05.11.15

Links 11/5/2015: Linux 4.1 RC3, OpenELEC 6.0 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 2:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom firms join MIPS open-source push

    Qualcomm Atheros, Lantiq (part of Intel) and Broadcom have appointed representatives to the board of the Prpl (‘purple’) Foundation, organisation set-up by Imagination Technologies to support open-source software on the MIPS architecture.

  • Events

    • OSCAL Open Source Conference Albania – DAY 1

      Held in Tirana and with attention on gathering free libre open source technology users, developers, academics, governmental agencies and people who share the same idea. Oscal aimed to inform and promote that software should be free and open for the local community and governments to develop and customize to its needs; that knowledge is a communal property and free and open to everyone. The conference is supported and organized by Open Labs, the community that promotes free libre open source culture in Albania since 2012.

    • User stories at Summit and more OpenStack news

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Big data challenges? Look at your people, not your technology

      As anyone pursuing a big data initiative knows, every big data strategy really has two components: the technology and the people. The technology part is actually very simple to solve, relative to the people. As long as you’re not trying to crack big data problems with relational database technology from 2004, this piece of the equation shouldn’t be a big scary beast.

    • Pivotal rolls out Hadoop distro update, new query optimizer

      Just a few months ago, Pivotal announced that it would open source its entire big data stack: the Pivotal HD distribution, Pivotal Greenplum Database, Pivotal GemFire real-time distributed data store, Pivotal SQLFire (a SQL layer for the real-time distributed data store), Pivotal GemFire XD (in-memory SQL over HDFS) and the Pivotal HAWQ parallel query engine over HDFS. These updates, says Michael Cucchi, senior director of Outbound Product at Pivotal, underscore Pivotal’s continued commitment to supporting that open source strategy.

  • CMS

  • Education

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open source, beyond technology

      Here at Opensource.com, the staff, community moderators, and contributors strive to show how the ideas underpinning open source go beyond technology and apply to all aspects of life and society. Imagine organizing a conference around that idea.

    • Open Hardware

      • What if a robot can sense what you think

        Surrounded by small yet sturdy pieces of 3D-printed plastic, a Macintosh and a couple of 3D-printers, sits 22-year-old Diwakar Vaish at New Delhi-based A-SET Training & Research Institute’s robotics lab watching a robot move its mechanical joints to groovy songs from old Bollywood movies. Vaish, who has a faint smile playing along his lips while watching the show, has jolted the robotics sector with his new first ever 3D-printed humanoid robot.

      • Hackaday Prize Entry: Open Source Diesel

        But what about the motors themselves? For his entry to The Hackaday Prize, [Shane] is designing an open source engine. It’s small, it’s a two-stroke, and it’s diesel, but it’s completely open hardware; a great enabling project for all the open source dirt bikes and microcombines.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Khronos Group Releases Final SYCL 1.2 Specification

      The Khronos Group today announced the official release of the SYCL 1.2 specification. SYCL is the Khronos Group’s single-source heterogeneous programming language that serves as an abstraction layer for utilizing OpenCL while writing standard C++ code.

Leftovers

  • Google killing PageSpeed website service

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Top OpenStack Security Dev from Nebula Didn’t go to Oracle, He Went to Netflix

      Lots of chatter in my news feeds the last few days about Oracle allegedly hiring most of Nebula’s OpenStack devs. Trouble is it’s not entirely accurate.

      [...]

      I can’t speak to the rest of Nebula staff, and no doubt some of them have landed at Oracle – but not all.

    • The Internet of Things to take a beating in DefCon hacking contest

      Hackers will put Internet-connected embedded devices to the test at the DefCon 23 security conference in August. Judging by the results of previous Internet-of-Things security reviews, prepare for flaws galore.

    • The Increasing Problem Of FOSS Mailing List Flooding Attacks

      Recently, I have received a large amount of subscription confirmation emails. These mails are from public mailing lists, especially lists of Free and Open Source Projects, included but not limited to OpenBSD, FreeBSD, GNU Project, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Qt. The “subscribers” are from multiple IP addresses. After I shared my experience to social networks, I have found more than 10 victims of the same attack, included a famous Chinese tech-blog writer. One of us received more than 10k email for 24 hours. Some of our emails have already stopped operating and refusing all new incoming emails.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The Killing of Osama bin Laden

      A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis. ‘The Saudis didn’t want bin Laden’s presence revealed to us because he was a Saudi, and so they told the Pakistanis to keep him out of the picture. The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al-Qaida. And they were dropping money – lots of it. The Pakistanis, in turn, were concerned that the Saudis might spill the beans about their control of bin Laden. The fear was that if the US found out about bin Laden from Riyadh, all hell would break out. The Americans learning about bin Laden’s imprisonment from a walk-in was not the worst thing.’

  • Censorship

    • The left has Islam all wrong: Bill Maher, Pamela Geller and the reality progressives must face

      Whatever her views on other matters are, Pamela Geller is right about one thing: last week’s Islamist assault on the “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest she hosted in Texas proves the jihad against freedom of expression has opened a front in the United States. “There is,” she said, “a war on free speech and this violent attack is a harbinger of things to come.” Apparently undaunted, Geller promises to continue with such “freedom of speech” events. ISIS is now threatening to assassinate her. She and her cohorts came close to becoming victims, yet some in the media on the right and the center-right have essentially blamed her for the gunmen’s attack, just as far too many, last January, surreptitiously pardoned the Kouachi brothers and, with consummate perfidy to human decency, inculpated the satirical cartoonists they slaughtered, saying “Charlie Hebdo asked for it.”

  • Privacy

    • Snoopers’ charter set to return to law as Theresa May suggests Conservative majority could lead to huge increase in surveillance powers

      The Conservatives are already planning to introduce the huge surveillance powers known as the Snoopers’ Charter, hoping that the removal from government of the Liberal Democrats that previously blocked the controversial law will allow it to go through.

      The law, officially known as the Draft Communications Data Bill, is already back on the agenda according to Theresa May. It is expected to force British internet service providers to keep huge amounts of data on their customers, and to make that information available to the government and security services.

    • US reviews use of cellphone spying technology

      Faced with criticism from lawmakers and civil rights groups, the U.S. Department of Justice has begun a review of the secretive use of cellphone surveillance technology that mimics cellphone towers, and will get more open on its use, according to a newspaper report.

    • 7 reasons why the feds shouldn’t mess with encryption

      Information security professionals were overwhelmingly opposed to a plea to rethink encryption by the Department of Homeland Security at last week’s RSA conference.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • You Can’t Defend Public Libraries and Oppose File-Sharing

        Public libraries started appearing in the mid-1800s. At the time, publishers went absolutely berserk: they had been lobbying for the lending of books to become illegal, as reading a book without paying anything first was “stealing”, they argued. As a consequence, they considered private libraries at the time to be hotbeds of crime and robbery. (Those libraries were so-called “subscription libraries”, so they were argued to be for-profit, too.)

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

This post is also available in Gemini over at:

gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2015/05/11/openelec-6-0-beta/

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. Techrights Statement on IRC

    Freenode needs to explain what the hell happened this week and why communities that make up the network weren't informed or consulted

  2. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 15, 2021

    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 15, 2021

  3. Virtual Injustice -- Part 8: A Well-Connected 'IP' Maximalist

    The EPO‘s lobbying for European software patents goes all the way to the top, including António Campinos and his circle

  4. Links 16/6/2021: Alpine 3.14.0 and DXVK 1.9

    Links for the day

  5. Links 15/6/2021: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 2 and Zink Updates

    Links for the day

  6. IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 14, 2021

    IRC logs for Monday, June 14, 2021

  7. Virtual Injustice -- Part 7: Musical Chairs and Revolving Doors

    Cross pollination in Alicante and Munich serves to show that people aren't picked for their skills and experience; it's like a private club or a clique

  8. Hardly Shocking and Not At All Surprising That Thugs Who Run the EPO Hired External Thugs to Help Them Oppress Aggrieved Staff

    With the EPO's management flooding the bank accounts of aggressive law firms (at our expense) we need to ask serious questions about how such a "Mafia" (what EPO staff calls the management) managed to metastasise inside Europe's second-largest institution and how to remove this "Mafia" as soon as possible (some arrests too are well overdue)

  9. [Meme] There Are No Elections in Mafia-Type Regimes; It's About Family and Friends...

    With no real concept or notion of "elections" (the so-called 'mafia' members choose their successors and colleagues) the EPO's patent examiners clearly need outside intervention, e.g. inquest by the EU authorities (the EPC died and maybe the EPO too; it's unregulated and it grants false patents that harm Europe because the courts don't function, either)

  10. Today's Linux Standing for the Opposite of What Linux Users Stand for

    The so-called 'Linux' Foundation or the "Corporate Linux Foundation" is alienating many of the original users of GNU/Linux and it still insults their intelligence; it's rewriting history, it still distorts the objectives, and before we know Linux will perish and lose momentum because all the excitement associated with the brand will fizzle away

  11. Links 14/6/2021: Kdenlive 21.04.2 and Raspberry Pi 400 Support in Linux

    Links for the day

  12. [Meme] EPO 'Lawfulness' as Crude Budget Wars

    A war of attrition against EPO staff won’t ensure justice is done; it’ll only increase the number of casualties and accomplish nothing good

  13. A Parade of 'Yes Men': EPO's Budget and Finance Committee as Rubber-stamper of the Dictatorship That Pays the Salary

    The lack of oversight at the EPO has long been apparent and it is becoming ever more problematic now that huge sums of money are passed by the EPO's management to law firms whose sole role is to fight against aggrieved EPO staff

  14. Links 14/6/2021: Linux 5.13 RC6, Psychonauts 2 for GNU/Linux

    Links for the day

  15. Conveniently Conflating Vaccination With the Surveillance Business of IBM/Linux Foundation

    The way some media handles COVID-19 can be described as self-serving, especially Microsoft-connected sites looking to make “Linux” sound bad (or like property of Microsoft); the video above discusses this past weekend’s media coverage about “Linux”

  16. [Meme] Microsoft Stooping Down Low in Search of Vapourware With a Superficial Version Bump

    Instead of trying to actually fix its broken (and self-breaking) operating system Microsoft has decided to sell mythology and false promises, as usual

  17. [Meme] Illegal Location, Illegal Methods (Haar ViCo)

    EPC denial is more lethal than anything which the the EPO says may merit 'urgency' (as if having discussions about patents will save lives)

  18. The 'Fixer' of António Campinos Taints G1/21 (ViCo Hearing)

    The meeting which is set to resume at the start of next month includes the 'Fixer' of António Campinos; what sense of impartiality might one expect?

  19. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 13, 2021

    IRC logs for Sunday, June 13, 2021

  20. Virtual Injustice -- Part 6: Best Buddies With António

    Benoît Battistelli, António Campinos, and the Hungarian link of the EPO

  21. Classic: Old EPO Strike

    2008 EPO video, predating the Benoît Battistelli EPO regime

  22. Links 13/6/2021: Linux 5.14 Work, Lots of Patent News

    Links for the day

  23. Update on Gemini, IPFS, and IRC

    "The video which was supposed to be a few minutes long ended up taking a lot longer, but it does cover a broad range of topics that are relevant and very recent (based on recent developments)."

  24. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 12, 2021

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 12, 2021

  25. Virtual Injustice -- Part 5: Benoît's “Friends” in Budapest

    "Battistelli went to considerable lengths to secure the support of the Hungarian delegation."

  26. Links 13/6/2021: KDE Frameworks 5.83.0 and helloSystem 0.5

    Links for the day

  27. The Story of Techrights, in Banners...

    A look back at site banners from 2006-2021; they help illuminate or show our changing focus over the years

  28. With KDE Plasma 5.22 Having Just Been Released It's Time to Give KDE a Try (or Move to GNU/Linux, Leveraging the Best Features of Any Operating System Out There)

    A quick recommendation of KDE based on a reasonably recent (but not latest) build; there's this myth about KDE being difficult and flaky, but for a number of decades it has been the most advanced desktop (on any operating system) and its developers managed to hide the complexity while offering users all the power they may want/need

  29. Open Letter to the FSF About Taking Control of the FSF's (and GNU's) IRC Channels

    The FSF should have seized the opportunity, in light of self-harming IRC infighting (instability and unpredictability), to create its own IRC network and then help this new (or "GNU") network flourish

  30. EU Already Captured by -- and Lying for -- Corrupt EPO Officials, Team UPC, and Lobbyists of Multinational Corporations

    12 pages of lies; is the European Parliament reduced to a mere marionette of corrupt officials who run the EPO into the ground?

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts