04.07.14
Posted in News Roundup at 7:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
With technological transitions come the powers to emancipate or to oppress
Privacy
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Here’s a little rant I posted to an IETF mailing list thread on whether the IETF should move its public-facing services to private-by-default mode. Someone posted a reply suggesting that “the user gets to choose the degree of security that they consider appropriate”.
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Privacy flaw on photo sharing website initially dismissed as ‘working as designed’ and not making sensitive data available
NSA/GCHQ
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It does apparently to the U.S. government, which reportedly will be scrutinizing Lenovo’s move to buy IBM’s server business to ensure it doesn’t lead to a backdoor access to U.S. national secrets and infrastructure.
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Rahinah Ibrahim is a slight Malaysian woman who attended Stanford University on a U.S. student visa, majoring in architecture. She was not a political person. Despite this, as part of a post-9/11 sweep directed against Muslims, she was investigated by the FBI. In 2004, while she was still in the U.S. but unbeknownst to her, the FBI sent her name to the no-fly list.
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The media has been overwhelmed by talk of Crimea joining Russia, but all are ignoring the fact that the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance, principally the US, has annexed the whole world through their spying, said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Speaking at the WHD.global conference on Wednesday, Assange – who has been living under asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London since 2012 – pointed out that there is a need for independent internet infrastructure for countries to maintain sovereignty to resist US control over the majority of communications. The annual conference is dedicated to global surveillance and privacy matters.
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American and British intelligence hope to take advantage of social media platforms, like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, in an effort to spread disinformation and propaganda, as well as potentially foment public protests, recent Snowden leaks claim.
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Brazil’s internet bill of rights is more concerned with advancing national interests than internet freedom.
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But it comes amid growing international pressure for Washington to step back from what some countries claim is a dominant role in the Internet.
Tensions have been exacerbated by the outcry over leaked documents showing the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance capabilities, feeding concern that the US manipulates the Internet for its own purposes.
Germany
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Reports last October – based on disclosures by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden – that Washington had monitored Merkel’s mobile phone caused outrage in Germany, which is particularly sensitive about surveillance because of abuses under the East German Stasi secret police and the Nazis.
Europe
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It could be a difficult breakup between the US government and the internet.
A plan unveiled last month would see the US relinquish its key oversight role for the internet, handing that over to “the global multistakeholder community”.
US officials say the move is part of a longstanding effort to privatise the technical oversight of the internet.
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European Union plans to build a separate communications network to prevent data from passing over US networks is being opposed by the US, which claims that it would breach international trade laws.
The opposition of the US to the plans comes at a delicate stage of negotiation between the US and EU over a trade treaty that would give more power to multinational organisations – including communications companies – to sue national governments over claimed breaches of trade rules.
Snowden
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Edward Snowden and reporter Glenn Greenwald, who brought to light the whistleblower’s leaks about mass U.S. government surveillance last year, appeared together via video link from opposite ends of the earth on Saturday for what was believed to be the first time since Snowden sought asylum in Russia.
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CIA
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Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has chaired the Senate’s Intelligence Committee for five years. So when she suggested last month that investigators should make public a report on the U.S.’s interrogation techniques because it would “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted,” one might have seen it as the strong words and fair assessment of a person who has deep experience on the issue.
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Former deputy CIA director Michael Morell told the House Intelligence Committee this week that despite reports from the chief of station in Libya that no protests occurred outside the American diplomatic facility in Benghazi prior to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on it, he edited the administration’s talking points to include references to such protests. His CIA analysts in Washington believed they had occurred, and the station chief, after all, was 500 miles away in Tripoli.
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For the public revelations that the CIA and NSA were spying on the committee that was supposed to have oversight of their activities should be of great concern as it is a major breakdown in the system of checks and balances that should be inherently present in a healthy democracy. Despite all of the Snowden revelations there is also no indication that the NSA has changed its practices or made changes to how they carry out operations. By not publishing information that the public has the right to know the media has also failed and according to WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, it is: “… an absolutely disgusting break with all the basic principles of journalism that I know of. And they claim that this is done upon the request of the US authorities for the security concerns. That is not acceptable.” Unfortunately today, he says: “We have submissive and lame editorial boards that will simply do as they are told.”
Venezuela, Cuba
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Over the past six weeks the so called salida ya [exit now] strategy launched by the Venezuelan opposition has developed, in part, into a low intensity war against the democratically elected government of President Nicolas Maduro. This essay will examine two strategic objectives of the Bolivarian revolution that serve as pillars of resistance to the anti-democratic elements of the counter revolution: the struggle to preserve national independence and the campaign to develop and expand the communal structures that are the organized expressions of popular power.
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Syria
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The first cell of Syrian rebels trained, armed and financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Jordan have reportedly began crossing over the Syrian border, according to the Guardian newspaper.
Torture
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The Senate Intelligence Committee last week easily approved a measure last week to declassify part of its report on Bush/Cheney-era torture policies. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the committee’s chairwoman, explained, making the findings public is important to “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.”
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Any encouragement that torture opponents may take from an initial step toward releasing part of a long Senate report on CIA abuses during the Bush-43 years is tempered by the fact that the declassification process may be glacially slow and still leave much hidden, writes Nat Parry.
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Last February, the world caught a glimpse George W. Bush’s paintings through work of a hacker named Guccifier. The paintings were amateurish and charming and slightly embarrassing for a former president. They famously included self-portraits of him bathing.
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Dick Cheney has defended torture techniques so many times that a frustrated U.S. senator has finally offered to waterboard the former vice president.
“The accusations are not true,” Cheney told college television station ATV last week. “Some people called it torture. It wasn’t torture.”
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Fox News contributor Liz Cheney on Sunday argued that a United States Senate report on Bush-era torture was “political” and that lawmakers should spend more time investigating President Barack Obama’s role in failing to prevent terrorist attacks in Benghazi.
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The year President George W. Bush left office, Jane Mayer published “The Dark Side,” a scathing, revelatory piece on the Bush administration’s unscrupulous detention and interrogation policies during the administration’s War on Terror. Mayer’s account reports the dubious legal foundations for the policies and contains detailed descriptions of the numerous human rights abuses the executive branch justified in the name of national security.
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ormer Wyoming Senatorial candidate Liz Cheney and Fox News analyst Juan Williams clashed on Fox News Sunday over the upcoming Senate report on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques (torture, to those of you scoring at home), with Cheney arguing congressional oversight already exists and the report is a Democratic hit job, and Williams responding that the politicization of counterterrorism has prevented oversight efforts.
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Former Vice President Dick Cheney is “proud” of the “tone and attitude” he set at the CIA, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, amid growing tension between the Agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee over the declassification of a Bush-era torture report that the Senate says will show the CIA misled the American public.
Drones
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A bipartisan Bill that would force President Obama to reveal casualties from covert US drone strikes has been put before the US Congress.
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In the skies above Yemen, the Pentagon’s armed drones have stopped flying, a result of the ban on American military drone strikes imposed by the government there after a number of botched operations in recent years killed Yemeni civilians.
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US President Bush and his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf had a deal allowing drone strikes in the tribal areas as a covert operation, run by the CIA, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
Racism
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A political war may be developing between Latinos and Asians in California over attempts to undo the state’s 18-year-old ban on race-conscious admissions policies at the University of California.
Censorship
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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As 2014 began, several prominent analysts were taking aim at recent media reports that have allegedly miscast how well Chromebooks–portable computers based on Google’s Chrome OS platform–are doing in sales terms. “There has been a ton of misreporting as many lazy reporters and bloggers have characterized this as all sales, which it wasn’t, or even consumer sales, which it most assuredly was not,” Stephen Baker of the NPD Group,
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The second day of IDF Shenzhen conference in China saw the unveiling of a new processor dubbed ‘Braswell’ by Intel; other announcements included a 64-bit Android kernel and the QVOD media box.
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An estimated 2.1 million Chromebooks shipped in 2013 with nearly 89% of total shipments reaching North America, according to market intelligence firm ABI Research. As Chromebook shipments expand globally, ABI Research forecasts an increase of CAGR 28% to 11 million in 2019.
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That’s just one possible deal you can get from Best Buy when you trade in your old Windows XP system, which is good for a $100 credit.
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
CyanogenMod
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Well, folks, it looks like CyanogenMod, Inc. is starting to shape up to look like a real legit company. The company has already made big deals with phone manufacturers and successfully raised a good deal of money to help in their endeavors, and now they are making some changes to the way they present themselves.
Source Code
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Sprint LG G2 owners may not have too much longer to wait for Android 4.4.2 to arrive. Sprint has posted details on an upcoming OTA update, which should roll out in stages starting today. The version is ZVB, and it contains little aside from all the delicious goodies that come with KitKat. To clarify, the developers have also packed in a fix for an audio issue with the pre-installed NextRadio app. Yeah, all eyes are on Android 4.4.2 here.
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Sony may not have the best track record when it comes to making its phones available across a wide number of carriers in the US, but it has no problem sharing its open source kernel files on a timely basis. The company officially announced the Xperia Z2 a month ago at Mobile World Congress, and now much of the handset’s internal code is available for download on the web.
Ballnux/Samsung
Google
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Google could have big plans in store for the way that it and other smartphone makers sell and advertise their best Android phones. According to a series of slides allegedly shown inside of Google and leaked to Android Police, Google is developing a program called Android Silver, which would find carriers dedicating a section of their store to some of the top Android phones, each of which would come with some significant advantages over phones that weren’t offered as part of the Silver program.
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Citing “sources aware of Google’s plans,” Engadget said Google is currently testing the new app, which will be pushed to Android users as a separate update, and won’t be part of the forthcoming Android 4.4.3 update.
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Project Ara (Phonebloks) and modular pieces of tech in general are gaining steam. So far, we’ve known that we will be able to swap specified parts of our smartphones, which will result in longer lives for our phones and less waste as a result of our tech lusts. Today, Google revealed some of the work that was going on behind the scenes with their ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) group. The Ara team members (read ‘nerds’) took the time out to demonstrate the sliding ‘blocks’ of their prototype or very early build of the devices, and they have not deviated a whole lot from the initial drafts, but there were significant bits of information included.
KitKat
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The latest flavor of Android is slowly eating up more Android devices, according to the latest stats from Google.
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The Intrinsyc Mobile Development Platform Tablet (“MDP/T”) uses an updated Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC running Android 4.4 (KitKat). According to a TrustedReviews overview of the Snapdragon 800 family, the 805 is set to ship this summer, but Intrinsyc says it’s shipping the MDP/T now for $799. So consider this a sneak preview, or as Intrinsyc calls it “early access” to the Snapdragon 805.
Humble Indie Bundle/Equiso/Games
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There are already quite a couple of Android gaming consoles out in the market today such as the OUYA and the Mad Catz M.O.J.O. to name a few. These devices offer an alternative gaming platform that is considered cheaper than the Xbox or PlayStation consoles. Equiso Play is another upcoming Android gaming console that aims to make it into the market this year.
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There are plenty of Android-powered game consoles already out for consumers to get their hands on and another one up on Kickstarter called Equiso Play. This new one definitely has the potential to be a great product from what we’ve seen of it already.
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Embedded/Devices
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The software stack for the Glass builds upon the Android platform, and hence, on top of the Linux Kernel. It was indeed customized for Glass and is available as google-glass-kernel-source.
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Insyde Software and Timesys have each released enhanced Android BSPs supporting Intel’s “Bayley Bay” evaluation board for the Intel Atom E3800 SoC.
Tablets
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Under the ministry of human resource development, government of India’s one laptop per child (OLPC) project ‘Akash tablet’ will be available in market in 3-4 months at a cost of around Rs 2,500. The tablet which will be the first of its kind to have a dual book and dual board as it will use both Android as well as Linux operating systems will perform the job of both, a tablet and a computer. It will be the cheapest tablet in the world.
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Small cheap computers naturally fit with GNU/Linux because they are easier to sell without M$’s “tax”.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Before installing a Linux system even in a dual boot install, make sure you back up all your files in case something goes wrong! There are many different versions of Linux. I have one computer with a recent version of Ubuntu, which is one of the more popular versions of Linux.
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Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP in a week’s time, on the 8th of April 2014. The number of users who still use Windows XP is astonishing. Let’s be honest – XP was the best and the most stable of all the releases of that Redmond corporation.
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There is an alternative to tossing your computer or paying for expensive upgrades. The solution I’ve been talking about for at least a decade is to make the switch to a GNU/Linux operating system. Now, you’ve got a reason to make that switch and it’s never been easier.
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Windows XP usage on the web is decreasing as the venerable operating system edges ever closer towards its “end of life” from Microsoft support next week.
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MORE INQUIRER READERS that have Windows XP will switch to Linux than Windows 8 when support for Windows XP ends next week.
In The INQUIRER’s recent poll we asked, “Which operating system will you use after Windows XP support ends on 8 April?”
One third will move to Windows 7, which according to latest Net Applications figures still has nearly half of the PC market.
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The support for Windows XP is ending on April 8 and the operating system from Microsoft will be slowly killed and suffocated by viruses and malware. It’s conceivable that some of those users will chose a Linux OS and everybody know that they are hundreds of options.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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The Linux land has a reputation, especially among developers used to Windows, of being – let’s say – somewhat savage, uncivilized. We’ve all heard the ghost stories: things being downright broken, lack of documentation and general despair; people coming, exclaiming: “what the fuck?!” and going right back.
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In little over a year since the first stable version of Steam for Linux emerged, the number of Linux-supported games continues to grow at a rapid pace. Valve’s digital game distribution currently hosts 376 games for Linux, with many quality commercial titles such as Shadowrun: Dragonfall, System Shock 2, and Europa Universalis IV to name-drop just a few of our favorites. With more game engines being natively ported to Linux, this trend is going to continue. For example, the CryEngine technology has recently been natively ported to Linux, so we could see ports of games like Ryse: Son of Rome and Crysis 3.
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Every month Valve publishes a comprehensive hardware and software survey that reflects what is being used to run the Steam client. It’s been pretty accurate until now, but a couple of months ago Valve made a few small modification and eliminated most of the inconsequential entries for various other distros.
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In the past I had a look at 17 free games available for Linux, overviewed here and here. In this article I will have a look at five more completely free and open-source games available to install in any distribution out there.
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Shipwrecked. Captured. Betrayed. Forced to perform for an audience of cats? Yes, all that and more when you unlock BattleBlock Theater! This game just sounds funny!
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It has only been a week since we let you know about Icebound, but it’s now been released! Icebound is a dark fantasy visual novel that takes place in a steampunk world locked in the depths of an ice age, where alchemists possess supernatural powers.
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Star Gem and Gaijin Entertainment’s inter-galactic MMORPG, Star Conflict, is celebrating its two year anniversary with a pretty hefty update that will see it gain Oculus Rift and Linux support.
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We’re extremely excited that Epic is porting Unreal Engine 4 to Linux — see the official announcement or some press here and here. Once we heard UE4 Linux was coming we pretty much dropped everything to ensure vogl can handle UE4 callstreams. The latest code on github now supports full-stream tracing/replaying and trimming of UE4 callstreams in either GL3 or GL4 mode. UI support for UE4 is still in the early stages, but now that we can snapshot/restore UE4 and continue to play back the callstream without diverging it’s only matter of time before the UI comes up to speed.
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FaeVerse Alchemy, a puzzle game developed and published by Subsoap, has been released on Steam for Linux with a small 9% discount.
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Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden, a point and click adventure developed and published on Steam by Artifex Mundi sp. z o.o., has also received a Linux version and a sizable discount.
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Harvester, a disturbing adventure video game developed by DigiFX Interactive and published by Night Dive Studios, is now available on Steam for Linux.
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While the voglperf code has been public for some time within Git, the first initial release of Voglperf was tagged on Tuesday evening by a Valve developer.
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Getting games to stream properly from Windows to Linux seems to be the main focus of the Valve developers and many of the patches deal strictly with this feature. It’s unlikely that In-Home Streaming will exist the Beta stages too soon, but the developers might surprise us with the next stable release.
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One month after releasing Unreal Engine 4 and talking about Unreal Engine 4 Linux support, Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4.1 preview today and it’s paired with first-rate Linux support.
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The Unreal developers from Epic Games have expressed their support before for the Linux platform, but now they actually made it possible with the latest update for the Unreal Engine 4.
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Good news for gamers who’ve been eyeing Valve’s upcoming Steam Machines: Unreal Engine 4.1 will support the Linux-based SteamOS after a pending update. In a blog post today, Epic Games’ Mike Fricker announced that the source code now includes “initial support for running and packaging games for Linux and Steam OS.” This means that upcoming UE4 titles like Daylight and Fortnite could be ported to the systems.
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Unreal Engine 4, the newest version of the game engine that powers many a AAA gaming title, just got a feature that may prove quite important in the near feature: the ability to build games that run on Linux.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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The latest GCompris 14.03 version is quite extensive and the developers have managed to implement a large number of fixes and new features. For example, support has been implemented for multigraph languages in click_on_letter by GunChleoc, a font selector has been added in the config dialog box and it has replaced the skin selector, the torta py pastel has been replaced in the Spanish text exercise, and support has been added for localized sound.
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The Wine development release 1.7.16 is now available. What’s new in this release (see below for details): – More regression test fixes. – String arrays better supported in the IDL compiler. – Initial stubs for DirectX Video Acceleration. – Various bug fixes.
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XBMC is a home theater application which runs in fullscreen, has a beautiful, modern interface, support for pictures, music and video collections and playlists, television and radio.
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Midori 0.5.8 features updates to its WebKit2 rendering engine and AdBlock support (for those web users that unfortunately deprive web publishers of their income… including here; if you appreciate this site, please disable AdBlock or become a Phoronix Premium subscriber to support this site that takes 80+ hours of my week for the past ten years in providing always the latest Linux/open-source news and Linux hardware reviews, etc).
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Wifislax is a Slackware-based LiveCD designed for wireless hacking and forensics. Though it is designed for use as a LiveCD, it is possible to install it to a hard disk drive (HDD) and run it just like a standard desktop distribution.
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04.06.14
Posted in News Roundup at 11:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Mentor and AMD
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With a just-announced agreement between AMD and Mentor Graphics, embedded linux developers will have free access to Mentor Embedded Linux Lite with AMD’s upcoming Steppe Eagle and Bald Eagle platforms. Embedded developers will also have access to Mentor Embedded Linux and Sourcery CodeBench Lite as a GNU-based C/C++ development/debugging tool-chain.
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As a Yocto Project™ compatible product, Mentor® Embedded Linux will now bring standardized features and tools, and ensure quick access to the latest Board Support Packages (BSPs) for AMD 64-bit x86 architecture beginning with the upcoming AMD Embedded G-Series system-on-a-chip (SoC) (codenamed: “Steppe Eagle”) and AMD Embedded R-Series APU/CPU (codenamed: “Bald Eagle”). Embedded systems developers will have comprehensive access to the Mentor Embedded Linux development platform for customized embedded Linux development and commercial support, as well as a no-cost Mentor Embedded Linux Lite derivative providing all the essentials to evaluate Linux on AMD embedded processors.
Cars
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Although big names like Google and Apple are now starting to move into the space, they have just as much of a learning curve as the other players in the market, meaning there is an opportunity for any company of any size to become a leader. With such fierce competition among organizations to dominate this field, I expect we will see some revolutionary new approaches and technologies. Already we are seeing open source technologies like Linux, Tizen, and Android being leveraged for new automotive products.
Chromecast
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Google’s Chromecast remains their hottest selling device. At $35 a piece and an ever increasing list of supported apps, the little dongle has put many set-top boxes and sources of digital media out of business. While many have expressed their love for the device, designer Sam Dirani of Raleigh, NC, feels like there could be a more modern look to the revolutionary device, and he has now revealed his take on it.
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People in UK have good news coming their way. So far, those who wanted to lay their hands on Chromecast had to import one from the United States. But it won’t be necessary anymore. It has been reported in Android Police website that starting Wednesday, interested buyers can source it from a retailer.
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Roku announced a new streaming media stick that’s compatible with standard HDMI ports, in hopes of slowing the growing momentum of Google’s Chromecast.
Amazon
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Rumors have been swirling for a while now that Amazon might release a device similar to the Apple TV. But TechCrunch reports that Amazon’s set top box might actually be similar to Google’s Chromecast device. Is Amazon about to copy Google?
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This week Amazon unveiled the Fire TV as a small network appliance primarily for HD video streaming and complemented by some gaming and mobile app capabilities. The Fire TV is powered by Amazon’s Android-based Kindle Fire OS so in this weekend review are my initial impressions of this Linux-based media system after using it the past two days.
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Fire TV is a tiny box that plugs into your HDTV. It’s the easiest way to enjoy Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, low-cost video rentals, and more. With instant access to over 200,000 TV episodes and movies, plus all your favorite subscriptions and streaming services, you can watch what you want, when you want. If you’re a Prime member, you get unlimited access to thousands of popular movies and TV shows, including exclusives like Downton Abbey, The Americans, Alpha House, and Under the Dome.
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Amazon unveiled Amazon Fire TV, a $99 multimedia and gaming oriented TV companion box running Android 4.2 on a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC.
Internet of Things (Surveillance Inside Homes)
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There are several definitions of open source. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) website contains a very useful and detailed definition, which goes beyond access to the source code and includes ten specific criteria concerning the distribution terms of open-source software. We will not enter here into the ongoing debate concerning the differences between open source and free software, as the OSI website provides a short review of the terms.
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Linux Foundation believes it has the code for unlocking Internet of Things and bringing success
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THE NUMBER of connected devices will rise to 26 billion by 2020, according to one analyst, with the market around the Internet of Things (IoT) worth a hefty $300bn.
Research house Gartner revealed its IoT predictions on Tuesday, advising that the growth would have a knock-on effect on data centres, as firms are tasked with collecting and managing the additional data created by these billions of devices and sensors.
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Marvell has reached its Indiegogo goal for “Kinoma Create,” a Linux- and JavaScript-based hardware/software platform for quick and easy development of IoT gizmos.
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If you want to be up to date on what’s going down in embedded Linux, there’s no place like ELC, as in the Embedded Linux Conference. The Linux Foundation has just posted the 90-session presentation line-up for the U.S. show, scheduled for April 29 through May 1 at the San Jose Marriott. The European version (ELCE) ran last Oct. 21-25 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Echelon introduced its IzoT Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) framework for peer-to-peer networking of embedded controllers last October. At that time, the building automation and smart grid networking vendor released the IzoT multi-protocol stack in an ARM-ready beta version and reference implementation optimized for the Linux-based Raspberry Pi SBC. Since then, support has extended to the BeagleBone Black.
Raspberry Pi
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Meet Ellie, a six week old robot weighing 100 lbs who can launch a two foot diameter exercise ball over 10 feet in the air! Ellie even has eyes: a webcam fitted to the front of her chassis that uses code written in Python running on a Raspberry Pi to process images. Ellie’s main code is written in Java and allows her mecanum wheels to drive, her claw to catch exercise balls, and her kicker to launch balls into the air. In just a few weeks Ellie will be competing along with more than 50 other robots in her first competition.
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Rather than partner with a computing company and badge up another machine, Furber believes the BBC would do better helping teachers to learn to program and provide education tools for students to use. He also believes that Linux would be the answer. He feels using Linux would help get children away from the accepted familiarity of a Windows or OS X environment and would help make them question, probe and investigate a lot more.
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The Raspberry Pi has been out for just over two years now, and has been one of the biggest tech success stories in recent times. With millions of Raspberry Pi’s in the wild and countless more millions raised for various charities and open source projects, the foundation has been able to do more than originally expected.
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We reveal some of the people and things you’ll be able to see at the Linux User Raspberry Jam on 5 April in Poole, Dorset
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Having recently co-authored a book about building things with the Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi Hacks), I’ve spent a lot of the last couple of years talking about this credit-card-sized Linux computer and seeing fun things people have used it for.
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As I was reconnecting the Raspberry Pi to our TV set yesterday evening (it bounces back and forth between connection on my desk and to the TV), I realised that I haven’t had this much plain old fun with computing in a very long time.
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Raspberry Pi celebrated its second birthday last week. Since its debut on February 29, 2012, Raspberry Pi has ushered in a whole new generation of tiny, inexpensive, single-board computers. Numerous Raspberry Pi based DIY project ideas are popping up over the web, and there are many use cases of Raspberry Pi as low-cost learning media in the developing world. Celebrating its second birthday, I am going to share in this post several interesting facts about Raspberry Pi.
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Probably, the best use you could do with a Raspberry Pi would be turning it in a full-fledged media center. With some tuning, a Raspberry Pi can become indeed a device that audiophiles will love, or a tiny board that can empower you television to become a 2014-like smart TV. All you need is some Unix tools (or Win32DiskImager for Windows OSes) to flash your SD Card, and the need to connect your nerdiness to multimedia-related things. This is why in the last week I kept going around the web, spotting the best projects for a Raspberry Pi, to turn it in my personal media center of choice.
Arduino
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There’s no shortage of tiny, low-power single-board computers that can run Android, Ubuntu, or other operating systems. What helps set the pcDuino line apart is that these little developer boards also support the Arduino ecosystem which means you can add Arduino shields to extend the capabilities of the little device and use Arduino programming tools.
RTOS
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Wind River has bagged a 2014 Network Intelligence Award for its Wind River Intelligent Network Platform. The awards from the Network Intelligence Alliance (NI Alliance) recognize telecom operators and suppliers that have used network intelligence technology to develop and deploy innovative services and products.
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3M has released Android 4.x and Linux 3.x kernel patches for its multitouch displays, supporting screens up to 46 inches.
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Enea(R) (NASDAQ OMX Nordic:ENEA) signs a software license agreement with a global Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturer to deliver the operating systems Enea Linux and Enea OSE together with an OSE Compatibility Platform for running OSE applications in Linux. The total value of the agreement is estimated to 3 million USD over a period of four years. The deal covers software for both ARM and PowerPC processor architectures.
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Today Linux dominates the control plane and simple executives are increasingly called on to perform packet processing functionally in the data plane of network equipment. Specialized multicore network processors are displacing other hardware technologies and their vendors often have their own software enablement strategies. Competition for the software layer in telecom has never been more heated.
TI
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TI released Sitara Linux SDK 7.0, now based on the mainline Linux kernel. The SDK supports the Sitara AM355x, and coming soon, the new Sitara AM4x and AM5x.
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AIS has launched a 7-inch, WSVGA multitouch panel PC that runs Android or Linux on TI’s Sitara AM3354 SoC, and offers a camera and PoE support.
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Android Support
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Like Huawei, ZTE is a major Chinese telecom equipment provider that has more recently moved aggressively into mobile devices. They primarily serve up Android phones and tablets, but ZTE has also been the major hardware vendor behind Firefox OS, along with China’s TCL/Alcatel, recently announcing the Firefox OS based ZTE Open C and Open II. Now it’s expanding its Android portfolio with two very different TV set-top boxes (STBs): the FunBox and the MeBox.
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A Cubestormer 3 robot based on a Galaxy S4 Android phone and eight Linux-driven Lego Mindstorms EV3 bricks aims to beat the Rubik’s Cube solving record.
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Haoyu Electronics announced a sandwich-style $60 “MarsBoard RK3066″ SBC equipped with Rockchip’s 1.6GHz dual-core RK3066 SoC, and running Linux and Android
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NanoPC launched a $69 mini-PC and $67 SBC based on a quad-core Samsung Exynos4412 SoC, with SD, HDMI, USB, camera, and Ethernet, and running Linux and Android.
Silica
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Silica has introduced a development board in its ArchiTech range, which has been optimised for Linux based designs incorporating the Renesas RZ/A1H microcontroller.
It has been optimised to have a small memory footprint together with a BSP (Board Support Package) for the on-board peripherals, minimising development time.
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SILICA, an Avnet company, has launched a new ArchiTech development board that offers a low-cost streamlined platform for Linux-based designs. The ArchiTech Hachiko board is supplied with a Linux kernel optimised for the Renesas RZ/A1H MCU, to work with a small memory footprint together with a BSP (Board Support Package) for the on-board peripherals, minimizing development time.
Development
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Jason Kridner is the co-founder of BeagleBoard.org, where he has helped create open source development tools such as BeagleBone Black, BeagleBone, BeagleBoard, and BeagleBoard-xM. Kridner is also a software architecture manager for embedded processors at Texas Instruments (TI).
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The Yocto Project’s open source toolset helps developers build a custom embedded Linux distribution on any hardware architecture by automating the low-level details of the build process. Thus, developers who use Yocto become super heroes, vanquishing Frankenstein and restoring their projects.
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Digia announced Qt Enterprise Embedded in October as a commercial distribution for enterprises. Like the Qt 5.2 cross-platform framework it’s based on, Qt Enterprise Embedded supports Android, as well as Linux. The platform combines Qt’s drag-and-drop GUI builder with an IDE based on Qt Creator and Ubuntu, as well as a Boot to Qt embedded stack for Android and Linux targets.
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Avnet announced a COM based on Xilinx Zynq-7000 ARM/FPGA SoCs, and supported by an optional baseboard, power module, FPGA mezzanine card, and Linux BSP.
Misc.
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Some financial firms are looking into Linux, a free, open source operating system. Currently, 30% of all electronic POS systems at U.S. gasoline stations and convenience stores use Linux.
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Building systems that combined a front-end user interface with real-time processing has often led to awkward and complex trade-offs in performance, architecture and costs.
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Nvidia unveiled a $192 Linux-based “Jetson TK1″ SBC based on the 2.3GHz quad-core Cortex-A15 Tegra K1 SoC, and demoed its use in a self-driving Audi.
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Keepod has developed a Linux-based operating system that can act as a portable hard drive by plugging it into the USB port of any recent PC (going back about 8 years, said Pfeffer). “For the first time, we are separating the ‘brains’ of the computer from the hardware, allowing users to take their ‘computers’ with them on a small, cheap device that will enable them to keep their data safe, secure, and accessible,” he said.
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Debugging embedded software can be a challenging, time-consuming and unpredictable factor in the development of embedded systems. Detecting errant program execution begs the question “How did the software reach this state?”
What combination of inputs and timing resulted in the error, and why? Tracing can often provide the answer.
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The free embedded Linux Buildroot project released a quarterly update, featuring enhanced internal and external toolchains, 67 new packages, and bug fixes.
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