• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Is Linux A Labour Of Love?

So is Linux a labour of love? I think that there is money to be made but not in the traditional sense of just making a single product and selling it. If distributions are out to generate income then they have to be a bit creative about how they do that. Multiple revenue streams are definitely going to be important.

I think charging for a download may help to generate income in the short term but it will ultimately mean missing out on possible revenue streams later on.

The debate is much like the newspaper paywalls. Would you really pay to read a newspaper online when the BBC provide similar or sometimes better information for free? Therein lies the problem for Elementary.

How to Hire Open Source Talent: Focus on the Community, Says Linux Foundation

Soaring demand for professionals with expertise in Linux and open source is great for people with the requisite skills. But it makes finding the right employees more difficult for companies. That’s why the Linux Foundation recently outlined tips for attracting open source talent, which is about much more than the hiring process itself.

Desktop

• Spelling in Malawi

  The inquiry from Malawi was passed to our local expert, Esben Aaberg, who after a few hours of work got the dictionary to work. Unfortunately dictionaries can not be registered without the language been known by LibreOffice. Instead, Esben “cheated” by using a language code from another language. Of course we need the language Chichewa registered, but here and now, it works after all.

• Ask LH: Can I Get A Refund Because Presto Doesn’t Work On Linux?

  Dear Lifehacker, I was recently in hospital and wanted to try out some streaming services in Australia. I have a Linux laptop. I tried out Stan on the free 30-day trial but then realised it uses Silverlight so I cancelled that straight away. Then I wanted to try Presto which has no free trial.

  I signed up because it was only 10 bucks and on the supported devices it lists PCs and Macs, with no qualification, but much to my dismay the service doesn’t work on Linux machines. Foxtel refuses to give me a refund. Is this false advertising, and is there any way to submit a complaint about them? Thanks, No Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Kernel Space

• Linux 3.20 Likely to be Renumbered as Linux 4.0

  Back in November of 2013, when the Linux 3.12 kernel was released, Linus Torvalds first began to talk about about Linux 4.0

  Linux 4.0, much like Linux 3.0 isn’t about any major milestone or API compatibility feature in the Linux kernel, but rather is just an arbitrary number.

• Systemd 219 Released With A Huge Amount Of New Features

  Lennart Poettering announced the release of systemd 219 today and it comes with a very large number of new features and changes.

• systemd 219

  Many many improvements, in particular in the area of containers, btrfs hookup, and networkd. Also, many bugfixes. Enjoy!

• systemd 219 Officially Released, Introduces a New API

  Lennart Poettering, the creator of systemd, has announced the immediate availability of systemd 219, a release that includes numerous improvements, specifically for Btrfs hookup, networkd, and containers. Many bugs have also been fixed in this release.

• Torvalds turns to Sir Mix-A-Lot for Linux versioning debate

  Linus Torvalds is “running out of fingers and toes” and therefore wonders if it might be a good time to tip the Linux Kernel over into version 4.0.

• Kernel 3.19 development – the kernel column

  Linus Torvalds, freshly returned from speaking at Linux Conf AU (LCA) 2015, announced 3.19- rc5 saying “[a]nother week, another -rc”. His announcement mail included his usual opening about his desire for less churn late in the development cycle (Linux kernels typically have up to 8 RCs – or Release Candidates – in the two months of the average release). Overall, Linux 3.19 is shaping up to be a normal sized release – though there’s still well over 10,000 individual commits or patches, each with many lines, which isn’t bad when you consider how the development largely aligned with the end of year holiday period. The new kernel will add a few exciting features, including support for Intel’s MPX processor extensions, and the nios2 embedded system microprocessor architecture from Altera.

• Graphics Stack

  • wayland 1.7.0

    The 1.7 release of Wayland is now available for download. Thanks to all who have contributed, and especially to the desktop environments and client applications that now converse using Wayland.

Applications

• ssh-chat: And a question for which I have no answer

• Command Line YouTube Player `mps-youtube` Sees New Release(s)

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How To Customize The Cinnamon Desktop Environment In Linux Mint

  • How to Create and Manage Btrfs File System in Linux

  • Build An Open Source FM Radio Station With Your Raspberry Pi

  • How to Install Enlightenment E20 Desktop Environment in Ubuntu 14.04/14.10

  • Linux Quota – installation and configuration on Ubuntu and Debian

  • How to Install ‘Varnish’ (HTTP Accelerator) and Perform Load Testing Using Apache Benchmark

  • How To Install Mumble Server On Ubuntu

• Games

  • Steam games for Windows, Mac and Linux – just 25 cents each in the new Trinity Bundle!

  • The Trinity Bundle Now Available From Bundle Stars For $2.49

  • Bundle Stars Trinity Bundle Has 10 Linux Games For Dirt Cheap

    Bundle Stars have unleashed their ‘Trinity Bundle’ and all games support Linux. You can save a massive amount of money buying this bundle!

  • OpenMW Switching From Ogre3D To OpenSceneGraph

    OpenMW has used the Ogre3D engine for rendering up to now, but they’ve decided to instead switch over to using OpenSceneGraph. The OpenMW developers feel OpenSceneGraph is more suitable than Ogre3D for their purposes, due to OpenGL requirements, Ogre’s resource system, and other support. OpenSceneGraph meanwhile is a “perfect fit” according to its developers.

  • A Radical Idea For More Linux Game Ports

    How could Linux get more game ports and users? An Ubuntu developer is suggesting that Canonical and Red Hat finance the ports.

  • Free Open World Game Destination Sol Is Worth A Look

    I gave the game a brief go and found myself having some fun despite it being rather limited in many ways. The premise and controls are simple enough – acquire resources to upgrade and customize your single ship which you control with a combination of the arrow keys and mouse. Trade is limited to buying and selling parts and there’s no real factions besides friendlies and hostiles from what I saw. Getting mercenaries to do my bidding was amusing as was exploring the different planets I encountered. However, in the end, most of the variety in the game was found in changing parts and loadout of my ship.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Final Report : Season of KDE

    This project is primarily for school children.It helps them to get acquainted with different parts of computer both internal and external and also to know about their functionality.

  • 2+ years with network management in KDE

    It has been more than 2 years when I was an intern in Red Hat and Lukáš Tinkl, my leader that time, told me that I should take a look what needs to be done around network management in KDE. I started with contribution to libnm-qt (networkmanager-qt now), because there was a plan to have a separated library for NetworkManager and port the applet to use it later. It took me a few months to get familiar with NetworkManager DBus API and implement all missing stuff and I was ready to start porting the applet. Problem was that the old NM applet was not ready at all, its architecture had been done with more network daemons in mind (like wicd) and the code base became really complicated. I still remember that discussion we had about starting from scratch, it was quite tough decision, because we had to drop such huge code base and years of work. Anyway, we decided to go for it and start from scratch and one of the best journeys of my life had begun. It went quite good, we were able to reuse some existing parts from the old applet and we had first release like half year later. Well, quality of first releases is questionable, not everyone liked them we did, but we have learned from mistakes and now I daresay that the version we have after 2 years currently in Plasma 5 is really great and we enjoyed doing it.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • The Usability of GNOME

    I recently spoke at GUADEC, the GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, and I opened my presentation with a reminder that GNOME is competing for mind share with other systems that are fairly easy for most people to use: Mac, iPad, Windows and Chromebook. So for GNOME to continue to be successful, it needs to be easy for everyone to use—experts and newcomers alike. And, that’s where usability comes in.

  • Using OpenGL with GTK+

    let’s say you are on a bleeding edge distribution, or have access to bleeding edge GTK+.

  • How-To Use OpenGL With GTK3 In Upcoming GNOME 3.16

    With the upcoming GNOME 3.16 release and its GTK+ 3.16 tool-kit there is native OpenGL support and a new GTKGLArea widget.

Distributions

• The Dangers of Boutique Linux Distros

  Every time a new boutique Linux distro rolls out into the limelight it seems the same two thoughts cross my mind. First, the distro’s developer must be excited to present their vision to potential uses and work hard to provide the best distro possible. Second, this also means that if something happens to the developer the project can instantly end in its tracks.

  In this article, we’ll examine the risks of relying on a boutique Linux distro and what to do when you’re forced to switch due to a distro ending its development.

• New Project Points to Danger of Boutique Distros

• Reviews

  • Elementary OS: A good looking cheap Apple lookalike

    So after spending the not-so-bad-after all-valentine watching “romantic” movies I decided to go on a cleanse and get back in my geek groove. What better way to do this than testing a Linux Distro Beta? So I remembered how one reader once requested a review of Apple lookalike Linux distros and decided to take the latest Beta of Elementary OS nicknamed Freya which is due for release “when it is ready!”

  • MakuluLinux 2.0 Cinnamon

    I think it is easy to get excited about Makulu as the distribution offers a lot. Users are given a modern, feature rich desktop (Cinnamon), a lot of useful software, including VLC, the WPS suite, a rich settings panel and easy to use backup utility. Multimedia is well supported and the operating system (when run on a physical machine) performed well. Plus users have access to a huge supply of software in the Debian repositories. I was a little surprised at some of the choices offered. For example, offering us WPS over LibreOffice is an unusual choice for an open source operating system. It’s not a bad choice necessarily, just uncommon. Likewise, the focus on gaming (providing Steam and PlayOnLinux) is an interesting choice. The theme, with its focus on rich, 3-D icons, is also strange, but a welcome breath of fresh air when compared against the stark utility of GNOME or the flat, washed out look of recent KDE releases.

    I suppose what really stands out about Makulu is it is an open source operating system that does not shy away from including proprietary applications when the developers feel those are the right tools for the job. It is a philosophy that may disappoint proponents of free software, but I have to admit it seems a practical path, one which is likely to attract people transitioning from Windows to Linux.

• New Releases

  • Frugalware Linux 2.0 Officially Released with MATE 1.8.1

    The Frugalware Developer Team proudly announced the immediate availability for download of the Frugalware Linux 2.0 computer operating system, a general purpose and independent GNU/Linux distribution that has been created from the ground up for people who are not afraid of text mode.

  • Frugalware 2.0 (Rigel) released

    The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 2.0, our twentieth stable release.

  • Frugalware 2.0 Released For Intermediate Linux Users

    Version 2.0 of the Frugalware Linux distribution is now available, the operating system originally inspired by Slackware that since moved on to being an independent distribution using Pacman.

  • Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 Is Now Available for Download, Chromebook Image Included

    While there’s no official announcement on the Bodhi Linux website about the 3.0.0 release at the moment of writing this article, we’ve spotted the final ISO images of the anticipated Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 release on SourceForge and decided to share them with you on this space.

  • Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 Officially Released, Uses the Numix Icons – Screenshot Tour

    Softpedia was the first to announce today, ahead of the official announcement, that the final release of the highly anticipated Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 computer operating system is available for download. Exactly 12 hours after our blog post, Jeff Hoogland officially announced the immediate availability of Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 for PCs and Chromebooks.

  • Bridge Linux LXDE 2015.02 Screenshot Tour

    The last screenshot tour blog post in the Bridge Linux 2015.02 series is for the LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) edition, which appears to be the most resource friendly of all Bridge Linux flavors.

  • Clonezilla Live 2.3.2-22 Available for Testing, Based on Debian Sid

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Enhances Certification Program for Open Source Experts

    Red Hat (RHT) has beefed up its certification and training programs for open source software. Now, the company is offering new Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) concentrations focused on clouds, data centers and applications related to its Linux-based solutions.

  • Fedora

    • DNF 0.6.4 and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE 0.1.5 Released

      New version of DNF and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE is available for F21 and F22. The update fixes over 25 bugs, exposes more API and enhances plugin options. Read more in release notes of DNF and plugins.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • #! is dead – Long live #!++

      It seems, that the passion of the community of #! was too overwhelming…

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Phones ready to Cut the Rope

        Cut the Rope is one of the many popular games on iOS and Android. The game is now available for Ubuntu Phones. The first Ubuntu phone was made available only a few days ago.

      • Keep A Portable Ubuntu Installation With You Wherever You Go

        There’s so much you can do with an Ubuntu installation. But what if you could take that same Ubuntu installation and make it portable so you can have it with you wherever you are?

        We’ve looked at several options where you can use Linux with your USB drive, but now we’re going to take a look specifically at keeping a portable Ubuntu installation with you so that you have access to all your apps, settings, and files wherever you go.

      • Ubuntu-Powered Meizu Handset Will Be Unveiled At MWC, Company’s Official Teaser Confirms

      • First Ubuntu Phone BQ Aquaris Sold Out; But Will It Challenge iOS-Android Dominance?

        The world’s first Ubuntu phone, the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, finally went on sale last week and promptly sold out within day. The Ubuntu OS offers an alternative to iOS and Android but it has a long way to go before it can take on the two market leaders.

        Ubuntu’s phone itself is not that exciting; the most interesting thing about it is the software.

      • Unofficial Ubuntu Store for Phones Now Available on PCs

        Ubuntu for phones doesn’t have an official online store for the applications accessible from the PC, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t manage to put one together. It’s not official, but it works very well.

      • BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu phone review and demo + additional thoughts

Devices/Embedded

• Open source robot kit taps Raspberry Pi 2

  On Indiegogo, CoroWare launched a 4WD “CoroBot Spark,” open robot platform for STEM education, based on a Raspberry Pi SBC and a CoroWare controller board.

  CoroWare Robotics Solutions’s CoroBot Spark is the latest of several open source robot kits that have used the Raspberry Pi single board computer. Recent examples include iRobot’s Create 2, a hackable version of its Roomba robot, as well as Frindo.org’s RPi-ready Frindo robot. Other Linux-based robot controller boards designed to integrate the Raspberry Pi include the Roboteq RIO, Mikronaut’s RoboPi, and the Calao Systems’s PinBall SBC.

  The open source CoroBot Spark differs from the Create 2 or Frindo in that it’s a larger four-wheel drive (4WD) vehicle. Like the Create 2, the Spark is designed for middle school and high school science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs, as well as university research and education.

• 3.5-inch Haswell SBC has powered serial ports

  Axiomtek’s “CAPA881″ SBC taps Intel’s 4th Gen Core chips, supports extended temperatures, and has powered COM ports, plus SATA, CFast, and mini-PCIe.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Best new Android and iPhone games (February 9th – 15th)

      Let’s start off the week with some fun! In our weekly round up of the best new Android and iPhone games we introduce you to everything new and worthy with no limits to the genre, platform, or price. We can’t guarantee that you’d love the genre of the game we’ve picked, but if you do, chances are you’d spend hours playing one of these games.

    • Android 5.1 Lollipop makes another appearance, this time in the Philippines

      Google is still keeping mum on Android 5.1 Lollipop, the seemingly-newest version of its OS, albeit it’s already been spotted on some Android One devices that got recently launched in Indonesia.

    • Google’s Android One debuts in PHL, priced below P5k

      Google Philippines, together with local phone brands Cherry Mobile and MyPhone, announced on Tuesday, February 17, that it is finally bringing the much-anticipated Android One smartphone into the country at a retail price of under P5,000.

Open-source software aims to change game for smart facades

Where outcomes don’t meet thermal performance standards, variations mean innovation often becomes a casualty. InEnergy, a new open-source software tool engineered by Inhabit Group, aims to prevent the dumbing down of designs and assist clients and designers to achieve higher performance outcomes without adding to costs.

17 years of defending open source: Join the OSI today

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) serves as an international nexus of trust, protecting and promoting open source software as well as the communities that develop and depend on it. Primarily known for our work in certifing open source software licenses, the OSI’s work today has grown—just as open source has—to include a vaeirty of member-driven working groups and incubator projects that help practitioners and communities create and share resourcs, furthering the open source movement. For 17 years, the OSI has brought together open source developers, organizers, contributors, advocates, and businesses toward the common goal of creation through collaboration. Our membership campaign is dedicated to furthering this vivsion.

Now Open Source Firmware Enters the Equation

It seems that running free software programs that will allow (in theory, at least) backdoors to be spotted in code, is not enough. The Kaspersky discovery shows that we must go even further, and demand open source firmware for hard drives (and presumably everything else), so that these too can be audited by independent researchers. It’s a salutary reminder that while there is any element of the software and hardware stack that is not open, there is always the danger the system can be compromised and turned against you.

Events

• Vote for Presentations: OpenStack Summit Vancouver 2015

  This year I’ve submitted, together with Sage Weil, a talk to the “Cloud Security” track with the title: “Storage security in a critical enterprise OpenStack environment”. The talk will provide insight into requirements for a secure setup and potential issues, pitfalls, and attack vectors against storage technologies used with an enterprise OpenStack cloud. We will present what Deutsche Telekom and Red Hat/Inktank, together with the community, are working on to build a security critical cloud with OpenStack and Ceph.

SaaS/Big Data

• Welcoming OpenStack Liberty, documentation improvements, and more

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Compare Office 365 vs. Office 2013 before going open source

  The best part about OpenOffice and LibreOffice is that they’re totally free. Even if they can’t compete with Office 2013 on a feature-by-feature basis, they still have plenty to offer. They’re simple to install and provide benefits not available with Office 2013, such as the ability to run on Linux.

  Plus, the editions available to Windows, Mac OS and Linux are comparable, unlike Office, which lets the Mac version lag behind its Windows counterpart. In fact, OpenOffice and LibreOffice will run on Windows XP and Vista, something even Office 2013 can’t do.

  In my next article, we’ll look at how open source suites compare with Office 365 and how OpenOffice stacks up against LibreOffice.

Healthcare

• Trusts combine to pioneer open source patient records project

  Three hospital trusts have taken a significant step forward in developing a pioneering electronic patient records system, which could be a blueprint for other NHS providers to follow.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Where do we stand after 30 years after the founding of the Free Software Foundation?

  There is a growing concern about government surveillance. At the same time, those of us who live and breathe technology do so because it provides us with a service and freedom to share our lives with others.

  There is a tacit assumption that once we leave the store, the device we have in our pocket, backpack, or desk is ours. We buy a computer, a tablet, a smartphone, and we use applications and apps without even thinking about who really owns the tools and whether we truly own any of it. You purchase a device, yet you are not free to modify it or the software on it in any way. It begs the question of who really owns the device and the software?

  The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and defend the rights of all free software users. FSF proudly promotes the idea of free software—not “free” as in “free beer,” but “free” as in “free to modify the code, share the code, and distribute it freely.”

Project Releases

• Task Coach 1.4.2 Released, Install in Ubuntu/Linux Mint to Organize Tasks

• cmocka 1.0

  At the beginning of February I attended devconf.cz in Brno and the days before I had a hack week with Jakub Hrozek on cmocka. cmocka is a unit testing framework for C with support for mock objects.

Public Services/Government

• Rationalising ICT takes Portugal to open source

  The government of Portugal is expanding its use of free and open source software solutions, to modernise the country’s ICT and to “target an effective expenditure”, says Pedro Viana, a ICT specialist working for the country’s Agency for Administrative Modernisation (AMA). Open source has been implemented since 2013, he says, “whenever a rigorous and objective evaluation analysis of maturity and total cost of ownership shows that it is advantageous.”

Openness/Sharing

• Tesla Open Source EV Patents Let Apple Jump in as Competitor [Ed: misleading FUD piece, not about Open Source]

  On June 12, 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s web site that “All Our Patent Belong to You.” In adopting an “open source” policy to allow others to use the company’s patented intellectual property for free, Tesla’s stock (NASDAQ-TSLA) went up and the company got lots of publicity. But the statement preserved patent rights by requiring “good faith”, which is definitely not “open source.”

• Open Data

  • Italian Open Budgets portal showcases open data analytics

    The Italian web portal www.openbilanci.it (Open Budgets) showcases the value of open data. The site provides financial statements from all Italian municipalities for the last ten years, and information on their mayors. Visitors can freely download and re-use all the raw data. The portal itself provides additional functions, such as the dynamic generation of charts and maps, and the ability to make comparisons between municipalities. The latter allows you to compare taxes and investments in culture and public transport, for example.

Standards/Consortia

• 5 March Will Be A Very Exciting Day For Next-Gen OpenGL

  Earlier this month a GDC 2015 session was listed for showing off “glNext”, the next-generation OpenGL. This major advancement for a cross-platform, multi-purpose graphics API is going to be presented by Valve, Epic Games, Unity, and the Khronos Group, among others. Besides the GDC session for glNext, on the same day they’ll be having a separate event about this new API.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• France sells 24 fighter jets to Egypt after years of export woes

  Analysts say the deal for up to $6 billion of military hardware, could signal Europe’s growing acceptance of President Sisi’s rule

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• MPs’ pension fund at risk from fossil fuel investments, Caroline Lucas warns

  The £487m MPs’ pension pot is in danger of taking a financial hit due to the failure of its trustees to acknowledge the economic risk posed by fossil fuel investments, a group of 11 MPs and two Lords have warned.

  The trustees of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund were challenged last year by the group, which include Green party MP Caroline Lucas, to shift its investments from oil and coal companies because of widespread fears that they are overvalued.

Finance

• “The Game is Rigged”

  ACLU SoCal, L.A. Progressive and Occidental College hosted Prof. Wolff for a discussion on economic rights and reform…

• Class, Change and Revolution

• Feel Trapped in Your Job? That’s Because You Are

  The eight-hour-day movement, which itself grew out of the ten-hour-day movement, was a central demand of the labor movement in its pre–New Deal phase, before the National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act locked in a system that many of us would recognize even if we don’t work under its actual conditions. The five-day work week, the eight-hour day—the “nine to five” (thanks, Dolly Parton).

Privacy

• Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program

  The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

• How “omnipotent” hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years—and were found at last

  In 2009, one or more prestigious researchers received a CD by mail that contained pictures and other materials from a recent scientific conference they attended in Houston. The scientists didn’t know it then, but the disc also delivered a malicious payload developed by a highly advanced hacking operation that had been active since at least 2001. The CD, it seems, was tampered with on its way through the mail.

  It wasn’t the first time the operators—dubbed the “Equation Group” by researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab—had secretly intercepted a package in transit, booby-trapped its contents, and sent it to its intended destination. In 2002 or 2003, Equation Group members did something similar with an Oracle database installation CD in order to infect a different target with malware from the group’s extensive library. (Kaspersky settled on the name Equation Group because of members’ strong affinity for encryption algorithms, advanced obfuscation methods, and sophisticated techniques.)

• Obama’s War on Leaks Skirts the Constitution

  The Obama administration is gloating over the recent conviction of Jeffrey Sterling in an Alexandria, Va. federal court for allegedly leaking details of a secret government program called Operation Merlin that was intended to damage Iran’s nuclear program. Attorney General Eric Holder described the verdict as “…a just and appropriate outcome. The defendant’s unauthorized disclosures of classified information compromised operations undertaken in defense of America’s national security. The disclosures placed lives at risk.”

• U.S. Embedded Spyware Overseas, Report Claims

  The United States has found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in computers and networks it has targeted in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and other countries closely watched by American intelligence agencies, according to a Russian cybersecurity firm.

  In a presentation of its findings at a conference in Mexico on Monday, Kaspersky Lab, the Russian firm, said that the implants had been placed by what it called the “Equation Group,” which appears to be a veiled reference to the National Security Agency and its military counterpart, United States Cyber Command.

• The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives

  It’s been known for a while that the NSA will intercept and bug equipment to spy on its soon-to-be owners, but the intellgency agency’s techniques are apparently more clever than first thought. Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered apparently state-created spyware buried in the firmware of hard drives from big names like Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. When present, the code lets snoops collect data and map networks that would otherwise be inaccessible — all they need to retrieve info is for an unwitting user to insert infected storage (such as a CD or USB drive) into an internet-connected PC. The malware also isn’t sitting in regular storage, so you can’t easily get rid of it or even detect it.

Civil Rights

• Jeb Bush in ‘95: We need more for-profit prisons

  Jeb Bush began his political career as a firebrand soldier of the Republican Revolution.

  Although he’s now widely known as the moderate Republican choice for 2016, Bush ran multiple campaigns for Florida governor while promoting the “deinvention of government” through broad privatization and the rapid shrinking of the public sector—including the transformation of the state’s prison system into a for-profit industry.

• Guantanamo Whistleblower: Guards Rehearsed for Reporter Visits Weeks in Advance

  SN interviewed Joseph Hickman, a former Guantanamo staff sergeant and author of the recently published book, “Murder at Camp Delta: A Staff Sergeant’s Pursuit of the Truth About Guantanamo Bay.” In the book, Hickman alleges that three Guantanamo detainees were murdered at a CIA black site, and that this was later covered up, the deaths portrayed as suicides.

• Why can’t media describe Chapel Hill murders as terrorism?

• The everyday terror we all live with

  I realize that terrorism is scary and I certainly hope that the US doesn’t suffer any more attacks from Islamic extremists any time soon.

• Islamic School of Rhode Island vandalized

  Hilmy Bakri, president of the school’s Board of Trustees, said Sunday that racial slurs were spray-painted on the school, at 840 Rear Providence St.

• U. Mass. Will Not Admit Iranian Students to Schools of Engineering and Natural Sciences (Updated)

  1. Turns out that Kaplan, which is a US-based educational company, is implementing an even more draconian version of the policy over in Britain. For similar reasons as U. Mass. And it’s caused some problems.

  Kaplan, a US-owned education provider in the UK, is refusing students who are residents of Iran enrolment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) subjects as well as any of its post-graduate courses, citing US sanctions.

  Applications for more than a dozen Iranians students have been withdrawn since autumn 2013 because the company felt it had to comply with the US regulations and sanctions policy regarding the country.

  Critics say sanctions were put in place to punish Iranian authorities, not ordinary people, and that such interpretations were based on a misreading of the policy.

  Iranian students studying in Britain’s public universities can generally take such courses.

• DOJ Doesn’t Want You To Think CIA Doctored Evidence in the Sterling Trial

  Indeed, it is an agency with a long and storied history of serially destroying evidence. The Eastern District of VA US Attorney’s Office knows this, too, because they have so much experience reviewing cases where CIA has destroyed evidence and then deciding they can’t charge anyone for doing so.

  And while I don’t expect Judge Leonie Brinkema of CIA’s own judicial district to therefore deny the CIA the presumption of regularity, I confess DOJ’s concern that Sterling might suggest CIA had doctored or destroyed evidence makes me pretty interested in what evidence they might have worried he would claim CIA doctored or destroyed, because with the CIA, I’ve learned, it’s usually a safer bet to assume they have doctored or destroyed evidence.

  Especially given the two enormous evidentiary holes in the government’s case:

  The letter to the Iranians Merlin included with his newspaper-wrapped nuclear blueprints
  A report of Merlin’s activities in Vienna

  As I lay out below, CIA’s story about the letter to the Iranians is sketchy enough, though the government’s ultimate story about it is at least plausible. But their story about Merlin’s non-existent trip report is sketchier still. I think the evidence suggests the latter, at least, once did exist. But when it became inconvenient — perhaps because it provided proof that Bob S lied in the cables he wrote boasting of Mission Accomplished — it disappeared.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• CuBox-i review – an elegant mini PC which runs Android, Linux and OpenELEC

  The CuBox-i is certainly an interesting mini PC. It offers a lot of flexibility since its support for Android and Linux is excellent, and it excels at running Kodi.
  One of the most important commercial uses of a Single Board Computer (SBC) is as a prototyping and rapid development platform. Recently I reviewed the HummingBoard-i2eX, a SBC from SolidRun that is compatible with Android and Linux. Since the proof is in the pudding, SolidRun has used its own tech to create a truly miniature PC.

  At just 2 inches x 2 inches x 2 inches (50.8 mm x 50.8 mm x 50.8 mm) the CuBox is a marvel of engineering. On one side of the cube is a set of ports including the power socket, HDMI, Ethernet and two USB ports. While the rest of the cube is fairly bland except for various labels, logos and LEDs.

• Are We There Yet?

  Inadvertently, this was a driver for adoption of GNU/Linux as one could install GNU/Linux and get better performance in the same amount of RAM, or one could keep an old PC snappy for years longer. GNU/Linux also increased use of RAM as did browsers… but the need to constantly double RAM every few years was gone for those first-adopters of GNU/Linux. Now it’s gone for everyone else. RIP Wintel.

Server

• Lets review.. Docker (again)

  It’s been just over a year since my last review of Docker, heavily criticising it’s flawed architectural design and poor user experience. The project has since matured into 1.0 and gained some notoriety from Amazon, but has suffered growing user frustration, hype accusations and even breakout exploits leading to host contamination. However the introduction of private repos in Docker Hub, which eliminated the need to run your own registry for hosted deployments, coupled with webhooks and tight Github build integrations, looked to be a promising start.

Kernel Space

• Redesigning the Linux video system from the ground up

  Being a good open source citizen—that’s where it starts. For Jon Cruz, navigating various technical opportunities over the years eventually led him there. Jon recently started working in the Open Source Group at Samsung where he works on the Wayland project as well as IoTivity, an infrastructure for the Internet of Things.

  Cruz’s open source journey began when he started contributing to the Inkscape community. His connections with Inkscape contributors eventually led him to his current role at Samsung. I think it’s important to note that this is a common story for many people who get involved with open source. The first step is to find the right project and start contributing—you never know what career opportunities could stem from that first step.

• The Community Really Wants To See Linux 4.0

  Linus Torvalds has yet to reveal whether Linux 3.20 will be re-branded as Linux 4.0, but it seems the community at least really wants this version bump to happen.

  Last week on Linus Torvalds’ Google+ page he polled the community over Linux 3.20 vs. 4.0. Torvalds has yet to say what version he’s going with for this next kernel — it will probably be revealed next weekend when he’s closing the merge window and bumping for -rc1 — but it seems overwhelmingly that people want this Linux 3.20 to 4.0 jump.

• Arnold’s T-800 Terminator Runs Linux Kernel 4.1, We’re All Doomed

  If the Terminator movies are to be believed, we are getting closer to the end of the world. It looks like the T-800 model is running Linux kernel 4.x and we already know that Linus Torvalds is thinking about releasing the 4.x branch soon.

• Linus Torvalds: I don’t care if Terminator robots run on Linux

  Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel was under heavy fire after a leak by Edward Snowden which showed that Skynet, the US-based company which builds robots, was using the Linux kernel to power their machines. Skynet is one of the most secretive US companies which reportedly operates from a leased hanger in Area 51.

  However, Linus Torvalds denied any association or knowledge of Skynet Corporation. During a local Linux conference in Portland, Linus was addressing a small crowd when a reddit user asked if he had been approached by Skynet? Linus, with a faint smile on his face, said ‘no’ while nodding (in yes).

• Graphics Stack

  • The DRM Graphics Changes Submitted For Linux 3.20

    The most recent pull request for the already very exciting Linux 3.20 / 4.0 kernel is the DRM graphics driver changes, which of course excite us a lot. This DRM pull request is another fairly heavy pull request with a number of end-user features for the popular open-source graphics drivers.

• Benchmarks

  • Linux 3.19, 3.20/4.0 Doesn’t Do Much For Intel HD 5500 Performance

    Yesterday I ran some benchmarks from the new Core i3 Broadwell NUC to see how the latest Mesa Git affects the OpenGL performance for the Core i3 5010U chip with HD Graphics 5500. Today I’m complementing that testing to see if the latest Linux kernel Git makes any difference for this low-end, low-power Broadwell chip.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • vagrant with lxc and libvirt in fedora – reprise

  • Now you can unlock the bootloader on Kindle Fire HDX tablets

  • How To Install Whisker Menu 1.4.3 On Xubuntu 15.04, Xubuntu 14.10, Xubuntu 14.04, Xubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint 17.1, Linux Mint 17 And Linux Mint 13 Using XFCE

  • How To Install Whisker Menu 1.4.3 On Fedora 21, Fedora 20, OpenSUSE 13.2, OpenSUSE 13.1 And Debian Wheezy, All Using XFCE As The Default Desktop Environment

  • How To Install Cutegram 2.0.0 On Ubuntu, Debian And Derivative Systems

  • How To Install Cutegram 2.0.0 On Linux Systems

  • How To Install Viber 5.0 On 64 Bit Linux Systems

  • How to make remote incremental backup of LUKS-encrypted disk/partition

  • Create a NAS box from spare parts

  • Android update battery problems: How to fix poor battery life following Android 5.0 Lollipop update

• Games

  • Cut the Rope Is the First Major Game Ported for Ubuntu Phones

    ZeptoLab, the studio that made the famous “Cut the Rope” game a couple of years back has officially ported the title for the Ubuntu platform and is now available in the store.

  • Strength of the Sword Ultimate is coming to Mac, PC, Linux

    Kickstarter gets a lot of flack these days, and deservedly so, for being nothing more than a way for game development companies to take preorders. Every now and again, however, it’s a way for two guys who have been working in the garage for five years to complete funding on something that otherwise may not see the light of day…or at least not in such an impressive manner. This is the case with Strength of Sword Ultimate, a new fighting game that has now been funded for Mac, PC and Linux.

  • Legends Of Eisenwald, A Medieval RPG & Strategy Game Is Coming To Linux

    Legends of Eisenwald never reached the Linux stretch goal to come to Linux right away, but it was always coming and the developers have reconfirmed this.

  • Enter The Gungeon, A Gunfight Dungeon Crawler That Looks Epic

    Enter the Gungeon is a recent discovery that has me excited! It looks similar to Nuclear Throne in an over the top kind of way, and I love it.

    Their official site notes that Linux will be a platform, and their publisher is the Linux-friendly Devolver Digital, so we are go!

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Sometimes they come back: Danbooru Client ported to KF5 and C++

    And so a port of Danbooru Client to C++ began. I took the opportunity also to learn some model/view programming (still baffling at times, but I’m getting ebtter) and then I even tried to implement a custom thumbnail view for posts (I managed more or less, with a lot of blood and tears).

    Then the KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt 5 arrived on the scene…

  • KDE Partition Managers 1.1.1 and 1.2.0

    I would like to announce two releases of KDE Partition Manager. Version 1.1.1 is a bugfix release. It was ported away from Solid to avoid the unfortunate udisks2 bug and uses libparted directly (partitionmanager was using libparted already anyway). That means packagers do not have to select -DENABLE_UDISKS2 cmake option anymore.

  • Kdenlive news for 4 months… many good things!

    First, let me come back to September: we didn’t talk about it here, and it’s a shame: we all must sincerely thank Akademy Jury for designating JB for Application Award! We all were really touched, he can be very proud of it and deserves it for so many years of hard work… and he did rise to the bait, as this raised back his motivation to come help us again! So double, triple, infinite thanks for that prize.

  • Kdenlive KDE Video Editor Is Still Progressing

  • [Krita] Interview with Chris Jones

    Most apps feel like they’re designed for someone else, and I have to try and adapt to their workflow. Krita feels more like it was built with me in mind, and whenever I feel something should behave differently, someone is usually already on the case before I even make mention of it. As far as 2D software goes, Krita fits my needs better than any of the alternatives.

  • KDE Frameworks 5.7.0 Prepares for Qt 5.5

    KDE Frameworks 5.7.0 has just been released by the KDE Community and the developers have pushed a large number of updates and various fixes. It’s a maintenance update, but it’s an important one.

  • Scalable UIs, Scaling the Content

    So far we talked about the technical aspects of scaling your application, the dpi, the number of pixels, its nature, the nature of image formats and the implications of all that on the creation of visual elements for your UI.

    But this is only a part of the problem, for although all this helps you to create answers to your scaling problems, it does not answer the problems that created the need for those answers: the fundamental part of the problem.

Distributions

• Netrunner 15 – Prometheus (64bit)

  We are proud to announce the official release of Netrunner 15 – Prometheus (64bit).
  Netrunner 15 is revised from the ground up: As the first distribution, it officially ships the new KDE Plasma Desktop 5.2.

• Netrunner 15 “Prometheus” Officially Released with KDE Plasma 5.2 – Screenshot Tour

  Clemens Toennies from the Netrunner project had the pleasure of announcing earlier today, February 16, the immediate availability for download of the Netrunner 15 computer operating system, dubbed Prometheus, based on the Kubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) distribution and built around the KDE Plasma 5.2 desktop environment.

• Netrunner 15 ‘Prometheus’ is here — the best KDE-based Linux distro gets better

• Bridge Linux KDE Is an Arch Linux Distribution with a Nice KDE Setup – Screenshot Tour

  A brand-new release of the Bridge Linux computer operating system arrived this past weekend, version 2015.02, which uses the latest ArchBang sources to provide a user-friendly Arch Linux distribution for those who want to easily install the acclaimed OS on their computers. The release is distributed in four editions, with the KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments.

• Black Lab Linux Introduces Its First MATE Edition – Screenshot Tour

  Roberto J. Dohnert, lead developer and project lead of Black Lab Linux, had the pleasure of announcing Softpedia earlier today, February 16, about the immediate availability for download of the Black Lab Linux MATE computer operating system, based on Ubuntu Linux and the MATE desktop environment.

• Black Lab Linux MATE 6.1 Released

  Today we are pleased to announce the release of Black Lab Linux MATE 6.1. Black Lab Linux MATE 6.1 is a distribution of Black Lab Linux that utilizes the Mate Desktop environment.

• Reviews

  • MakuluLinux KDE 7.0 Officially Released, Not Yet Ready for 64-bit – Video

    The MakuluLinux KDE 7 distribution has been officially released this past weekend, bringing a rock solid, stable, secure, responsive, safe and gorgeous KDE graphical desktop environment based on the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Core operating system, which is supported with software updates and security patches until 2019.

• New Releases

  • OpenELEC 5.0.2 Is a Bleeding Edge Embedded OS with the Latest NVIDIA Drivers

    OpenELEC, an embedded operating system built specifically to support the Kodi media player hub and to run on most available hardware, is now at version 5.0.2 and is ready for download.

  • Bridge Linux Xfce 2015.02 Released, a Fast and User-Friendly Arch Linux Distro

    We know how much you love screenshot tours, so at your request, we have decided to make a screenshot tour for the recently released Bridge Linux Xfce 2015.02 computer operating system based on the powerful Arch Linux distribution using the ArchBang sources.

  • Bridge Linux GNOME Is an OS for People Who Want a User-Friendly Arch Linux

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • Rawhide: Beloved and vital member of the Fedora family

      There are indeed people using Rawhide day to day. I myself have for the last few years, and I know there are a number of others (based on IRC conversations and posts to the test list). Regarding the KF5 issues, this is a somewhat unstable time for KF5, as they are just now landing things and integrating them and also gcc just updated to 5.0, causing them some issues. Perhaps some of this work could have been done in a copr or the like, but sometimes it’s really hard to anticipate what will happen when you finally build in the official Fedora buildsystem. I don’t think the common answer here should be “you should expect that in rawhide”, but instead “You should understand that at times various parts of rawhide may be under more work and help them work around those issues”. I’ve definitely run into situations in the last few years where something was broken and I couldn’t use it, but I reported bugs on them and people fixed them up. In the mean time it’s always good to have alternatives.

• Debian Family

  • Removing Systemd from Debian (and still running a desktop)

    This is a work-in-progress report on getting a functional Debian GNU/Linux system that does not have systemd or any systemd libraries installed, yet (with some inconvenience) is still functional. The process is not without risk, may require (required, as of 5am on 14th Feb 2015) some recovery procedures, and will almost certainly require ongoing maintenance that may be unattractive for some users. The recovery procedures utilised are also documented.

  • Debian Project Reaches 83% Reproducible Builds for Source Packages

    Debian developers have just announced that 83.5% of all source packages in sid main can be rebuilt reproducibly, which is actually a huge percentage.

  • Derivatives

    • Tails 1.3 RC1 Out Now, Edward Snowden’s Favorite Incognito Live CD

      The first Release Candidate (RC) version of the forthcoming Tails 1.3 amnesic incognito live system has been officially released for testing, bringing three major new features and four minor improvements that are described for your reading pleasure in the next paragraphs.

    • CrunchBang Linux Revived As CrunchBang++

      Earlier this month we wrote how CrunchBang Linux was winding down with its lead developer halting development of this Debian-based distribution. However, there’s new developers now forming the CrunchBang++ project.

    • CrunchBang Linux Is Back from the Dead as CrunchBang++, Based on Debian Jessie

      Ten days ago, on February 6, 2015, we’ve reported that the CrunchBang Linux computer operating system is no more because its developer, Philip Newborough, decided to stop developing the distribution. As a result, a bunch of devoted CrunchBang Linux fans decided that it is not time for CrunchBang Linux to die just yet.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Meizu teases Ubuntu phone ahead of MWC event

        Ubuntu on mobile phones has been a long standing project for Canonical and quite an ambitious one. Much like Microsoft and its new One Windows ideology, Canonical hatched the scheme for a unified cross-device application ecosystem long ago, but progress has been rather slow.

        Meizu has been a vital part of the new OS development with various demo builds and rumor of Ubuntu-powered Meizu handset popping up ever since the MX 3 was the company’s flagship offer. Today the Chinese smartphone maker posted a rather interesting teaser on Facebook. The image hints at a new OS, which will join the ranks of Flyme and YunOS and probably be unveiled at this year’s MWC.

      • Meizu Is Teasing Ubuntu for Phones Ahead of MWC 2015 in Barcelona

        Meizu is now teasing the launch of an Ubuntu OS-powered phone at the Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, which falls right into the plans that have been revealed until now via various rumors.

      • First Ubuntu Phone BQ Aquaris Sold Out; But Will It Challenge iOS-Android Dominance?

        The world’s first Ubuntu phone, the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, finally went on sale last week and promptly sold out within day. The Ubuntu OS offers an alternative to iOS and Android but it has a long way to go before it can take on the two market leaders.

        Ubuntu’s phone itself is not that exciting; the most interesting thing about it is the software.

        The first Ubuntu phone runs on Ubuntu for smartphones, the mobile version of Canonical’s leading Linux desktop OS brand Ubuntu. As such, there were high hopes for Ubuntu OS, which Canonical has seemingly met. The Ubuntu OS reimagines the mobile OS with Scopes, which consists of different home pages to organize your apps.

      • Multiple PostgreSQL Vulnerabilities Corrected in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

        Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating systems have been updated in order to fix a number of PostgreSQL vulnerabilities discovered to affect them.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Online Community Goes Nuts After elementary OS Devs Say People Should Pay

          The new elementary OS 0.3 Beta 2 has been launched, but it looks like the people are focusing on a different aspect of this release. The development team changed the way they are providing the download, which is still free, but the online community went nuts.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Sony SmartWatch 3 Review: The Best-Performing Android Smartwatch Yet

      Sony’s been trying the smartwatch thing for years, but the original SmartWatch and the SmartWatch 2 both…what’s the word I’m looking for here? Sucked? Yeah. But the SmartWatch 3 has solid performance and two nifty features you won’t find on any other Android Wear. It’s the first with built-in GPS and a screen you can read without backlighting.

    • What Every Company Can Learn From Xiaomi

      I’ve mentioned a couple of times the rising Chinese star Xiaomi, which could well become the leading manufacturer of Android-based smartphones worldwide if it manages to carry on as it has begun. In another sign of its global ambitions, it held a press conference in the US last week:

      Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra, vice president of international for the company, announced at a press event in San Francisco Thursday that it plans to launch its e-commerce website in the U.S. and other international markets soon to start selling accessories like its fitness band, power banks and other accessories.

    • Android 5.0 Lollipop Is More Stable Than iOS 8: Report

      Someone once said any edge is a good edge, even if it’s not a huge edge and that is what Android 5.0 Lollipop is enjoying right now given its stability edge over Apple’s iOS 8.

      A new Crittercism report reveals the Android mobile platform Android 5.0 Lollipop has a tiny slight edge when it comes to stability when compared to Apple’s iOS 8 mobile platform. That means mobile application crash and burns don’t happen as frequently on Android 5.0 Lollipop as they happen on Apple iOS 8.

    • LG’s new Android Wear smartwatch, the Watch Urbane, has an all-metal body

      In the long-term, Android Wear isn’t likely to be about just a small handful of watches. Fashion and individuality often go hand-in-hand, and now we’re starting to see some of the early Android Wear watch-makers reflect that, making different smartwatches for different styles. The latest? LG’s all-metal take on the G Watch R, the LG Watch Urbane.

    • Best new icon packs for Android (February 2015) #2

      In Android’s domain, customization is one of the main selling points. One of the easier ways to refresh your device’s UI and give it a new look is by changing your icon pack.

    • Samsung and Android 5.0: What does Lollipop bring to your Galaxy S5?

      At a glance there’s very little visually different on the Samsung Galaxy S5 homescreen. Delve a little deeper and cleaner design can be found. Notifications have a much cleaner look, which work well, while being able to control app notifications is a welcome extra.

      If you delve a little deeper there are stock Android treats to be founds on the Galaxy S5. The Easter egg for this version of Android has added another layer of fun with and Android style Flappy Bird game. Go to settings, select the version and tap until the Lollipop appears, you can tap this to change colours or hold to play the fun game.

      Making the jump from KitKat to Lollipop on Samsung doesn’t feel as bold a move moving from stock KitKat to Lollipop, where the changes across the design are much more pervasive.

    • Xposed Framework For Android Lollipop Now Available: What You Need To Know

    • Android 4.4 KitKat Update Now Available for Xolo Q1200

      Xolo has released the Android 4.4 KitKat update for the Xolo Q1200 smartphone. The update installation files as well as instructions are available on the Xolo website.

    • Lenovo A6000, A5000, P70, S90 and Others to Get Android 5.0 Lollipop Update Soon

      Lenovo has announced that its devices – A5000, A6000, P70-A, S90-A, VIBE X2 (Lenovo X2), VIBE Z2, and VIBE Z2 Pro (Lenovo K920) – that currently run on Android 4.4 KitKat will receive Android 5.0 Lollipop update in the second quarter of 2015.

    • G3 Android 5.0 Lollipop roll-out starts on another U.S. carrier

      Android 5.0 Lollipop started rolling out to the LG G3 on AT&T last week, and now it’s hitting another U.S. carrier. Sprint announced on Monday that customers should start seeing the latest version of Android hitting their devices over-the-air beginning now.

    • Android 5.0 Lollipop Update: Moto G 2013 Users Require To Update Motorola Updates Services To Upgrade

      Like other leading brands, Motorola is also trying its best to roll out the Android 5.0 Lollipop update to its numerous devices. According to Mobile Syrup, some of the Moto G 2013 users have received an official notification message from Motorola about the arrival of Android 5.0 Lollipop.

An Update On The Open Source Project ‘Xoreos’ Concerning Jade Empire

Continuing with my quest to make the engines display areas (as I did with Neverwinter Nights 2), I turned to Jade Empire the last two weeks. There was just one tiny issue: xoreos didn’t yet support the model format. While I could make use of other’s people reverse-engineering work for the model formats of other engines (Neverwinter Nights (Torlack), Neverwinter Nights 2 (Tazpn) and Knights of the Old Republic (cchargin), apparently barely anybody bothered to look into Jade Empire. A person called Maian tried to figure out a few thing with just a hexeditor, and while that was a great start (and confirmed my suspicions that the format is similar to Knights of the Old Republic’s), it wasn’t enough for full support in xoreos.

Why I am a Member of the Open Source Initiative

For the first time ever, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is running a membership drive to recruit more individual members. The goal is to recruit 2,398 new members, with that number chosen in homage to the organization’s founding date on February 3, 1998. As an individual member of the OSI, you receive a number of benefits for joining:

Startup OpenLegacy Open Sources App Modernization Tool

A company called OpenLegacy is beginning to gain momentum with a suite of free and open source tools for modernizing IBM i and z/OS applications. Besides giving away most of its technology (it charges for support in its professional edition), the company is also unique with its API-driven approach to giving older apps new life with Web, mobile, and cloud interfaces.
OpenLegacy was founded in Israel about a year ago with the goal of helping organizations expose their IBM i and z/OS assets in new and useful ways. The company’s CEO and co-founder, Romi Stein, is a former IBMer and its COO, Hans Otharsson, worked previously at Software AG, and they were in New York City recently to drum up interest in the venture-based company and its unique business model.

Events

• SCALE 13x: My Dance Card

  I bring this up because since SCALE 8x, my life is never my own during mid-February. Frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way — being part of SCALE every year, working with the rest of the SCALE team to make a great show, and leading a fantastic SCALE publicity team made up of Hannah Anderson, Dennis Rex, Sean McCabe, Sam Is, Michelle Klein-Hass, Jason Riker, and new this year, Mimi Cafiero.

• Open Source Promotion Event at Toch Institute

• Mozilla Angika Meetup @ Bhagalpur, Bihar – A Report

  I am overwhelmed with the success of the event and to see the love of the people for Angika and how they are excited to know that Angika is going to be present with one of the languages in which Firefox is present. UNESCO says that Angika is endangered but now I am convinced that Angika cannot be an endangered language. How a language – a real Lok-Bhasha – can be endangered?

Funding

• Concurrent: 2015 is “show me the money year” for Hadoop

  Field engineering veep at Concurrent, Inc Supreet Oberoi says that “2015 is the ‘show me the money year’ for Hadoop” — his firm offers an application development platform for big data applications.

BSD

• A Prediction: 2020 the year of (PC-)BSD on the desktop

  I am going to make a prediction right now that FreeBSD is going to take off in a big way on or before 2020, perhaps even to the point where it threatens Linux Desktop share.

• m0n0wall BSD Firewall Is Officially Dead

  m0n0wall was a BSD firewall operating system that’s been around for quite some time. It was recognized as one of the best, but there is a reason why we are now using past tense for it. The developer has stopped development and dropped the project.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU Toolchain Update, February 2015

• GNU libtool-2.4.6 released [stable]

  The Libtool Team is pleased to announce the release of libtool 2.4.6.

Public Services/Government

• Malta to start government software repository

  The government of Malta is to implement a repository and observatory of information systems to be used by the islands’ public administrations. The repository will make available open source solutions and share information on reusable tools and systems from across the EU.

• Galicia publishes CeMIT classroom management system

  Amtega, Galicia’s agency for technological modernisation, has published the classroom management system XEA as open source. The software and its documentation can be downloaded for free from the repository of the Galician government (Xunta de Galicia).

Programming

• A beginner’s guide to GitHub

  GitHub uses Git, which is a distributed revision control system designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development back in 2005. Since then, it’s become the most widely adopted version control system for software development there is.

East Germany’s doping legacy lives on, 25 years later

Twenty-five years ago, as a nation officially divided into East and West worked out a plan for how to become simply Germany, Ines Geipel decided to get her name out of the record books.

Geipel – who under her maiden name, Ines Schmidt, had been a member of the formidable East German women’s track team when she helped set a German relay record in 1984 – had started wondering whether the little blue “vitamins” she’d taken as part of her official training regime didn’t taint any glory of being a champion.

The pills, it turned out, were steroids, banned under international competition rules. Geipel asked that her name be removed from the German record books. An asterisk instead of her name now appears.

Hardware

• To a child, often the box a toy came in is more appealing than the toy itself.

Security

• Security advisories for Monday

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Drone Strikes and the Sanitization of Violence

  After a lull of some two months – a break punctuated by the toppling of Yemen’s government – the US drone campaign in Yemen has resumed.

  The pattern that has emerged is distressingly familiar.

  While the US government can claim the death of radical preacher Harith al-Nadari, the victims also include Mohammed Tuaiman, a 13-year-old boy whose father and brother were killed in a drone strike in 2011.

• What Is Going on in the World?

  Could an international tribunal hold war criminals accountable?

• Hailed as a Model for Successful Intervention, Libya Proves to be the Exact Opposite

  When Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 by U.S. forces, Iraq War advocates boastfully celebrated the event as proof that they were right and used it to mock war opponents (Joe Lieberman and John Kerry, for instance, gleefully exploited the event to demand that Howard Dean admit his war opposition was wrong). When Muammar Gaddafi was forced by NATO bombing in August, 2011 to flee Tripoli, advocates of U.S. intervention played the same game (ThinkProgress gleefully exploited the occasion to try to shame those who objected to the illegality of Obama’s waging the war even after Congress voted against its authorization: as though Gadaffi’s fleeing could render legal Obama’s plainly illegal intervention).

• AP Exclusive: High Civilian Death Toll in Gaza House Strikes

  The youngest to die was a 4-day-old girl, the oldest a 92-year-old man.

  They were among at least 844 Palestinians killed as a result of airstrikes on homes during Israel’s summer war with the Islamic militant group, Hamas.

• War punishes Gaza

  In almost every way, the Gaza Strip is much worse off now than before last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas. Scenes of misery are one of the few things in abundance in the battered coastal enclave.

  Reconstruction of the tens of thousands homes damaged and destroyed in the hostilities has barely begun, almost six months after the cease-fire. At current rates, it will take decades to rebuild what was destroyed.

• What ISIS Really Wants

  What is the Islamic State?

  Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• CIA fears enemy will gain control of the weather

  The CIA is worried that a foreign power may develop the ability to manipulate the global climate in a way that cannot be detected, a leading climatologist has claimed.

• Scientist concerned over ‘CIA’ weather weapon query

  A senior US scientist has expressed concern that the intelligence services are funding climate change research to learn if new technologies could be used as potential weapons.

• CIA accused of trying to control the world’s weather

  A scientist has claimed that the US foreign intelligence agency sought his advice about techniques for disrupting the climate.

Finance

• Manchester city centre rents to peak in 2018, says Colliers

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Oscars Make History, So Hollywood’s War Stories Need To Be True

  I’m not referring to the Oscars that particular films might win, but our embrace of their narratives of history. If “American Sniper” gathers a fistful of statues, even more people will see a film that presents a skewed view of the Iraq war. If the “Imitation Game” gets lucky, a lot more people will watch a movie that erroneously portrays Alan Turing as a social idiot. If “Selma” catches some of the limelight, more people may believe that Lyndon Johnson wasn’t entirely supportive of Martin Luther King.

• From Brian Williams to ‘American Sniper,’ the Iraq War Keeps on Killing the Truth

  Who remembers the last time watching the nightly news on network television was an important part of their evening routine?

  No one I know. So when Brian Williams fell into an abyss of amnesia over what he actually went through on a press junket covering the Iraq War in 2003, I just felt sorry for the NBC star because we all make mistakes, and as we get older, our memories aren’t what they used to be—along with every other part of our body. I’ve never taken Williams seriously or anyone from his generation of newscasters. But I do remember growing up with my parents being glued to the tube when the battle in my house was fought over whether we’d watch Walter Cronkite on CBS or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC—whoever was on ABC was never part of the evening equation.

  What an uncanny coincidence—as we used to say in the tabloids—that in one week the news shows are the big news in America, and it has nothing to do with what they’re reporting but which anchor is doing the job on the air.

  When Jon Stewart proclaimed on the same Daily Show where he announced his heart-rending pending departure from our nightly routines how happy he was that “finally, someone is held accountable for misleading America about Iraq,” we had to take notice because the irony factor was too large to ignore. He was describing how Williams had succumbed to “infotainment confusion syndrome” and that malady had messed up his memory.

• Questions they ought to ask on the citizenship tests

  Folks should, for example, be aware of how things really work in government — as opposed to how they are ostensibly designed to work. They should also be familiar with some of those inconvenient tidbits from history that may not show us in our best light but nonetheless have had a drastic impact on the way we are today.

Censorship

• Jordan hands senior Islamist 18 months for criticizing UAE

  Jordan’s state security court on Sunday sentenced a top official in the Muslim Brotherhood to 18 months in prison for criticizing the United Arab Emirates, an ally of the kingdom, his lawyer said.

• The War Over Control Of The Net Is A War Over Information Advantage

  Throughout history, you can observe that many groups have fought over the information advantage – to know more about other people than those others know in return. Whoever has held the information advantage has usually risen to power.

  We know little of spycraft before ancient times, but we do know that covert messaging was common in the Roman Empire. One well-documented method was to shave a slave’s head, tattoo a message into the scalp, let the hair grow back, and send the slave on foot to the recipient, presumably carrying a decoy message.

Privacy

• News outlet to release more secrets of US National Security Agency obtained from cybersecurity firm in Mexico

  A yet-to-be identified news outlet is preparing to release top secrets of the US National Security Agency (NSA), adding to the woes of the intelligence wing which is still suffering from the massive leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

• Report: NSA Bracing for Major New Leaks

  Though the NSA is characteristically not publicly discussing the matter publicly, reports citing private comments from the officials say that the agency is bracing for “major” new leaks.

• NSA braced for new leaks

  The National Security Agency, still reeling from massive leaks caused by Edward Snowden, is preparing to be hit with another major loss of secrets, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

  The leaks are expected to be published in the near future by a news outlet that was not further identified by the officials familiar with details of the compromise, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

  The NSA is aware of the news outlet’s forthcoming disclosures and is taking steps to try and minimize any damage they will cause.

• Feds Visit SpiderOak and Leave Empty-Handed

  Dropbox and similar cloud storage services routinely get inquiries, warrants, non-disclosure NSLs (National Security Letters), etc. which demand information about their users and the content of those user’s files. Because most of those services encrypt your data with THEIR key, (if at all). they can easily hand this data over. Many of these cloud services make an honest effort to protect their customers, but in the end they all too often must surrender the data and keep their mouth shut about it. Many of these services are publishing so-called “transparency reports” detailing (well after the fact) the nature and type of such government demands.

• FBI redacts Public Records requests

  Documents first acquired and reported on by the Minnesota Star Tribune in December 2014 reveal that the FBI is working with State Bureaus of Investigation to “prevent disclosure” of how cell-site simulators are used to determine a phone’s 
location and intercept calls.

• Big Brother Knows What You’ve Been Reading

  Every book you read on your Kindle (or Kindle app) and every word you highlight in those ebooks is recorded by Amazon and may be shared by the bookselling behemoth with the federal government.

• How data privacy is turning into an Orwellian maze

  Earlier this month, the tribunal held that the British intelligence and security agency had been in breach of articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, referring to the right to private family life and to freedom of expression. But hard on the heels of the UK ruling came news that the US government is creating a dedicated agency to monitor cybersecurity threats, pooling and analyzing information across a spectrum of risks. The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC)’s mission will be to ‘connect the dots’ between various sources of intelligence.

Civil Rights

• They Treat the Constitution Like a Worthless Piece of Paper

  President George W. Bush was fond of saying that “9/11 changed everything.” He used that one-liner often as a purported moral basis to justify the radical restructuring of federal law and the federal assault on personal liberties over which he presided. He cast aside his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution; he rejected his oath to enforce all federal laws faithfully; and he moved the government decidedly in the direction of secret laws, secret procedures and secret courts.

  [...]

  Snowden revealed that Obama’s lawyers had persuaded these secret judges, without any opposition from lawyers representing the victims of this surveillance, that somehow Congress had authorized this and somehow it was constitutional and somehow it was not un-American to spy on all of us all the time. These judges actually did the unthinkable: They issued what are known as general warrants. General warrants were used against the colonists by the British and are expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. They permit the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. That’s what the NSA does to all of us today.

• Focus:Iraq War and Torture Violate the Values of Humanity (1-5)

  Yes, they were on top of the world and undoubtedly chilled to the bone with fear as well. And fear and impunity turned out to be an ugly combination indeed. Both the fear and the sense of license, of the freedom to act as they wished, drove them fiercely. Take Michael Hayden, then head of the NSA, later of the CIA. Of that moment, he recently said, “I actually started to do different things. And I didn’t need to ask ‘mother, may I’ from the Congress or the president or anyone else. It was within my charter, but in terms of the mature judgment about what’s reasonable and what’s not reasonable, the death of 3,000 countrymen kind of took me in a direction over here, perfectly within my authority, but a different place than the one in which I was located before the attacks took place.” In other words, on September 10, 2011, he was simply the director of the NSA. On September 11th, without ever leaving the NSA, he was the president, Congress, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court all rolled intone.

• Their Barbarism and Ours

  It will come as no surprise to you that we’re top-notch when it comes to denouncing barbarism — as long as it’s theirs. So the responses here to the horrific burning to death of a Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State — the definition of an act of barbarism — were suitably indignant and horrified. Unfortunately, when it comes to our own barbarism, we turn out to be a tad weaker, whether you’re talking about torture, horrific abuses, the killing of prisoners and of innocents, or the deaths of children by drone (“collateral damage”) across the Greater Middle East.

• How Can This Happen? Here Is How

  So: Ukraine’s troops are permitted to steal whatever they want from the residents in Donbass, the rebelling region. The particular victim here lives in an apartment, and so all that Ukraine’s troops can take from him are his belongings. He’s lucky they didn’t shoot him (if they didn’t).

• “Oh My God, This is Way Off”: New Investigation Shows Texas is Likely Set to Kill An Innocent Man

  Kevin Gannon, a retired detective sergeant with the New York Police Department, spent just 10 minutes looking at official documents related to the case of Rodney Reed — slated for execution in Texas on March 5 — before concluding that something was very, very wrong.

  It was October 2014 and Gannon was working as part of a three-cop team featured on the A&E channel true-crime show Dead Again. The program follows the trio of veteran detectives as they reinvestigate old murder cases. The team approaches the cases cold, not knowing what original police investigators concluded — or who was arrested and prosecuted in the end. Sometimes, Gannon says, he and his colleagues end up agreeing with the official outcome. Sometimes, they do not.

• George Washington, Slave Catcher

  AMID the car and mattress sales that serve as markers for Presidents’ Day, Black History Month reminds Americans to focus on our common history. In 1926, the African-American historian Carter G. Woodson introduced Negro History Week as a commemoration built around the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Now February serves as a point of collision between presidential celebration and marginalized black history.

  While Lincoln’s role in ending slavery is understood to have been more nuanced than his reputation as the great emancipator would suggest, it has taken longer for us to replace stories about cherry trees and false teeth with narratives about George Washington’s slaveholding.

• Coup Plot in Venezuela Thwarted

  Coup plotters planned on assassinating the Venezuelan president and installing a de facto government.

  A coup plot against the Venezuelan government has been foiled, with both civilians and members of the military detained, President Nicolas Maduro revealed Thursday in a televised address.

  Those involved were being paid in U.S. dollars, and one of the suspects had been granted a visa to enter the United States should the plot fail, Maduro said.

• Britain and Canada Involved in Foiled US Venezuelan Coup Plot

  Britain and Canada were co-conspirators in the latest plot to topple Venezuela’s government.

  TeleSUR provided detailed coverage of Washington’s war on Venezuelan democracy. Its dirty hands manipulate violence and instability worldwide.

  US funded and supported key opposition fascist figures Antonio Ledezma, Maria Corina Machado and Leopoldo Lopez released a joint February 11 communique a day before the foiled coup.

• ‘Almost All’ Opposition Leaders Knew About Venezuelan Coup Plot

  Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro added that a U.S. Embassy advisor drafted the script that the coup plotters read in video they planned to air.

• Venezuela Coup Thwarted

  Coup plotters planned on assassinating the Venezuelan president and installing a transitional government.

  A coup plot against the Venezuelan government has been foiled, with both civilians and members of the military detained, President Nicolas Maduro revealed Thursday in a televised address. Below, teleSUR English’s indepth coverage explains the details and context behind the plan.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Merkel’s moment of power and partnership with America is right now

  Yet, this trade deal faces the strongest opposition of any recent joint initiative. Fueled by remaining distrust vis-à-vis the United States, 1.2 million Germans signed a “stop TTIP” petition in just ten weeks. Given these realities, experts now recommend that the negotiations relaunched last week focus on getting an agreement more limited in scope–a work in progress–coupled with a strong education campaign to prevent a greater backlash against globalization. European and American leadership will face an uphill battle with public opinion, but a trimmed down deal coupled with public education efforts should create substantial progress on this deal in the next two years.