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11.06.14

Links 7/11/2014: War Thunder on GNU/Linux, KaOS ISO 2014.11

Posted in News Roundup at 8:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • ON.Lab, backed by AT&T and NTT, offers open source SDN operating system

    The Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab), a non-profit open source software-defined network (SDN) tool development ecosystem out of Stanford University and UC Berkeley, has unveiled an SDN Open Network Operating System (ONOS). ON.Lab ONOS community founding members include AT&T and NTT Communications, who would appear to be in line to implement ONOS in their networks in the near future.

  • Joyent open-sources its core technology

    Not all the action is happening at the OpenStack Summit in Paris. In a bold move, cloud specialist Joyent has announced it’s open-sourcing its core technology. That includes software that competes directly with OpenStack and enables high-performance use of container technology like Docker. The newly open projects enable easy management of containers at scale.

  • Look out OpenDaylight, there’s a new open source SDN controller

    ON.Lab pitches ONOS, an open source SDN controller that offers more scalability than OpenDaylight. Competition could be good and bad.

  • Sensor Fusion Goes Open-Source

    Analog Devices, Freescale, PNI Sensor Corp., and the MEMS Industry Group formed the Accelerated Innovation Community, a group dedicated to providing open-source algorithms for sensors. AIC also plans to announce an I/O standard for sensors in collaboration with the MIPI Alliance.

    Engineers shouldn’t have “to reinvent the wheel on common algorithms every time they want to add or change functionality in their product,” said Karen Lightman, executive director of the MEMS Industry Group (MIG). “Access to an open-source library of introductory algorithms fundamentally changes the development paradigm.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla’s Firefox OS readies for Africa launch

        Phones running the operating system have been gradually hitting various markets across Europe since last year, and have since been released in Brazil, India, and Asian markets too. Now the Mozilla Foundation is looking to expand Firefox OS’ reach to Africa.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Using Open Source Solutions for Cloud-Ready Big Data Management

      Information interchange has reached all new levels. Now, much more than before, organizations are relying on large data sets to help them run, quantify and grow their business. Just a few years ago, we were already working with large databases. Over the last couple of years, those demands have evolved into giga, tera, and petabytes. This data no longer resides in just one location. With cloud computing, it is truly distributed.

    • OpenStack: Distribution or service?

      OpenStack cloud technology is getting very popular, but how should your business use it: By deploying an OpenStack distribution in your servers or data center, or by using it as a service from a service provider?

  • Databases

  • BSD

    • NetBSD Gets Multi-Core Support Working For ARM

      NetBSD developers have finally managed to enable SMP support for modern ARM SoCs.

    • The NetBSD Project: ARM multiprocessor support

      Those following the source-changes mailing list closely may have noticed several evbarm kernels getting “options MULTIPROCESSOR” in the last few days. This is due to those configurations now running properly in SMP mode, thanks to work mostly done by Matt Thomas and Nick Hudson.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GnuPG 2.1.0 Supports ECC, Other Improvements

      GnuPG 2.1 brings support for Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), merging of secret keys is now supported, support for PGP-2 keys has been dropped for security reasons, create/signing key improvements, improvements to handling key server pools, a new format is used for locally storing public keys, card support has been updated, X.509 certificate creation has been improved, and there’s many other enhancements.

    • New GIMP Save/Export plug-in: Saver

      The split between Save and Export that GIMP introduced in version 2.8 has been a matter of much controversy. It’s been over two years now, and people are still complaining on the gimp-users list.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Highwire publishers to pilot eLife open-source tool

        The Journal of Biological Chemistry, The Plant Cell, Journal of Lipid Research, and mBio are among the journals introducing the Lens viewing experience to readers this fall. First introduced by eLife in 2013, Lens is aimed at making reading scientific articles on-screen easier by making it possible to explore figures, figure descriptions, references, and more – without losing your place in the article text.

    • Open Hardware

      • Open hardware sensor BITalino for cool projects

        Smaller than a credit card, BITalino is a low-cost hardware and open source software toolkit, aligned with the DIY (do-it-yourself) movement. It enables anyone to create quirky and serious projects alike for wearable health tracking devices. The base kit includes sensors to measure your muscles, heart, nervous system, motion, and ambient light—and it includes a microcontroller, Bluetooth, power management module, and all the accessories needed to start working.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Security

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Media advise Dems to move to the right once more

      With the Democrats suffering substantial losses in the 2014 midterm elections, it is likely that the advice from pundits and political journalists will be the same as it always is: Move to the right.

  • Censorship

    • Lena Dunham, Meet Barbara Streisand — Have You Met?

      Lena Dunham, who apparently is famous for a HBO show I haven’t watched, has a memoir out. I don’t approve of 28-year-olds having memoirs unless and until they have been shot for advocating for the downtrodden or something, but Ms. Dunham is hardly the first to commit this minor sin.

      This weekend Ms. Dunham became very upset because some people — mostly on conservative political websites — described her memoir as a confession to sexually abusing her little sister.

    • Lena Dunham Once Again Threatens Lawsuit Over An Interpretation Of Her Book That She Doesn’t Like

      We’ve only written about Lena Dunham once before, and it was in the context of her threatening a lawsuit against Gawker for daring to publish her book proposal and comment on it, mocking Dunham. At the time, as noted, I’d never even heard of Dunham. I’ve still never seen her show, but I have seen/heard her interviewed a few times, and I don’t quite understand why there’s so much hate directed at her some of the time. She seems to have an interesting perspective on life and has turned it into a very successful TV show. Good for her. Still, this is now the second time we’ve felt the need to write about Dunham and, once again, it’s about an apparent legal threat from her, based on her book. This time it’s not about the book proposal, but the book itself, now that it’s out.

    • Roca Labs Threatens Other Sites For Writing About Its Case, Files Another Questionable Document

      Apparently, though, Roca Labs just keeps threatening people for covering the case. We’ve heard from a few others who received similar threats to the one we received, and the latest is Tracy Coenen, a fraud investigator who writes the Fraud Files blog, where she covered the Roca lawsuit, the lawsuit against a former customer and the fake implied endorsement from Alfonso Ribeiro.

  • Privacy

    • Open Rights Group: RIPA not fit for purpose

      Further evidence that the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) is being used to violate the rights of UK citizens was exposed today. Documents released by human rights organisation, Reprieve show that GCHQ and MI5 staff were told they could target lawyers’ communications. This undermines legal privilege that ensures communications between lawyers and their clients are confidential.

    • GCHQ are plunging into the privacy debate.

      Writing in Tuesday’s Financial Times, the new director of GCHQ Robert Hannigan, called for “greater co-operation from technology companies” to stop terrorists and criminals groups using online services as their “command-and-control networks of choice”.

    • The courts should decide how much privacy we’re entitled to – not GCHQ

      In his first public statement since becoming Director of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan yesterday described the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple as, ‘the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals,’ and called on them to give ‘greater co-operation’ to the intelligence services. It is a surprising challenge to these companies, given how much GCHQ relies on them for our data.

      [...]

      The problem is that GCHQ and the NSA don’t want personal security to get in the way of them looking at our data: they want banks of computers to check on everyone to make sure you don’t pose a threat to them. That is what bulk collection and analysis means, though they daren’t spell it out that way. Instead, they talk of “needles” being separated from “innocent hay”.

    • Facial Recognition: It’s Hide Your Face Time

      The day is rapidly approaching when every city in the U.S. will be like London is now, with surveillance cameras connected to a grid covering every cubic inch of the city, not dissimilar to what we see weekly on “Person of Interest”. Already, in London, computers connected to these cameras can detect “suspicious behavior”. Add facial recognition technology to that and it really will be like “Person of Interest”, especially in a nation that’s convinced that terrorists are hiding around every corner. The technology is sure to be abused, as law enforcement has never found a technology they didn’t overuse.

    • James Comey Again Demands Tech Companies Do As He Says And Grant The FBI Complete Access To Whatever It Wants

      And what has all this “demanding” and “doubling down” netted Comey? Nothing really. He still needs a compliant legislative body to oblige his fantasies of subservient tech companies opening wide for fat-fingered g-men.

    • FBI Director: Tech companies must unlock devices if requested by officials

      The director of the FBI on Monday doubled down on demands that Silicon Valley giants cooperate in the course of criminal investigations, saying that tech companies such as Apple and Google have to unlock cellphones, if authorities request it.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Verizon Now Pleads For Bogus Net Neutrality Rules Under 706 Promising It Won’t Sue This Time, Ignoring That Others Will Sue

      One of the points that we’ve made a few times concerning the whole net neutrality fight is that whatever rules are put in place, someone is going to sue. As we noted in that post, Verizon’s original filing on the net neutrality plan the FCC announced back in May (based on Section 706) suggested that Verizon would sue over those rules if they were put in place (in contrast to Comcast and AT&T who both said they’d be fine with rules under 706). Since then, it’s become clear that lots of other ISPs have made it clear to Verizon that it should shut up and sit tight, because its own lawsuit that kicked out the 2010 rules now seem likely to lead to much stricter laws.

      So it’s fairly amusing to see Verizon put out a blog post effectively now pleading for the May rules under 706 — rules that it didn’t initially support — now that it’s come out that the FCC is considering this new “hybrid plan.” Suddenly, according to Verizon, rules under 706 are unassailable and won’t lead to a lawsuit, while everything else will.

  • DRM

    • AT&T Still Proudly Makes Unlocking Phones Under Contract Annoying and Impossible

      One of the more interesting things unveiled at Apple’s most recent press event was the company’s AppleSIM, or universal SIM technology embedded in the iPad Air 2 that quickly allows users to switch carriers, presenting you with easy wireless broadband pricing for each carrier option. Of course, when Apple quietly announced this functionality, Verizon wasn’t listed as a supporter.

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