05.13.15
Posted in News Roundup at 6:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
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What’s your Linux dream job? The Linux Foundation recently asked our Twitter followers to share their ideal Linux careers. Many responded that they’re already living the dream, working as sysadmins and developers (or by simply getting to use Linux in their everyday tasks.) While others imagine fulfilling careers not yet within their grasp. Here are 10 of our favorite responses, along with a few resources for learning more about each dream Linux career path.
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When you moved to Linux, you went straight for the obvious browsers, cloud clients, music players, email clients, and perhaps image editors, right? As a result, you’ve missed several vital, productive tools. Here’s a roundup of five umissable Linux apps that you really need to install.
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Yesterday on Datamation, Matt Hartley wrote what could best be described as a reminder piece about the folks using Windows XP at home or in small businesses having options when it comes to replacing that particular operating system, and that the best option — go ahead and say it with me — is Linux.
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The idea of solar sails was first introduced in popular culture by none other than Carl Sagan, more than 40 years ago. This particular technology was not a priority for scientists in the past decades, with very few exceptions, but The Planetary Society and Bill Nye want to change that by launching a small spacecraft called CubeSat that will be powered by light.
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Desktop
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A slate of devices, which includes 15.6-inch notebooks and a 20-inch all-in-one desktop PC, will be sold through selected resellers and distributors across the country starting from mid-May, 2015.
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HP is one of the big companies that provide users with computers that came with Ubuntu pre-installed, and now those PCs are going to be sold in Russia as well.
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The Cirrus7 nimbini mini PC that is built with some great hardware and with a case from machined aluminum is now available for sale.
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Server
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Rackspace reported its first quarter fiscal 2015 results on May 11, with company executives sounding very optimistic about the company’s future prospects.
For the quarter, Rackspace reported net revenue of $480 million, for a 14.1 percent year-over-year gain. Net income for the first quarter was reported at $28.4 million, up from $25.4 million in the first quarter of 2014.
[...]
Rackspace’s cloud fortunes today are somewhat tied to the open-source OpenStack cloud platform, which it helped to create. Rhodes sees potential for OpenStack both in the public cloud space as well as the private.
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Kernel Space
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A new version of the Linux kernel, 4.0.3, has been released by Greg Kroah-Hartman and is now ready for download. As it stands right now, this is the most advanced version available, and the same can be said about the branch.
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Graphics Stack
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One of the latest commits to the xorg-server that’s seen relatively few commits this development cycle is support for smooth scrolling with XWayland.
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I’ve found out from various people in the know that AMD has assembled a “tiger team” to tackle outstanding Catalyst driver issues. This tiger team isn’t Linux specific, but Linux driver issues will be fully evaluated and tackled by this new group of driver specialists.
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Last year AMD open-sourced their VCE video encode engine code for use by their open-source Linux graphics driver stack with the Radeon DRM kernel driver and RadeonSI Gallium3D and worked out a new OpenMAX state tracker. That open-source code drop only worked on the support for “VCE2″ hardware found with the AMD GCN hardware and newer (Sea Islands, Kabini, etc). AMD’s open-source Linux team has now gained permission for providing open-source VCE 1.0 support to offer video encode to older Radeon graphics processors.
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Nvidia has just announced that a new Linux driver has been released in the Long-Lived branch, fixing just a few issues and bringing better texture transfers.
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Intel’s been working on open-source Linux support for Cherryview for more than one year while finally one of the last pieces of the hardware enablement puzzle has landed: OpenCL support for Cherryview.
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Applications
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Using Linux on the desktop on your computers will lead anyone to rely on a media or music player. A media player may not play movies (contrary to a movie player) but should be able to handle playlists, albums, and podcasts. What people quickly discover though is that the Linux platform has a many of these. A lot, actually. But it is difficult to know which one to choose, and depending on the distribution you may need to install additional codecs and other bits. Another aggravating factor is that while choice is good in these matters, no player really seems to stand out for each kind of platform. In my view, it has been already been several years that the choice of an actual media player for Linux is confusing. So confusing, sometimes, that I find myself wondering whether I shouldn’t turn directly to EMMS (yes, it’s that bad).
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qBittorrent 3.2.0 was released recently and it includes numerous changes such as support for Qt5, rewritten WebUI code, episode filtering for RSS, per tracker re-announce and much more.
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Two new Pithos versions were released yesterday: 1.1.0 (for GTK 3.14+ only) and 1.0.2 and they include an important bug fix which caused the app to stop playing randomly.
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Proprietary
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Slack is a team communication platform which features persistent chat rooms organized by topic, private groups and direct messaging, all searchable from one search box. Furthermore, the app integrates with Google Docs and Dropbox, GitHub and many others.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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Games
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The charming sci-fi platformer was released for Windows in February to very positive reviews from press and customers, and is now finally available for Linux.
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The popular action platformer has undergone a massive rewrite since last year to remove the dependency on XNA and to add a host of improvements. It is now nearing completion and has been made available in an open beta on Steam.
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CO-OP : Decrypted recently added in Linux support to the rather good looking 2.5D platformer, so it’s time for an overdue look at it with some initial thoughts.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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We want to enable piwik to get meaningful statistics of kde.org visits, to be nice with privacy for that we have enabled the ip anonymizer plugin but we still need to provide a way for people to opt out.
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This minor update includes a number of bugfixes, focusing especially on Kdenlive, Okular, Umbrello, and Marble. In addition to software bugs, issues with translations have also been addressed in this release.
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digiKam is an Open-Source project Photos management software, specially for KDE but you can use it on Ubuntu or others distros too. In digiKam photos are organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by folder layout or by custom collections. Developers recently released digiKam 4.10.0 with 16 bug fixes. Developers main focus is on digiKam 5.0 release, as it is supposed to be a major release of digiKam.
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digiKam Software Collection 4.10.0 arrived on May 12 and included numerous bug fixes reported by users since the previous version of the program, digiKam 4.9.0, which was announced back in April 2015.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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As part of the soon-to-be-released GNOME 3.16.2 desktop environment, we are happy to announce today the immediate availability of the GNOME Boxes 3.16.2 open-source virtualization software and virtual machine manager.
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It’s with great sadness in our hearts that we write this article to you all, but it appears that in an email to the Foresight Linux’s mailinglist, Michael K. Johnson announces the retirement of the distribution.
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It’s been a while since we heard about Papyros, the Linux distribution that used the Material Design concepts from Google, but developers have released a short video that illustrates the work they’ve done so far.
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New Releases
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On May 12, Steven Shiau announced the immediate availability for download and testing of a new development version of his famous Clonezilla Live distribution, version 2.4.1-19.
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Slackware Family
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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Foresight Linux officially called it quits yesterday due to a lack of developers. The project hasn’t seen a release in over two years, but it’s still sad when a distribution shuts down. Across town, Pete Travis posted a passionate open letter to Fedora on why it should remain true to its philosophy and Bruce Byfield pondered the age old mystery, “Why can’t Ubuntu play well with others?”
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Today is an important day on the Fedora 22 schedule[1], with a significant cut-offs.
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The Fedora Project is preparing to release their latest and greatest Linux kernel-based operating system, Fedora 22, which will arrive as expected later this month, on May 26, 2015.
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Today marks the final freeze for Fedora 22 with plans to officially release this Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution update later in May.
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As the Fedora 22 release approaches, there will be more benchmarks coming along with other tests (e.g. the latest X11 vs. Wayland, Fedora 22 graphics performance, etc). For today’s article I just wanted to make a few remarks about Fedora Workstation 22. Fedora Workstation 22 feels like a nice evolutionary upgrade over Fedora 21. GNOME 3.16 and these upstream improvements represent a bulk of the user-visible changes in Fedora 22. Below the hood there’s the GCC 5.0 compiler, Mesa 10.5, Perl 5.20, Linux 4.0, and many other package updates. If GNOME isn’t your thing, Xfce 4.12 is present along with the premiere of the LXQt desktop environment. The latest KDE Plasma 5 / Frameworks 5 packages are also present in Fedora 22. Many of the other Fedora 22 workstation/desktop changes have already been detailed in numerous Phoronix articles.
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Debian Family
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I wonder if systemd shouldn’t do more to detect problems during services initialization, as the transition to proper notification using sd_notify will likely take some time. A possibility would be to wait 100 or 200ms after the start to ensure that the service doesn’t exit almost immediately. But that’s not really a solution for several obvious reasons. A more hackish, but still less dirty solution could be to poll the state of processes inside the cgroup, and assume that the service is started only when all processes are sleeping. Still, that wouldn’t be entirely satisfying…
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The creator of numerous GNU/Linux distributions are very excited to introduce us to RaspEX today, a distro based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 (Jessie) and created to run on the Raspberry Pi 2 computer board.
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Derivatives
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Nearly a year after Tails 1.0, and the Tails 1.4 release is now available. Tails – short for The Amnesic Incognito Live System and is a privacy focussed Linux distribution.
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Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.4, is out.
This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible.
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Tails 1.4 Updates the Windows 8 Camouflage to Work with the I2P and Unsafe Browsers
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu has been making big promises since 2011 when they chose Unity to be at the center of their universe. And while they failed to deliver on Ubuntu TV or Ubuntu for Android, they’ve got other tricks up their sleeves.
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With its number of uses growing, the Snappy Ubuntu Core Linux operating system is now coming to network switches and refrigerators.
Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system, today announced an expansion of its push to embed Linux in everything from phones to refrigerators—and now network switches. The Snappy Ubuntu Core Linux operating system, a minimal version of Ubuntu Linux that provides an improved updating and security model, is designed for embedded devices and the Internet of things (IoT).
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Canonical has published details in a security notice about an ICU vulnerability that has been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
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Although Ubuntu is best known for its desktop/server distro—which was recently updated to 15.04—the last few years have seen the project’s ambitions have grown considerably. For example, there’s the Ubuntu phone, which is beginning to win plaudits. In turn, solving the particular demands for a mobile platform led to new approaches and technologies that appeared again in Snappy Ubuntu, a “transactionally updated Ubuntu for clouds and devices.”
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As we had anticipated correctly last week, Canonical has released an OTA update for Ubuntu Touch (OTA 3.5), an update which brings fixes for over 15 bugs, some 3G enhancements, fixes for a bunch oc calendar sync problems, removed some crashes regarding ubuntu-keyboard and indicator-network, fixed the bug that drained the battery when the phone was used in airplane mode, patched some routing problems and the suspend problems have been removed.
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Today, May 12, we are happy to inform all Ubuntu Phone users that the Ubuntu Touch developers have just announced the release of the OTA 3.5 update for Canonical’s mobile operating system.
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Last week, founder Mark Shuttleworth opened the Ubuntu Online Summit with a challenge to Linux desktop developers.
“I’m issuing a call to people who participate in every desktop environment,” he said, “to set aside our differences, to recognize that the opportunity now is bigger than those differences, to create experiences that spans phones and tablets, and PCs, to bring all of our applications, none of which are on one desktop environment or another.”
His words were rhetorically stirring — and provoked no major response whatsoever. Although some news sites reported his words without comment, probably most companies and projects have heard too many similar calls to action for this one to be effective.
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Imagine if every time you wanted a Windows computer, you had to buy a Mac, format the hard drive and install Microsoft’s operating system. That would suck, right? This is pretty much how it is for Linux users, sadly. If you are a user of a Linux distro such as Fedora or Ubuntu, for the most part — unless you are a system-builder — you have to buy a Windows machine, and install your preferred operating system.
What if you want to buy a computer with an operating system such as Ubuntu pre-installed? Enter System76. The company sells computers — both desktops and laptops — running the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system. Recently, the company began selling the Meerkat — a mini computer based on Intel’s NUC. I have been using the computer for a few weeks now, with both Ubuntu and Windows 10 and I am ready to share the experience with you.
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Now, we all know that you can use Ubuntu on a tablet device, so this may not come as news to you, but seeing the next-generation Ubuntu 15.10 Desktop Next on a Lenovo ThinkPad 8 Bay Trail tablet might interest you.
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Today marks the start of IoT World in San Francisco, and TelecomTV is onsite to record a series of executive video interviews and product demos. As the telecoms sector shifts its focus from vertically-aligned M2M solutions towards more horizontal IoT platforms, we expected to see yet more jostling for position amongst platform providers and OS developers.
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Announced by Mark Shuttleworth on May 4, 2015, Ubuntu 15.10 (codename Wily Werewolf) will be released later this year on October 22, 2015, according to the preliminary release schedule that was made public today.
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Flavours and Variants
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CompuLab has a long history of working with the developers of Linux Mint. The MintBox 2 is a good example of their cooperation, and it has gotten very positive reviews on Amazon. Now there’s a new product called the MintBox Mini and one of the Linux Mint developers has a preview of it.
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A month after elementary OS “Freya” was released to the public, the developers have made public some details about the platforms that download it and the results are pretty surprising. From the looks of it, the Windows users are the main downloaders of this Linux OS.
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Despite recent reports suggesting the contrary, Linux Mint isn’t committed to avoiding systemd, the controversial project taking Linux by storm. In fact, Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint’s project leader, expects the next major releases of Linux Mint to use systemd by default.
No, Linux Mint isn’t switching to systemd immediately. The Linux Mint 17.x series and Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 will continue to use Upstart and SysV init, with systemd available as an option you can choose yourself. Linux Mint is giving systemd some time to mature before switching, but—with upstream projects and the Linux ecosystem as a whole moving towards systemd—Mint realizes it doesn’t have an option in the long term.
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Samsung unveiled a series of IoT-focused “Artik” SoCs and modules, including dual- and octa-core COMs that integrate wireless radios and run Yocto Linux.
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Phones
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Android
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Back in April the Moto X Android 5.1 Lollipop update emerged for one small market in Brazil, but so far that’s it and the millions of owners in the United States are still waiting for the latest software upgrade. Last night Motorola made some key announcements regarding the original Moto X Android 5 Lollipop update, and when we can expect it to arrive.
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Android Wear, the wearable operating system developed by Google, has established itself as a credible option in the world of wearables. The mobile operating system platform allows for smartwatches and other wearables to take advantage of modified Android apps and gives Google a much-needed foothold in what is an increasingly important market. For enterprise customers, however, wearables are pretty much an unknown quantity. There are several studies that suggest wearables could find a suitable home in the enterprise, but for the most part, those devices have yet to show their value to corporate customers at this stage in the market’s development. To address that, Google has been courting third-party developers to build apps for Android Wear. Some of those apps can appeal to both consumers and enterprise customers. But the very fact that they can be used for the enterprise makes devices running Android Wear even more appealing. This slide show looks at some current Android Wear apps to see what might be useful for enterprise customers.
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Google’s Android 5.1.1 update is finally pushing out in force to the Nexus 9, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10 bringing bug fixes for Lollipop problems. And while we haven’t seen widespread complaints just yet, the Android 5.1.1 update will almost certainly bring battery life problems to select Nexus users. With that in mind, we take a look at how you can go about fixing bad Nexus Android 5.1.1 battery life.
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While we await Android Wear 5.1.1 to roll out on a wider scale, we had the opportunity to try the update out on the LG Watch Urbane. Google’s wearable platform has seen its fair share of incremental updates over the past several months, but this one is by far the biggest. You want Wi-Fi support? Done. An always-on screen? That’s here, too. Let’s take a look at what else is new.
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Android L, also known as Android 5.0 or Lollipop, has been very slow to roll out for newer versions of Android phones, and now a lot of users want version 5.1. This is especially true for Motorola phones including the Moto G (both 1st and 2nd generation), the Moto X (also 1st and 2nd generation), and the Moto E, as well as other Motorola Android phones.
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Sprint is giving its Galaxy S4 Spark and Note 2 customers some Android 5.0 Lollipop loving after recently releasing the said update last May 8.
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Last month, it was revealed that Samsung was working on Android 5.1 for either device, with the update rumored to bring a Guest Mode feature, along with the ability to take images in RAW.
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Apple still hasn’t disclosed sales figures, but it appears Apple Watch is outselling all of the Android Wear watches pushed by Google and its partners.
Never mind that those Google watches collectively hit the market long before Apple’s high-tech timepiece or that Apple is experiencing delays getting watches to buyers.
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According to Canadian carrier Rogers, the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the S6 edge should get their Android 5.1 Lollipop update as early as next month. The carrier’s official website mentions June as the estimated release date for the update, although the website also says that the dates are subject to change.
Over this past month, we’ve heard that Samsung is already working on updating its latest flagships to Android 5.1 Lollipop, and we’ve also heard that the update should come with a new Guest Mode feature, as well as the ability to snap RAW photos. This is the first time we’re hearing about a potential release date for the update.
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Android Wear 5.1 has reduced Google’s emphasis on talking to your wrist, which is a good thing. The new menu system makes it easier to get to apps and settings, and the simple swipe-based interface is intuitive.
The emoji-drawing support is excellent and being able to connect remotely to a smartphone using Wi-Fi is useful for when Bluetooth won’t stretch far enough.
Android Wear’s notification-handling and quick, useful interactions powered by Google Now make it the best smartwatch platform currently available, but only if your life is plugged into Google services such as Gmail, calendar and Play Music.
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The complexity of application stacks keeps going up. Way, way up. Application stacks have always been complicated, but never like this. There are so many services, so many tools, so much more compute power available, so many new techniques to try, and always the desire, and the pressure, to solve problems in newer and cooler and more elegant ways. With so many toys to play with, and more coming every day, the toy chest struggles to contain them all.
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It all sounds so straightforward: Put your code up on GitHub or start/join a project at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), build a community of like-minded individuals, start a company, take in some funding, and then IPO. Or maybe not. One thing is certain: Running an open source company has unique challenges and opportunities. Although much has been written on the subject of open source and community building, I’d like to share three critical lessons learned in my travels as a co-founder and CTO of a venture-backed open source company.
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GOG Galaxy is a new gaming client for the GOG distributions service, but for now it’s only available for the Windows platform. As a response, the GOG wish list now shows the open source GOG Galaxy client as the most requested item.
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Events
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Every moment spent was mesmerizing in the summit. Day 0, 7th May 2015 Thursday was the workshop day in the auditorium of the Computer Science Department. Presentations by Andika Triwidada on “GNOME Indonesia Translation”, Akshai M for “MicroHOPE(Micro-controllers for Hobby Projects and Education)”, David King on “Writing your first GNOME application”, and Ekaterina Gerasimova, Alexandre Franke on the topic “How to make your first contribution” were out of the box informative.
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We’re happy to announce that recordings of five sessions from LibrePlanet 2015 are now online. Whether you couldn’t make it to the conference and are watching these for the first time, or attended and want to see them again, we hope you enjoy.
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If you are interested in participating in this year’s Randa Meetings and want to have a chance to be financially supported to travel to Randa then the last 24 hours of the registration period just began.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Mozilla is proud to announced that it has released the Firefox 38.0 ESR (Extended Support Release) internet browser, which brings interesting features.
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Five of the 13 security updates for Firefox 38 are considered critical. Mozilla also disabled the RC4 cipher suite for encrypted TLS data.
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Mozilla today launched Firefox 38 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include digital rights management (DRM) tech for playing protected content in the HTML5 video tag on Windows, Ruby annotation support, and improved user interfaces on Android.
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Because DRM is a ‘black-box’ technology that isn’t open source, we have designed a security sandbox that sits around the CDM. We can’t be sure how other browsers have handled the “black-box” issue but a sandbox provides a necessary layer of security. Additionally, we’ve also introduced the ability to remove the CDM from your copy of Firefox. We believe that these are important security and choice mechanisms that allow us to introduce this technology in a manner that lessens the negative impacts of integrating this type of black-box.
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Ubuntu has been making big promises since 2011 when they chose Unity to be at the center of their universe. And while they failed to deliver on Ubuntu TV or Ubuntu for Android, they’ve got other tricks up their sleeves.
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SaaS/Big Data
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John Dickinson is Director of Technology at SwiftStack and Program Team Lead (PTL) of the OpenStack Swift project. Last year, he gave us an update on Swift’s progress with Storage policies: Coming to an OpenStack Swift cluster near you for Opensource.com. In this follow up interview, John offers tips for improving community collaboration on open source projects, and gives us a preview of his upcoming OpenStack Summit talk.
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The end of 2014 was a momentous time for Hortonworks, which focuses on the Hadoop Big Data platform. The company had a successful IPO, driving home how focused many enterprises are on yielding more useful insights from their troves of data than standard data mining tools can provide.
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Project Releases
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Wireshark, the world’s most popular open-source, cross-platform, and free network analyzer software, has been updated to version 1.12.5, a release that fixes numerous issues, patches important security vulnerabilities, and updates protocol support.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Access/Content
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Students facing eye-popping costs of college textbooks could save substantial amounts of money under a bill that would encourage the use of electronic texts.
The House on Tuesday approved a pilot program and study of so-called open-source texts that faculty could assign instead of traditional books that can cost students as much as $1,200 a year. The bill, which passed 144-0, next heads to the Senate.
It would establish a task force to develop plans for the best use of open-source texts through an existing program at Charter Oak State College.
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Security
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Google Inc., taking a new approach to enterprise security, is moving its corporate applications to the Internet. In doing so, the Internet giant is flipping common corporate security practice on its head, shifting away from the idea of a trusted internal corporate network secured by perimeter devices such as firewalls, in favor of a model where corporate data can be accessed from anywhere with the right device and user credentials.
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IBM’s Andy Thurai didn’t quite put the words into former RSA CTO Deepak Taneja’s mouth, but did prompt him by asking at the start of a TIE Startup Con panel in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month whether Internet of Things security is a “time bomb ready to explode.”
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CVE-2015-3456 (aka VENOM) is a security flaw in the QEMU’s Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) emulation. It can be exploited by a malicious guest user with access to the FDC I/O ports by issuing specially crafted FDC commands to the controller. It can result in guest controlled execution of arbitrary code in, and with privileges of, the corresponding QEMU process on the host. Worst case scenario this can be guest to host exit with the root privileges.
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The QEMU fix itself is now available in source code. Red Hat has been working on the fix since last week.
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Popular virtualization platforms relying on the virtual Floppy Disk Controller code from QEMU (Quick Emulator) are susceptible to a vulnerability that allows executing code outside the guest machine.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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The U.S. military is considering using aircraft and Navy ships to directly contest Chinese territorial claims to a chain of rapidly expanding artificial islands, U.S. officials said, in a move that would raise the stakes in a regional showdown over who controls disputed waters in the South China Sea.
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Max Fisher, now at Vox, learned well during his apprenticeship under Marty Peretz at The New Republic. This week, he was among the first to try to smear Seymour Hersh’s piece in the London Review of Books, which argued that pretty much everything we were told about the killing of Osama bin Laden was a lie. Most importantly, Hersh’s report questions the claim that Washington learned of OBL’s whereabouts thanks to torture—a claim popularized in the film Zero Dark Thirty.
There’s a standard boiler plate now when it comes to going after Hersh, and all Fisher, in “The Many Problems with Seymour Hersh’s Osama bin Laden Conspiracy Theory,” did was fill out the form: establish Hersh’s “legendary” status (which Fisher does in the first sentence); invoke his reporting in My Lai and Abu Ghraib; then say that a number of Hersh’s recent stories—such as his 2012 New Yorker piece that the United States was training Iranian terrorists in Nevada—have been “unsubstantiated” (of course, other reporters never “substantiated” Hersh’s claim that Henry Kissinger was directly involved in organizing the cover-up of the fire-bombing of Cambodia for years—but that claim was true); question Hersh’s sources; and then, finally, suggest that Hersh has gone “off the rails” to embrace “conspiracy theories.”
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Four years after U.S. forces assassinated Osama bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published an explosive piece claiming much of what the Obama administration said about the attack was wrong. Hersh claims at the time of the U.S. raid, bin Laden had been held as a prisoner by Pakistani intelligence since 2006. Top Pakistani military leaders knew about the operation and provided key assistance. Contrary to U.S. claims that it located bin Laden by tracking his courier, a former Pakistani intelligence officer identified bin Laden’s whereabouts in return for the bulk of a $25 million U.S. bounty. Questions are also raised about whether bin Laden was actually buried at sea, as the U.S. claimed. Hersh says instead the Navy SEALs threw parts of bin Laden’s body into the Hindu Kush mountains from their helicopter.
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R.J. Hillhouse, a former professor, Fulbright fellow and novelist whose writing on intelligence and military outsourcing has appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times, made the same main assertions in 2011 about the death of Osama bin Laden as Seymour Hersh’s new story in the London Review of Books — apparently based on different sources than those used by Hersh.
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A three-year operation to smuggle official documents out of Syria has produced enough evidence to indict President Bashar al-Assad and 24 senior members of his regime, according to the findings of an international investigative commission.
The prosecution cases against the Syrian leaders focus on their role in the suppression of the protests that triggered the conflict in 2011. Tens of thousands of suspected dissidents were detained, and many of them were tortured and killed in the Syrian prison system.
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Fox News defended Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush after he said he would still have authorized the invasion of Iraq “given what we know now,” claiming that Bush simply misunderstood the question.
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Transparency Reporting
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They’ll be examined for evidence of any pressure brought to bear by a hereditary monarch-in-waiting on elected ministers, and for any evidence that government policy was changed following the prince’s intervention.
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Prince Charles’ secret letters to British government ministers expressing frank views that the government has warned could undermine his political neutrality will finally be published on Wednesday.
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Prince Charles clearly doesn’t want to talk about his ‘black spider’ memos to ministers, which are about to be released, after his aide was filmed body blocking a reporter who tried to ambush to ask about the secret letters.
The memos, written to various government departments between 2004 and 2005, will be released at 4pm after a 10-year legal battle by The Guardian.
They are understood to show Charles’ disagreeing with government policy.
As Charles arrived at Marks and Spencer’s flagship store near Marble Arch on Oxford Street in London, Channel 4 News’ Michael Crick asked if he was “worried” about the letters and if he was still writing to ministers – and whether he thought he was behaving “unconstitutionally” in doing so.
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Secret letters that Prince Charles wrote to Tony Blair’s ministers are finally being revealed after a fight lasting several years.
It’s a battle that’s cost taxpayers more than £275,000 and needed a ruling by Britain’s highest court.
So why has there been such a long wrangle over some bits of paper? Here are all your questions answered.
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The publication of letters Prince Charles sent to government ministers is a triumph – of sorts – for the Freedom of Information Act.
The point of the act is to enable the public to understand better how those in authority are governing us. The release of the letters allows us a limited peek behind the curtains to see how the heir to the throne has been seeking to influence government policies.
But boy, what a struggle. The government has fought very hard for a decade to prevent the disclosure of 27 pieces of correspondence between the prince and ministers in Tony Blair’s government.
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Prince Charles said British troops were under-resourced during the war in Iraq, according to letters from him published on Wednesday which the government had tried to keep secret in case they cast doubt over the future king’s political neutrality.
The comment about the armed forces came in a letter from the 66-year-old prince to former Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004, one of 27 letters he wrote to former ministers in 2004 and 2005 which were released to the public after a decade of government attempts to block publication.
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The determination of Queen Elizabeth II to avoid any action or utterance that might be deemed “political” has become the status quo. Little is known about her personal passions or politics. If she has any – and she surely has – she keeps them to herself.
But monarchs and future monarchs, even since the end of executive monarchy, have always meddled. It is Elizabeth, not her son Charles, who is the exception rather than the rule.
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People opposing a cull of badgers to prevent the spread of tuberculosis in cattle were described by Charles as “intellectually dishonest” in a letter revealing that he has long been in favour of the controversial process.
In a letter to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2005, the Prince criticised what he described as the “badger lobby” for objecting to the killing of badgers while disregarding the slaughter of cattle which contract the disease.
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A cache of secret memos between Prince Charles and senior government ministers has been released after a 10-year legal battle, offering the clearest picture yet of the breadth and depth of the heir to the throne’s lobbying at the highest level of politics.
The 27 memos, sent in 2004 and 2005 and released only after the Guardian won its long freedom of information fight with the government, show the Prince of Wales making direct and persistent policy demands to the then prime minister Tony Blair and several key figures in his Labour government.
From Blair, Charles demanded everything from urgent action to improve equipment for troops fighting in Iraq to the availability of alternative herbal medicines in the UK, a pet cause of the prince.
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A cache of secret memos sent by Prince Charles to senior UK ministers has finally been published, following a 10-year freedom of information battle between the Guardian and the government. The letters reveal that Charles lobbied ministers, including the former prime minister Tony Blair, on a wide range of issues, including agriculture, the armed forces, architecture and homeopathy.
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There will be many disappointed people today I’d guess. Clarence House has released a statement that the publication of these letters will “only inhibit” the Princes ability to express concerns. Complete rubbish, if a member of the Royal Family is sending letters of a non-personal nature to those in our government, its of utmost importance that UK citizens are privy to their contents.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Imported energy as a share of total US energy consumption last year fell to just 11.16%, continuing a dramatic downtrend since 2005, when dependency stood at 30%. This is nothing short of a revolutionary trend-change, especially when you consider the gargantuan energy consumption of the US, which stands just shy of 100 quadrillion btu per year. Because US energy consumption overall has either bottomed, or is set to advance at least a little, the next dramatic move lower in the energy deficit will come in 2017, as LNG exports really get underway. TerraJoule.us believes global currency markets have not yet discounted these coming changes. Viewpoints overall about energy use, production, renewables, and global trade remains firmly anchored to an era that ended roughly a decade ago. Moreover, it’s astonishing that anyone who was watching markets a decade ago could possibly think the US Dollar is headed for trouble today. The US will become energy independent by 2019, according to the TerraJoule.us forecast. While the swings in fossil fuel trade are the driver for this change, the gains in renewables that will start hitting harder in the latter part of the decade will perfect and ensure this new era. Energy independence has typically been a subject for geo-political analysts. However, for our purposes, it’s the effects on the US Dollar and the impact on energy transition more broadly which are the main concerns for energy-focused investment, and the energy mix to 2020.
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In the aftermath of the 7.3-magnitude tremor in Nepal this week, Seattle-based NGO Splash has launched a campaign to raise $500,000 (£320,000) for its water projects in Kathmandu.
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Finance
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WTO, TPP, NAFTA, CAFTA, and a host of trade agreements are causing America to hemorrhage jobs and the resultant downward pressure on wages. Add the productivity gains realized from automation and technology and the future of jobs in America looks pretty bleak. The government is cutting back on social programs and privatized welfare systems dependent upon the whims of the wealthy didn’t work for Louis the XVI or any other aristocracy throughout history. How will American workers support their families and keep our economy vibrant? There is a way but it will take courage. However, the long-term benefits are sustainable and fair. Professor Wolff talks to Tim Danahey and tells us how.
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I really, really dislike this, but EU law leaves me no choice. I’m not comfortable blatantly ignoring tax law. I don’t think the EU could really do anything to me, but I wouldn’t be shocked if a future EU-US treaty were to suddenly make me responsible for years of back VAT. And I would like the option of visiting the EU in the future, rather than risk trouble because I’m evading taxes.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy sent federal authorities new evidence today that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is falsely passing itself off as a tax-exempt charity and effectively using taxpayer dollars to subsidize its lobbying on behalf of private interests.
Common Cause filed a supplement to its three-year-old tax whistleblower complaint against ALEC, and the two groups sent a joint letter to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen demanding an investigation, collection of fines and back taxes, and the revocation of ALEC’s status as a tax-exempt charity. Supporting evidence available here.
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Censorship
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We learned recently from Paris that the western world is deeply and passionately committed to free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. That’s a really good thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the west – perpetrated not by The Terrorists but by the western politicians claiming to fight them.
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Privacy
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AOL’s fastest-growing business is advertising technology, which few people understand, like, or value.
In its acquisition announcement this morning, Verizon Wireless declared its $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL, the Internet stalwart, to be a driver of its “over the top,” or Internet-delivered, content strategy.
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The Justice Department on Tuesday withdrew its appeal of a lower court’s December ruling that said it was illegal for police to attach a webcam to a utility pole and spy on a suspected drug dealer’s house in rural Washington state for six weeks.
The government did not comment on its decision to drop the appeal in a brief filing to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The video camera operated 24 hours a day. Footage was synced to the computer of a Kennewick Police Department detective who could operate the camera from afar via its pan-and-zoom capabilities.
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Civil Rights
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In fact the first focus of the Tory government is on removing rights that protect ordinary people from their betters, be they human rights or employment rights.
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Today marks the 30th anniversary of a massive police operation in Philadelphia that culminated in the helicopter bombing of the headquarters of a radical group known as MOVE. The fire from the attack incinerated six adults and five children, and destroyed 65 homes. Despite two grand jury investigations and a commission finding that top officials were grossly negligent, no one from city government was criminally charged. MOVE was a Philadelphia-based radical movement dedicated to black liberation and a back-to-nature lifestyle. It was founded by John Africa, and all its members took on the surname Africa.
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David Cameron will introduce a counter-extremism bill later in May…
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Posted in Courtroom, Europe, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 4:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![Android and Microsoft](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/android-microsoft.png)
Image from Android Beat
Summary: The marriage of convenience between Microsoft and Cyanogen helps reaffirm CyanogenMod’s status as a Microsoft Trojan horse which must be rejected
MICROSOFT is assaulting Android from numerous angles at the same time. There is no way Microsoft can compete with Android on technical merit, so Microsoft is, as usual, resorting to underhanded tactics and dirty tricks. Our recent article about Microsoft’s assault on Android says that “Cyanogen is confirmed as a Microsoft Trojan horse also elsewhere, so it’s not merely a rumour.”
Stallman asked us for additional references for that, so we provided a few [1, 2, 3], including one from Microsoft’s unofficial mouthpiece ([1] is from the original announcement). Anyone who still thinks of Cyanogen as an independent company is clearly not paying attention. The days of CyanogenMod are gone; now there’s just a proxy called Cyanogen and it is controlled by Microsoft just like Nokia was controlled by Microsoft after Elop had taken charge.
The announcement which unofficially confirmed Cyanogen’s status as a Microsoft proxy was made a few weeks ago, but we think many of the details are still not entirely clear to some negligent observers. It is not stated explicitly, but basically, CyanogenMod would push Microsoft software at the expense of Google et al. software (also Google/Android partners), turning Android into a sort of “Microsoft Android” — a term which some other sites now casually use as well. Android is facing the threat of a classic embrace extend and extinguish manoeuvre by a Microsoft proxy.
“We are having a fundamental miscommunication,” said Stallman. “The CyanogenMod I have heard of is a system distro. Various people have told me about installing in phones.”
That was well before Microsoft harnessed the popularity of CyanogenMod to attack Android, or to turn it into “Microsoft Android” (same thing which was attempted by Amazon, Facebook, and Nokia).
“You are talking about “CyanogenMod” as some sort of entity which can do things,” said Stallman. “That is a total surprise to me. What relationship exists between those two?”
One predates the other and Microsoft needs CyanogenMod to operate like a company, e.g. Cyanogen. Microsoft requires that in order to manipulate CyanogenMod in this turf war against Google and AOSP (Android Open Source Project).
“I will look at those articles,” said Stallman regarding additional links we sent to him. “Does this mean that when people install CyanogenMod on their phones, it standardly includes Skype etc?”
I recently found out that even some companies like HP preinstall Skype on Android tablets (I found out because I bought one for my parents in law). One has to wonder who pays who and what deals are silently being made, not publicly. With respect to Cyanogen’s CM12.1, I think that their latest release contains many Microsoft apps. I have not downloaded CM12.1 or anything like this to confirm it, but it seems like an inevitability. The announcement from Cyanogen (about the Microsoft deal) was made some weeks ago, so we think some of the details are still not entirely clear (they remain to be seen in practice), but basically, CyanogenMod would push Microsoft software (spyware, or ‘cloud’) into phones. We wrote additional articles about it and will continue to write as new details emerge. More Microsoft spyware and surveillance are being spotted by the media even this month, so whatever Microsoft puts on Cyanogen is likely to be as privacy-infringing as is legally allowed (if not well beyond it).
Stallman has been eager to understand what is happening here. We explained that Microsoft ‘embraces’ Cyanogen to make CyanogenMod a distro through which Cyanogen partners will spread Microsoft spyware, hoping that this adequately explains the relationship. Stallman wanted some broader context though. “It leaves the most important question unanswered,” he wrote to us. “Will the CyanogenMod distro that users install contain these Microsoft apps? Does it contain them now?”
Seeing the confusion here, we clarified a little further; CyanogenMod and Cyanogen are synonyms only in the sense that CyanogenMod (CM), previously a username of the guy who founded the company (Cyanogen), are company-product. A quick historical roundup:
- CyanogenMod (name of person) uses AOSP (Android Open Source [sic] Project) to make his own fork/derivative of Android{tm}
- CyanogenMod (self named, like Linus and Linux) becomes popular
- CyanogenMod (the person) is hired by Samsung
- CyanogenMod leaves Samsung
- CyanogenMod establishes a company called Cyanogen
- Microsoft sues Samsung using patents, compelling it to install Microsoft spyware (by default in Android) in order to attain settlement
- VCs give money for Cyanogen to develop CyanogenMod
- Microsoft ‘embraces’ Cyanogen to make CyanogenMod a distro through which Cyanogen partners will spread Microsoft spyware
- (Coinciding with the above) After much lobbying in Europe, Microsoft paralyses Google and dubs Google apps in Android ‘anti-competitive’. This is accompanied by potential legal action.
We hope this adequately explains the relationship between CyanogenMod and Cyanogen and we hope that Microsoft’s strategy in attacking Google is better understood now. It’s an extension of the “Scroogled” PR campaign that Microsoft has sunk so much money and effort into. Microsoft, being Microsoft, is very focused on annihilating the competition rather creating its own products.
We always recommend Replicant and F-Droid, and have done so for years (even at CyanogenMod’s expense). See our articles from 2013. We sort of foresaw what is happening now, including what Microsoft does to Samsung and other Android distributors at the moment (patents as tools of extortion). According to the press in Taiwan, Microsoft now pressures companies to put Microsoft spyware in their distribution of Android or face patent lawsuits/higher patent royalties. This is extortion, blackmail, abuse of retaliatory means etc.
“I think it would help if the FSF issued some kind of statement regarding Microsoft’s behaviour,” I told Stallman, “[especially the attacks which happen] behind the scenes, countering Orwellian charm offensives that seek to paint/frame Windows as “Open Source” and insist that Microsoft “loves” [GNU/]Linux. What Microsoft has been doing recently sure increased the blood pressure levels of many Free software supporters (I wrote a lot about it this year). A high-authority, facts-based response would perhaps help counter Microsoft’s narrative.” █
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Posted in Deception, FSF, Law at 3:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![Richard Stallman](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Richard_Stallman_-_Fête_de_lHumanité_2014_-_010.jpg)
Source: Conference by Richard Stallman, “Free Software: Human Rights in Your Computer” (2014)
Summary: Media mistreatment of the very roots of Free/Open Source software (FOSS), which is now approaching 35 years in age and increasingly thriving
IN recent weeks we have found several ‘news’ articles that gave us cause for concern. Some were shared with Richard Stallman, a regular reader of Techrights, for his views to be expressed and portions of the correspondence can be found here (cautiously redacted to reduce potential animosity/tensions).
It is not unusual, especially these days (age of openwashing), to see the label “Open Source” misused. Not too long ago we identified some very gross distortion of the term “open source” to essentially openwash Facebook’s surveillance ambitions, focusing on poor people. Facebook traffic has sunk pretty badly over the past year (based on Alexa it’s a massive drop), so Facebook is trying really hard to frame/paint itself as “ethical”, even when it tries to expand its surveillance to people too poor to get connected to the Internet. This isn’t altruism, it’s opportunism and malice. It’s definitely not “open source” and the dot org suffix (Internet.org) is clearly inappropriate, not just misleading. “Facebook mistreats its users,” Stallman explained. “Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine.”
There was also an effort to delete GNU from history — an effort that has gone rather aggressive. Stallman was in the process of speaking to editors who jad allowed this to happen (dumb lawyers called GNU and Stallman’s text “Open source Manifesto” in the article “Open source Manifesto turns 30″). Stallman asked me to show him the original publication site and tell him how to write to them. It wasn’t too clear whether to write to the editor/site or the author/law firm. The former can issue some fixes/corrections, we tend to think, superseding what was contributed by lawyers. The article comes from a formal publication which often publishes patent lawyers’ pro-software patents columns (we have seen over 100 of them over the years). The target audience is lawyers. The latest is no exception to the rule. It is an article by Leech Tishman Fuscaldo & Lampl LLC and the Web site is London-based, with Andrew Teague as the Associate Publisher, Mark Lamb as the Publishing Director, and Chris Riley handling subscriptions. When it was first published Stallman was eager to contact “Either one, or both! [editor and writer] But the sooner the better.” No correction has yet been published. It’s nowhere to be found.
GNU and Free software are 30+ years old. A lot of people contribute to the misconception that it all started when Torvalds released Linux or when the term “Open Source” (not open source intelligence) was coined by the likes of O’Reilly. Watch the “Open Source” O’Reilly nonsense starting the clock more than 10 years later than GNU: “Twenty years ago, open source was a cause. Ten years ago, it was the underdog. Today, it sits upon the Iron Throne ruling all it surveys. Software engineers now use open source frameworks, languages, and tools in almost all projects.”
Rachel Roumeliotis is advertising OSCON 2015 (OS stands for “Open Source”), but she should know about GNU and its age. These people conveniently start the clock when O’Reilly and his henchmen got involved. They want all the credit and they want people not to speak about freedom. Eben Moglen already ranted about this, right on stage in an OSCON event nearly a decade ago.
“This shows how “open source” misses the point,” Stallman wrote to us. “If the frameworks, languages and tools they use are free software, that is good for their freedom. But if what they develop with those is nonfree software, it doesn’t respect our freedom.
“So open source “won” by ducking the important battle.”
Well, the “we already won” attitude (or notion) helps a defeatist’s approach; why fight for more freedom if “we won”? That’s what those people (even developers) who open a MacBook or some ‘i’ device want to happen; some would further insist that Apple and Microsoft are now “open source” players, so “game over”…
We have noticed that Microsoft is now googlebombing with “Windows open source”, promoting the ludicrous notion that it’s now “open” (or gratis), or that it will be so one day. It started about a month ago, maybe two; dozens of articles have served this PR strategy. we wrote some rebuttals and will write another one this weekend. There is a gross distortion of what actually happened and what is happening.
“Stallman was unhappy about the increasing prevalence of proprietary software,” said the aforementioned article From Lexology, “software protected by copyright law and usually licensed on a commercial basis by its owners.”
Yes, but Free software too is protected by copyright law, it’s just twisted into copyleft. “Source code is sometimes licensed under GNU GPL terms,” says the article, “a form of
“copyleft” rather than copyright.”
OK, so surely they know what Free software is and where it comes from. Why proceed with statements like: “The “open source” movement emerged in GNU’s wake. As with GNU, users of
open source code can look at the source code and modify it. However, unlike with GNU, they are not required to share their developments with the world at large.”
“We have noticed many articles throughout this past year or so — including some from Linux Foundation staff — that basically start history in 1991 as if GNU/Linux came out of a vacuum or from Torvalds’ bedroom.”Actually, unless they are using something like the BSD licence, they usually must. Then there are issues like SaaS, which are addressed by the AGPLv3, among other licences. But either way, Free software remains Free software, there is no justification for renaming it “Open Source” and calling the GNU Manifesto “Open source Manifesto”. It’s insulting to those who started the whole thing and wish to receive fair coverage or attribution, at the very least.
The Lexology sites presents some other issues, mostly to do with access, not just paywalls. Stallman asked: “Can you email me the full text of that article? I tried to fetch the page and what I got did not include the text.”
Stallman said he “wrote to them”, but more than a month later the article remains uncorrected, not updated, etc.
Another big load of revisionism (changing history) uses the “Open Source” label to delete GNU from history. Published last month, the article titled “At Birth, Open Source Was About Saving Money, Not Sharing Code” focuses on Torvalds (see feature image) and frames the movement as one that is centered around money. Stallman asked: “Is that someone opinionated who won’t listen to me?”
It is of course worthless asking for a correction when you know in advance none would be made. It later turned out to be part of a broader series of articles, some of which did cover GNU. I personally read several hundreds of items from the author and he’s more into ‘practical’ benefits, so I don’t think it would be worth arguing over. Some people just aren’t fond of freedom in the context of computing.
We have noticed many articles throughout this past year or so — including some from Linux Foundation staff — that basically start history in 1991 as if GNU/Linux came out of a vacuum or from Torvalds’ bedroom. Quite frankly, we think it’s an insult to history. We deem it negligent at best. Of course it leads people to deducing that the success of the system in its entirety is owing to the great “Linux values”, not GNU philosophy.
In summary, in our threads of communication with Stallman we were able to reaffirm that there were factual issues in the “Open Source Manifesto” article (it speaks about the GNU Manifesto) and despite Stallman’s request for correction, nothing has been done by the publishers. It’s like people just don’t wish to speak favourably about freedom in computing. Mac Asay, a Mormon (i.e. more superstition a religion than most other religions), compares Free software people to dangerous religions — a typical smear directed at a largely secular Free software community. Perhaps there are just those who are impossible to please because they are inherently opposed to control over one’s machine and would rather buy digital prisons from Apple than work a little harder to gain control or acquire freedom-respecting tools. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 8:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Locked inside Gates
Summary: Microsoft’s proprietary software, such as Visual Studio Code and PowerShell, thrown at GNU/Linux users in an effort to promote Microsoft’s way of doing things and re-enforce lock-in
MICROSOFT is trying very hard to confuse the population. It’s aiming at low-hanging fruit — the non-technical people who are easy to bamboozle and convince through repetition that Microsoft is now “Open Source”. Microsoft’s googlebombing, as we have stated here before, keeps pushing Microsoft and “Open Source” into headlines. Jim Martin from PC Advisor is doing the “Windows Open Source” routine even one month after something actually happened (publicity stunt in Wired Magazine) and another British news site does the “Microsoft Open Source” routine (yet again!). If one isn’t careful, he or she might be led to believe that Microsoft completely embraced “Open Source”. See yesterday’s headline “What if Windows went open source tomorrow?” Days ago we found openwashing in a puff piece from Kevin Kelleher at Time Magazine. This is propaganda. It’s effective. People repeat what the propaganda tells them.
The most serious issue with all this is perspective or perception. In this new article about “.Net Core” (as in open core) Bill Weinberg is correct about what ‘open’ (openwashed) .NET does; it’s all about Windows and Microsoft lock-in. It is about leading people, including developers, into the prisons of proprietary software (Windows, Office, SQL Server, Hyper-V and so on). Microsoft recently used some non-news about Visual Studio Code (which is as proprietary as can be) to seduce people into the fantasy of “Open Source Microsoft”. As one GNU/Linux-centric site put it: “Microsoft Visual Studio Code, as opposed to the original Visual Studio for Windows, is not a complete integrated development environment containing an its own compiler and typical tools of this kind of development environments but it’s simply a code editor like sublimetext, atom, kate or brackets.”
So it’s not only proprietary but also less potent than Free/libre software. Paul Krill, the Editor at Large at InfoWorld, continues his Microsoft apologism, going further than openwashing Visual Studio. “Continuing its overtures toward open source,” he says (loaded statement), “Microsoft is unveiling technologies for packaging applications and remotely debugging JavaScript.”
Another article, titled “Visual Studio Code For Linux: What it Means”, provides another kind of analysis and notes that ‘Linus Torvalds once said: “If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I’ve won.”‘
“Bill Gates once said: “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” That very well applies to developers as well as end users. Microsoft is trying to make developers ‘addicted’ to Microsoft.”Well, but those applications are proprietary. They’re unwanted. A Microsoft promotion site wants people to run “.NET on Linux and Mac OS X” (that’s the real goal, spreading .NET). By repeating the words “open source” in relation to proprietary software Microsoft gives people the wrong/false impression that its proprietary software is suddenly “open”. Microsoft is doing that to its Web browser right now [1, 2] and by extension, by saying that this proprietary browser may run on Windows for phones, Microsoft promotion sites serve to openwash Windows Phone [1, 2]. How appalling it that? Cross-platform efforts with proprietary software and a little bit of “open core” in very few areas (getting developers ‘hooked’ on Microsoft APIs) is not “Open Source”. It’s only now that Microsoft says it may finally stop torturing the Web with ActiveX, so never mind “Open Source”, what has Microsoft ever been for standards? Bill Gates once said: “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” That very well applies to developers as well as end users. Microsoft is trying to make developers ‘addicted’ to Microsoft.
Microsoft booster Darryl K. Taft was one among several (including Adrian Bridgwater) who promoted Telerik, a longtime booster of .NET (“enhancements to its existing solutions, ongoing support for Microsoft development tooling” says the latest press release). The push for the whole world to become prisoner of .NET is reaching new heights as even Fedora 23 is chewing Mono [1,2] (after it got rid of it half a decade ago).
Let’s remind ourselves that amid all the “Microsoft Open Source” nonsense (googlebombing) there is very little that is actually open and a lot which is proprietary and geared towards lock-in. Microsoft now wants to ‘addict’ UNIX/Linux users to Microsoft’s command-line syntax [1, 2]. As if GNU/Linux hasn’tgot enough Free software shells like GNU Bash… well, apparently it needs Windows, too. Microsoft insists it needs proprietary Windows blobs like PowerShell. To quote one report: “After having shocked the world by releasing Visual Studio Code for Linux, Microsoft had the pleasure of announcing today the immediate availability for download of PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) for GNU/Linux operating systems.”
Compiling a pile of Windows lock-in for another platform is not openness. It’s a proprietary trap, just like Visual Studio Code. Developers are hopefully wise enough to see through the lies and the gross spin. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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We announced last week that the release schedule of the upcoming Fedora 23 Linux operating system has been published and that the distribution might arrive on October 27, 2015, if everything goes according to plan and no unexpected delays occur during the development cycle.
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Aside from the other features proposed thus far for Fedora 23, the update of the popular Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution due out in late 2015, you can add Mono 4.0 to the list.
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 7:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![Toy](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/toy-portrait-star-wars-84247-m.jpg)
Summary: The latest moves from Microsoft, which is eager to undermine Android and GNU/Linux (desktop/server) by all means possible
Microsoft really hates GNU/Linux. It shows it too. We wrote about several clear signs of it just a couple of month ago. It’s summarised in the following series which we published in order to — at the very least — act as a reminder amid Microsoft’s media blitz (claiming that it “loves Linux” and embraces “Open Source”):
“Windows ideology [is] causing harm just to be spiteful,” wrote to us a reader yesterday morning, “yet again.” He cited this new article which shows an attack on GNU/Linux from a Microsoft-faithful CIO.
“The CIO,” says the article, “had already released a memo to all tech support chiefs, stating that all retiring hardware should be placed on pallets for pick up by a soon-to-be-named reclamation and recycling vendor. The real kick? They’re paying big money to have their stuff picked up and parted out for profit — all in the name of “responsible recycling.” Rick quietly shared with me that the CIO was miffed because we were repurposing their donated computers with GNU/Linux. Because we were removing Windows, he thought the donated hardware was being wasted.”
How is it a waste to throw away proprietary software with back doors? Surely it would not be a gift if handed over to the disenfranchised in this form (with Windows). Windows is a tool of espionage against its users, so wiping it off should make sense by now, especially after the NSA leaks which prove Microsoft’s complicity. Microsoft Peter (Peter Bright) frames Microsoft as anti-leaks after the NSA’s Exchange Server spewed out almost everything the NSA had in store. It’s hilarious to see how far Microsoft propagandists in Ars Technica are willing to go with such spin.
In other news of interest, the New York Times whitewashes a patent troll (Paul Allen) who attacks Android through Interval. Microsoft, in the mean time, spreads more Android FUD (security-flavoured), showing its clear disdain for Free/Open Source software. Is this the “nice Microsoft” or “new Microsoft” we keep hearing about? How about Microsoft’s attacks on Android through Cyanogen as a proxy? It’s a Microsoft vassal which tries to remove Google from Android and put Microsoft in charge. Jack Wallen recently published this article about “Microsoft and Cyanogen”, asking: “But why Microsoft? Why jump from one juggernaut to another, from one lockdown to another? It’s really clear why Microsoft would make this deal: their mobile platform is going nowhere. In order to get their fingers embedded in the mobile pie, they have to embrace other platforms. And what better way to embrace mobility than to get in league with the leader–Android. By working with Cyanogen, Microsoft effectively gets their own version of Android–we’ll call it MS Android.
“From my perspective, Cyanogen partnering with Microsoft on Android doesn’t open the platform, it closes it up tight. This is especially true considering we’re not talking about simply adding a few apps, we’re talking about bundling. Microsoft’s history of bundling is not littered with praise for being “open”. Instead, what this looks like to me is an attempt at Cyanogen turning its back on Google to say “We’ll show you!””
Microsoft’s spinners Peter Bright and Andrew Orlowski both feel unhappy that Microsoft tries bringing Android software to Windows [1, 2]. They view this as surrender or suicide, as if Microsoft has any chance against Android/Linux and GNU/Linux, except by destroying/undermining them.
“Microsoft closes sole Helsinki outlet,” says a Microsoft-friendly paper after Microsoft killed Nokia. “Software giant Microsoft,” it explains, “has shut the doors of its only retail outlet in Helsinki, saying that it will focus sales of its consumer devices online and in other retailers’ outlets. Located in prime commercial real estate in the heart of downtown Helsinki, the store operated under the Microsoft banner for less than one year.”
Yes, just under a year. It means that Microsoft layoffs carry on. We’re entering a post-Microsoft era, one that is dominated not just by an alternative brand but also a software distribution alternative. Free software is getting its way. Microsoft actively attacks Free software. Microsoft cannot coexist with freedom, as history serves to show. █
“I do hope that the suit can help demonstrate that Microsoft’s claims of succeeding through innovation are a complete fraud. Their only innovation has been in inventing predatory business practices. Other than that, they have been perhaps the greatest borrowers in the history of the software industry.”
–Sybase Chairman Mitchell Kertzman
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 6:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Linux Foundation Helps .NET
![Sam Ramji](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/F1_SamRamji3_hires.jpg)
Photo from a Microsoft marketing site
Summary: The voices and brute-force impact of Microsoft are gradually penetrating the Free/Open Source software (FOSS) world, including the Linux Foundation
Earlier this year we wrote about Sam Ramji, Microsoft’s mole inside Free/Open Source software, entering the Linux Foundation [1, 2, 3]. No lessons learned yet from Nokia and Elop?
Either way, according to some articles (see also [1,2] below), Ramji’s new position (at Cloud Foundry) now facilitates Microsoft and .NET. How predictable. It didn’t even take long, only months.
“GE Launches Cloud Foundry ‘Industrial Dojo,’” says one new press release, “Contributes to Open Source to Foster Continued Development of the Industrial Internet” (more coverage in [1, 2, 3, 4]), so “Microsoft and Canonical are partnering up on IoT,” to quote SJVN.
This is what we have come to expect when ‘former’ Microsoft staff was allowed to join the Linux Foundation. Watch how an operating system (DCOS) that is backed by Microsoft’s anti-Linux manager (Silverberg) is getting tied up to Microsoft right now, facilitating control over the competition (GNU/Linux guests). This is a sign of defeat, not a victory over Microsoft, and it is going to lead to more proprietary software (which DCOS is).
North Bridge, somewhat of a sidekick of Black Duck (founded by a man from Microsoft to badmouth the GPL and sell proprietary software), is doing Black Duck’s marketing in Red Hat-run site, not just in Linux Foundation sites. The author says: “It’s been nine years since my firm, North Bridge, began our annual examination of trends in open source, which we conduct in conjunction with Black Duck Software.”
Congratulations, Chamberlains of the world. We now have Microsoft-occupied FOSS. Microsoft tells FOSS what to think and compels FOSS to invite Microsoft in, even though Microsoft remains proprietary, attacks FOSS (even in the courtroom), bribes officials, eliminates standards etc. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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IBM announced a bunch of new Bluemix services to help developers create analytics-driven cloud apps.
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Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Security at 6:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The plague which is Microsoft staff swapping hats (to masquerade as journalists) is still impacting news giants
OVER the past half a decade (or more) we have given many examples where CBS hired from Microsoft and appointed ‘journalists’ who not only had worked for Microsoft (to cover Microsoft issues and/or bash Microsoft’s competition) but even people who still worked for Microsoft. It’s like they are wearing two hats. The latest such example goes only a month or two back. There are dozens of such people (in total) and it is a very big deal because CBS owns and controls ZDNet and CNET, among many more sites. Last night we were told by a writer from Ars Technica (owned by Condé Nast, just like Wired and Reddit) that Microsoft sponsored the launch of Ars Technica UK, where every single page right now bears a huge Microsoft advertisement (which ad blockers are unable to hide). Ars Technica already employs several pro-Microsoft propagandists.
IDG, which owns and runs a huge number of sites that cover technology and proclaim to be news sites, can serve to show the security bias which we last mentioned the other day. As spotted by this comment, “Roger Roger A. Grimes] currently works for Microsoft as a principal security architect.”
“The author clearly has never met a good troll,” said another comment. The title of the piece is “We need the Internet police now more than ever”. This is total nonsense. What we need are operating systems without back doors, i.e. we need to abandon the likes of Microsoft (no more Windows). It facilitates cyber-crime, leads to botnets, DDOS attacks, extortion, etc.
This article is not atypical; this is just Microsoft propaganda (whether planned/coordinated or not). It’s Microsoft philosophy publicly projected. There is mostly blaming of the victims from Microsoft’s Grimes (Microsoft salaried ‘journalist’). Watch one of his latest: “Get real about user security training” (because it’s easy to blame the victims).
One day it may become possible to effectively screen journalists. We hope that journalism wouldn’t be so easy for Microsoft to penetrate and use to its advantage, leaving Microsoft only with aggressive PR agencies that try to push 'prepared' articles to journalists. █
“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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05.12.15
Posted in News Roundup at 5:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
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Looking for an alternative to Windows? You may not think of your business as an enterprise shop, but you might be surprised at what enterprise Linux vendors have to offer SMBs.
The three major commercial Linux vendors—Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu Linux—provide excellent products and services for all businesses, large, small, and in between. These are the top three commercial Linux vendors, and when you want to evaluate Linux as an option for your business you might as well start at the top.
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The bottom line: wearable computing is where the future belong and Linux is going to play a major role there, thanks to Google.
Now a new research is going to make things even more exciting. An international team of scientists have create what is called the world’s truly electronic textile, using Graphene.
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While the notion of free software has lasted since the days Richard Stallman was sleeping under his desk at MIT, the full thrust of collaboratively and openly licensed software really took off with the advent of Linux.
Linux took a principle and filled in an important technology gap that inspired the filling of a thousand other gaps too. This led to the rise of the venerable Linux distribution, as myriad as consumer-grade platforms such as Ubuntu and Fedora, to server-grade such as CentOS and Debian, and down to the downright weird such as RebeccaBlackOS.
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Kernel Space
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I’m announcing the release of the 3.18.13 kernel.
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On May 11, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 3.19.8, while informing users that the Linux 3.19 kernel branch reached end of life and they should move to the Linux kernel 4.0.x series as soon as possible.
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Sasha Levin announced this past weekend that the thirteen maintenance release of the Linux 3.18 kernel was available for download, urging all users of the 3.18 kernel series to upgrade as soon as possible.
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Back in 2013 the Jailhouse Hypervisor was announced as a partitioning hypervisor that’s lighter-weight than KVM. Last year saw the release of Jailhouse 0.1 and finally coming out today is the next update: Jailhouse 0.5.
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Graphics Stack
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Bryce Harrington announced the Wayland 1.8 Alpha on the wayland-devel list. Wayland 1.8 is bringing a new scanner option, new headers (wayland-client-core.h and wayland-server-core.h), and other changes.
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Render-nodes expose a GPU for off-screen rendering and GPGPU without needing display access. DRI_PRIME makes it possible to use an alternative GPU for rendering an application/game using the DRI_PRIME environment variable. DRI_PRIME is particularly useful for those with notebooks/ultrabooks sporting dual graphics processors.
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The current plan is to branch Mesa 10.6 from Git master on Friday, which would put the official 10.6.0 release in early June.
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Months after working on direct state access support in Mesa, Fredrik Höglund of KDE has finished off this OpenGL 4.5 feature for core Mesa.
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Intel as of late seems quite set on seeing OpenGL ES 3.1 becoming a reality for Mesa in the near-term.
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Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center continues to hire new developers for working on their Linux graphics stack. Back in 2013, Intel had 20~30 full-time Linux graphics driver developers and since then that number has only risen.
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Applications
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Linux commandline is the best and most powerful thing that fascinates a new user and provides extreme power to experienced users and geeks. For those who work on Server and Production, they are already aware of this fact. It would be interesting to know that Linux console was one of those first features of the kernel that was written by Linus Torvalds way back in the year 1991.
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The Guake development team has recently announced the availability of a new update for one of the most appreciated drop-down terminal emulator applications on the open source market.
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The digiKam Team is proud to announce the release of digiKam Software Collection 4.10.0. This release includes a new sets of bugs fixes from Maik Qualmann who maintain KDE4 version while KF5 port is under progress.
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After recent porting python-gammu to Python 3, it was quite obvious to me that new release will have some problems. Fortunately they have proven to be rather cosmetic and no big bugs were found so far.
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More likely, Emacs was the victim of competition. The command line editor nano scored roughly the same as Emacs in the LinuxQuestions polls, while the desktop editors gedit and Kate scored slightly better. Another sixteen editors scored .1-4%. Almost all these editors can be learned in a matter of minutes, while Emacs’ arcane features are the subject of jokes, even among users..
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Unity WallpaperSwitcher remembers each of your workspace-specific wallpapers and changes it each time you switch to a different workspace. When you disable the app, all workspaces are set to the currently used wallpaper however, the wallpapers set for each workspace will be remembered and they will be used the next time you enable it.
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Another major step for the Ipsilon project: we have just released version 1.0.0[1]!
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qBittorrent, a multi-platform BitTorrent client, designed to run on all major platforms that has pretty much all of the features you would need, is now at version 3.2.0 and is ready for download.
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Rygel, a home media solution (UPnP AV MediaServer) that allows users to easily share audio, video, and pictures to other devices, has been upgraded to version 0.26.1 and is now ready for download.
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Macaw-Movies is the latest KDE incubator project, which is focused on providing movie organization/management features to open-source fans.
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Proprietary
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Instructionals/Technical
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In this article, I demonstrate a method to build one Linux system within another using the latest utilities within the systemd suite of management tools. The guest OS container design focuses upon BusyBox and Dropbear for the userspace system utilities, but I also work through methods for running more general application software so the containers are actually useful.
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Congratulations! You’ve decided to set up a Web site. The site might be for your personal use, for sharing family pictures, for a blog, for an SaaS application, or any number of other possibilities. In all of those cases, people will access your site using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP has evolved and improved through the years, but one thing about it hasn’t changed—the fact that all of the traffic sent on an HTTP connection is unencrypted.
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Wine or Emulation
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Per the latest World Wine News (WWN), USB support for Wine is being discussed yet again but as of right now it’s not clear if any new work will materialize as a result of the latest discussions.
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Games
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It’s sad, but not entirely unexpected that we will be left waiting for Trine 3. We did have to wait for ports of Trine and Trine 2, but when our editor Cheeseness spoke to Frozenbyte it sounded like the Linux version would be out during Early Access.
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Valve today pushed out the SteamOS 159 update into the Alchemist repository today, which matches the recent changes to the Alchemist Beta repository. This update isn’t too exciting as it’s mostly stable fixes, branding updates, etc, but the NVIDIA Linux driver update does remove the support for pre-Fermi graphics cards.
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Don’t let the cute looks deceive you. Behind its innocent looking facade, Snakebird from developer Noumenon Games hides a fiendishly hard puzzle game that should give even the most seasoned puzzle veteran a proper challenge.
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Invisible, Inc. has snuck out the door and is now available on your favourite operating system. I’ve been looking forward to this for some time, so I took a look.
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If you’re a fan of 4X strategy games, then you will have probably heard of Master of Orion. Honestly, Master of Orion 2 is one of my all time favourite games, and now I can play it without any messing around on Linux.
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Black Mesa is a total conversion of the original Half-Life with the Source 2 engine that’s been in works for years. Now, the developers are pushing their work into Early Access, and it looks like they are also targeting the Linux platform as well.
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The PlayOnLinux is an application based on Wine that allows users to install and run Windows games, and the developers are seriously considering a major upgrade.
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For over one year we’ve been looking forward to Crytek bringing CryENGINE to Linux with an OpenGL renderer. That was announced back at GDC 2014 and we haven’t heard much lately, but finally there’s an update and the Linux support is expected soon.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Spring is in the air, taxes are done, and it’s time to focus on fun stuff—like digital painting! Krita is attempting a second stab at success with another Kickstarter that started earlier last week. For 2015, Krita has Photoshop in their crosshairs with the anticipation of making Krita as fast or faster than Photoshop. I was able to speak to Krita’s lead developer, Boudewijn Rempt, about the 2015 Kickstarter campaign and upcoming year.
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KDE had the pleasure of announcing today, May 12, the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the first point release of their KDE Applications 15.04 software suite for the KDE Plasma 5 desktop.
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Today KDE released the first stability update for KDE Applications 15.04. This release contains only bugfixes and translation updates, providing a safe and pleasant update for everyone.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Among other things, it summarizes what your elected board of directors has been up to these past twelve months.
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The GNOME developers are hard at work these days to bring us the second and last official point release of the stable GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, which was announced back in October 2014.
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DistroWatch.com has a list of Linux distros and ranks them based on popularity. Currently, Mint is the distro of choice for many Linux users followed by Ubuntu and Debian. There are hundreds of distros available and you can’t possibly use or play around with all of them. Most of these distros are just offshoots of the more popular distros. If I were to narrow it down to just a few distros, I would go with these magnificent seven.
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The Foresight Linux Council has determined that there has been insufficient volunteer activity to sustain meaningful new evelopment of Foresight Linux. Faced with the need either to update the project’s physical infrastructure or cease operations, we find no compelling reason to update the infrastructure.
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Reviews
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Most of the reviews I write for DistroWatch come about after I have installed and run a distribution for a week. I have worked my way into a routine where I grab a couple of new installation images each week, select one that looks good and/or interesting, run it for a week and then write about the experience. However, I rarely write about the distributions that, for whatever reason, do not make the cut. Each week I end up with a small collection of ISO files that will not be written about for one reason or another. Sometimes a distribution I have downloaded is too similar to one I have written about recently. Other times the rejected software did not install properly. Sometimes I think an operating system has promise, but it is still in beta and not yet ready for release. The end result is, unfortunately, that a lot of the interesting material I download does not get talked about. This week I want to take a break from my usual reviewing style and talk briefly about some operating systems I downloaded this month that I found interesting, but did not get selected for a full trial.
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Screenshots/Screencasts
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Red Hat Family
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In the case of an organization like Red Hat (the organization where I am the CEO) which operates as part of multiple open source software communities like Linux and OpenStack, these questions are all the more difficult to answer — like how to measure someone’s contribution to an external community — and traditional performance reviews just don’t cut it for us. For example, building open source software, like we do at Red Hat, involves collaborating with people outside of the company who volunteer their efforts. That means you can’t simply issue orders or direct what work gets done and when. What you can do is build influence and trust with other members of the community. But doing that can involve making contributions that offer no direct output or result. It’s not quid pro quo, and it’s not easy to track and measure.
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Red Hat, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source solutions, announced Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) 6.4 and expanded benefits for JBoss EAP subscribers deploying their Java applications in hybrid cloud environments.
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In today‘s fast-moving, demanding economy, organizations are using DevOps and bi-modal IT initiatives to compete and achieve the next level of developer productivity. They also seek complementary, flexible technologies that enable them to experiment, fail fast, and still deliver innovations on time.
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Philip Papadopoulos announced on May 11 the immediate availability for download of Rocks Cluster 6.2, a specialist Linux kernel-based operating system derived from the well-known CentOS distribution, which in turn is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
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Everyone can grab and install Fedora 21-22 on APM Mustang. But what if you want something more enterprise ready? Answer is simple: you can install CentOS 7 (at Alpha stage now).
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Fedora
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Jan Šilhan was proud to announce the other day that the highly acclaimed DNF command-line package manager for RPM-based Linux operating systems reached version 1.0.0.
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The DNF 1.0 version was released, being considered as stable and ready to be the main command line package manager in Fedora 22 and later. Along with a many bug fixes, the DNF stack release adds HTTP authentication support, enhances repoquery and builddep plugin and more. For more information look at release notes of DNF and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE.
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The day is coming where DNF is replacing Yum as the default package manager on Fedora Linux. DNF 1.0 was just released today to mark the point of stability and it being ready to take over Yum’s responsibilities with the upcoming Fedora 22 release.
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A Phoronix reader recently asked whether Fedora developers have yet enabled F2FS file-system support within their packaged kernel. While I didn’t mention it before, yes, they ended up enabling support for the Flash-Friendly File-System.
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For early adopters of Fedora 22 that have been missing out on the packages provided by the third-party RPM Fusion repository, they have started rolling out their support for this next Fedora Linux release.
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DNF 1.0 released, will become default package manager in Fedora 22
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GNOME Software is awesome. I started a fresh F22 installation on my laptop and thought I had installed.. $package. Whatever it was. I typed out the application name, a matching thing popped up, I pressed enter, and found out “Oh, this isn’t installed, I need to press this one button first”. Then I was done. It was really easy; no messing around with a terminal, no visiting sketchy blogs, no third party sites visited. I have a sense that this is exactly the kind of experience you’d like when a user wants to use flash, or Virtualbox, or listen to MP3s – everything they want to do Just Works on Fedora.
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Here is a preview video of the upcoming Fedora 22 release (running in a KVM VM). This is my personal remix (with non-Fedora provided rpmfusion-free packages, google-chrome-stable, and flash-plugin added) and I haven’t bothered with the branding nor customization at all… and I don’t really publicly distribute it.. but I’d be happy to share my kickstart file if anyone wants it.
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Debian Family
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Thanks to Charles C. for alerting me that the Debian team has released version 8 of Debian Linux, nicknamed “Jessie.”
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The Debian Ruby Ruby team had a first sprint in 2014. The experience was very positive, and it was decided to do it again in 2015. Last April, the team once more met at the IRILL offices, in Paris, France.
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C.H.I.P., a Linux-based mini-PC priced at just $9, is receiving an overwhelming response on Kickstarter. Launched last Thursday with a funding goal of $50,000, it has chalked up more than 16,000 backers who have shelled out upwards of $815,000. The project still has 25 days to go.
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One of the promises made by the new Debian leader, Neil McGovern, was that he will push for the implementation of PPA support. It’s an interesting proposition, but it doesn’t mean that Debian will support the existing Ubuntu PPAs.
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Canonical is developing a new package format called Snappy that will bring a lot of new features to the desktop, like containment, carefree dependencies, and security, just to name a few. From the looks of it, the new Debian leader is concerned that it might affect the free software ecosystem, in the long run.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Linux is engineered with security in mind. In fact, the most fundamental security mechanisms are built right in to the kernel itself, which makes it extremely hard for malicious code to bypass. Unfortunately, attackers always are looking for ways to break down security walls, and engineers constantly are patching security weaknesses.
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A user by the name of Zack Smith, published an article on his website entitled “Is There Spyware in Ubuntu?” and targeted at Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Jane Silber, the CEO of Canonical.
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No. There is no reason to assume that the compiled executables and libraries that comprise most of Ubuntu are built from the same source code that Canonical makes publicly available. It may have had “patches” added that provide spying capability. Any spyware in the object code only needs to behave stealthily.
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Making Linux distros look like other operating systems is one of the favorite pastimes for some of the users, and a new transformation pack named MBuntu Y has been published.
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Unity and GNOME are two very different desktops, and users of each of them can be…er…passionate in their loyalty. But what are the pros and cons of GNOME and Unity? Gary Newell at About recently did a comparison post, and found that both desktops have strengths and weaknesses.
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While Linux distributions like Fedora and Mageia have adopted predictable/persistent network interface names, Ubuntu has not. However, that is looking to change and it might also be the case for upstream Debian.
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Ligo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) may not get the same kind of attention in the media as other physics experiments, but it should. It’s designed to detect gravitational waves, and it looks like the scientists are also using Linux (Ubuntu) to do that.
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One of the more interesting stories today was Zack Smith’s question, “Is There Spyware in Ubuntu?” Elsewhere DNF 1.0 was released triggering a blog post and a how-to. Several Linux lists caught my eye as well; which distributions would be best for Windows XP holdouts, 10 best distros for privacy, and the “magnificent seven.”
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A supposedly Meizu MX5 image has been leaked, and it has gotten everyone very excited because it shows a phone with no bezels. It’s interesting for Android systems, but it would fit like a glove with an Ubuntu system.
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Ubuntu developers are working to bring Mir and Unity 8 to the desktop, but users need to know that there will be some minor issues, at least until these new technologies become more mature.
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Mir, Canonical’s display server for Unity 8 that’s currently in use by Ubuntu Touch, is now under development for its next major version.
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Softpedia was just informed today by the Linux AIO team that new builds are now available for download for their Linux AIO Ubuntu project, which has been updated to Ubuntu 15.04.
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Flavours and Variants
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I’d like to thank CompuLab for sending the development team three MintBox Mini. I just received mine
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MintBox Mini is a mini-PC that runs Linux Mint, and it’s developed by a company called CompuLab. The new PC went on sale a few weeks ago, and they are sold out the same day. Now, Clement Lefebvre, the leader of the Linux Mint project has finally got one and he shared some details about it.
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An open source, Debian Linux based “Chip” SBC going for $9 has surpassed $740K on Kickstarter. An optional mini-tablet “PocketChip” version sells for $49.
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Imagination released a new version of its MIPS-based Creator CI20 hacker board with a squared-off design, better WiFi, and a built-in FlowCloud IoT API.
Imagination Technologies, which licenses MIPS processor IP, launched the MIPS-based, Linux- and Android-ready Creator CI20 hacker SBC last December, and shipped it shortly thereafter. The company has now released an update with a redesigned PCB layout that squares off the previous indent and wing. In the process, several components have shifted position, and Imagination has added more mounting holes to make it easier to attach to different platforms, such as robots.
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Startup Next Thing is turning to Kickstarter to tap funding for its pocket-sized computer — CHIP — which runs Google’s Chrome browser, uses Linux, and costs just $9 to start.
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A crowdfunded project to bring to market a $9 computer has blown past its initial goal of $50,000 to raise over $500,000 in a few days. But what does $9 buy you?
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The Raspberry Pi is going to the International Space Station and it’s doing that in the most awesome aluminum case that you have ever seen.
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Phones
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Tizen
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The Samsung Gear S Smartwatch has been getting the firmware update R750XXU1BOC1 in several countries over the last couple of months, but I’m pleased to see the BTU version has FINALLY reached the UK shores. The file is available via a 33.84Mb Over the Air (OTA) update or you can download the full firmware file from Sammobile at 430Mb. Users are reporting a definite increase in battery life and a couple of extra watch faces are now available.
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Samsung have today released their new Tizen SDK to developers that have previously signed up for their Samsung Gear Early Access SDK. The new Tizen SDK will help developers to build “richer and differentiated apps for the next generation Gear device”. The current release is Tizen SDK 2.3.1 RC7, with downloads available for Mac OSX-64bits / Ubuntu-32bit / Ubuntu-64bits / Windows-32bits and Windows-64bits.
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Android
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The T-Mobile variant of the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge with the model number SM-N915T has just started receiving the latest Android 5.0.1 Lollipop firmware update. Although the firmware may not be available for all users of the device at the same time, users can download the update for manual installation.
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The Android 5.1 Lollipop update for Sony Xperia Z series of devices is reportedly scheduled for this week. In addition, the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop for Nexus 9 and Nexus 7 has officially been rolled out. Here are some details about the new updates:
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Android mascots are lined up in the demonstration area at the Google I/O Developers Conference in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, May 10, 2011.
Android Lollipop is currently being distributed to older models of smartphones and is already available out of the box for most if not all new models of smartphones. As this is happening, rumors are already abound that a new version of the mobile OS, initially called Android M, is in the works.
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Android: If you’re a little tired of your phone’s default launcher, FlowHome is an alternative that puts favorite apps a tap away, but transforms your home screen into scrolling tiles of useful information, updates from inside your favorite apps, and notifications with as much information shown as they need to be useful.
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It looks like saying sorry wasn’t enough. After Google was forced to apologize for an image of the Android mascot urinating on the Apple logo in Google Maps last month, the company is temporarily shutting down its maps editor, Map Maker, until it can appropriately respond to people abusing the tool.
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I’ve touted the awesomeness of Calibre in the past. And although the Web-based calibre2opds still is an awesome way to access your eBook library, using a native Android app is even smoother. If you have your Calibre library on your local network, using Calibre Companion ($3.99 in the Google Play Store), your Android device connects to your library like a device connected via USB. It’s possible to load books directly onto your device without syncing your entire collection into the cloud!
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Google’s new Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update for Nexus devices brings fixes for lingering Android Lollipop problems. However, it also appears to deliver some problems of its own. With that in mind, we take a look at five things you need to know, right now, about Nexus Android 5.1.1 Lollipop problems as we push further away from its roll out.
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Google might well follow through with handing app permission control back over to end users. Find out why Jack Wallen doesn’t think this is such a good idea.
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Google’s recent slip about the Android M update got the rest of the market buzzing on what’s in store for its next operating system. Primary features expected in the update include Voice Access for a possible hands-free user experience and Nearby for proximity-based communication. More importantly, Google is not only aiming to update its Android OS; it has also been working on Project Fi, offering users a new messenger option.
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Google is supposedly working on making Android Wear smartwatches compatible with iPhone, which might be a clever way to combat Apple’s popular Apple Watch. However, while Google has yet to release Android Wear support for iOS, you can already connect Android Wear devices to iPhone and iPad.
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Android M will reportedly be the new version of Android unveiled at Google’s I/O developers conference, to be held May 28 and 29 in San Francisco. The official schedule initially said that Android M would be revealed during the Android for Work session, as Android Police reported, but apparently that session has been removed from the schedule.
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Motorola has a mixed record when it comes to device updates. The first-gen Moto X made the jump from Jelly Bean to KitKat quite smoothly, but Lollipop has proven to be more of a challenge. Motorola recently announced the 2013 Moto X would go straight to Android 5.1, but when? Soon, according to Motorola’s David Schuster.
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Motorola last month announced that its first-generation Moto X will not receive the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, and will directly receive the Android 5.1 update. Now, the company has confirmed that Android 5.1 ‘test drive’ for the Moto X (Gen 1) has started and the update should start rolling out in some weeks.
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Android One devices are coming to Turkey, with a twist. While Google and its local partners offer Android One phones in India and other Asian countries for around $110, the first Turkish model features better specs and a $260 price tag.
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Sony was one of the earliest players to enter the wearable space when it had launched its first smartwatch in 2012, followed by a second version in 2013. However, the first and second iterations of Sony’s smartwatch didn’t exactly set the market on fire, as they failed to stand up to the intense competition in the smartwatch category due to various shortcomings. The Japanese company has now launched Sony SmartWatch 3, which runs on the Android Wear platform, Google’s operating system that works exclusively with Android smartphones, resulting in improved features as well as functionality.
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Today Google announced that it has officially expanded Android One to Turkey. The launch represents the program’s debut in Europe, and brings the total count (so far) to seven countries. Android One, which Google unveiled last September, aims to spread affordable smartphones throughout the developing world. The devices run a close-to-stock version of Android, though up until now the hardware has been somewhat underwhelming.
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Android enjoys such a thriving developer community, that the question of “what can an Android smartphone do?” is better voiced as “What can’t an Android smartphone do?” Control your computer from afar? Check! Play PSP games? Betcha! But can you boot Windows 8 from it? Guess what, the answer’s yes! DriveDroid is a brilliant app that lets you convert your Android smartphone to a bootable CD/USB stick that’s able to boot your computer into multiple operating systems, provided you got the images. Pure sorcery!
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The 8-inch device will run Android 5.0 Lollipop and be available either for $49.99 with a two-year contract or for $10 per month on an installment plan.
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Google has launched the Android One initiative in an attempt to bring to the market affordable handsets that deliver a stock Android experience and quick software updates.
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Remember pico projectors? A few years ago, the idea of being able to carry a tiny projector anywhere with you was one of the most popular visions for the future of tech. Even your phone would have one baked in so you could easily give presentations or watch a movie with your friends anywhere.
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To make it simpler for organizations to embrace an open source framework for rapid application development (RAD), IBM has thrown its weight behind the Ionic open source RAD platform.
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The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced the appointment of Dr. Bithika Khargharia as the director of product and community management. Bithika’s service to ONF is being provided by Extreme Networks, an ONF member company where Bithika is a principal architect of solutions and innovation. She will continue in her role at Extreme Networks while also taking on her new responsibilities with ONF.
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You hear it all the time: Linux and Free/Open Source software depend on contributors. After all, someone has to make all that great software. But what does this really mean? You might think you don’t have any useful skills, or it will be drudgey and no fun, or people will yell at you. The Linux/FOSS universe is very large, and it is quite possible to find yourself in communities that are drudgey and no fun, and people yelling at you. Which is pointless and punitive; why bother? It’s not as though we lack opportunities to enjoy pointless and punitive endeavors.
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Comcast joined the OpenDaylight Project today and we wanted to share how we’ve been using the OpenDaylight platform and how it fits into our long-term network direction.
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From HTTP Server, to Hadoop and Cassandra, there’s no doubting the effectiveness of the Apache Software Foundation in fostering open-source innovation.
Yet the other side of its collaborative, consensual approach is the freedom it gives people to duplicate software engineering efforts, which in other contexts might be seen as wasteful.
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He said instead of software’s inherent value being its cost, it was better as a means to an end. “The value isn’t in the software, it’s in the utility that the software provides.”
“My call to action is … is there something in your portfolio of products or services that you can open source.”
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Open source software projects ensure transparency, enabling community collaboration to improve overall quality. However, the guarantees that come with vendor-backed software projects help ease IT concerns and greatly benefit end users. To maximize business potential, companies are now turning to commercial open source options.
In commercial open source, backing from a vendor ensures the availability of product support and lets users know that the product is suited for commercial use, even for non-technical end users. According to Olivier Thierry, chief marketing officer of Zimbra, the mutually beneficial relationship between commercial vendor and community creates a powerful positive feedback mechanism that improves all aspects of the software. Any ecosystem needs support from its end users and trained experts if it intends to thrive, and commercial open source creates a platform where new opportunities and innovation can be sparked by this input. However, to make it work for your business, you need to identify the main goals of your commercial open source initiative and ensure transparency, flexibility and long-term value are central aspects of your plan.
This slideshow features six ways to leverage commercial open source software for your business.
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Qualcomm Atheros, Lantiq (part of Intel) and Broadcom have joined the Prpl Foundation.
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Events
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As all the last year in May the event row called Linuxwochen makes it stop in Vienna and I represented Fedora there. This year it was an special event as the Linuxwochen could celebrate their 15th anniversary. And this years event was indeed special, normally this event is compared to others a smaller one as it is from Thursday to Saturday. But this year it was on Thursday already crowded and it looked some more Germans have found their way to Vienna. Also both of the workshop I gave in Vienna was an success and as always filled with people.
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We had our weekly planning meeting today. Comparing to earlier Fudcon planning meeting with today’s, we have done lots of progress. Most of the things are already in good shape including Travel, Accommodation, FUDPub, Website and Scheduling etc.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Mozilla Firefox 38 is being officially released today and with this open-source web browser update comes new functionality.
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Mozilla has just released the stable version of the Firefox 38.0 Internet browser, which has arrived with some pretty interesting new features, including a new tab-based preference menu.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Mirantis, the pure OpenStack company, has forged a partnership with Pivotal to integrate and deliver the Cloud Foundry-based platform-as-a-service on OpenStack-based cloud infrastructure. Under the deal Pivotal will support Pivotal Cloud Foundry, a distribution of Cloud Foundry, on Mirantis OpenStack.
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The idea of open source software development projects is to bring many people and organizations together from around the world to work on a common initiative or goal. It is quite communal in nature. That means lots of different entities are going to be weighing in on code development, design, revisions, security and other issues throughout the lifetime of the project.
[...]
To date, more than 150 companies have agreed to support the mission of OpenStack by providing architectural input, contributing code or integrating the code into their business offerings, the community says.
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Using DCOS, developers and operators don’t need to focus on individual virtual or physical machines but can easily build and deploy applications and services that span entire data centers. Here’s more on Mesosphere’s news and some relevant excerpts from our recent interview with the company’s Ben Hindman (shown).
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OpenStack Kilo—the 11th release of the open-source OpenStack cloud project since NASA and Rackspace first launched the effort in 2010—was officially released on April 30, providing cloud administrators with new features and capabilities. A key focus in OpenStack Kilo was stability, as 7,257 bugs were fixed during release cycle. However, bugs weren’t the only focus, as OpenStack Kilo also introduced a new project to the integrated release, as well as new features. The Ironic bare-metal service makes its debut in OpenStack Kilo, enabling cloud administrators to provision bare-metal services alongside virtual resources. In the OpenStack Swift storage project, erasure codes have been added, providing new data protection capabilities. The OpenStack Keystone identity project, meanwhile, gained new federation features, enabling multicloud federation. In all, 1,494 individuals affiliated with 169 organizations contributed to the cloud platform release. The top companies contributing code for Kilo were Red Hat, HP, IBM, Mirantis, Rackspace, Yahoo, NEC and Huawei. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the key innovations in OpenStack Kilo.
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Cloudera and Intel, which have had a significant partnership together are out with many new details on how their Hadoop-focused partnership has accelerated innovation in big data over the past year. Through collaborative efforts they’ve deliered solutions focused on security, optimization of core Hadoop technology in four releases of the Cloudera distribution, and greater manageability.
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Akanda Inc., the startup that spun out of DreamHost last year to monetize the network virtualization technology powering its public cloud, has released the first stable version of the software with the promise of helping organizations decouple operations from the underlying infrastructure. It has a high bar to meet from the outset.
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Storage
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Funding
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BSD
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Earlier this month we wrote about DragonFlyBSD having experimental Broadwell graphics support and now this updated DRM driver code has landed in the BSD distribution. Besides supporting the new Intel Broadwell HD/Iris Graphics, there’s also a number of other new features.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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With GCC 5 the C compiler changed its default to C11/GNU11 and now for the next version, GCC 6, C++11 might become the default C++ language compiler target.
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Musl has long aimed at being a lightweight, simple, free, and correct libc library. However, hindering its adoption has been out-of-tree patches required against GCC for supporting the Musl C library. Fortunately, Musl support has now been merged into GCC.
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The GNU inetutils team is proud to present version 1.9.3 of the GNU networking utilities. The GNU Networking Utilities are the common networking utilities, clients and servers of the GNU Operating System.
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Project Releases
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Licensing
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While verified copies of our licenses can be useful, this is unfortunately a project that sounds straightforward at first, but all the corner cases found in the wild muck it up.
One relatively frequent request we receive is for the FSF to provide GPG-signed copies of our licenses. GPG is a tool that lets users cryptographically sign or encrypt documents and emails. A GPG-signed document lets anyone who receives it know that they have received the exact same document as the one that was signed. By providing signed documents, users will be able to easily ensure that they have received an unmodified copy of the license along with their software. It’s also possible that some system of signing the documents could help projects tracking the use and adoption of various free software licenses. Providing these signed documents is a simple task: run a command and publish the documents. A trivial investment of resources, or at least that is how it appears at first.
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The Linux Foundation has updated its SPDX standard to v2.0, enhancing the ability to track complex open source license dependencies to ensure compliance.
The Linux Foundation (LF) released version 1.0 of the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) standard in 2011, promoting it as a common format for sharing data about software licenses and copyrights. Now the LF’s SPDX workgroup has released version 2.0 of the standard, with new features that let you relate SPDX documents to each other to provide a “three-dimensional” relationship view of license dependencies.
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Software licenses aren’t very useful if no one adheres to them—and adhering to licenses gets tough quickly when you’re dealing with complex supply chains of software whose numerous, ever-moving parts are licensed differently. That’s why the Linux Foundation’s Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) working group has rolled out an updated specification designed to make open source licensing simpler.
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Openness/Sharing
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Some of the world’s greatest minds are hard at work developing an affordable, long-range electric car for the masses, but the technology needed to do so may already be out there. The Luka EV project at HackaDay is utilizing readily-available open-source information in an attempt to build a 186-mile EV that weighs less than 750 kg/1,653 lbs and only costs around $22,000.
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Programming
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I’ve recently been contacted by Johannes Hubertz, who is writing a new book about Python in German called “Softwaretests mit Python” which will be published by Open Source Press, Munich this summer. His book will feature some interviews, and he was kind enough to let me write a bit about software testing. This is the interview that I gave for his book. Johannes translated to German and it will be included in Johannes’ book, and I decided to publish it on my blog today. Following is the original version.
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One of the biggest shocks of this election is the realisation that you can’t get a socialist paradise on Earth by tweeting. Or even by putting up really angry statuses on Facebook. Who knew? Actually, as people who do this kind of thing all follow each other, it seems that many of them still don’t realise. In the echo chambers some of us inhabit online, everyone not only votes Labour but crows about it in 140 characters.
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The Tories will be even worse in this parliament.
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While it promised to “reverse the Government’s top-rate tax cut, so that those with incomes over £150,000 contribute a little more to help get the deficit down,” it also vowed to “not increase the basic or higher rates of income tax or national insurance.”
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A major earthquake has struck eastern Nepal, two weeks after more than 8,000 people were killed in a devastating quake.
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Security
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Running XMPP over TLS is a good idea.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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By equating the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin to Adolf Hitler, Ukrainian politicians and their Western supporters are trying to cover-up their own shameful history, American professor Grover Carr Furr told Sputnik.
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Transparency Reporting
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Sweden’s highest court has rejected a bid by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to overturn the arrest warrant against him for sexual assault allegations, which means he could yet be sent to the Nordic country for questioning.
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Sweden’s highest court has thrown out Julian Assange’s appeal against his arrest warrant, dashing his immediate hopes of an end to his three-year confinement in Ecuador’s embassy in London.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Amid an epochal drought with no end in sight, farmers in California’s Central Valley have entered a veritable well-drilling arms race to capture water from fast-depleting aquifers, causing large swaths of land to sink and permanently reducing its ability to hold water. But none of that has reined in the pistachio industry’s relentless expansion. Acreage devoted to pistachios grew more than 20 percent between 2012 and 2014; at a conference in March, nut magnate Stewart Resnick, co-owner and president of Wonderful Pistachios, urged growers to plant more, more, more, claiming that the tasty nuts deliver an even tastier $3,519 average per acre profit. (Resnick’s team also beseeched growers to invest some of their windfall in lobbying to maintain industry-friendly water rules.)
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Finance
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It is one of life’s little ironies that the market where geography plays a diminished role – the online sector – is also one where national boundaries are still a huge problem, particularly when it comes to material under copyright, which is often “unavailable in your country” – a ridiculous situation. That’s also the case for the European Union, one of whose core features is the single marketplace. That may be true for analogue goods, but it certainly isn’t for digital ones.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The reference to Sanders “suddenly getting into the teens” appears to be a reference to polling of Democrats in New Hampshire, where the Vermont senator got 18 percent support in the last Bloomberg poll, and in Iowa, where he was the choice of 15 percent in the latest Quinnipiac poll.
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“The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education just last month.
Yet, he is calling for a 48% increase in the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—an initiative repeatedly criticized by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls.
CMD’s review of appropriations reveals that the federal government has spent a staggering sum, $3.3 billion, of taxpayer money creating and expanding the charter school industry over the past two decades, but it has done so without requiring the most basic transparency in who ultimately receives the funds and what those tax dollars are being used for, especially in contrast to the public information about truly public schools.
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Privacy
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A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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It seems that Facebook is taking an aim at Google by experimenting with its own search engine which will prevent users from leaving the platform.
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Now that the Conservative Party has secured a majority government in the UK, it’s pushing ahead with plans to expand the surveillance state with the Communications Data Bill, also known as Snooper’s Charter, which would require communications providers from BT to Facebook to maintain records of customers’ internet activity, text messages and voice calls for a year. This may have emboldened GCHQ, the British spy agency and chief NSA partner, which has, for the first time, openly called for applicants to fill the role of Computer Network Operations Specialists, also known as nation-state funded hackers.
According to a job ad for a Computer Network Operations Specialist, a student or graduate will have to have, or soon have, “a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree incorporating ethical hacking, digital forensics or information security”.
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The US government’s prosecution of a South Korean businessman accused of illegally selling technology used in aircraft and missiles to Iran was dealt a devastating blow by a federal judge. The judge ruled Friday that the authorities illegally seized the businessman’s computer at Los Angeles International Airport as he was to board a flight home.
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Free tech is about much more than free software. It’s more than just being able to see and modify code and deeper than the rivalry between proprietary and FOSS or Windows versus Linux. It’s not just about computers. Free tech is also about freedom and rights, and keeping our lifestyle from being destroyed by the misuse of technology.
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Anyone can design a cipher that he himself cannot break. This is why you should uniformly distrust amateur cryptography, and why you should only use published algorithms that have withstood broad cryptanalysis. All cryptographers know this, but non-cryptographers do not. And this is why we repeatedly see bad amateur cryptography in fielded systems.
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BitTorrent today launched its encrypted P2P chat app Bleep. You can download the first stable version for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac from bleep.pm.
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Civil Rights
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The CIA subjected “war on terror” detainees it held captive at black site prisons to sleep deprivation, rectal feeding, waterboarding, ice-water baths, painful stress positions, beatings, mock executions, mock burials, and threats of sexual abuse.
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No sooner had General Petraeus received a mild scolding for handing over pages and pages of classified information to his biographer/mistress than the defense team handling Jeffrey Sterling’s case saw a point of entry to argue that the proposed sentence of 19-24 years in prison was too severe.
Petraeus, who was also a CIA official, received two years probation and a $100,000 fine. The defense has asked for something more in line with recent prosecutions of whistleblowers and leakers: something between Petraeus and John Kiriakou (30 months), as it were.
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Federal prosecutors on Thursday defended their use of the Espionage Act to prosecute a former CIA officer who leaked information to a New York Times reporter and suggested it was “mistaken” for him to receive a sentence far below what federal guidelines call for because he gave materials to a journalist, rather than a foreign government.
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A federal judge sentenced ex-CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling Monday to serve 42 months in prison for leaking to a New York Times reporter details of a clandestine agency program aimed more than a decade ago at impeding Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
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A secular blogger has been hacked to death in north-eastern Bangladesh in the country’s third such deadly attack since the start of the year.
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Ananta Bijoy Das, a Bangladeshi writer known for advocating science and secularism, was hacked to death by masked men wielding machetes while on his way to work Tuesday morning.
Das died instantly in the attack, police in Sylhet city told the Associated Press. He is the third Bangladeshi writer to be killed in less than four months.
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Consumer advocate and political reformer Ralph Nader speaks with Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff about his latest book “Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President 2001-2015;” the conversation covers topics from trade treaties and Democratic presidential candidates, to Gaza, Israel and AIPAC.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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With a month left before net neutrality complaints can be filed to the Federal Communications Commission, Internet service providers are continuing to sign agreements to prevent network congestion and a potential scolding from regulators.
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In March of this year, the FCC’s 400-page net neutrality order arrived, and made waves because of the agency’s vote to reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service. The FCC argued that it created “clear and enforceable rules” to protect consumers, but broadband providers and others bristled at the regulation proposals.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Online copyright enforcer Rightscorp contacts alleged Internet pirates, sometimes on their cell phones, and demands $20 per song from them. It’s a business that has led to tens of thousands of payment demands, but Rightscorp is far from profitable.
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Anti-piracy monetization firm Rightscorp has failed in its bid to unmask alleged Internet pirates. The company attempted to use the DMCA to force ISP Birch Communications to expose its customers’ identities but the company stood strong. A federal judge in Atlanta has now ruled in favor of the ISP by quashing Rightscorp’s subpoena.
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Further Recent Posts
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In defiance of common sense and everything that public officials or academics keep saying (European, Australian, American), China's SIPO and Europe's EPO want us to believe that when it comes to patents it's "the more, the merrier"
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To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies
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The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
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Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
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The UPC is neither desirable nor practical, especially now that the EPO lowers patent quality; but does the Select Committee understand that?
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Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
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Even the EPO's Central Staff Committee (not SUEPO) understands that Battistelli brings waste and disgrace to the Office
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The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
- 2016 in Review and Plans for 2017
A look back and a quick look at the road ahead, as 2016 comes to an end
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