12.28.15
Links 28/12/2015: Corporate Media Associates Linux With N. Korea and Abuses, Linux 4.4 RC7 Released
Contents
GNU/Linux
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Desktop
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What Computer Platforms Do You Use?
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State Of The Desktop PC
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Worldwide desktop shipment decline to shrink from 15% in 2015 to 7% in 2016
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North Korea’s computer operating system mirrors its political one
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RPT-Paranoid: North Korea’s computer operating system mirrors its political one
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North Korea’s ‘paranoid’ computer operating system revealed
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North Korea’s Version of Linux Spies on Those Who Use It, Researchers Say
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Operating system from Pyongyang: How North Korea’s copy of Apple works
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North Korea’s Red Star OS leaves the government in control of computers
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Inside North Korea’s Totalitarian Operating System
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REVEALED: Security chiefs get into North Korea’s top secret computer system
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Researchers investigate North Korea’s Red Star OS 3
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North Korea’s version of Linux watermarks files on USB sticks and more
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Paranoid: North Korea’s Computer System Mirrors Its Political One
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Red Star over N. Korea: The Hermit Kingdom’s paranoid Apple-inspired OS
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Paranoid: North Korea’s computer operating system mirrors its political one
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North Korea’s OS revealed
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North Korea’s version of Linux is extremely oppressive
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North Korea’s Linux OS is hardly open sauce
Open Saucers have got under the bonnet of North Korea’s glorious Linux Operating system and discovered it is more oppressive than any proprietary licence can dream up.
Linux is supposed to open up the world, but the Red Star OS limits you to a North Korean government approved view of the world which is more proprietary and bat shit crazy than a company getting a patent for a rounded rectangle.
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Florian Grunow, Niklaus Schiess: Lifting the Fog on Red Star OS
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North Korea’s Linux-based Red Star OS is as oppressive as you’d expect
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North Korea’s Linux-based Red Star OS is as oppressive as you’d expect
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North Korea’s Redstar OS brings totalitarianism to computing
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N. Korea’s computer operating system mirrors its paranoid political one
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North Korea Has Its Own Operating System Hand-Crafted to Suppress and Surveil
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Details revealed about North Korea’s version of Linux (Red Star OS)
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North Korea’s State-Built OS Spies on Citizens
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North Korea’s Nuclear Missile Reaches The U.S. In Its Design
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Researchers get a glimpse into North Korea’s homemade operating system
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North Korea’s paranoid Apple-inspired Linux based operating system “RedStar” revealed
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North Korea’s OS Has ‘Malicious Functionality’
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North Korea’s Computer Operating System Mirrors Its Political One
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Analysis of North Korea’s computer system reveals spy files
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North Korea’s paranoid GNU/Linux watermarks every file
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Server
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2015 wasn’t about AWS. It was about everybody getting ready to try to beat AWS
One star eclipsed all others in the enterprise in 2015: Amazon. Or, rather, its cloud division, AWS.
It somehow became a given that AWS leads in Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas), with the one-time ebook shop now a major IT infrastructure provider.
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Kernel Space
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Linux 4.4-rc7
Ok, clearly there _is_ some rest for kernel developers, because rc7 is
pretty tiny. I think a third of the patch is from the sparc updates,
and those weren’t that big either. -
Linux-4.4 Imminent
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Linux 4.4-rc7 Kernel Officially Released
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Linux Kernel 4.4 RC7 Now Available, Final Release Should Be Out in Two Weeks
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Did Linux Power Consumption Improve At All This Year?
The short answer, as far as I’ve seen through my testing, is no. There were no major breakthroughs this year for extending Linux battery life nor any magical optimizations/fixes like a few years ago with the wide-spread ASPM issues. There were continued improvements to Intel’s P-State drive and the generic CPUfreq driver along with some new CPUfreq drivers in the ARM space and various processor-specific improvements, but nothing really incredible.
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Happy Birthday, Linus Torvalds!
The Linux community has a couple of very important dates to celebrate, the release of the Linux kernel on August 25, 1991, and the birthday of Linus Torvalds on December 28, 1969.
Linus Torvalds is now one of the most influential people on the planet, and he doesn’t really like this role. If his appearances and speeches have taught us anything, it is that he doesn’t like the spotlight and that he’s still interested in good code for the Linux kernel.
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Graphics Stack
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Rockchip DRM Driver Is Ready With Atomic Mode-Setting Support
The Rockchip DRM driver for supporting the display component of the company’s ARM SoCs is now ready with its support for atomic mode-setting.
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The Mesmerizing Mesa Milestones Of 2015
This year Mesa made a heck of a lot of progress on advancing open-source 3D driver support for Linux and other operating systems. While Mesa isn’t yet caught up with OpenGL 4.5, over the past twelve months there was a heck of a lot of progress made on OpenGL 4 support.
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The Open-Source NVIDIA Linux Driver Continued Evolving In 2015
This year the open-source NVIDIA Linux driver (Nouveau) continued to evolve with improvements for re-clocking, the start of OpenGL 4 support, and other new functionality. Here’s a recap along with some performance benchmarks showing how the OpenGL performance evolved over the past 12 months.
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AMD/Radeon Has Continued Making Much Linux Graphics Progress
AMD’s open-source graphics driver stack continued maturing in 2015 while Catalyst (now known as Radeon Software) releases were rare. AMD’s open-source driver stack now supports OpenGL 4.1 for GCN GPUs and select pre-GCN graphics cards plus the other driver stack also matured in other ways this year.
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Applications
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What are good web server benchmarking tools for Linux
As far as web server performance is concerned, there are many different factors at play, e.g., front-end application design, network latency/bandwidth, web server configuration, server-side in-memory cache, raw hardware capability, server load of shared hosting, etc. To compare and optimize web server performance under such a wide array of factors, we often perform load test (or stress test) using a web server micro-benchmark tool. A typical benchmark tool injects synthetic workloads or replays real-world traces to a web server, and measures web server performance and scalability in terms of varying metrics (e.g., response time, throughput, number of requests per second, CPU load, etc).
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12 Best Open Source Text Editors (GUI + CLI) I Found in 2015
Text editors can be used for writing code, editing text files such as configuration files, creating user instruction files and many more. In Linux, text editor are of two kinds that is graphical user interface (GUI) and command line text editors (console or terminal).
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Personalise the Past with these Excellent Open Source Tools
Family history (or genealogy) software is computer software used to record, organise and publish genealogical data. With this software, you can help unlock the past, discover secrets and surprises from your past. Genealogy, the study of one’s ancestry, allows people to personalise the past.
There are useful websites devoted to helping would-be genealogists. Further, radio and TV programmes such as the immortal Who Do You Think You Are?, and other shows such as Secrets of the Clink have encouraged a growing band people to trace their roots, sparking new interest. It’s not just celebrities when tracing their ancestry who come up with secrets and surprises from their past.
There are a huge raft of sources to trace ancestors including the General Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Census Returns, International Genealogical Index, National Burial Index, Parish Registers, Wills and Other Probate documents. These traditional sources are often available to review over the net, although it’s often not free access. Not all records are online (particularly those before 1837) so visiting local records offices, churches, graveyards or libraries can help in the quest. Huge online genealogical databases also help people discover their history.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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WINE 1.7 review – Alcoholics Anonymous
Several weeks ago, I read a quick but thoroughly interesting news snippet about a, well, ahem, new (not anymore) WINE release, which included additional experimental DirectX 11 support. Wait, what? DirectX 11 support? Sounds massively cool.
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Games
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Does job vacancy posting point to Elite: Dangerous Linux version?
A recent job vacancy posting at Frontier Developments may be a signal that a Linux port of Elite: Dangerous is in the offing. Both TweakTown and Softpedia reckon the job vacancy advert might give away Frontier’s intentions of creating a Linux port of its premier open-world Space exploration and adventure games title.
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Freedom Planet 2 is Announced for PC, Mac, and Linux
Independent developer Galaxy Trailer has announced Freedom Planet 2, a follow-up to their iconic and throwback platforming game.
The developer said the game will follow a similar release schedule as the first game, meaning it will launch for PC, Mac, and Linux first, followed by Nintendo platforms, as well as potentially more platforms, “depending on resources.”
Most of the voice cast and characters from the original game are returning in the sequel, however the above trailer definitely gives more insight as to what you can expect in the new game.
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OpenRA Brings C&C: Tiberian Dawn, C&C: Red Alert, and Dune 2000 to Linux
OpenRA is an open source project that recreates and improves upon the classic Command & Conquer and that has C&C: Tiberian Dawn, C&C: Red Alert, and Dune 2000 games in one collection.
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Elite: Dangerous might be getting Linux version, hints a job opening
This information isn’t based on much, though the job description is specifically for a systems programmer for helping to create cross-platform libraries for online services, and it does mention having the ability to “…write platform-independent code for deployment on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and current generation consoles.”
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End of the year benchmarks, GTX 760 and R7 370
It’s been a while since I last dug up my 760 and did some benchmarking, so I decided that I would run some to celebrate the last days of 2015. I’ve picked some new games this time around to show the performance of both the open source and the proprietary drivers.
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A closer look at some DRM free Linux games available on itch.io
Itch.io has fast become a popular distribution platform among developers for its many and flexible tools for distributing and promoting games. The co-op bundles, which lets developers team up to bundle their games and agree on the split caught my attention when it was announced in April. There have been some interesting bundles since, but from what I’ve seen as an outsider, it hasn’t generated much attention. The desktop app instantly became much more popular when it was released earlier this month, and it’s the first real DRM free alternative we’ve had to the Steam client for Linux in a while (not counting clients independent of distribution platforms, like Lutris).
What many might not know is that itch.io isn’t just host of jam games and thousands of amateur projects, but that it also has a good selection of high-quality professional games, like Gone Home, Tales of Maj’Eyal, Electronic Super Joy, VVVVVV and Super Win the Game. You’ll also find several of my biggest favorites from this year there, including Dropsy, Snakebird, BLACKHOLE, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and many more.
Here’s a look at some popular games released on itch.io this year that we didn’t cover before.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Gnumeric 1.12.25 Adds Support for Multiple File Selection and Double Click, Bugfixes
The development team of the Gnumeric open source spreadsheet editor software for GNU/Linux operating systems had the pleasure of announcing this past weekend the availability of Gnumeric 1.12.25.
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Distributions
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Best KDE/Plasma distro of 2015
The end of the year best-distro nomination is approaching fast. But before that, let’s narrow it down a bit and focus on what KDE and Plasma had to offer the Linux user in 2015. Undoubtedly, it was a very tough year, with some really awesome distributions released in the spring, some rather awful editions coming out earlier this autumn, the birth of Plasma and its attempt to win my heart.
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Best Xfce distro of 2015
The fall of one empire usually signals the rise of another. Five years ago, if you asked a typical Linux desktop user what environment they favored, the answer would most likely be KDE or Gnome 2. But today, the answer is probably Unity, Cinnamon, maybe Plasma. And Xfce. The underwhelming underdog has taken upon itself to exploit the gap left by the turbulent change in the Linux desktop world and ascertain itself as a top player.
The exploits (not in the security sense) of Plasma leave even more room for aesthetic maneuvers and dominance by Xfce. This desktop environment holds a very interesting market position. It’s a product of old, trying to captivate the modern user, with focus on performance and stability, but without having to lag behind the fancy, modern rivals in terms of style and elegance. So let us, like we did the year before, vote on the one Xfce distro that does its job the bestest.
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Solus
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First Look at Solus 1.0, the Linux Operating System That Rules Them All
After a long wait and a few delays, the guys over at Solus, a groundbreaking Linux kernel-based computer operating system, have finally announced the release and immediate availability for download of Solus 1.0 on December 27, 2015.
Solus has been in development for quite some time now, and it was previously known to the world first as SolusOS, and then as Evolve OS. Because of some trademarking issues with the name Evolve, the distribution returned to its origins, and it is now dubbed Solus.
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Solus 1.0 Released, Powered By GTK Budgie Desktop
The Solus 1.0 release didn’t happen on Christmas as originally planned, but nevertheless it’s available this morning for its premiere release and formal introduction of its own desktop environment.
Solus 1.0′s desktop is called Budgie and it’s a simple, GTK-powered desktop environment that ships with a nifty applet/notification/customization center, and various other features of the new desktop.
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Solus to Have Two Years of Support, Major New Features Coming in 2016
Now that the Solus operating system has reached version 1.0, the developers are looking towards the future, and they have explained what they are planning for the coming year.
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Solus’ Budgie Desktop Turns 2 Years Old, Version 10 Is Full of Goodies
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New Releases
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4MLinux 15.0 Officially Released, Brings Audacity, Postfix and InfraRecorder
Zbigniew Konojacki had the great pleasure of informing us earlier today about the release and immediate availability for download of the final build of his 4MLinux 15.0 GNU/Linux operating system.
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Arch Family
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Arch Linux-Based Apricity OS Might Get a Xfce Edition, KDE Flavor Delayed
We’ve been informed by the developers of the Apricity OS GNU/Linux distribution about the release and general availability for download of a new Beta release for the month of December 2015.
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Manjaro Cinnamon Edition 15.12 Is Out and Ready for Download
A new Manjaro Cinnamon 15.12 stable version has been released and is now ready for download, developers have announced.
The Manjaro community is a very active one, and they have a ton of flavors going, covering pretty much all of the window managers and desktop environments available right now that are still being maintained. It’s a huge undertaking, but it’s a task that seems to be gladly handled by the Manjaro fans.
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Manjaro Mate Edition 15.12 Arrives with Linux Kernel 4.1.15 LTS
The Manjaro community has just released the Manjaro Mate Edition 15.12, which is now ready for download and testing.
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Ballnux/SUSE
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Michal Hrušecký: openSUSE Summit Asia 2015
Last year first ever openSUSE Summit Asia took place in Beijing. From all the reports it sounded really awesome and I regretted that I couldn’t go. This year, I was lucky enough to manage to go. I was selected to do a board keynote and I got some of my travel expenses sponsored by Travel Support Programme (big thanks!). So how was this years openSUSE Summit Asia from my point of view? In short, amazing In long, read on…
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat Closing In On $2 Billion In Its Fourth Quarter
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Exclusive: Why Red Hat, Inc. Isn’t Hedging Its Currency Bets
Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) reported a fine third quarter last week. Sales rose 15% year over year, adjusted earnings per share increased by 14%, and full-year guidance targets were lifted across the board. Analysts responded with mass price target upgrades (even some of the bears!), and Red Hat shares spiked to prices not seen in 15 years.
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Can Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) hit $97?
Wall Street analysts have placed a $88.882 short term stock price target on Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) company shares. This is the consensus, or average number, based on the 17 weighing in on the name. The most lofty target stands at $97 while the most conservative analyst has a $75 on the equity.
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Update: Red Hat, Inc. Short Interest Disclosure
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Company Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Rally 0.42%
Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) appreciated by 0.42% during the past week but lost 0.92% on a 4-week basis. The shares has underperformed the S&P 500 by 2.29% during the past week but Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) has outperformed the index in 4 weeks by 0.48%.
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Stock Watchlist: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) – Today’s Morning Report
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Fedora
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Fedora Globalization (G11n) Activity Day – November 2015
We already had a number of blog posts regarding how Globalization (G11n) Fedora Activity Days (FADs) went. After all of these reports, it makes sense to have one post discussing the achievements from our Activity Days.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Dedicated GPS Navigation Scope Coming to Ubuntu Touch
The developer who made the excellent uNav GPS Navigation is now looking into the possibility of building a dedicated scope for Ubuntu Touch with the same function.
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Watch: Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 to Bring Improved Download Manager
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Aethercast Developing Open Source Display Streaming for Ubuntu
Streaming video to monitors and TVs from Ubuntu mobile devices via Miracast is set to become one of the open source operating system’s new features, further blurring the lines between the GNU/Linux experience and proprietary operating systems.
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The Most Exciting Ubuntu News Of The Year
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ZFS File System for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Is 90% Ready
The ZFS file system is coming to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and it’s just one of the many new features that are going to be implemented in the new OS.
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Canonical Teases Seamless Swipe Through All Your Ubuntu Apps in Full-Screen
Canonical, the company behind the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu Linux, has announced a few minutes ago, December 28, 2015, an upcoming feature for the Unity desktop environment used in recent versions of Ubuntu.
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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Is Continuing To Prep ZFS Support
Back in October we heard Ubuntu was planning for better ZFS support and to make it part of the distribution’s “standard offering.” Work in that direction has continued to advance for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” KDE – BETA Release
Linux Mint 17.3 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.
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Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” Xfce Beta Out for Testing, Linux Kernel 4.2 Supported
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Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” KDE Edition Up to Beta State, Ships with KDE 4.14
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Devices/Embedded
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Raspberry Pi vs SPARCstation 20: Fight!
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2015 Embedded Linux Trends in Mobile, Hacker Boards, and IoT
The roughly 15-year old experiment called Embedded Linux has by several accounts surpassed real-time OSes and Windows Embedded in recent years. If you include phones, tablets, and consumer electronics using the Linux-based Android, that lead turns to dominance.
This year, Linux has continued to control the fledgling home automation market, and it’s increasingly shaping up as the OS of choice in robots and drones. In consumer electronics, Linux and Android lead in categories such as media streamers and smart TVs. As manufacturers upgrade industrial equipment for wireless Internet of Things capability, Linux has become the OS of choice when an OS is needed at all.
This two-part series looks at embedded Linux trends over the last year in six broad segments, listed roughly in order of market maturity. This installment covers mobile, embedded boards, IoT and home automation. And part two covers media-focused consumer electronics, robots and drones, and emerging technologies like wearables and automotive.
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Open source router makes all other routers look woefully behind the times
There’s a crowd funded piece of technology that aims to change all of that. The Turris Omnia is a router of a completely different nature. Not only does it automatically update its firmware (as soon as a vulnerability is discovered and patched), it can serve as a DNLA (Digital Living Network Alliance), a backup server (you have to plug in an external drive for this), you can insert a SIM card to ensure connection failover, connect to SFP, and much more. The Omnia is based on OpenWRT and is, as you might expect, open source).
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Here are the most exciting Linux devices of 2015
The year 2015 that started with an exciting display of Linux at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is now coming to an end. This year saw some great Linux-powered devices. Let’s have a look at the most impressive ones.
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Phones
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Android
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Android 6.0.1 promises a major usability update for Samsung’s edge devices
A leaked video showcases a new versatile app model for advanced edge functionality on the S6 edge.
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Xiaomi Android Marshmallow updates nearing release
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Android 6.0.1 will make the Galaxy S6 edge’s edge more useful
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Google promotes some popular iOS and Android apps on its home page
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Spotlight: Sleep Talk Recorder for Android and iOS can expose a serial snorer
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Hyundai, others stumble with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto updates
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Android 6.0 Marshmallow Heading to the Sprint LG G Stylo
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Google Photos: favorite app 2015, Android, iOS
There was a time before cloud storage that we all wanted large device storage for image files, but once you shoot an image and share, storage on the device is unnecessary and a liability.
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Android smartphone sales leave others in the dust
Microsoft was barely a blip on the radar with 1.7 per cent, with sales also showing a downward trend worldwide.
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How to check screen on time on Android Marshmallow and Lollipop devices
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Honor 7 is getting Android 6.0 Marshmallow update in India
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Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update: Moto G (Gen. 3) Update Rolls Out; Motorola Releases Kernel Source for Moto X Pure (2015)
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PSA: If ‘Touch To Search’ Is Gone In Chrome For Android, Here’s How To Bring It Back
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Xiaomi’s Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for Mi smartphones in ‘final testing’ stages
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HOLIDAY LIST: Five best Android TV consoles to choose from
Let’s face it, television as we knew it – circa 1990 to early 2000’s – is dead and gone. Enter the age of multimedia, multi-platform, cloud-based content that you can stream to your big screen TV through a bevy of Android TV consoles that give you the same (if not even better) Android experience on your TV. These holidays, here are some of the best that you can purchase for your home entertainment system.
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Top 5 Free Icon Packs for Your Android Phone
The biggest advantage Android still holds in the mobile ecosystem is the elevated level of customization it offers. You can go crazy with the features but even if you aren’t a pro, changing how your Android phone’s software looks is a piece of cake with a few downloads.
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A popular Android 6.0.1 feature has mysteriously disappeared
Google’s tinkering with notifications continues, apparently, as folks on Android 6.0.1 have awakened to find that a recently returned feature of Marshmallow’s Do Not Disturb has once again gone missing.
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Android 6.0.1 ‘Do not disturb until next alarm’ feature disappears
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The only guide you need to get started with Android Wear
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Huawei Honor 7 getting Android 6.0 Marshmallow update
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Moto 360 Sport review: Best Android Wear smartwatch for recreational runners
The Moto 360 Sport is a solid Android Wear device for recreational runners who don’t listen to music when they run and I award it an 8.0 rating.
If it played music as flawlessly as the Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S2 3G, or Sony SmartWatch 3 then I would consider buying one as my running watch. However, if you don’t care about your heart rate and want an Android Wear device to run with and enjoy music then the older Sony SmartWatch 3 is the watch to buy.
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Free Software/Open Source
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SaaS/Big Data
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On the OpenStack Scene, Get Credentials to Get Hired
As part of its efforts to grow the OpenStack talent pool and global community, the OpenStack Foundation has announced a new professional certification program that is meant to provide a baseline assessment of knowledge and be accessible to OpenStack professionals around the world. Some of the first steps in advancing the program are taking place now, and other companies are also advancing OpenStack certification plans. Here is a sampling of the educational opportunities.
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Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)
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Internet giants embrace open source: 11 technologies open-sourced by Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn [Ed: Naming proprietary surveillance machines as “Internet giants [that] embrace open source”]
Open source projects often stem from businesses attempting to solve an internal problem, before being offered up to a wider community. And increasingly in recent years it has been the internet giants such as Facebook and Google which have offered the technology which underpins their huge, hyper-scale computing environments.
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Twitter and Tech Titans End Year with Big Open Source Offerings [Ed: Twitter is hardly FOSS at all]
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Facebook’s top 5 open source projects of 2015 [Ed: ditto]
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BSD
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Licensing
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What topped the GitHub charts in 2015
It’s been a year of open-source projects. Both enterprises and startups have been releasing their code into the wild as a way to grow their capabilities. It’s not just the code that’s important; it’s the programmers and contributors that can get their hands on it, alter it, fix it, and make it better.
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Best of Opensource.com: Law
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Answer to a Frequently Asked Question
Q: Which open source license is best?
A: Unlike bilateral copyright licenses, which are negotiated between two parties and embody a truce between them for business purposes, multilateral copyright licenses — of which open source licenses are a kind — are “constitutions of communities”, as Eben Moglen and others have observed. They express the consensus of how a community chooses to collaborate. They also embody its ethical assumptions, even if they are not explicitly enumerated.
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Openness/Sharing
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Standards/Consortia
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Switzerland Wants a Single, Universal Phone Charger by 2017
Apple’s Lightning cable cartel be damned: Switzerland is moving forward with a plan for a single, universal phone charger across the country, standardizing phone chargers across the board. While the exact standard hasn’t been mentioned yet, it wouldn’t be hard to guess the standard: Micro USB, used across phone platforms, most especially Android, which has a gigantic chunk of the cell phone market worldwide.
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Leftovers
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Security
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Security Researchers Offer Warnings About Hackable Railroads
The well-being of critical infrastructure and transportation has long been the elephant in the room when it comes to cybersecurity: plenty of researchers have warned about the possibility of attacks on power-plants, the national grid, and, more recently, even the emergence of internet connected cars.
Now, researchers are warning of the gaping holes in the security of railroad systems. On Sunday at Chaos Communication Congress, a security, arts and politics conference held annually in Hamburg, Germany, members of the SCADA StrangeLove collective presented a long list of problems with railroad systems that attackers could exploit.
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DLL Hijacking Just Won’t Die
To make a long and complicated story short, a bad guy who exploits this vulnerability places a malicious DLL into your browser’s Downloads folder, then waits. When you run an installer built by an earlier version of NSIS from that folder, the elevation prompt (assuming it runs at admin) shows the legitimate installer’s signature asking you for permission to run the installer. After you grant permission, the victim installer loads the malicious DLL which runs its malicious code with the installer’s permissions. And then it’s not your computer anymore.
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CA Council to Improve Internet Certificate Security in 2016
At the heart of much of the Internet’s security is the use of Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS), which provides encryption for data in motion. Certificate Authorities (CAs) are the trusted entities that issue TLS certificates, and as a group, the CAs are gearing up for big year in 2016, with multiple efforts designed to improve the security of the Internet.
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Backspace Flaw Enables Linux Zero-Day Attack
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Monday’s security updates
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Thousands More Homes Face Flooding Threat
Thousands of homes are being evacuated in York after “unprecedented” levels of rain caused the Foss and Ouse rivers to burst their banks and the city’s flood barrier to be lifted.
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UK flooding: Government rejected warnings of high flood risk from own advisers
Minsters were warned by the Government’s own climate change advisers that they needed to take action to protect the increasing number of homes at high risk of flooding – but rejected the advice.
The decision not to develop a comprehensive strategy to address increased flood risk came in October just a few weeks before the flooding in Cumbria before Christmas and the most recent flooding in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
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Why Engineers Can’t Stop Los Angeles’ Enormous Methane Leak
One of the biggest environmental disasters in US history is happening right now, and you’ve probably never heard of it.
An enormous amount of harmful methane gas is currently erupting from an energy facility in Aliso Canyon, California, at a startling rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. The gas, which carries with it the stench of rotting eggs, has led to the evacuation 1,700 homes so far. Many residents have already filed lawsuits against the company that owns the facility, the Southern California Gas Company.
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Finance
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As Venezuelan economy collapses further, gov’t targets US-based currency news site
The US-based website that publishes a daily unofficial exchange rate between American dollars and Venezuelan bolivares has recently filed a vigorous defense in a strange international lawsuit. The site, DolarToday, was sued in October 2015 by the Central Bank of Venezuela (CBV) in federal court in Delaware, where the site is based.
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EU Agriculture would be gross losers in TTIP Agreement – Anderson MEP
Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson has said that a study carried out on behalf of the US Department of Agriculture shows that EU Agriculture would be the gross loser in any of the three scenarios considered.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Bill O’Reilly Had A Terrible 2015
Numerous Journalists Took Apart O’Reilly’s Falklands War Tales. O’Reilly has repeatedly attempted to bolster his reporting credentials by claiming over the years that he reported “in the Falklands” during the 1982 Falklands War. A Mother Jones exposé, however, found that O’Reilly fabricated his reporting resume and his former colleagues said he was actually 1,200 miles away in Buenos Aires. O’Reilly also claimed to have reported on a 1982 Buenos Aires protest in which “many were killed,” but numerous journalists who reported from the scene and a historian disputed his story. Furthermore, O’Reilly claimed to have helped an injured CBS photographer during the protest, but his colleagues have no recollection of that incident.
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Censorship
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True or false, decide through self-censorship, says minister
He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.
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Public should practice self-censorship on social media, says minister
Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak today called on the people to use their power of self-censorship to reject or accept any information posted on the social media.
He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.
“The important thing is, we should not be confused between news and views. Views are people’s own and not necessarily accurate and our views could differ from each other’s. But news contain facts, the veracity of which are verified before being disseminated.
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Anonymous Attacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity website to protest Internet censorship
The global hacktivist group, Anonymous has now turned its eyes to the varying degrees of censorship being practised in Asia. The Asia Pacific Telecommunity website (apt.int) has not only been hacked by members of the Anonymous hacker collective, and they also have got entry to the site’s admin panel (running Drupal), and also have been able to get their hands on a database dump.
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Anonymous Hacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity Against Internet Censorship in Asia
Anonymous hacker collective has attacked the official website of Asia Pacific telecommunity and defaced it in protest against growing plans for internet censorship in Asia.
The hackers gained access of the website’s admin panel (running Drupal) and from there, leaked all the data stored on the website along with defacing the site with one of their own pages.
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Court Orders Shutdown of Libgen, Bookfi and Sci-Hub
A New York District Court has granted Elsevier’s request for a preliminary injunction against several sites that host academic publications without permission. As a result the site’s operators are now ordered to quit offering access to infringing content, while the associated registries must suspend their domain names.
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Amidst censorship row, two “porn-coms” are releasing in India in January
India’s 2016 film calendar will begin on a controversial note. Two Bollywood adult comedies starring the same actor are releasing within a week of each other in January. Both Maastizaade and Kya Kool Hain Hum 3 are releasing after facing considerable objections from India’s censor board.
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The Splinternet: A New Era of Censorship, Surveillance, and Cyberwarfare
For more than a decade, the internet has become a seemingly borderless land of free flowing information. It began as a not so open U.S. military data system decades ago, but it evolved over time into the public digital domain it has become.
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On the Aggressive, Hilarious Theorizing in ‘Censorship Now!!’
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Harvard Law Review Freaks Out, Sends Christmas Eve Threat Over Public Domain Citation Guide
In the fall of 2014, we wrote about a plan by public documents guru Carl Malamud and law professor Chris Sprigman, to create a public domain book for legal citations (stay with me, this isn’t as boring as it sounds!). For decades, the “standard” for legal citations has been “the Bluebook” put out by Harvard Law Review, and technically owned by four top law schools. Harvard Law Review insists that this standard of how people can cite stuff in legal documents is covered by copyright. This seems nuts for a variety of reasons. A citation standard is just an method for how to cite stuff. That shouldn’t be copyrightable. But the issue has created ridiculous flare-ups over the years, with the fight between the Bluebook and the open source citation tool Zotero representing just one ridiculous example.
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Privacy
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Why ownCloud’s CEO isn’t worried about the death of Safe Harbor [Ed: Katherine Noyes should be smarter than that and not quote Microsoft propagandist Enderle]
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Windows 10: Microsoft hits new low with ‘Upgrade Now’ or ‘Upgrade Tonight’ pop-up [Ed: how to push spyware]
The latest pop-up message to consumers, outed on Reddit, removes the explicit option to opt out of the upgrade, instead offering two options: ‘Update Now’ or ‘Update Tonight’. Simply closing the box will make it go away (we’re still trying to ascertain for how long) but it seems that this is a deliberate attempt to prey on the less tech savvie.
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The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord
“I’m not high-tech, but I’m like, ‘This isn’t that complicated. This is just some guy behind a computer,’” he recalled saying to himself. “In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I’m like, ‘Well, that stuff still works.’ ”
Mr. Alford’s preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name “altoid.”
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China passes law requiring tech firms to hand over encryption keys
Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the controversial law is the Chinese government’s attempt to curtail the activities of militants and political activists. China already faces criticism from around the world not only for the infamous Great Firewall of China, but also the blatant online surveillance and censorship that takes place. This latest move is one that will be view very suspiciously by foreign companies operating within China, or looking to do so.
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New Chinese law takes aim at encryption
A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.
A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.
ISPs and telecommunication companies must provide technical assistance to the government, including decrypting communications, for terrorism-related investigations, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.
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China Using US Encryption Fight To Defend Its New Encryption Backdoor Mandate
So, again, to all the politicians and lawmakers supporting backdooring encryption, what’s your response when China uses it to say that’s why they’re doing it as well?
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Senator Richard Burr: Confused And Wrong On Encryption
Right, except so far officials haven’t been able to show evidence of any of those cases actually using encryption. Similarly, law enforcement has failed to show that criminals using encryption have really been that much of a problem either. And that’s because it’s not a problem. Even in the (still mostly rare) cases where encryption is being used, criminals still reveal plenty of information that would allow law enforcement to track them down. It’s called doing basic detective work.
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Civil Rights
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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India Tells Facebook To Shut Down Controversial Zero Rating Program ‘Free Basics’
The Indian government has spent much of the last year trying to craft net neutrality rules, and had recently been fielding public comment on whether or not Facebook’s zero rating effort, Free Basics, violates net neutrality. As we’ve covered at length, Facebook’s been trying to corner the developing nation ad market with a zero rated program that offers free access to curated, Facebook approved content. Critics and Free Basic content partners alike haven’t been comfortable with giving Facebook that much control.
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How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice
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Why India’s Net Neutrality Activists Hate Facebook
Facebook Inc. Chairman Mark Zuckerberg made a personal appeal in one of India’s leading newspapers for the country to allow a free Internet service that has stirred controversy and invited questions from regulators.
Facebook’s proposed Free Basics plan allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan. Yet activists say the program threatens the principles of net neutrality and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.
The backlash in India centers on net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible. Critics accused the world’s largest social networking company of favoring a limited swath of the Internet and excluding rival services. And Facebook’s broader Internet.org initiative, including Free Basics, is seen as an effective way to draw more users onto a social network already used by over a billion people.
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Facebook’s Zuckerberg: If You Oppose Our International Power Grab, You’re An Enemy Of The Poor
Last week we noted that India had shut down Facebook’s Free Basics program, arguing the company’s plan for zero rating Facebook-approved content and services is effectively glorified collusion; an attempt to eventually corner global ad markets under the banner of altruism. The country has been trying to craft net neutrality rules, and has slowly realized that whatever neutrality looks like, Facebook deciding what content Indians get access to isn’t it.
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Comcast Cap Blunder Highlights How Nobody Is Ensuring Broadband Meters Are Accurate
For years now we’ve noted that while broadband ISPs rush toward broadband caps and usage overage fees, nobody is checking to confirm that ISP meters are accurate. The result has been user network hardware that reports usage dramatically different from an ISPs’ meters, or users who are billed for bandwidth usage even when the power is out or the modem is off. Not only have regulators historically failed to see the anti-innovation, anti-competitive impact of usage caps, you’d be hard pressed to find a single official that has even commented on the problem of inaccurate broadband usage meters.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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El Paquete Semanal: How Offline Piracy Flourishes in Cuba
For more than a decade many Cubans have been pirating the latest entertainment without a proper connection to the Internet. Instead, they have built their own person-to-person distribution network to share a weekly package of pirated material: El Paquete Semanal.
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