progressing on a new program dubbed Android Silver, as part of which, Google will be paying big manufacturers such as Samsung, LG and Motorola to make Android smartphones according to the specifications it offers. They will then be sold via cellular carriers like AT&T and Verizon. This is expected to materialise by next year.

      • Google Gives Developers Early Access to Android L

        Android developers are getting their first look at the future with the new Android L Developer Preview edition of the mobile device operating system, which was unveiled by Google on June 25 at the Google I/O 2014 developers conference. The early preview version provides developers and users with glimpses of the evolution of Android as it approaches its seventh birthday in September 2014. Android L marks the first time that Google has ever provided early access to a development version of the OS to device and application developers, according to a June 25 post by Jamal Eason, an Android product manager, on the Android Developers Blog. The preview version, which is available for use as of today, will allow developers to explore many of the new features and capabilities of the next version of Android while providing tools to allow development and testing on the new platform, wrote Eason.

      • Android ‘L’ Keyboard, Wallpapers and Fonts available to download

Free Software/Open Source

• Teradata Lifts the Limitations on Open Source R Analytics

• SaaS/Big Data

  • OwnCloud 7 beta released

  • ownCloud 7 Aims to Advance Open-Source Cloud File Sharing

  • ownCloud 7 beta makes it easier for businesses to deploy cloud

  • Mirantis Invests in OpenStack Market in Western Europe

  • NuCivic launches ‘truly’ open SaaS, open data platform

  • From incubation to integration in OpenStack

    In a large open source project made up of lots of interacting pieces developed by different teams, how do you decide what officially becomes a part of the core release and what stays outside? In OpenStack, a formal process of incubation helps prepare fledgling projects for integration into the main code body as they develop and mature.

  • Open source is the fastest way to innovate big data

    This market is moving so quickly in terms of what’s happening. And if you wind back Hadoop, it started as a way of having a scale-out architecture. It allowed you to take your storage out onto the web. And around 2011, the team at Yahoo! Decided that Hadoop was a great technology and realised that it had potential far outside the four walls of Yahoo!

    So they decided to take it out to be a general data processing platform, and they founded Hortonworks. We take Apache Hadoop, which is an open source data architecture, and to turn it into an enterprise-class data platform, completely in the open.

• Databases

  • SymmetricDS 3.6.1 Is a Complete Application for Multi-Master Database Replication

  • Google Releases Cayley Open-Source Graph Database

    Google has been using, improving and boosting its Knowledge Graph search services for several years to show users how information can be linked together in graphics form to help find desired results. Now it is again pushing forward in the graph database world through the open-source release of Cayley, which will be used in the continuing development of graph databases.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Oracle Linux 7.0 RC Uses XFS Filesystem and Has UEFI Support

    It’s been a couple of months since the latest development release for Oracle Linux, but the developers have had enough time to prepare the distro for the final release, although a precise date hasn’t been put forward.

    “It’s an exciting day for the Oracle Linux team because the Oracle Linux 7 release candidate is now available for download from Oracle Technology Network! Head on over to the OTN Oracle Linux downloads page and have a look at the Oracle Linux Beta Programs section to get it right now,” said the developers in the official announcement.

  • Oracle Linux 7 RC Released – Another RHEL 7 Clone

    Oracle is a little different – First of all, I’m not even sure what the name of the thing is. I’ve heard of OEL (Oracle Enterprise Linux), Oracle Linux, and a few other names. I think I’ll just call it OEL. OEL is a pay distro *BUT* they do offer free downloads of their install media as well as updates. Originally updates were pay-only but they opened that up a while back when they had a promotional campaign claiming they were faster with updates than CentOS (turns out they aren’t but close). I guess their business plan is you can use OEL for free and have updates… but there are some value add features (like Ksplice and Dtrace, etc) and support that cost extra. To download their iso install media you have to have an account on their system but that is cost-free and it just so happens I already had one because I’ve downloaded previous releases like OEL6.

• Healthcare

  • Free software for healthcare facilities in need

    GNU Health is a free software tool for healthcare facilities in rural areas and developing countries, licensed under the GNU GPL. The project got its start in 2006, and at the time of my interview with Falcon, GNU Health had evolved into a health and hospital information system used by the United Nations, public hospitals and Ministries of Health in countries like Argentina, and private institutions around the globe. Today, GNU Solidario is planting their free software and health administration system into facilities in need in countries all over the world.

• Funding

  • Couchbase Rides Big Data Demand to $60 Million in Funding

    Couchbase Inc., which helps companies manage data, raised $60 million in a funding round that almost doubled the amount it had received from investors.

  • Aerospike bids to break out with new funding, open source plan

    With a fresh new $20 million funding round in its pocket a new distribution strategy built on open source licensing, database startup Aerospike is bidding to become a major player in a market segment that some people believe will be the future of enterprise database management.

  • Open Source NoSQL Database Firm Couchbase Raises $60M

• BSD

  • GhostBSD 4.0 Beta 2 Released With MATE Goodness

    GhostBSD 4.0 continues moving along as the FreeBSD operating system focused around the MATE Desktop Environment.

    GhostBSD 4.0 Beta 2 was released and it features various bug-fixes and other minor improvements over the earlier development versions.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Richard Stallman to speak at Tails Hackfest, in Paris, France

    Richard Stallman’s speech will be part of Tails HackFest. His talk will be nontechnical, admission is gratis (and registration is appreciated) and the public is encouraged to attend.

  • Richard Stallman at IndieTech, in Brighton, United Kingdom

• Openness/Sharing

  • Africa: ‘Open-Source’ Seed Released to Nurture Patent-Free Food

    An ‘open-source’ seed initiative has released 36 varieties of 14 food crops, which the project’s leaders say could help poor farmers get access to better quality seeds.

  • Open source 3D printing means freedom to improve technology

    Aleph Objects believes in open source 3D printing. In fact, the company was born to build open source and its philosophy of “Libre Hardware” is built into everything the company creates. “We exist for the freedom of our users and the benefits that brings,” said Harris Kenny, communications manager for Aleph Objects, a Loveland, CO-based maker of the LulzBot 3D desktop printer.

  • Google’s open source PDF engine, the Open Wireless Movement, and more

  • Open Hardware

    • Intel Chips, 3D Printing Could Put a Robot in Every Home

      Intel chips and 3D printing could make robots as ubiquitous, affordable, customizable and diversely helpful as smartphones.

• Programming

  • PHP 5.5.14 Officially Released

    PHP, an HTML-embedded scripting language with syntax borrowed from C, Java, and Perl, with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in, has been updated to version 5.5.14.

    The PHP 5.x branch includes a new OOP model based on the Zend Engine, a new extension for improved MySQL support, built-in native support for SQLite, and much more.

Leftovers

• Scottish independence: Miliband raises border post prospect

  Ed Miliband has said a Labour government at Westminster would consider building border posts if Scotland voted for independence.

• Security

  • Security advisories for Thursday

  • Canonical Closes Swift Exploit in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

  • Canonical Fixes GnuPG Vulnerability in All Ubuntu-Supported OSes

    Canonical has published details in a security notice about a GnuPG vulnerability in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating systems that has been fixed.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • How will the US react if someone made a film around a plot to assassinate a real US president?

    What is common between The Conspirator, Death of a President, JFK, The Day of the Jackal and Shooter? Full of twisted plots, these movies are based on President Assassination plots. A similar plot is bearing the wrath of the government of North Korea, which has taken serious offense to Seth Rogen’s upcoming film titled The Interview.

    The American action-comedy is about two journalists that are given the task of assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and is now being called as an “act of war” by the government. The movie stars Rogen and James Franco as the two journos who are instructed by the CIA to assassinate the leader. In a statement issued by a local KCNA news agency, a spokesperson from the foreign ministry called Rogen as a “gangster filmmaker” and has asked for the ban of the film, reported AFP.

    [...]

    This makes me wonder if there are any Hollywood films that show the assassination of a real and not a fictional US President. Or are there films that revolve around the plot of murdering the current US President? However, what I do remember is that the US Army banned the sale of Medal of Honor video game as the game allowed you to play as an Al Qaeda member and attack US troops. Do you think a writer can ever dare to work on a film plot about the assassination of the current US President?

  • ISIS Cashing in on Looted Antiquities to Fuel Iraq Insurgency

  • This Sunday, a Different Kind of Iraq War Booster: Bill Clinton

    Is Clinton trying to pull this trick all over again? Who knows. But what’s clear is that proponents of the Iraq War are still the kinds of people that corporate media are seeking out as experts now. Getting pro-war Democrats to balance out the pro-war Republicans isn’t exactly a broad debate.

  • Google withdraws its robots from military contest

    Remember Schaft? The dextrous little robot that previously grabbed the top prize at DARPA’s $2 million Robotics Challenge. Google acquired the Japanese robotics firm in 2013, and reports emerged soon after that Mountain View was planning to pull its team from the DARPA robotics competition. The reason being the company is not keen on pursuing military contracts.

• Finance

  • Millions in Poverty Get Less Coverage Than 482 Billionaires

    Poverty continues to be a pressing social problem– but it’s hardly mentioned on the network newscasts, according to a new study by the media watch group FAIR.

  • Marty Bennett

    Peter Phillips with guest host Marty Bennett Co-Chair, North Bay Jobs with Justice, examine the significance of the $15 an hour city-wide minimum wage recently approved by the City of Seattle and we will discuss the minimum wage and living wage campaigns across the SF Bay Area that are part of the national “Fight for $15″ campaign. Our guests include: Jahmese Myres, Policy Associate and Organizer, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Gordon Mar is Executive Director of SF Jobs with Justice, Derecka Mehrens, Executive Director, Working Partnerships USA (Santa Clara County) and Paul K. Sonn, General Counsel & Program Director National Employment Law Project

  • China building World Bank rival

    Owing to its concerns over western (mainly US) dominance on the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, China is working towards establishing a global financial institution. According to two sources familiar with the matter, Beijing has proposed to other countries to double the size of the registered capital for the bank to $100bn, FT reported.

    The bank, which will be named Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has so far garnered attention from 22 countries including Middle East. Initially, the model will be focusing on a revised version of the ancient trade route that connected Europe to China- silk road.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Why The European Commission’s Consultation On Corporate Sovereignty Is A Sham (And How To Respond To It Anyway)

    One measure of the resistance to the inclusion of corporate sovereignty provisions in TAFTA/TTIP is that the European Commission unexpectedly announced that it would be holding a three-month public consultation on this aspect in an attempt to defuse public anger.

• Privacy

  • Time for Parliament to act on Mass Surveillance

    We hear all the time that the British public don’t care about mass surveillance, privacy and Edward Snowden, but we know that’s not true. It may be that those inside the Westminster bubble have been able to hide from how people really feel up to now, but it’s time to change that.

  • European Citizens Right To Sue US Over Data Privacy

    President Obama aims to allow European citizens to sue the United States over the misuse of their personal data

  • Mass. Supreme Court: Defendant Must Decrypt Computers for Police

    The top court in Massachusetts has ruled that an attorney charged with mortgage fraud must decrypt his computers for police, who believe they contain evidence of the alleged crime.

• Civil Rights

  • Nigerian man is locked up after saying he is an atheist

    Campaigners call for release of 29-year-old Mubarak Bala, who lives in Kano in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north

  • The Insane Clown Posse’s lawsuit against the FBI: how does it work?

    The Department of Justice has asked a Detroit-area federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against the department and the FBI filed by local horror-rap group the Insane Clown Posse and four of its fans, with the assistance of the ACLU. That’s a real thing that’s happening in the world we all inhabit. Here, watch ICP’s Joseph Bruce (aka Violent J) introduce the lawsuit on January 8:

  • FBI vs. ICP: Juggalos say gang designation caused harassment; Feds say document only reported trends

    U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland on Monday heard arguments on a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Insane Clown Posse and a group of fans against the FBI.

    ICP, a Detroit music duo known for explicit lyrics, face paint and a diehard following that created the “Juggalo” subculture, claim a 2011 FBI report caused their fans to be detained, questioned and harassed by law enforcement agencies across the country. (View the complaint here.)

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • The Father of Net Neutrality Returns to Do Battle With Comcast

    Fifteen years ago, he landed a marketing job with a network equipment maker called Riverstone Networks. Riverstone made network routers, among other things, and it sold many of these to Chinese internet service providers who then used them to block traffic on their networks.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Supreme Court Uses The Bizarre ‘Looks Like A Cable Duck’ Test To Outlaw Aereo

      As you may have heard, this morning, the Supreme Court effectively killed off Aereo with an unfortunate and terribly problematic 6 to 3 ruling that can be summarized simply as the “looks like a duck” test. If you’re not familiar with the history, decades back, when cable companies were first around, they started rebroadcasting network TV to cable subscribes, and the Supreme Court (rightly) ruled that this was perfectly legal. The broadcasters ran screaming and crying to Congress, who changed the law to create a retransmission setup, saying that if cable companies wanted to retransmit broadcast TV they had to pay fees. Aereo got around that by setting up a very different system — or so we thought. The majority decision, written by Stephen Breyer, really just keeps going back to the fact that Aereo looks just like what those cable companies used to do… and therefore, given that Congress changed the law to outlaw that, Congress must have meant that Aereo should be illegal as well. The majority seems to view things as a black box, ignoring everything in the box. It just says “well, to end users and to networks, this is identical to the old cable systems.” As for the very careful steps that Aereo took to comply with the law? The majority just brushes that off as meaningless.