07.18.14
Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 3:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft’s layoffs are not about Nokia but about Microsoft
Summary: Microsoft’s rapid demise and permanent exit from Nokia’s last remaining Linux platform (after Microsoft had killed two more)
NOKIA is dead because Microsoft killed it under the guise of “acquisition” (after a so-called “partnership”). Nokia committed the ‘sin’ of exploring about 4 Linux-based platforms over the years. This could not be tolerated by Microsoft, especially considering Nokia’s size (Nokia’s had the lion’s share of the mobile market). Microsoft had to put a stop to it. When Microsoft took over Nokia (with a mole and a bribe) Nokia had just become one of the top contributors to Linux (the kernel) and was actively developing one of the most promising platforms for mobile devices. It is still being adopted by Jolla (former Nokia staff) as Sailfish OS and to a lesser degree explored by Samsung (Tizen). Let this remind us how anticompetitive Microsoft remains. It’s a force of destruction, not creation. Microsoft has done this for decades.
Some days ago we wrote about news that Microsoft would announce massive layoffs. This turns out to have been true, but the earliest coverage was Microsoft ‘damage control’ (or PR). A longtime critic of Microsoft (after the company stabbed him in the back), a man widely known as Jean-Louis Gassée, says that “Satya Nadella’s latest message to the troops – and to the world – is disquieting. It lacks focus, specifics, and, if not soon sharpened, his words will worry employees, developers, customers, and even shareholders.”
The company is in bad shape because the cash cows are in rapid decline and money is derived from aggressively milking those who are still locked in (we covered this before). The company also uses crimes like bribery in an attempt to keep people locked in. Microsoft is not a real company but more of a corrupt political movement, so if you work for a criminal, by choice, then expect to be treated like one. Here is the Microsoft mouthpiece covering (up?) the layoffs and anonymous staff saying: “that concerns me because now you have a level of stress and anxiety at Microsoft. First, the selfish stress about whether my job is affected. Then personal circle stress. Then partner collaboration stress. Then way out there general concerns about the company. And guess what: when folks are stressed and gossiping, they are not effectively – er, excuse me, productively (?) – implementing the latest strategy. Physiologically, they have increased cortisol and this time will turn into a fog.”
Only about 6% of those laid off are based in Finland. Don’t let Microsoft pretend that it is all about Nokia.
One headline says the layoffs will be complete next year and Microsoft has meanwhile axed the Android phones from Nokia. This expected decision seems to have Elop the mole at the centre of it (he works for Microsoft again, not just as a mole). In Microsoft-tied networks we again witness Sam Dean playing soft. “You have to hand it to incoming Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’” he said. “He is not afraid to stir the pot, and seems well aware that it needs stirring. In a company-wide email, Nadella announced that it will cut its employee base by up to 18,000 jobs, or 14 percent in the next year, and one of the big reasons is to accommodate the acquisition of Nokia.”
No, it is not about Nokia, that is part of the coverup. Dean is still sucking up to Nadella and helping Microsoft’s PR campaign. Here is a better article about how Microsoft killed everything in Nokia which deals with Linux, but there is a lot more to it. “Only 1100 culled from Finland,” tells me a reader, so the lie that Microsoft merely cuts down Nokia is just diversion and deception. About 17,000 are fired outside of Finland and claims that Microsoft goes back to Windows wrongly assume that Windows (mobile) has something going for it. It has been a massive failure. Perhaps it is all about pulling the plug on people who have no blind faith in the Windows ‘religion’:
MICROSOFT HAS ANNOUNCED that Nokia’s Android-powered X handset lineup is no more, with the firm instead planning to deliver the devices with its own Windows Phone mobile operating system.
The layoffs are not effective immediately, so any staff that challenges the status quo should beware.
A reader wrote to us: “What to you want to bet that the severance packages contain non-disparagement/non-compete clauses of some kind? They will spread like a cloud of toxins to new employers. And how many temps/permatemps are going, too?”
The reader showed us this new article which he labeled “voice of a ‘softer” (Microsoft staff). The headline is “Sipilä: Government should hire ex-Microsoft staff to build IT systems” and it suggests that the Finnish government should put an army of Microsoft moles in charge of government IT. What a horrible idea.
These layoffs are not what the early puff pieces claimed them to be. These puff pieces came also from CNET, which has helped openwash Microsoft (the chief editor systematically does this) and is now deleting articles that Microsoft does not like. Yes, CNET has removed (censored we assume) a classic article about a company that ditched Microsoft. Follow the links here (last year) or here. “CNET has taken down the article,” our reader told us, “Link was active in 2013 as it was used then by Pogson” as he indeed demonstrated. █
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Posted in Law, Patents at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
There are software patents even on progress bars
Summary: The Federal Circuit Appeals Court has just “invalidated a software patent for being overly abstract,” says a patents expert
Some days ago we noted that the USPTO had begun rejecting software patents owing to a SCOTUS decision. Thankfully, the subject of software patents is back in the headlines (not “trolls”), with articles like “Kickstarting an Old Patent System for the New Software Era”. More fantastic news from the US (regarding software patents) seemed to suggest that the tide is changing, as CAFC — not just the USPTO — destroys software patents (both CAFC and USPTO the are software patents maximalists). Here is some new coverage of it:
On Friday we got our first taste of the practical consequences of last month’s landmark decision from the Supreme Court restricting patents on software. The Federal Circuit Appeals Court, which hears appeals in all patent cases, invalidated a software patent for being overly abstract. And the reasoning of the decision could lead to a lot of other software patents going down in flames, too.
This is exciting news. Some of the most pro-software patents entities are now forced to obey the guidance from SCOTUS. This is a real change and one that the corporate media has not been covering. After the Bilski ruling we saw something similar. █
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Posted in Mono, Novell, OpenSUSE at 2:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Not much too see in the land of SUSE and Attachmate, or formerly the company known as Novell
Last week we were asked about Attachmate, which we no longer keep track of because Novell is pretty much dead and SUSE is not doing well. They are going extinct. The Xandros Web site is no longer even accessible and when it comes to SUSE, the community in particular, it is going down the same route. Well, judging by the declining volume of activity in OpenSUSE News, Greg K-H’s move to the Linux Foundation, the fact that community manager left (he works for ownCloud now) and now the departure of the chairman of the OpenSUSE board (more on that here), we think it is safe to treat SUSE as irrelevant, or not relevant enough for us to track. Here is the latest:
The openSUSE Board announced this morning that Vincent Untz has stepped down as the openSUSE Board Chairman.
Several days ago I spent some time looking at years’ worth of Novell news, Attachmate news, and SUSE news (I am still subscribed to dozens of feeds related to all those). This was done after a discussion in IRC. I am reluctant to bother with any of them because 1) there is not much news at all and 2) the news hardly relates to FOSS. Novell will go down the same route as Corel and SUSE will end up like Xandros. As for Xamarin, which was created after Novell/Attachmate had abandoned Mono, it is mostly an extension of Microsoft now (a bit like SUSE, which shows up in Microsoft sites because their goal is to tax GNU/Linux servers).
SUSE and Novell pretty much became what we foresaw and feared. Novell’s patents are in Microsoft’s hands now, SUSE serves no purpose other than taxing GNU/Linux for Microsoft, and Novell was not allowed to truly complete with Microsoft. AttachMSFT ensures that much of Novell’s proprietary portfolio is a dying breed. Mono became more closely tied and entangled with Microsoft. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 8:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Spencer Hunley is an autistic professional, former Vice Chair of the Kansas City Mayor’s Committee for People with Disabilities, and current board member of the Autism Society of the Heartland & ASAN’s Kansas City chapter. In August, Spencer will be giving a talk, Universal Tux: Accessibility For Our Future Selves, at LinuxCon in Chicago. He also gave a talk, Maximizing Accessibility: Engaging People with Disabilities In The Linux Community, at LinuxCon North America 2013.
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Desktop
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Microsoft knows this, which is why it has misguidedly destroyed its consumer desktop and replaced it with the hideous Windows 8. Linux users with Gnome 3 could have told them that the remaining desktop users don’t want a dumbed down desktop experience. But while Microsoft indignantly fixes its desktop at glacial speed, now has become an ideal time to woo weary Windows escapees.
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Not that this saving happened over night. The city first began to seek an open-source antidote to its Microsoft dependence in 2003. With some 1.5 million citizens, thousands of employees, and tens of thousands of government workstations to consider, its initial shopping list was suitably strict, spanning everything from avoiding vendor lock-in and receiving regular hardware support updates to having access to a wide array of free applications.
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Server
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When was the last time you compiled a kernel? For many of the latest generation of Linux admins, the answer is really simple: never. I am one of those, provided we don’t count a few times I tried it just for fun, then couldn’t see why I would need a custom kernel and went back to my out-of-the-box kernel.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Kernel Space
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Experience with Linux is an important thing – a track record of tinkering and involvement in the open source world. Working in drivers, embedded Linux, etc. At this point companies are desperate for Linux talent. The most important thing to show is you’ve gotten hands-on with bits of the kernel, whichever ones are interesting to you personally. Time spent as a site reliability engineer or working in a DevOps environment is particularly attractive to employers these days, as are well rounded sys admin skills. Even if you just run Linux as your primary operating system and know how to tinker with your machine, you’re ahead of many candidates.
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Have you ever wondered what the workspace of the world’s most famous developer looks like? Well wonder no more. Linux creator Linus Torvalds invites you into his home office in this first-ever, personal tour of his workspace. It also includes behind the scenes laughs and footage, as well as a closer look at what he keeps on his desk and what he does between kernel releases. He also demonstrates how he uses his “zombie shuffling desk” (his walking desk) while working on the world’s most ubiquitous software.
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Linus Torvalds keeps a pretty low profile in the Portland area, but the creator of the open source Linux computer operating system retains a very high profile in the world of computing.
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There is so much news today I’m not sure which to highlight first. Linux.com has a look at Linus Torvalds’ home office and a new paper describes fresh malware “Mayhem.” X.Org Server 1.16 and GCC 4.9.1 have been released and the Plasma 5.1 development cycle has been officially kicked off. All this and some openSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora tidbits here in tonight’s Linux news.
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Graphics Stack
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Nouveau’s NVC0 Gallium3D driver for supporting NVIDIA “Fermi” hardware and newer has picked up support for indirect drawing.
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Luc’s latest blog post points out several interesting responses by Jem Davies of ARM MPD, responsible for the Mali T-Series graphics hardware, and the recent Q&A he did with AnAndTech. In response to asking about open-source drivers, Davies commented, “I really do understand your frustration and I’m sorry that this makes life harder for you and similar developers. We are genuinely not against Open Source, as I hope I’ve tried to explain. I myself spent a long time working on the Linux kernel in the past and I wish I could give you a simple answer. Unfortunately, it is a genuinely complex problem, with a lot of trade-offs and judgements to be made as well as economic and legal issues. Ultimately I cannot easily reduce this to an answer here, and probably not to one that will satisfy you. Rest assured that you are not being ignored. However, as a relatively small company with a business model that is Partner driven, the resources that we have, need to be applied to projects in ways that meet Partner requirements.”
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The X.Org Server 1.16 release has almost 35,000 lines of new/changed code, per Keith’s notes. X.Org Server 1.16 is one of the more exciting releases in recent times and represents about six months of development work. X.Org Server 1.17 is now on the table for late this year or early 2015. X.Org Server 1.16 is codenamed Marionberry Pie.
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Only hours after the release of X.Org Server 1.16, pull requests are already coming in for the X.Org Server 1.17 development code.
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Benchmarks
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Here’s our first benchmarks of the Intel Pentium G3258 using Ubuntu Linux.
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Applications
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Calibre is mostly used as an eBook converter and reader, but the developer added the option to edit books just a few months ago. Since then, numerous changes and improvements have been made to this particular feature and it looks like there is a lot of work left to do.
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For those not familiar with Pushbullet, this is a service that lets you easily send files, links, notes, lists, etc. from your iOS or Android device to your desktop or the other way around. It can be used via Chrome / Firefox extensions and for Windows there’s also a desktop app. Because there was no native Linux app, Lorenzo from Atareao.es created an Ubuntu AppIndicator (and a Nautilus extension as a companion for the AppIndicator) to easily use Pushbullet in Ubuntu.
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Git 2.0.2, a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency, has been officially released.
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Proprietary
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Dropbox is a very popular Cloud storage services, but is it good for the privacy-conscious?
According to Edward Snowden, it’s not.
In an interviewed published on GuardianNews, Snowden described Dropbox as “hostile to privacy.”
So what are the better alternatives. Snowden recommended Cloud storage services with zero-knowledge as a key feature.
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Users with multiple machines no longer need to install the FastX client on each machine or pay for more than one copy of the software. After installing FastX onto the USB drive, the product will run from the memory stick. With a few clicks, users are logged into their remote Linux server and either start a new remote Linux desktop session or resume one they launched earlier from another PC.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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OpenMW 0.31 implements a large number of game features from saving fog of war state to implementing murder crime to follower fast travel. When it comes to bug fixes, there’s over 135 reported bug-fixes.
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The Beta version of SteamOS, a Debian-based distribution developed by Valve to be used in its hybrid PC / console, has been updated yet again and a number of packages have been added and upgraded.
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We recently ran an article wondering what happened to Torchlight Linux, as it seemed to be forgotten about, so be sure to read up on it.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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The first alpha of a new modular Qt5 desktop environment called ‘Moonlight‘ has been made available for testing.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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The KDE Project developers have released the third maintenance version for Applications, Platform and Plasma Workspaces, bringing some new, much needed fixes.
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With the KDE 4.0 release we had the issue that everything was one big blob: the libraries, the desktop and the applications, all inter-dependent.
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So, as of tonight, all but three tier 1 modules from kf5 are built in meta-kf5. The ones remaining are KApiDox, which does not really apply, and KConfig and Sonnet, which both needs to be part built for the native host environment, and part cross compiled. So, any Yocto hackers out there, please have a look at the issues linked to from the meta-kf5 status page.
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I’ve just merged the dev branch to the master, and soon you will see the new features inside digiKam 4.2.0
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We had a fun two hour meeting in #plasma yesterday to decide on the tasks for the next release. It’s due out in October and there’s plenty of missing features that need to be added before Plasma 5 is ready for the non-geek.
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This week we finally released Plasma 5.0 including KWin 5.0 and also a new design called “Breeze”. While Breeze provides a window decoration, KWin still defaults to Oxygen and that’s for a good reason. As I had been asked quite often why that’s the case and on the other side got lots of feedback from disappointed users using the Breeze decoration I think it’s needed to explain in a blog post the technical background.
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Linux distributions tend to use two different types of release cycles: standard releases and rolling releases. Some people swear by rolling releases to have the latest software, while others like standard releases for being more stable and tested.
This isn’t an option you change in your current Linux distribution — instead, it’s a choice the Linux distribution itself makes. Some distributions release regular standard releases and use a rolling release cycle for their unstable development release.
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New Releases
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SparkyLinux 3.4.1 LXDE, e18, Razor-Qt, MATE, Xfce, Base (Openbox) and GameOver x86_64 is ready to go.
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Clonezilla Live, a Linux distribution based on DRBL, Partclone, and udpcast that allows users to do bare metal backup and recovery, is now at version 2.2.3-28 and is ready for testing.
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Robolinux is best known for a feature called Stealth VM Software that allows uses to create a clone of a Windows operating system, with all the installed programs and updates. This would allow potential users to switch to a Linux environment and continue to use their favorite Windows-only applications, although there is a performance penalty.
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Screenshots
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Arch Family
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Users can install the under-development version of KDE Frameworks 5 side by side with KDE 4 from the Beta 2 stage. To make this possible the packages are installed under /usr instead of /opt/kf5 as it used to be on the Arch User Repository (AUR) previously. Till date the only exception was the kactivities component because both KDE Frameworks and KDE 4 ship a kactivitymanagerd binary. To make them co-install now both the packages from KDE4 and KDE Frameworks install a kactivities virtual package on the same system under the /usr directory. The packages are grouped into two parts: kf5 and kf5-aids (PortingAids).
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The Netbook Edition uses a lightened and customised Xfce environment. Screen real estate is optimised with the use of a single vertical panel that includes DockBarX (via a plug-in) and through a modified version of Xfwm4 (Xfce’s window manager), based on xfwm4-titleless-dev, further patched for default-maximized support.
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Slackware Family
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It was on this day in 1993 that Patrick Volkerding announced the Slackware 1.00 release that was inspired by the Softlanding Linux System.
Slackware remains kicking after 21 years of guidance by its leader Patrick Volkerding. The most recent release of Slackware is version 14.1 that took place late last year with the Linux 3.10 kernel — a long way from the initial Slackware 1.00 release that used the pre-1.0 Linux kernel (0.99.11).
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Slackware had just turned five when I first discovered it and, by extension, Linux. It was the first Linux distribution that I’d ever used and it was a wonderful platform to learn on. Made even better by the fact that Patrick was quick to respond to emails asking for support, and provided gentle guidance to updating XFree86 so that I could actually use X on my blazing fast Pentium 133MHz machine with eight whopping megabytes of RAM.
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Red Hat Family
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Only months after acquiring Inktank, Ceph’s parent company, Red Hat has released the next version of this open source, distributed storage system.
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Red Hat has released Inktank Ceph Storage 1.2, which brings new performance and management features to the open source distributed storage system for the cloud.
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Fedora
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In aiming towards an on-time release of Fedora 21, developers have spun the first test candidate for the upcoming development release.
Per the official release schedule, Fedora 21 is expected to see its alpha release on 5 August while next week (22 July) is the software string freeze and the alpha change deadline. Following that alpha release is a planned Fedora 21 Beta on 9 September, final change deadline on 30 September, and hopes to ship Fedora 21 final on 14 October.
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Debian Family
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While Spotify was a major Debian user with running their thousands of back-end servers on the major Linux distribution, including being vocal about systemd on Debian, they have decided to switch over to Ubuntu.
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Derivatives
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The ISO images for the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” were updated and labelled “v2″. All the links were updated on the website and in the announcements to point to the new ISOs.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) reached end of life today. That means that if you use Ubuntu 13.10, you should upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support). That’s because after July 17, 2014, “Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 13.10″.
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Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) has reached the end of its nine-month journey and the distribution has now entered EOL (end of life).
Nothing is going to happen to you in the immediate future if you are using Ubuntu 13.10. EOL means that Ubuntu developers will no longer release security updates for the distribution, which also indicates that the OS will become increasingly insecure as time goes by. You will still be able to use it, but it won’t be as safe as possible.
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An MIT spinoff has launched an Indiegogo campaign for a $499, Linux-based “Jibo” robot billed as a social, self-learning companion for families.
Like SoftBank’s Aldeberan-built Pepper, the Jibo bot runs on Linux and is designed to communicate and interact with people in a social, human-like manner. While the $1,930 Pepper is dubbed an “emotional” robot, Jibo is referred to as a “social” robot, and sells for a modest $499, via its $100,000 Indiegogo campaign. The device is expected to ship to funders Dec. 2015, followed by a commercial launch in 2016.
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The OpenWRT project has released version 14.07 RC1 of its lightweight router and IoT oriented Linux distribution, adding IPv6 support and faster startup.
OpenWRT 14.07 (“Barrier Breaker”) was issued as a first release candidate (RC1), bringing full IPv6 support to the small-footprint GNU/Linux distribution. The router-oriented distro has become a favorite for home automation gizmos and other, frequently MIPS-based, Internet of Things (IoT) boards and devices, such as the Arduino Yún (pictured below-right).
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Mentor Graphics has released a heterogeneous multicore development platform for combining Linux, Nucleus, and bare metal OSes on a single multicore SoC.
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NI has introduced an embedded system development board which comes with Linux-based real-time operating system (RTOS) already integrated.
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Phones
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“While smartphone growth is beginning to fall, plenty of growth remains, with smartphone penetration of mobile subscribers under 30% worldwide,” commented Nick Spencer, senior practice director, ABI Research. “Most advanced and affluent markets already have 60%+ penetration, so the growth is driven by developing markets and the reduction in smartphone ASPs.”
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ABI Research says the 60% penetration of smartphones in the developed markets could be possible in the developing markets thanks to lowering prices… Wow! Just Wow! This makes “the PC revolution” seem like a rummage sale. Soon, more smartphones will ship per annum than legacy PCs extant.
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Remember back way back when, when there were several new OS platfoms coming and I said I thought Tizen was strongest bet? Well its been down hill ever since.
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Android
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MICROSOFT HAS ANNOUNCED that Nokia’s Android-powered X handset lineup is no more, with the firm instead planning to deliver the devices with its own Windows Phone mobile operating system.
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Nowadays, there’s only one reason why anyone could possibly want to venture into one of Britain’s God-awful town centres on a Friday or Saturday night: to watch the inevitable catfights that break out after Kylie and Traycee have had a few Jagermeisters too many.
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Via’s “Viega” is an IP65-ruggedized, 10.1-inch tablet that runs Android 4.2 on a Via dual-core SoC, providing 9-hour battery life and optional 3G and GPS.
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The default phone will only have support for wifi and will be available in three sizes: small, medium and large. If you want to have the features of a normal phone, you will need to buy different modules for connectivity, camera, touchscreen and others. The modules will be attached via magnets, to be easy to replace modules, without having to restart the phone.
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I currently count four calculator apps for Google’s wearable platform, and they’re all useless. You need pinpoint touch precision to enter each number, and none of the apps include a backspace key for when you inevitably mistype something. Using a calculator app on your phone would be faster and less frustrating.
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RFinder Android is already released with this capability; iPhone is waiting for Apple’s approval.
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It’s not easy to wade through the Google Play store to find open source apps, so we put together a quick guide to some nifty productivity, Internet, and game apps. Some are free, some cost a few bucks, and it’s always a good practice to slip a few dollars into the tip jars, because nothing says “thank you” better than cash money.
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Instead of Apple’s proprietary iOS software, the Wico clone reportedly runs a custom version of Android KitKat. Without Android, manufacturers couldn’t create a clone that worked well enough to be a threat, said tech analyst Rob Enderle. “Google remains the biggest threat Apple will ever face.” Owning an iPhone or iPad is a mark of prestige among Chinese citizens, but few can afford them.
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For those of you unfamiliar with Roboto, it is a typeface and part of the sans-serif typeface family. Roboto was original introduced by Google along with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system and has remained since. Roboto became free to download back in January 2012 from the Android Design website.
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Chinese Smartphone company Xiaomi is launching three devices in the India, fuelling the already hyper competitive budget smartphone market in the country. The first phone to launch is the Mi3 which is priced at Rs. 13,999, followed by Redmi Note at Rs. 9,999 and Redmi 1S at Rs. 6,999.
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Yesterday Google announced the launch of a new training tool Android Fundamentals on the Google developer’s blog. The course is aimed at assisting experienced programmers to switch over to Android by familiarising themselves with the Android SDK and Android Studio. This is unfortunately not for those completely new to programming but instead those who do possess some programming knowledge.
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Some Android applications will drain your smartphone or tablet of battery life, storage or bandwidth like a blood-sucking fiend. Here’s what’s what with the worst of the worst.
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Open Source Storage has a bit of a struggle on its hands. Despite having existed (kind of) for well over 10 years, the storage company is relatively unknown compared to incumbent players (NetApp and EMC for example) and newer storage industry disruptors (Inktank and StorSimple for example) alike. The company has had something of an on-again, off-again life as the GFC caused its early investors to back out and the company waited until this year to relaunch.
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Adobe and Google have teamed up to develop a new open source font that supports seven different languages.
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For users of libbluray for limited open-source Blu-Ray disc support, there’s some updates worth fetching.
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Events
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The LLVM Foundation has announced the annual LLVM Developers’ Meeting that occurs every year in Q3~Q4 in California.
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Web Browsers
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Earlier this year we wrote about Apple working on an LLVM-based JIT compiler for WebKit. This new JIT engine, called “Fourth Tier LLVM” (FTL), is enabled within the latest open-source code for this browser rendering engine and is faster than WebKit’s earlier JavaScript implementations.
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While you are reading this, the chances are you are using Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Internet Explorer (IE). That is because these tend to be the only choices on offer. Although each of the big browsers will try to convince you that you have a choice. The simple truth is you do not. You are confined to using these five main choices which generally-speaking are increasingly converging and becoming more alike with each update. That is until now!
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Chrome
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Google is out with a new version of its Chrome web browser, providing users with new features and security fixes for over two dozen vulnerabilities.
Among the user facing improvements in Chrome 36 is a new look for the Incognito mode. Chrome has had an incongito mode since Google first debuted the browser back in 2008. Incognito mode, which is sometime referred to as ‘Porn Mode’, enables a user to view websites without having those websites or cookies stored in the browser’s history.
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Having to keep track of your daily eating habits is quite a task. Oh, and there is those tedious workouts that you have to do. Being healthy is such a bore, isn’t it? Don’t worry, even the healthiest of people hate getting out of bed and going to the gym. Yep, that’s true. Fitness isn’t a pleasant experience, it’s hard work and yes, hard work for some people is boring.
As prolonged tech junkies, we are used to having shortcuts or little apps here and there that help us cut our job in half, in other words, keep us lazy. We have apps for self-diagnosing, for reserving our table at a restaurant, and even ordering the menu. Just press a button and your job is done.
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People who read my tweets and articles will know that I love my Chromebook. I’ve been very productive with it and I believe I am over the two month mark of having used it exclusively. Is it possible to live your online work/life with a Chromebook.
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Mozilla
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Rust, the programming language born at Mozilla for developing a “safe, concurrent, practical language” continues to evolve and experience greater adoption. Rust certainly seems to have a good future ahead of it as shared by the latest status update on the project, but a few more release cycles are needed at least before the Rust developers look toward version 1.0.
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Over the past 6 months since the last one of these updates was written, Rust has evolved significantly: the standard library was refactored to make Rust more convenient to use in embedded or bare-metal platforms, the language has been greatly simplified (moving most pointer types into libraries) and the package ecosystem has been thriving under a new package manager.
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Firefox OS has unlocked the mobile ecosystem and is quickly expanding across a broad range of devices and product categories in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Just one year after the first devices were launched, Firefox OS is now available on seven smartphones offered by five major operators in 15 countries, showing strong signs of ecosystem momentum and widespread industry adoption.
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Mozilla’s Firefox OS continues its slow march across the globe, with carriers set to begin shipping devices running the open source, browser-based smartphone platform in additional developed markets this week.
Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica has previously sold Firefox OS phones in Spain, but the bulk of its efforts have been focused on its subsidiaries in Spanish-speaking emerging markets, including Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
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SaaS/Big Data
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What’s in a name? Quite a bit, actually. To ensure compatibility between products sharing the same name, it’s important that users can expect a core set of features to be consistent across different distributions. This is especially true with large projects like OpenStack which are made up of many interlocking components.
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Dell’s also done much to build confidence in OpenStack for enterprise cloud by teaming up with open-source software company Red Hat to resell its new private cloud deployments.
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Mirantis, which has been expanding its bets on the OpenStack cloud computing platform throughout 2014, is also deepening its bets on the enteprise. The company, which is already a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), has announced that Oracle Linux and Oracle VM have been integrated Mirantis’ own OpenStack distribution, which will keep Mirantis and Oracle serving and supporting joint customers.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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LibreOffice from Collabora is the enterprise-ready build of the widely used Open Source office suite. The newly announced LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.2 provides an enterprise-hardened build which can be maintained by patch updates for many years.
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CMS
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To keep students’ academic plans on track, the University of Washington developed open source software that integrates previously siloed administrative functions such as degree audit and articulation, student lifecycle and recruitment, registration and advising.
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WordPress 4.0 Beta 1 was released a couple of days ago and the list of changes is rather impressive.
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Funding
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The Yorba Foundation, a non-profit group that produces open source Linux desktop software, reported last week that it was denied tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status by the IRS. The group had waited nearly five years for a decision. The IRS stated that, because the software Yorba develops can be used commercially, the organization has a substantial non-exempt purpose and is disqualified from tax-exempt status. We think the IRS’ decision rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of open source software.
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PredictionIO, a startup that has crafted an open-source program to let developers add machine-learning smarts to their applications, might just be setting the tone for the next wave in data technology.
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BSD
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The GhostBSD team is pleased to announce the availability the third BETA build of the 4.0-RELEASE release cycle is available on SourceForge for the amd64 and i386 architectures. This is expected to be the final BETA build of the 4.0-RELEASE cycle.
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The final version of FreeBSD 9.3, an operating system for x86, ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures, has been released and is now available for download.
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As expected, FreeBSD 9.3 made it out on schedule today with this new release carrying a few new features, numerous updated packages, and other improvements for those not yet riding FreeBSD 10.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Jakub Jelinek of Red Hat announced this morning the GCC 4.9.1 release that has many bug-fixes and other minor improvements to GNU Compiler Collection 4.9 that was released in April with many improvements and features. More than 88 regressions and serious bugs were fixed in GCC 4.9.1 while a new feature now supported is OpenMP 4.0 support for Fortran, to complement the GCC 4.9.0 OMP 4.0 support for the C and C++ languages.
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The first thing I notice is a different terminology. An executable is called system and a set of classes is refereed as universe. The classes can be grouped in clusters into the universe. And the routines (operations) of a class, and its attributes, are called features. The routines are divided in functions or queries (which return a value) and procedures (which do not return a value). As opposed to C language, where we need a function named main, on Eiffel we can designate any procedure to start the execution.
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Public Services/Government
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Public administrations across Europe continue to discriminate in their IT calls for tender by asking for specific brands and products, concludes OpenForum Europe, and organisation advocating for an open, competitive ICT market. “Thousands of small IT firms are excluded from competing in the public procurement process by restrictions such as the naming of trademarks in calls for tender”, said Graham Taylor, OFE’s CEO, in a press statement.
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Microsoft is a commercial venture so it is reasonable for them to sell their products, which they do via licensing per unit. The NHS has about 100,000 computers, so it pays a considerable amount and also has a lot of work to do each time there’s a required update for any of their server technologies or desktop computers. While it needs some technical tweaking, Windows is sold as something that comes out of the box and should work. Designed to work with a wide range of different types of systems, the one size that fits (almost) all computers is a bonus for many technical managers.
But it hasn’t been problem-free. Most hospitals still have thousands of PCs running Windows XP which stopped being supported earlier this year.
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The Kerala Legislative Assembly has made a significant transition to the free software platform for recording its voluminous business.
The Speaker’s announcement to this effect a couple of days ago represented a milestone not just for the IT Department of the Niyama Sabha, but also for the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (Icfoss) based here, the larger free software community, and free software enterprises in Kerala.
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Openness/Sharing
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Blogger Eliot Higgins launched Bellingcat on July 14 – it’s an open-source site for investigative journalism. Bellingcat aims to bring journalists together to share tech tools, and also to be a learning platform.
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He has always wanted to be an inventor, and I spoke with him about what it’s like to work as a technology consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this interview, Thomas tells me more about how Project Gado came to life, how the Gado community evolved, and how open source is applied to everything.
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John Schloendorn is distributing “open source” plasmids, giving away proteins that normally cost biotech startups thousands of dollars per milligram, ready to be inserted into bacteria and reproduced at will, without any royalties.
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Open Data
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The head of one of Australia’s biggest insurance companies has called for a completely open approach to disaster risk data, saying it is the only way to ensure communities are fully prepared for catastrophes.
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Open Access/Content
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One of the fundamental tenets of the open source movement is the freely available access of knowledge. There has been a growing scene of educators, institutions, and organizations that see open access to knowledge as not being limited to that of source code. For several groups and universities this has been a focal point for the future of worldwide education.
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Open Hardware
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Intel plans to launch its second generation of the open-source computer Galileo Gen2 this August for around $60 to counter the popular $25 Raspberry Pi PC.
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Intel announced an updated, slightly larger “Galileo Gen 2″ version of its Arduino-compatible Galileo SBC, and expects to start shipping it in August.
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Programming
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Typesafe this month marked the five-year anniversary of Akka, its open-source run-time toolkit for concurrency and scalability on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
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Standards/Consortia
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The AllSeen Alliance, which is one of several open-source consortiums working to develop standards for the Internet of things, is adding eight new members to a lineup that includes such tech heavyweights as Microsoft, Qualcomm, Cisco Systems and Symantec.
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Red Bend Software is a community member of the AllSeen Alliance and a leader in mobile software management. More than 2 billion Red Bend-enabled devices use the company’s software and services for firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating, application management, device management, device analytics and mobile virtualization. Customers include more than 100 leading manufacturers, mobile operators, semiconductor vendors and automotive companies worldwide.
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This blog exclusively broke the news that Juncker was much more friendly to Scottish independence, and that was a major reason for Cameron’s bitter opposition.
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Security
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A new malware that runs on UNIX-like servers even with restricted privileges has already infected machines in Australia and is actively hunting for more targets, a new research paper has shown.
Three researchers from Russian web provider Yandex – Andrej Kovalev, Konstantin Ostrashkevich and Evgeny Sidorov – said in the technical analysis of the malware, published on security and anti-virus specialist publication Virus Bulletin, that Mayhem functions like a traditional Windows bot.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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What is particularly ghoulish is the false grief, what I might call the triumphalist shroud waving, of those seeking gleefully to blame the side they do not support in the Ukrainian conflict. In the current total absence of evidence, this is abominable behaviour.
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Jimmy Carter: “The Rest of the World, Almost Unanimously, Looks at America as the Number 1 Warmonger”
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Who is the true patriot, Hillary Clinton or Edward Snowden? The question comes up because Clinton has gone all out in attacking Snowden as a means of burnishing her hawkish credentials, eliciting Glenn Greenwald’s comment that she is “like a neocon, practically.”
On July 4 in England, Clinton boasted that two years ago she had favored a proposal by a top British General to train 100,000 “moderate” rebels to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, but Obama had turned her down. The American Thatcher? In that same interview with the Guardian she also managed to get in yet another shot against Snowden for taking refuge in Russia “apparently under Putin’s protection,” unless, she taunted, “he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable.”
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Jordan, where the Central Intelligence Agency has been covertly training Syrian rebels for more than a year, is reluctant to host an expanded program in what is likely to be a significant step back for Barack Obama.
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The CIA is currently providing training and arms to the Syrian militants in Jordan.
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There are not “charges” that civilians are killed in those strikes; such deaths are well-documented. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which tracks drone strikes in several countries, estimates that drones have killed at least 400 civilians in Pakistan alone. According to a recent UN report, there were 45 civilians killed by drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2013.
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The problem is that Cordesman is on the record as advocating the option of brutality against Palestinian civilians. Back in 2000, Cordesman authored a CSIS report–condemned at the time by an Amnesty International spokesperson–that recommended “excessive force” to control Palestinians and ensure the implementation of a potential peace agreement (Extra!, 1/01).
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“Obama has had a very tense relationship with Netanyahu, so he is not as automatic in his support of Israel, but there are still plenty of conflicting considerations especially with the events in Egypt and Iraq.”
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Killing and destruction are gathering pace, but neither side is winning
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Ayelet Shaked of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who she said give birth to “little snakes.” “They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists,” Shaked said.
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Nowadays, Special Forces are used ad nauseam in shadow wars to avoid full engagements and still get the bad guys. And yet the American drone campaign is considered the lesser of two evils. It kills terrorists abroad, we’re told, and keeps boots off the ground.
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A British academic and expert in international studies says the biggest threat of drone technology is its potential use by terrorists and other non-state actors with “malign intent”.
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A favorite line of Official Washington goes: “Perception is reality!” — a misguided notion that makes the U.S. mainstream media particularly vulnerable to “perception management.” And no one does that better than the Israelis when justifying the slaughter of Palestinians, as Danny Schechter notes.
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There is a terrible irony in Israel’s current assault on Gaza. More than 200 Palestinians have died in an onslaught supposedly aimed at weakening Hamas and degrading its capacity to fire rockets into Israel. It was Israel itself, however, that helped Hamas to power in Gaza. For more than thirty years,from the 1960s to the 1990s, successive Israeli governments viewed radical Islamism as a useful tool with which to counter the influence of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (of which Yasser Arafat’s Fatah was the principal component) and to sow discord within Palestinian ranks.
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Tunnels had long been used by Hamas and others to smuggle weapons, fuel, and goods into Gaza from Egypt before the Hamas-friendly Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was deposed and the Egyptian army shut most of the tunnels down last year. Nevertheless, Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza have also launched cross-border attacks through tunnels, but generally with little success.
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As I write this I can hear the waves of the Mediterranean shift and gently crash at Gaza’s shore. The sky is clear, the moon is bright and if not for the loud buzzing of an Israeli drone it would be soothing.
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Israel says it is considering a new ceasefire proposal from Egypt that would take effect on Friday. There is no word yet from Hamas, which rejected the last proposal on the grounds its leaders were never consulted and the terms would have allowed for the continued siege of Gaza and for Israeli bombardment at will. The news of a fresh proposal comes just as a five-hour humanitarian pause has ended. The United Nations asked for the break to let Gazans receive supplies and repair damage following 10 days of Israeli bombings. On Wednesday, an Israeli gunboat shelled a beach, killing four boys who were playing. The boys were all between the ages of nine and 11 and from the same extended family. Seven other adults and children were wounded in the strike. The scene was witnessed by several international journalists, including our guest Tyler Hicks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff photographer at The New York Times. We are also joined from Gaza City by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who has interviewed family members of the young victims.
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The Israel Defense Forces shot down their second Hamas-supplied drone in less than a week as it was flying over the skies of Ashkelon in southern Israel. According to Israel’s Channel 2 News, a Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) shot down the UAV.
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But go back even further and you might be surprised to learn that at one point, there were even budding ties between the CIA and Saddam. In 1988, during a war between Iraq and Iran, the U.S. helped Iraq carry out a devastating chemical attack by sharing intelligence information with the country.
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Today, the architects of the Iraq War scramble to rewrite history. In a June 17 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Liz and Dick Cheney, shifting the blame, condemned Obama: “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
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Cheney was among those from the administration who were speaking out publicly about WMD’s in Iraq. In August 2002, Cheney told a VFW convention, “Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.” Of course, there were no WMD’s in Iraq. The administration had misled the American people.
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“I was convinced we had to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction,” he said July 14. “I was uncertain about the vote. I was 60 percent in favor of it and 40 percent opposed to it. I was uncertain if [President George W.] Bush [and his] administration were telling the truth about the weapons of mass destruction. But, I concluded, if you can’t trust the president and his top national security team to tell the truth to Congress and the American people about a matter of war and peace, then who can you trust?”
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Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding has come out swinging against the United States, declaring that nation lacks the moral authority to cite human-rights abuses as reasons to withdraw support to the Jamaican security forces.
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On Wednesday, Golding slammed the United States (US) government while speaking on Power 106 FM radio talk show, ‘Cliff Hughes On-line’, declaring the US lacked the moral authority to cite human-rights abuses as reasons to withdraw support to the Jamaican security forces.
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All Slain Dubbed ‘Suspected Militants’
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A suspected American drone attack killed over a dozen militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on Wednesday, officials said, as the Pakistani military intensified its assault on insurgents in the region where 450 Islamist ultras have been killed so far.
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General Atomics has a new cockpit for their MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, two of the most common hunt-and-kill drones used by the USAF, capable of destroying basically any ground — and some air — targets. It looks like a dream gaming setup. Heck, it even includes a gamepad (check out that guy’s lap.)
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Drone warfare makes some people squirm for the ethical issues it raises, but right now drones are still controlled by human beings. The upcoming technology, though, would make them autonomous, allowing them to make their own “decisions” about whether or not to kill. To meet the moral objections in giving machines the option to kill human beings, some techies are proposing tacking on separate software they are calling “ethical governors” that could automatically run the decisions through international law protocols before going lethal.
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Drones fuel ‘blowback’ and undermine core principles of American identity.
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Transparency Reporting
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Most of the Stockholm hearing into the Assange case yesterday was held in secret.
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Decision by Stockholm judge condemns WikiLeaks founder to remain in Ecuador embassy in London
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Wikileaks has demanded that Danish authorities investigate whether laws were broken when the FBI met with Icelandic citizen Sigurður Þórðarson, aka Siggi ‘the hacker,’ in the country on three occasions, following meetings in Iceland in early 2013.
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Julian Assange has hit back at Attorney General George Brandis for saying the Wikileaks founder should be “man enough” to face Swedish sexual assault allegations.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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The government has unveiled federal terrorism charges against two animal rights activists accused of helping to free minks and foxes from fur farms in rural Illinois. In newly unsealed indictments, the prosecutors accuse Tyler Lang and Kevin Olliff of freeing about 2,000 mink from their cages on a fur farm and then removing parts of the fence surrounding the property so the mink could escape. The activists are also accused of spray-painting “Liberation is Love” on the farm’s walls. Lang and Olliff have been indicted under the controversial Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), with each count carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. We are joined by reporter Will Potter, who covers animal rights and environmental issues at GreenIstheNewRed.com. “It really doesn’t matter how you feel about animal rights groups or about these alleged crimes of stealing animals,” Potter says of the AETA, which he argues is too broad while criminalizing protests and civil disobedience. “This is really about a corporate campaign to demonize their opposition and to use terrorism resources to shut down a movement.” Potter also discusses his wildly successful Kickstarter campaign to purchase a drone for use in photographing abuses at factory farms.
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Finance
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In a new Pew poll, more than three quarters of self-described conservatives believe “poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything.”
In reality, most of America’s poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.
The real non-workers are the wealthy who inherit their fortunes. And their ranks are growing.
In fact, we’re on the cusp of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history.
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A Connecticut state trooper has pleaded guilty to charges he stole cash and jewelry from a dying accident victim.
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Five major countries under the leadership of India had announced setting up of a new global bank which would pose a challenge to the institutions like the World Bank and the IMF.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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A survey of major cable news discussion programs shows a stunning lack of diversity among the guests.
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We know — Coulter hates soccer. With the World Cup over, here’s what her ludicrous column might rail against next
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Censorship
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As published by STV, we found a number of Scottish websites blocked by different filters provided by ISPs and mobile operators, apparently by mistake, without of course informing the website owners. Here is the list.
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On 10 July, the Working Group on Information Exchange and Data Protection (DAPIX), in charge of the General Data Protection Regulation, worked on the regulation’s Article 17, the “Right to be forgotten and erasure”. In this framework, the legislator must consider the harm to freedom of expression and information, harm which the law currently makes possible, and provide citizens with procedures that safeguard that freedom.
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Privacy
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Whistleblower says NSA revelations mean those with duty to protect confidentiality must urgently upgrade security
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Australian journalists could face prosecution and up to 10 years in prison for reporting Snowden-style revelations about special intelligence operations, according to a new bill proposed by Australia’s attorney general George Brandis.
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George Brandis’s new spying laws will include measure to criminalise media reporting of Snowden-style leaks
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Aussie journalists will face prison time if they leak out sensitive information according to a brand new security law. If those in the media report Snowden-like revelations about particular spy missions they could face prosecution from the Australian government as stated by top criminal lawyers.
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The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho have announced they will join Anna Smith’s legal team in her challenge of the government’s bulk collection of the telephone records of millions of innocent Americans.
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The top U.N. human rights official suggested on Wednesday the United States should abandon its efforts to prosecute Edward Snowden, saying his revelations of massive state surveillance had been in the public interest.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay credited Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, with opening a global debate which has led to calls for the curtailing of state powers to snoop on citizens online and store their data.
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File-storage startup Box is making its service work more seamlessly with Microsoft Office, the king of workplace documents and a major Box rival. Box also is removing file-storage limits for its paying business customers.
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One of the most shocking discoveries from Edward Snowden’s disclosures was that GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, is tapping undersea cables to harvest the communications of people from all around the world. This top-secret programme, nicknamed Tempora, sucks up petabytes of data from tapped cables off the coast of Cornwall and is capable of storing the entirety of the metadata travelling through cross-Atlantic links for 30 days, and the content of communications for three. If it is authorised by law at all, it is on the basis of highly tenuous interpretations that run afoul of human rights; this very week the Government finds itself having to justify these interpretations in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
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Yesterday the House of Commons passed a law called DRIP, which forces communications companies to store all of your data for up to 12 months for use by the security services. Today it goes to the House of Lords, which is also expected to pass the bill.
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While the UK government is attempting to establish a completely locked down digital communications network, the UN finds that prospect “disturbing”.
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The World Wide Web seems to have become a dangerous place for ordinary Web users after ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing revelations. If you’re on the Internet, you’re under NSA survellienace—regardless of the fact whether you are in the U.S. or not.
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A group of 35 civil society organizations, companies, and security experts have asked President Obama to pledge to veto the controversial cybersecurity bill S. 2588, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (“CISA”) of 2014. These privacy and Internet freedom groups fear that the bill invades the privacy and civil liberties of users.
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Despite Barack Obama’s promises during the 2008 campaign to reform the U.S. intelligence community, he has continued to tolerate its abuses, enable its excessive secrecy and indulge its bone-headedness, as ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman explains.
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As an Illinois senator running for president in 2008, Barack Obama promised there would be no more “wiretaps without warrants” under his administration. He abandoned that position even before he was elected to the White House, voting for legislation that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to let the National Security Agency (NSA) collect Americans’ international communications without a warrant.
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With all the attention focused on Edward Snowden, the world forgets that he is not the first NSA whistle-blower. Nor might Snowden be the last. William Binney blew the whistle first following the 9-11 attacks on the United States and a third whistle-blower is probably leaking new information to the media.
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Both strategically and economically, some European countries are being forced to move away from the Anglo-American (British Empire) faction because of the sheer insanity of the latter’s policy. Relations with Russia is a case in point. As of July 3, the German, French and Russian foreign ministers have begun direct diplomatic talks with their Ukrainian counterpart, without the participation of the U.S. State Department.
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The German Chaos Computer Club said Wednesday that it has added to its legal complaint about U.S. spying on German citizens evidence that the NSA allegedly snooped on at least one of its Tor servers.
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Former executive editor of The New York Times, Jill Abramson, spoke of being “fired” from the paper in May, and also her belief that the Obama White House is the most secretive administration she ever dealt with in her career.
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The former executive editor of the New York Times says Washington often played the terrorism card to spike stories
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Jill Abramson, who made headlines when she became the first female executive editor of the New York Times – and again when she was unexpectedly fired after only two and a half years on the job – has spoken out about her situation in an article to be published in Cosmopolitan magazine in September.
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The authors later describe the collection programs, PRISM and Upstream, and state “most of the people caught up in these programs are not the targets and would not lawfully qualify as such.” Readers instantly recognize the action described as spying, a term the authors avoid. Further, they make no mention of the lack of an uproar in Congress about this massive surveillance and violation of the 4th Amendment. This is so because the majority of congressional members have an important function: to serve privilege and power.
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When developers of the TrueCrypt disk encryption program warned the open source project was insecure, it left users hanging. Fortunately, there are TrueCrypt alternatives.
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The question for the UK to answer is not whether data can contribute to policing but whether it is justified to retain data of innocent people on a blanket basis. The charge that Jack Straw and Lord Howard made in Parliament was that civil libertarians who asked for “targeted” retention were asking the police to be “clairvoyant” as they would have to know in advance whether somebody would commit a crime and become of interest. That is the argument for blanket retention in a nutshell. We don’t know who the criminals will be so we will keep all of the data all of the time.
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But in doing so they won’t have had the final word. You’ve already shown them the growing public opposition to mass surveillance. There was incredible action from supporters: 4458 of you wrote to your MPs with even more phoning up on the day of the vote. Together we helped 49 MPs rebel against the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill. It may have passed, but thanks to you they know that we do not agree.
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When is a snoopers’ charter not a snooping charter? When David Cameron and his stooge Nick Clegg call it the data retention and investigation powers bill (Surveillance bill rushed through in a day, 16 July).
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Russia will reopen its electronic spying center in Cuba as the island once again assists its old ally in its renewed dispute with the United States, reports the EFE news agency.
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The Russian government and Cuba have agreed to reopen a massive Soviet-era spy base on the outskirts of Havana, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant.
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Former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden exposed thousands of classified government documents to major media outlets in June of last year.
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‘Deep differences’ between Berlin and Washington over US double agents
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US secret services have recruited more than a dozen officials in various German government ministries to work as spies, with some of them working for the CIA for many years, a German tabloid reported on Sunday.
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As American fans chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” the Germans countered with, “N-S-A! N-S-A! N-S-A!”
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The United States has badly underestimated the level of anger in Germany over its spying operations and the damage could be long-lasting if Washington fails to ease off, former US officials said Wednesday.
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How is Germany supposed to react to the U.S. spying activities that have come to light recently? The political opposition seems to think the answer is simple: Expel all U.S. intelligence agents! Allow whistle-blower Edward Snowden asylum! Immediately halt all negotiations regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)! Stop all cooperation with U.S. intelligence services!
But things are not that easy for those who actually have to govern. On the one hand, the German government is under pressure to act in a way to not be seen by its own citizens as the powerless appendage of the Americans. On the other, it has to protect Germany’s very real interests.
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Pakistan, unlike Germany, abstains from ousting CIA Station Chief from the country on spying charges
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All in all, much ado about nothing; the NSA was not unilaterally scooping and scanning all Internet content and Microsoft was not part of a larger surveillance scheme. For those accustomed to believing what the Wall Street Journal said — remember the bogus story of Saddam Hussein’s agent meeting with one of the 9/11 attackers? — everything was as it should be.
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Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden wants professionals to utilize data protection and encryption to communicate, and is reportedly working on some type of “encryption tools” to help protect sources. Remaining in Russia, with his asylum status extended, it’s mainly unknown what the American has been doing with his spare time.
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Internet mogul Kim Dotcom is now thinking about suing New Zealand’s spy agency for “illegal; surveillance.” According to reports, the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) has found the police were justified in not pursuing any of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) officers for an illegal spying operation.
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When the House passed the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361) in May, both Members and the administration announced that it would end bulk collection of metadata about Americans’ communications. The administration is now urging Congress to pass the bill as soon as it can and Senators are now considering revisions to specific language in the House-passed bill.
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The new LED bulbs will have the ability to read your license plate, listen in to your conversation, monitor your movements, detect the weather and even sniff out a dirty bomb, claims CBS. This raises questions about privacy.
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“Chilling” is the word lawyers use to describe governmental behavior that does not directly interfere with constitutionally protected freedoms, but rather tends to deter folks from exercising them. Classic examples of “chilling” occurred in the 1970s, when FBI agents and U.S. Army soldiers, in business suits with badges displayed or in full uniform, showed up at anti-war rallies and proceeded to photograph and tape record protesters. When an umbrella group of protesters sued the government, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that the protesters lacked standing — meaning, because they could not show that they were actually harmed, they could not invoke the federal courts for redress.
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When earlier this year, the European Court of Justice threw out the EU’s data retention directive on the grounds that it was not fit for purpose and grossly disproportionate to needs – in effect, imposing surveillance on the entire European population without justification – the UK had a problem.
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The European Court of Justice properly overturned a European Union directive that would have forced telecommunications companies to store data on all of their customers for as long as two years. In response, British Prime Minister David Cameron is countermanding the spirit of the ruling and doubling down on the failed policies of mass surveillance.
Mr. Cameron plans to rush an “emergency data plan” through Parliament. It would require British companies to continue to store the time, date, location, and recipient of every telephone call, email, and text message sent by British citizens for a year.
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In the wake of Ed Snowden’s revelations there’s been a litany of calls for the widespread adoption of online anonymity tools. One such technology is Tor, which employs a network of Internet relays to hinder the process of attribution. Though advocates openly claim that “Tor still works” skepticism is warranted. In fact, anyone risking incarceration in the face of a leveraged intelligence outfit like the NSA would be ill-advised to put all of their eggs in the Tor basket. This is a reality which certain privacy advocates have been soft-pedaling.
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With paranoia over NSA surveillance reaching a fever pitch, foreign governments are making a reasonable plea: bring our data home.
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Edward Snowden should be shielded from prosecution because the world needs people willing to expose violations of human rights, says the UN’s High Commissioner for Human rights Navi Pillay.
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In a new hard-hitting draft report, Navi Pillay, the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, has thrown the weight of the U.N. General Assembly behind the idea that digital privacy is a human right, and one under attack amid disclosures of surveillance by “signals intelligence agencies,” not only the United States’ National Security Agency but the United Kingdom’s General Communications Headquarters.
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UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay has suggested former NSA contractor Edward Snowden should not face prosecution for leaking top secret material.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Idaho have joined Anna Smith’s legal team in her challenge of the government’s bulk collection of telephone records.
Smith, an emergency neonatal nurse and pregnant mother of two in North Idaho, filed her suit against President Barack Obama and several U.S. intelligence agencies shortly after the government confirmed revelations that the National Security Agency was conducting bulk collection of telephone records under a section of the Patriot Act.
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A civil society coalition has called for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group of countries to provide a new global Internet Governance model that ensures human rights, as well as equity and social justice.
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Surveillance reformers on Capitol Hill are up against a wall — and short on time.
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The House Armed Services Committee has come up with a creative approach to look for emails from embattled former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner that were apparently lost in a computer crash: they’re asking the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Department.
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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden believes his revelations were so important that he could endure a life in chains in US detention.
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Snowden“If I end up in chains in Guantanamo I can live with that,” Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor-turned-privacy advocate, told the Guardian newspaper during a recent interview released in part by the paper on Thursday.
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Workers for the National Security Agency regularly share private, intimate photos swiped from communications streams, Edward Snowden said.
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The NSA’s spokesperson didn’t explicitly deny that it happens in a response to an inquiry about Snowden’s claim, but said such activity wouldn’t be tolerated. “NSA is a professional foreign-intelligence organization with a highly trained workforce, including brave and dedicated men and women from our armed forces,” said spokesperson Vanee Vines by email. “As we have said before, the agency has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities or professional standards, and would respond as appropriate to any credible allegations of misconduct.”
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Civil Rights
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A federal judge ruled California’s death penalty unconstitutional Wednesday, writing that lengthy and unpredictable delays have resulted in an arbitrary and unfair capital punishment system.
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It’s something most students learn in elementary school — the United States is made up of 50 states and the District of Columbia. But Channel 9′s Justin Gray found out it’s a lesson that an Orlando agent with the Transportation Safety Administration seems to have missed.
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British police officers have this week started using facial recognition software designed to automatically identify criminals from digital images. Police in Leicestershire become the first in the UK to test NEC’s NeoFace software, which the force says is capable of comparing any digital image of a suspect with photos held on its database, by comparing “dozens of measurements” against key facial features.
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The CIA station chief in Germany left the country on Thursday after Berlin’s shock decision last week to demand his expulsion, the US and German governments said.
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Noriega worked with the CIA from the late 1950s through the 1980s when their relationship soured. Broad, public criticism based on mounting evidence of his close ties to the notorious Colombian Medellin Cartel forced the U.S. government to reverse its tacit acceptance and level charges of drug trafficking and money laundering.
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Manuel Noriega, former Panamanian strongman and CIA operative, is suing an American video game developer over his portrayal in one of their most well-known games. The former dictator objects to the game’s portrayal of him without his consent and demands monetary compensation.
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The rodents are used to pass secrets between CIA agents, Museum Curator Toni Hiley said during a tour taken by Yahoo News reporter Oliver Knox, who gained unprecedented access to the museum, which only allows those with top security clearance access to its artifacts.
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When renowned journalist Michael Hastings died in a high-speed car accident in 2013, he left behind a secret manuscript hidden in his desk drawer. One year later, almost to the day, the manuscript has been published as The Last Magazine, Hastings’s first (and last) novel.
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North Korean officials from the National Defence Commission sent a letter to President Barack Obama officially protesting the release of the James Franco and Seth Rogen film “The Interview” on Thursday, according to reports in the Voice of Korea.
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The Department of Justice will not investigate whether the Central Intelligence Agency illegally spied on staffers of the Senate Intelligence Committee and removed documents from committee servers, McClatchy News Service confirmed Thursday. The CIA also claimed committee staffers took documents from the intelligence agency without authorization. That claim also won’t be investigated.
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The Vietnamese general Nguyen Ngoc Loan, head of South Vietnam’s National Police and a CIA informant—who was famously photographed blowing the brains out of a Viet Cong prisoner in 1968—wound up owning a pizzeria in Burke, Virginia. Down the street a number of Saigon’s former top intelligence officers had townhouses, and everyone would get together at the Vietnam Inn in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia once a week to reminisce over old times, frequently to be joined by friends from the nearby Pentagon and CIA headquarters.
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In the latest installment of the Guantanamo war court’s most mysterious legal filings — two motions so secret that the public can’t know their titles — an Army judge has issued a classified order to prosecutors that even the defense lawyers can’t see.
The Pentagon disclosed the existence of Army Col. James L. Pohl’s judicial order dated June 4 in a recent website notation in the capital case of the accused USS Cole bomber.
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Despite legal decisions and expert opinions to the contrary, minister after minister has insisted that he is a very dangerous man. He is invariably referred to as a “convicted terrorist” or “war criminal”. Yet recently revealed secret information in the United States suggests that there was never any legal basis for charging him with war crimes in the first place.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Verizon is making an alarmist argument in its response to the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality proposal. Classification of broadband as a common carrier service—a step called for by public interest groups who want to prevent ISPs from charging Web services for faster access to consumers—would instead require ISPs to charge Netflix, YouTube, and other Web services for network access, Verizon claims.
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Earlier we wrote about Rep. Marsha Blackburn adding a terrible amendment to a House appropriations bill that would block the FCC from preempting anti-competitive bans on municipal broadband. Unfortunately, despite some noise about it, the amendment it was approved 223 – 200 in the House. While Blackburn (falsely) spun the bill about letting local governments make their own decisions, that’s flat out wrong. As others have pointed out it’s exactly the opposite. The FCC’s plan would be about giving power back to local governments to allow them to make their own decisions about whether or not they wanted to offer municipal broadband.
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Over the last few weeks we’ve seen a number of politicians come out on one side or another concerning the FCC’s net neutrality plans, but most of them were pretty much expected. It actually was nice to see some net neutrality supporters be quite explicit in their support for Title II reclassification (like Senator Chuck Schumer), but beyond that there weren’t too many surprises. That’s why it was actually great to see Rep. Gary Peters, who is currently running for the Senate in Michigan, come out in favor of net neutrality, warning of the harm that could be caused by the fast lanes and slow lanes as allowed by the current FCC proposal.
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Klabnik works for marketplace payment company Balanced, where he is—and how awesome is this?—Philosopher in Residence. His job, he says, “is to pay attention to where things are going and also think about where we should be going.”
So for years, Klabnik has been thinking about web standards, the technical protocols that govern the way anyone accesses the World Wide Web. Much of the web’s lingua franca, (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), has been standardized—that is, people who write software for the World Wide Web have come to an agreement about the way certain technologies should work and the way they’ll implement those technologies. A webpage appears the same on both Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome because those companies have agreed to program their browsers in accordance with the official rules for displaying that page.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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EU citizens must be better informed of the progress of EU-US talks on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), said MEPs from all political groups debating the issue with EU trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht.
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Copyrights
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ReelRadio, a site that streams an archive of often decades-old historical radio shows, has been forced to take down much of its library after the RIAA complained that the site was operating outside the terms of its license. The letter of the law is tight, and the RIAA is insisting that the near 20-year-old site now meets all of its requirements.
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The world’s biggest copyright holders send Google millions of DMCA notices each week, many of them sent by the most notable anti-piracy companies around. But for reasons best known to themselves, hundreds of thousands being processed by Google are completely useless and a waste of time and money.
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New research by economist Koleman Strumpf shows that there is no significant effect of movie piracy on box office revenues. This conclusion is based on data from 150 blockbuster movies that were released over a period of six years, using the popular Hollywood exchange as an indication for the revenue impact.
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