09.21.15
Gemini version available ♊︎Links 21/9/2015: Tizen 3.0, Red Hat’s Results Coming
Contents
GNU/Linux
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Finding Linux & FOSS Where You Least Expect It
For a few months I’ve being hearing radio commercial for a tech company that does the usual stuff — support, equipment, etc — but they also advertise that they handle open source. They explicitly advertise Linux server deployments and maintenance.
As I said, it used to be lonely being a Linux or FOSS user in Panama. Not so much anymore.
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How Microsoft could finally kill Linux
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How to Kill Linux: A Tutorial for Microsoft
In case you haven’t already figured it out, this is not meant to be taken seriously. I see all kind of articles, almost on a weekly basis, about how Windows is killing the Linux desktop, how Linux missed its chance with Windows 8, and so on. It’s getting tiring. Saying that Linux can be killed and even considering this means that you have no idea of just how big this project really is, not to mention the community around it.
Linux is not trying to beat Windows, it’s not trying to kill it, it’s not even trying to compete with it. Linux is competing with itself and this is why it’s getting better all the time.
Whether Windows will be around when Linux really takes off for the desktop is actually irrelevant.
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Linux Light Bulbs Allow Devices To Talk To Each Other With Flashes Of Brilliance
Disney researchers are working on a new protocol – tentatively called the Linux Light Bulb – that flashes out data using visible light. The bulbs are designed to work with gadgets and toys that may not need a full Wi-Fi or wireless component and instead will read data from he environment. The technology is called Visible Light Communication.
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Smart rifle company TrackingPoint restructures and relaunches
Back in May, things were looking grim for Austin-based TrackingPoint. The company, which manufactures Linux-powered smart rifles capable of nailing moving targets more than a thousand yards away, had posted a notice on its website saying that it stopped taking new orders. Multiple news sites began publishing stories saying that TrackingPoint had laid off half of its employees and was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
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New Is Here
In USA, Unknown, probably Android/Linux on a desktop, was 1.17%. GNU/Linux on a desktop was 3.71% (1.92% Chrome OS and 1.79% regular GNU/Linux).
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New to Linux? You Should Start Right Here – Lesson One: Introduction to Linux
So, you want to learn Linux, right? And you need an experienced tutor to point you in the right direction and guide you through your learning process. Well, you’ve come to the right place! With this article, I’m starting a series of lessons for those of you who want to learn Linux.
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Desktop
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It’s the year of the Linux desktop, for Dell, in China
For years, the “year of the Linux desktop” was right around the corner: Open-source software would displace Windows (or Window$), and usher in a glorious, peaceful revolution in the computing industry.
If Dell is to be believed, that revolution is happening now.
Dell’s head of China told The Wall Street Journal that NeoKylin Linux is shipped on 42 percent of the PCs it sells into the country, primarily for the commercial and government PCs that Dell specializes in. Hewlett-Packard also ships NeoKylin-equipped PCs to China, the paper said, but it’s unclear how many they sell with the OS installed.
In 2010, China Standard Software and the National University of Defense Technology teamed up to launch NeoKylin as a secure alternative to foreign software, such as Windows. (A screenshot of the original Kylin Linux is above.) TechinAsia claims that NeoKylin was based on Ubuntu Kylin, which was developed for the Chinese by Canonical.
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Dell Reporting That 40% of PCs Sold in China Are Ubuntu-Powered
The Chinese market is adjusting itself after Windows XP reached end of life, but it’s not all that keen to get hooked on another Windows OS, so it’s looking for alternatives. The Ubuntu Kylin OS is having a real impact, and Dell is just one of the mediums used to propagate this operating system.
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A great time to be a Linux person
2007 is when desktop Linux really shifted into high gear for me. A friend had told me that he’d tried Ubuntu and it was really awesome. “It’s designed to be immediately usable as a desktop OS, and it shows,” my friend said. So when my roommate started crabbing about how much he despised Windows on his laptop, I started trying to convince him to install Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. He seemed dubious, and I wasn’t really using my laptop very often, so I did an install on my own laptop and showed it to him. As I answered his questions and solved his potential adoption problems, I started looking seriously at it myself. Feisty was nice, in a way that desktop Linux never had been for me before—it was actually easier to get simple day-to-day tasks done than it was with Windows! Of course, it also had the reliability of Linux, and it was nice using something more like my servers on my desk.
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Review: The ideal Linux laptop for power users
The Serval ships with Ubuntu right out of the box. I also loaded up openSUSE. Both Linux distributions ran fantastically well. (Would it run Windows well? I have no idea. I couldn’t think of any good reason to check.) When I spoke to an engineer at System76 he regaled me with the story of making sure the firmware on the Serval supported Linux as perfectly as possible right out of the gate. That earned significant brownie points with me.
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Installing Linux on a Chromebook: What you need to know
Chromebooks are more powerful than you realize already, but zooming around the web in Google’s browser is just the beginning of what Chromebooks are capable of.
Chrome OS is built on top of the Linux kernel, and you can install a full Linux environment alongside Chrome OS on your Chromebook. This gives you access to Steam and over a thousand PC games, Minecraft, Skype, and everything else that runs on desktop Linux.
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ZaReason Zini 1550 tiny Linux desktop PC review
There are a number of reasons you might want to install a Linux-based operating system like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or Linux Mint on a computer. These operating systems are free to use, which means you can install them on a PC that may not have a Windows license without spending a penny. They can sometimes breath new life into old computers that no longer reliably run the latest versions of Windows. Or maybe you just like the idea of free and open source software.
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Worried about Windows 10 privacy? Use Linux
Luckily, Windows is not the only game in town, folks. Actually, there are many wonderful operating systems available to you at no charge. Unlike Windows 10, where it is only free with a prior licence, most Linux-based operating systems are entirely free. Period. If you want to try one of these open-source operating systems, you may be confused as to where to start. Don’t worry, I am here to help. Here are the distributions and software you should use.
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Server
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New Linux-Only Mainframes Support Chef
IBM has recently announced the LinuxONE. This is an expansion of their mainframe strategy consisting of a new portfolio of hardware, software and services solutions, which provides two distinct Linux systems for large enterprises and mid-size businesses.
IBM will enable open source and industry tools and software on z Systems. IBM has announced Chef and Docker support, together with other open source tools such as Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB or PostgreSQL.
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Kernel Space
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Linux Kernel 3.14.52 LTS Is a Small Release with ARM64 Fixes and Updated Drivers
After announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.1.7 LTS, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a renowned Linux kernel developer that currently maintains several LTS (Long-Term Support) branches of the Linux kernel, a core component of any GNU/Linux operating system, announced the release of Linux kernel 3.14.52 LTS.
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Linux Kernel 4.1.7 LTS Adds Numerous ARM Improvements, Some Updated Drivers
On September 13, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a renowned kernel maintainer, had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the seventh point release of the Linux 4.1 LTS kernel series, immediately after releasing Linux kernel 3.14.52 LTS.
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12 technologies that tick off Linux creator Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds is considered one of the greatest living programmers, and for good reason, having written some of the most widely used software, such as the Linux kernel and the Git revision control system. He’s also known for not being shy about sharing his opinions on things that he doesn’t like through colorful and sometimes NSFW language. Sometimes, he’ll direct his sharp tongue at people who, in his opinion, do substandard work or companies and organizations with which he may have a disagreement or be in competition. Most often, though, the target of Torvalds’ ire is technology that he feels isn’t up to snuff. Use the arrows above to read Torvalds’ thoughts about a dozen technologies that have gotten under his skin repeatedly over the years.
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What Linux Means 24 Years Later
Linux: For most people it’s just a pretty word to say. But for programmers its still a remarkably relevant operating system given that the Linux kernel, the part of the OS managing input/output requests, arrived on September 17, 1991. It was a big deal, the dawn of the open source age for the OS world.
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Linux Kernel 3.10.88 LTS Officially Released, Available for Download Now
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Torvalds Says Hello to Linux 4.3 RC1 and Goodbye to EXT3
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Some stable kernel releases
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Graphics Stack
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AMD Catalyst 15.9 Linux driver is out with tweaks and fixes for Linux gamers
AMD just released the latest version of Catalyst, the proprietary graphics driver for maximum Linux gaming performance with AMD hardware. Bright minds are hard at work on an entirely new graphics driver architecture to make AMD more competitive with Nvidia’s best-in-class Linux graphics driver, but Catalyst still provides the best performance for AMD hardware on Linux today.
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Mentor Graphics and AMD to Accelerate ARMv8-A Linux Development for Embedded Systems
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XDC 2015: Atomic Modesetting for Drivers
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Wayland: Atomics Ahead!
This post will take a look at the current state of upstream Wayland as the community prepares for the upcoming 1.9 release. The core of the project is quite mature and is currently in a holding pattern as KDE, GNOME, EFL, and others complete their Wayland transitions. As this proceeds the Wayland community will be responding to the needs of these other projects.
Most notably, there is a need to complete the XDG Shell protocol. This aims to become a standard across all desktop environments, but it needs to have strong buy in and collaboration from the desktop environment projects themselves. There’s a number of conversations that need to occur before anything can be nailed down effectively, but the desktop environment developers need to be relatively far along in their implementations before they can have strong enough opinions on what the desktop API should look like.
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Nouveau X.Org Driver Drops GLAMOR Support
The xf86-video-nouveau DDX driver has dropped support for GLAMOR hardware acceleration and in the process eliminated the support for the Maxwell GPUs.
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Applications
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GeoClue 2.3.0 available
Geoclue is Free Software, licensed under GNU GPLv2+. It is developed for Linux.
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Deluge 1.3.12 Open-Source BitTorrent Client Released for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows
The developers of the well-known Deluge BitTorrent client announced a few hours ago, on September 13, the immediate availability for download of the twelfth maintenance release of the Deluge 1.3 branch.
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Proprietary
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Opera 32 Arrives with Dedicated VPN, but Not for Linux
The Opera browser is getting some pretty interesting updates and features, but it looks like not all the platform are getting them. At least one of the new options won’t arrive for Linux.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Using Tcpdump To Capture And Analyze Network Traffic
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How after an upgrade my /etc/sysconfig/docker-storage got me mad
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systemd in Fedora 22: Failed to restart service: Access Denied
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Identifying Fedora media
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Turning a Raspberry Pi into a portable streaming camera
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How to securely erase a hard drive using Linux
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How to update your iOS device to iOS 9
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Optimizing shader assembly instruction on Mesa using shader-db (II)
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How to change USB device permission permanently on Linux
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How to compare and merge text files on Linux (part 2)
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Install and use Ansible (Automation Tool) in CentOS 7
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Atmel launches ultra efficient, Linux ready Cortex-A5 SoC
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Finding out if a newer version of a package is coming for Fedora
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Finite-Element Methods for PDEs
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Install Justniffer In Ubuntu 15.04
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Install Webuzo Control Panel In Ubuntu 15.04
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Webinar: Maximizing NoSQL Clusters for Large Data Sets
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Managing packages on Fedora with DNF
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How to install Odoo ERP Software on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
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How to install WordPress on CentOS 7
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How to Install Bodhi Linux’s Moksha Desktop in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Linux Mint 17.2
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Build an IRC Server with IRCD-Hybrid and Anope on Ubuntu 15.04
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Ibus Typing-booster speeds up input of Indic languages
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How to find out which CPU core a process is running on
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How to find information about built-in kernel modules on Linux
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Games
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AMD Catalyst 15.9 Linux Driver Adds Counter-Strike: GO and Dota 2 Improvements
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Football Manager 2016 Arrives on Linux in November
Football Manager 2016, the latest in the famous series built by SPORTS INTERACTIVE, will arrive on the Linux platforms in just a couple of months.
Football Manager 2016 is published by Sega, a company that has already shown that it’s interesting in Linux users. Also, the guys from SPORTS INTERACTIVE are now at their third game for Linux players, since both of their previous releases have been ported as well.
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Valve hits a Linux landmark—1500 games available on Steam
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It’s Official, There Are Now Over 1,500 Linux Games in Valve’s Steam Library
As you might know, Steam is the world’s largest digital game distribution platform, supporting all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux or SteamOS, Valve’s own distribution derived from the acclaimed Debian GNU/Linux OS.
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The Astronauts Looking to Port The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for Linux Users
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a beautiful first-person adventure game developed by a studio named The Astronauts, and it looks like they are finally willing to take a closer look at Linux support.
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AMD Unwittingly Reveals That Alien: Isolation Is Coming to Linux
AMD is not known for the fact that its driver releases are accompanied by comprehensive documentation and changelogs. For the latest AMD Catalyst 15.9 driver, they revealed too much, and they have sort of confirmed that Alien: Isolation is scheduled to get a Linux port.
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SteamOS to dismount windows
With Valve pushing their own Linux Distro “SteamOS” onto consoles in the livingroom, this will get game developers making games that work with linux, and in turn better driver support for graphics cards, processors, drives. While steamOS will most likely cause havoc for Sony and Microsoft in the console arena. This wont on the Desktop. SteamOS is not intended as a Desktop OS.
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Age Of Wonders III Now Has Mods, Linux Support Included, But No Mod Tools For Us
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Victor Vran Updated With Free Casual & Hardcore Modes, Free DLC & More
It’s not secret that I consider Victor Vran to be one of the best action RPG’s on Linux, and now even more so with more free content!
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First id Software Game Comes to Steam for Linux
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Why I love Plasma
I’ll first say that this blog post very one sided towards KDE but I do like and love the work that every developer does for Desktop Environments like GNOME Shell, Unity, elementary’s Pantheon Shell and even Linux Mint’s Cinnamon. While I might get some names and descriptions wrong please do correct me.
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KDE FreeBSD in my KDE FreeBSD
This post carries on a bit about the way I build and test packages for FreeBSD. I only have one desktop machine, running FreeBSD amd64, and it needs to function as a desktop even while building and testing packages. Elsewhere, things like Project Neon and the OpenSUSE build service do something similar, on a much larger scale: building packages from various stages of development and delivering them to users. Here, though, I’m concentrating on end-to-end ports and packages testing for FreeBSD for a single computer and user.
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Half-Left is back
Since then, we got a great Visual Design Team, and we got an awesome default theme (and its dark version).
But, two themes are not enough. People have different tastes.
Now, Sean is back in the Plasma world.
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Bugs fixed in Ark 15.08.1
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Breeze is finished
Talking about Kubuntu, Arch Linux, OpenSuse, …. Questions where I can find the Plasma Widgets, UI Session about Kmail, Plasma, Kdenlive … . Where Plasma Mobile should go, how the user should navigate through Plasma and the phone applications. Starting improvements for plasma. Talking how the VDG can improve the workflow between designers and development. Writing bug reports, fixing bugs. Make code changes, discuss it on reviewboard. Talk to the devs to fix some UI stuff. Go hiking and don’t stop talking about Plasma and KDE. That was Randa for me. It was amazing.
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digiKam Recipes 4.9.1 Released
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184 Qt Libraries
We have collected 184 third party Qt libraries on Inqlude now. This is a pretty complete map of the Qt ecosystem, quite an impressive number, and lots of useful libraries extending Qt for many purposes.
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Vector Tiling in Marble Maps @Randa
…me and 50 other KDE developers met in the Swiss Alps for a week of hacking.
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Interview with Lucas Ribeiro
I was looking for tips and resources to painting with GIMP, until I found out that David Revoy was using Krita to do the free “Pepper & Carrot” webcomic. When I looked up the pictures, I was impressed. Which is awesome.
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Vector Tiling in Marble Maps @Randa
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FITSViewer Histogram gets a face lift
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KDE Partition Manager 2.0 alpha
I am happy to announce that upcoming release of KDE Partition Manager is split into library (KPMcore) and GUI parts to allow other projects reuse partitioning code. KPMcore is already used by the development versions of distribution independent installer Calamares whose maintainer Teo Mrnjavac contributed a lot to help get this release of KDE Partition Manager out.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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GNOME 3.17.92 Release Candidate
Here we are, this is the end of this development cycle and here comes
a release candidate for you to download, build, and test. Enjoy it as
fast as you can, the final release is scheduled next Wednesday.To compile GNOME 3.17.92, you can use the jhbuild modulesets published
by the release team (which use the exact tarball versions from the
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GNOME Boston Summit 2015
The Boston Summit is a 3-day hackfest for GNOME developers and contributors, that we traditionally hold over the Columbus day weekend.
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Minutes of the Board Meeting of September, 01st, 2015
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Minutes of the Board Meeting of September, 15th, 2015
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Minutes of the Board Meeting of September, 08th, 2015
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Development: GNOME 3.18.0 newstable tarballs due (and more) (responsible: mclasen)
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Distributions
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Reviews
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An Everyday Linux User Review Of Q4OS
Last week I updated an article at about.com which lists the top 25 Linux distributions on Distrowatch and gives a short description of who they are for as well as any pros and cons.
There are a few distributions on that list that I haven’t tried and so I just gave a description as provided by Distrowatch. I made a note to myself though that I really should give them a go.
The first one I tried was Q4OS because it was the smallest download (under 400 megabytes) and my internet is playing up again. (The misty hills of Scotland does that from time to time).
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Solus 1.0 Linux Operating System Dubbed Shannon, to Arrive in October
Earlier today, September 19, the developers of the Solus Project revealed the codename of the first ever release of the anticipated GNU/Linux operating system, Solus OS 1.0, due for release sometime in October.
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New Releases
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Minimal Linux Live Is Now Based on Linux Kernel 4.1.6 LTS and BusyBox 1.23.2
Developer Ivan Davidov, creator of the Minimal Linux Live shell scripts that lets users create minimal live BusyBox- and Linux kernel-based operating systems, announced on September 14, 2015, the availability of an update version of his project.
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Black Lab Linux 2015.12 Gets New Beta with LibreOffice 5.0, Based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Roberto J. Dohnert from Black Lab Software had the great pleasure of informing Softpedia earlier today, September 14, about the immediate availability for download and testing of the second Beta build of the upcoming Black Lab Linux 2015.12 OS.
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ExTiX LXQt Breathes New Life Into Weak Hardware
The latest release of ExTiX offers a new spin on an old desktop environment and exhibits a passion for speed and ease of use.
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Cuba’s Ubuntu Linux-Based Open Source Linux OS to Get Facelift
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Cuba’s National Ubuntu-Based GNU/Linux OS to Get a Gorgeous Lightweight Edition
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Arch Family
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Hands-on with Manjaro Linux 15.09: A new favourite
In summary, I really like Manaro Linux, and I strongly recommend it. It is well developed and maintained, and it is consistently one of the first distributions to include new/updated kernel, driver and packages. The next stable release (15.09) is likely to be released within the next week or so. That would be a great chance to give it a try, even if it is just running from the Live USB media so that you could check out what Jamie has been raving about.
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Manjaro Linux Xfce 15.09 RC3 Out Now, Adds Support for Linux Kernel 4.3
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Last Release Candidate Build of Manjaro Linux KDE 15.09 Brings KDE Plasma 5.4.1
Not much has changed since the previous Release Candidate build of the forthcoming Manjaro Linux KDE 15.09 operating system, as it remains based on the long-term supported Linux 4.1 kernel, which adds better support for the latest hardware components, the most advanced Linux technologies, and long-term viability.
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Manjaro Linux KDE 15.09 Gets a Fourth Release Candidate with KDE Plasma 5.4.1
Today, September 20, we were expecting to download the final release of the Manjaro Linux 15.09 operating system, but it looks like Manjaro’s Philip Müller has just announced the release of the fourth build of Manjaro Linux 15.09.
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Manjaro 15.09 Features Support for the Linux Kernel 4.3 Branch
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Ballnux/SUSE
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Looking forward to openSuSE Leap
The next major release for openSuSE is scheduled for 4 November, exactly one year after the debut of 13.2. The second milestone was recently released, so I decided to give it a try.
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Red Hat Family
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Open source is way forward: Red Hat
Open source software will be the future of IT systems, says global open-source software services leader Red Hat. Over the past couple of years, the myths relating to reliability and security of open source software have been busted given the success of humongous projects including the UID, senior official of the company said.
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Corvesta Chooses Red Hat CloudForms for Management of Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Testing Environment
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Analyst Rating Update
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Company Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Rally 2.72%
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Red Hat Looks Poised to Rise After Monday’s Quarterly Report
Since reaching a 52-week high of $81.49 on June 18, shares of Red Hat (RHT) , the world’s largest provider of open-source Linux software solutions, have lost as much as 18% of their value. And while the stock has rebounded from their summer lows and is now up almost 4% on the year, Red Hat is still 13% below where it was trading three months ago.
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My interview in le Journal du Hacker
A few days ago, the French equivalent of Hacker News, called “Le Journal du Hacker”, interviewed me about my work on OpenStack, my job at Red Hat and my self-published book The Hacker’s Guide to Python. I’ve spent some time translating it into English so you can read it if you don’t understand French! I hope you’ll enjoy it.
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CentOS Linux 7 Gets Its August 2015 Update with Lots of Improvements and Bugfixes
After announcing the release of a new version of the CentOS Atomic Host project, Karanbir Singh published details about the August 2015 snapshot of the rolling-release CentOS 7 Linux kernel-based operating system.
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Release for CentOS Linux 7 Rolling media Aug 2015
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Red Hat: API layer is the key to successful microservices
Microservices has become the latest buzzword in IT as a new approach to deploying applications and services in the cloud. But much of the debate around microservices has centred on whether containers or some other approach is best for implementing them, while Red Hat said that the API should be the focus.
Enterprises and service providers are looking for a better approach to deploying applications in a cloud environment, and microservices is being heralded as the way forward. By breaking down applications and services into smaller, loosely coupled components, they can be made more scalable and easier to develop, or so the theory goes.
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Red Hat Inc Neutral Rating Reaffirmed At MKM Partners
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What to Expect When Red Hat (RHT) Reports Earnings on Monday
Overall, analysts are forecasting the company’s year-over-year earnings and revenue to increase.
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jClarity, RedHat et al working on Secure Java applications for Cloud environments
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Red Hat (RHT) Stock Drops Ahead of Earnings Release
Analysts are expecting the company to report earnings of 44 cents per share on revenue of $494.6 million for the most recent quarter.
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Attackers Hit a Pair of Red Hat’s Open-Source Ceph Sites
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‘Intrusion’ at ceph.com makes for red faces at Red Hat
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Red Hat: Bringing law & order to the mobile Wild West
Take application development. Many apps require very similar or identical APIs for universal functions, such as connecting to the back-end in an organisation. But because of the lack of coordination across the industry, the same API or app feature ends up being developed again and again by different developers.
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Company Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Rally 0.75%
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Can Red Hat Deliver Another Upside Surprise for Q2?
Despite its earnings beats, Red Hat stock has taken a hit in the recent downturn. After hitting a 15-year, post-dot-com-boom high of 81.49 after reporting Q1 earnings in June, Red Hat shares bumped along before dropping 12.5% over six sessions during the market retreat this month.
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Fedora
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Fedora 23 Beta Approved for September 22, Final Version Set for October 27
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Fedora Linux 23 Beta Is Now in Freeze, Will Be Released on September 22
Dennis Gilmore from the Fedora Project has informed all Fedora Linux developers and package maintainers that the Beta Freeze for the upcoming Fedora 23 Beta build is in effect starting September 10, 2015.
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Fedora Linux Is Looking For Those Still Using 32-bit AMD CPUs
Fedora’s latest AMD issues aren’t about some Catalyst graphics driver problem, but rather for the few still left using a 32-bit USB installation on an AMD processor.
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5tFTW: Fedora 23 beta, conference reports and annoucements, and Atomic testing
Fedora Program Manager Jan Kuřík announced yesterday that Fedora 23 beta is “GO” for next week. I’m running Fedora 23 Workstation on my main desktop system (and posting this 5tFTW from there), and everything looks great so far. If you’re interested in trying it out, come back Tuesday (as is traditional, the official time is 10am US/Eastern) and get your pre-release downloads. Or, if you’re a little more cautious, no problem — the final release will be in just about a month.
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Debian Family
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Debian Project Aims to Keep the CIA Off Our Computers
The problem of producing reproducible builds requires a number of changes to be made:
1: The source code must be changed so that variables are always initialized to static values (not dynamic values from memory, which can be random).
2: Eliminate the use of timestamps, source code file paths, and build numbers.
3: Specify the exact build environment, so that it can be reproduced on different computers.As you can imagine, this could be painstaking work on a single project. But the Debian project has over 20,000 packages, and the majority of them need to be overhauled. This is a major undertaking, to say the least.
But it has to be done. A single corrupted package could result in thousands of infected computers.
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TurnKey Linux 14.0 Is a Massive Release Based on Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 Jessie
On September 17, the Turnkey Linux developers, through Jeremy Davis, has the enormous pleasure of announcing the release of the final version of their TurnKey Linux 14.0 highly specialised virtual appliances created specifically for servers.
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Derivatives
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Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0r0
Parsix GNU/Linux is a live and installation DVD based on Debian. Our goal is to provide a ready to use and easy to install desktop and laptop optimized operating system based on Debian’s testing branch and the latest stable release of GNOME desktop environment. Users can easily install extra software packages from Parsix APT repositories. Our annual release cycle consists of two major and four minor versions. We have our own software repositories and build servers to build and provide all the necessary updates and missing features in Debian stable branch.
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Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0r0 “Mumble” Officially Released, Based on Debian 8 “Jessie”
The developers of the Parsix GNU/Linux project had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download of the final version of the Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0 (Mumble) operating system.
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Ubuntu-Based Linux Mangaka Distro for Anime and Manga Fans Moves from KDE to MATE
You might remember the Linux Mangaka distribution from Animesoft International, as we’ve written several articles about it in the last few months, but today we report that its developers are currently working on a new version.
From the looks of it, the developers of Linux Mangaka can’t settle for a desktop environment, as the distribution was switched from GNOME-based elementary OS’ Pantheon desktop, to KDE4, and now to MATE.
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Parsix GNU/Linux 7.5 (Rinaldo) to Reach End of Life on November 14, 2015
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu Online Summit for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Takes Place on November 3-5, 2015
Canonical’s Alan Pope announced earlier today, September 13, the official dates for the next UOS (Ubuntu Online Summit) event, which will take place online, on the Ubuntu On Air YouTube channel.
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Developer Attempts to Port Ubuntu Touch to the Sony Xperia Z Ultra Android Phone
Pedro Dias Vicente, a senior XDA member, posted news on the Ubuntu Touch mailing list informing developers and users alike about his attempt of porting Canonical’s mobile operating system to the Sony Xperia Z Ultra smartphone.
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Ubuntu 15.04 Robotics Edition Brings Microsoft Kinect Support to ODROID
ODROID is a mini-PC platform, akin to the Raspberry Pi, and it comes with the same kind of functionality. Developers have just released the Ubuntu 15.04 Robotics Edition for XU3 and XU4 models.
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LXD Is the New Pure-Container Hypervisor for Linux, Says Mark Shuttleworth
Canonical’s Stéphane Graber has announced earlier today, September 16, that version 0.18 of the LXD next-generation container hypervisor for Linux kernel-based operating systems has been tagged, and it is available for download.
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Why Ubuntu?
Users who are running licensed versions of Windows 7 or 8.1 on their PCs get a free upgrade to Windows 10, but those running Windows XP or Vista will have to buy Windows 10. Well, Ubuntu is a free user-friendly Linux based operating system. Yes, absolutely free, including future updates.
Secondly , it is extremely light on PC hardware, so you can even install it on computers that are 3-4 years old, and it will run smoothly . Besides, if you buy a brand new PC without an OS, you could consider running Ubuntu on that too. Ubuntu lets you do everything you can do on Windows, and just as easily…
You can edit documents, work on spreadsheets, create presentations and more with LibreOffice – a fully functional productivity suite. It comes with the Ubuntu installation and supports Microsoft file formats.
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Snapdeal Reveals Dedicated Website for Ubuntu-Powered Devices
Snapdeal is the biggest retail store in India, and it looks like it’s pulling all stops on Ubuntu products. It now features a customized page that lists a host of Ubuntu-powered products, including laptops.
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Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) Official Wallpaper Revealed
You know that a new Ubuntu release is just around the corner when the official wallpaper is made available in Launchpad. Guess what? Now we know what the new wallpaper for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) is.
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Erle-Spider, the Ubuntu drone with legs
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint 18 to Launch with Cinnamon 3.0, Probably Named Sarah
The Linux Mint developers have just revealed that the 17.3 branch of the operating system will be called Rosa and that it will land sometime in the next few months, but they’ve also said some other interesting stuff regarding the upcoming 18.0 version.
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Linux Mint 18: Will run Cinnamon 3.0 and might be called Sarah
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Linux Mint 17.3 Named “Rosa,” Will Probably Arrive in December
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Gorgeous Live Voyager X2 Linux OS Out Now, Based on Xubuntu 14.04.3 LTS – Screenshot Tour
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Devices/Embedded
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Continually updated home security appliance runs Linux
A startup is launching a “Cujo” home security appliance on Indiegogo starting at $49, that protects devices ranging from PCs to home automation gadgets.
In Stephen King’s book Cujo, a beloved St. Bernard goes bezerk from rabies, embarks on a killing spree, and is finally “put down” with the sharp end of a baseball bat to the eye. Redondo Beach, Calif. startup Cujo presumably named its eponymous home security device after the crazed guard dog to demonstrate the lengths it will go stop hackers, phishers, snoopers, identity thefts, and other evildoers from inflicting harm. Yet, we’d hate to have to take a baseball bat to the cute little gizmo, which has adorable eye features that indicate various modes of operation.
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Qualcomm unveils Linux-based UAV reference platform
Qualcomm unveiled a Snapdragon 801 and Ubuntu based “Snapdragon Flight” reference platform for the design of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
Ubuntu got a big boost as a competitive operating system for drones with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) reference platform announced by Qualcomm this week called Snapdragon Flight.
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Software defined radio module runs Linux on Zynq SoC
Avnet released a 100 x 72mm “PicoZed SDR” COM and dev kit for fixed or mobile Software Defined Radio apps, that runs Linux on an ARM/FPGA Zynq-7035 SoC.
In Oct. 2013, Avnet launched two Linux-based Software Defined Radio (SDR) development kits that combined Xilinx ARM/FPGA Zynq-7000 SoCs with the Analog Devices AD9361 RF Agile Transceiver for SDR. The company provides essentially the same ingredients with the new PicoZed SDR Z7035/AD9361 computer-on-module, but instead of using a Zedboard SBC combined with a Xilinx reference board, the PicoZed SDR implements the required functions on Avnet’s much more compact, 100 x 72mm PicoZED COM form-factor.
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Disney “Linux Light Bulb” home networking is not just for toys
Disney Research has demonstrated an LED-to-LED networking method whereby toys, wearables, mobile devices, and IoT gizmos could communicate with one another.
Disney Research has demonstrated an LED-to-LED “Linux Light Bulb” networking technology that would let toys communicate with each other, thereby bringing us one step closer to the reality of Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story. Instead of lip-syncing to the voice of Tom Hanks, however, Woody would argue with Buzz Lightyear with a flash of his eyes.
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WiFi, Move Over – Here Comes LiFi
Linux Light Bulbs can communicate with each other and with other VLC devices — such as toys, wearables and clothing — over the Internet Protocol, according to Disney scientists Stefan Schmid, Theodoros Bourchas, Stefan Mangold and Thomas R. Gross, who coauthored a report on their work. In essence, they could establish a LiFi network that would function in much the same way that WiFi works.
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$15 plug-in crypto key supports RPi and other Linux devices
Zymbit’s IoT-focused, $15 “ZymKey” encryption and authentication device offers 256-bit SHA security for the Raspberry Pi and other Linux devices.
In May, Zymbit unveiled its hackable, Raspberry Pi-based Zymbit Orange mini-PC for Internet of Things applications (see farther below). Now Zymbit has gone to Kickstarter to launch a $15 ZymKey encryption and authentication device that plugs into the expansion header on the Raspberry Pi, including the one built into the yet-to-be-released Zymbit Orange. There is also an identically priced USB version of ZymKey designed for other Linux-based devices.
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Under $40 quad-core Cortex-A9 SBC offers expansion shields
Allo.com’s new SBC runs Linux or Android on a quad-core, Cortex-A9 SoC, and offers amp/preamp, wireless, eMMC, USB hub, and LCD expansion shields.
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Wireless touchscreen kits run Android or Yocto on TI Sitara
Gumstix unveiled a pair of $329, 4.3-inch, wireless, battery-powered “Pepper” touchscreen kits that run Android or Yocto on an 800MHz TI Sitara SoC.
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PC/104-Plus SBC runs Linux on Vorte
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Rugged, secure SMARC COM runs Yocto on Tegra K1
Calao claims its “SMC-NTKE1″ is the first SMARC COM with a Tegra K1 SoC. The rugged module offers Yocto Linux, crypto and TPM security, and up to 64GB eMMC.
Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra K1 SoC, which features a 192-core Kepler GPU, has appeared on Linux-ready computer-on-modules including Seco’s SECOMExp-TK1 COM Express Type 6 Compact COM and the GE Intelligent Platforms mCOM10K1 COM Express Type 10 Mini module. Now, Calao Systems has launched what it claims is the first Tegra K1-based module to adopt the 82 x 50mm SMARC form-factor. Other Tegra-based SMARC modules include Kontron’s SMARC-sAT30, which used the earlier Tegra 3.
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ElectroSuper LED tunnel
I used a hierarchical structure. At the top we have a single Raspberry Pi B+, which contains a customised Raspbian – for example, I removed everything to do with X Window, so I saved something like 1 GB, which is even more space for storing the videos. And then I did some adaptations: I hardened the operating system so it would be in read-only mode. In these installations we never know if or when the power supply is removed, so there is the risk of wearing out the SD card if it is storing logs etc. So I put the system in read-only mode, and when I log in via SSH it goes into read-write mode and I can configure, then I reboot and it starts a simple script that runs a simple C file, which reads data from the SD card and then sends it over the network. There is also a modification to add a real-time clock, because we are in a public space and there is also the issue of saving energy. So when the sun is out there is no point having the LEDs working, so from about 10am to 5pm the system is turned off – it stops sending data – and when the WisYasep boards see that no data is coming, they set everything to black so that it draws less current.
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How Many Smart Devices Running Linux Do You Have in Your Home?
Apparently there’s a trend going on right now: smart devices in your home. I have to admit that I’m one of those people curious about new technology, especially things that you can interact with. You may know them as Internet of Things.
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Disney’s Linux powered LED bulbs brings Li-Fi connectivity to your homes
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Phones
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Tizen
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Samsung begins assembly of Samsung Z3 Smartphone in India
According to shipping reports assembly parts for an Initial 1,000 smartphone units have been shipped from the Korean companies HQ to India, and we would expect more to follow shortly.
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Samsung to bring Tizen to Europe with Germany, France, UK, Russia and Poland on the hit list?
Samsung have decided to launch the first Tizen Smartphones initially in south asian emerging markets. The Initial launch was in India which was then followed by Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The Samsung Z1 Smartphone has done better than most would of expected with sales of over 1 Million units since the device went on-sale in January 2015.
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Tizen 3.0 to Ship with Linux Kernel 4.1, Drops X for Wayland
Tizen is an open-source Linux operating system developed under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, which aims to run on phones, tablets, watches, and IVI (in-vehicle infotainment). A new milestone for the 3.0 branch of the operating system has been released, and it bring some pretty interesting changes.
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Tizen reference device to be given to Tizen Developers in China
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Android
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Debian GNU/Linux 8 Now Ready for Creator Ci20, Android 5.0 Support Coming Soon
Imagination Technologies, through Alexandru Voica, informed Softpedia about the progress made in adding support for the Debian GNU/Linux 8 (Jessie) operating system to their Creator Ci20 microcomputer.
The Debian GNU/Linux 8 OS for Creator Ci20 is powered by Linux kernel 3.18.21 LTS, about which we reported a while ago, and it brings a great number of improvements to the MIPS hardware architecture. For those of you who are not in the loop, we inform you that the Creator Ci20 development board is powered by an MIPS CPU.
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Google Expanding Android One To Portugal And Spain
Google’s Android One initiative aims to bring low-cost, high-quality Android phones to the hands of those who are not able to afford a more premium device. While they are not known for having the fastest processors or the most gorgeous screens, they do come with the promise of a Nexus-like experience of stock Android and fast updates — sometimes even beating Nexus devices at their own game.
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Gameloft’s Order & Chaos 2: Redemption fights its way to the Play Store
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Samsung’s S Health app now supports all Android phones
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Meet BlackBerry’s top-secret Android device
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Free Software/Open Source
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Microsoft’s wake-up call on software piracy
With piracy-related lawsuits becoming a looming possibility, open-source software seems to be the answer
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Exercising Software Freedom in the Global Email System
In this post, I discuss one example of how a choice for software freedom can cause many strange problems that others will dismiss. My goal here is to explain in gory detail how proprietary software biases in the computing world continue to grow, notwithstanding Open Source ballyhoo.
Two decades ago, nearly every company, organization, entity, and tech-minded individual ran their own email server. Generally speaking, even back then, nearly all the software for both MTAs and MUAs were Free Software0. MTA’s are the mail transport agents — the complex software that moves email around from one Internet domain to another. MUAs are the mail user agents, sometimes called mail clients — the local programs with which users manipulate their own email.
I’ve run my own MTA since around 1993: initially with sendmail, then with exim for a while, and with Postfix since 1999 or so. Also, everywhere I’ve worked throughout my entire career since 1995, I’ve either been in charge of — or been the manager of the person in charge of — the MTA installation for the organization where I worked. In all cases, that MTA has always been Free Software, of course.
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Open source ‘essential for heritage preservation’
Working together on open source tools based on open standards is very important for those involved in the preservation of digital information, says Barbara Sierman, board member of the Open Preservation Foundation.
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GNU/Linux Touted As Safe Replacement For Illegal Software In Bangladesh
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FOSS the Solution to Piracy, Newspaper Says
On September 9, a Bangladeshi English language newspaper, Dhaka Tribune, reported that the country’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Task Force and Copyright officials had seized 69 laptops with pirated Microsoft software and arrested two high ranking officials at Flora, one of Bangladesh’s largest computer retailers. The raid came after two years of newspaper ads sponsored by the country’s Copyright Office warning about the legal implications of selling pirated goods.
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AT&T’s Chiosi: Unite on Open Source or Suffer
The telecom industry needs to agree on how it wants the various pieces of open source to come together in a platform for the future, AT&T’s Margaret Chiosi said here Thursday. Otherwise, there is the risk of a splintered effort that will ultimately slow critical network transformation.
Chiosi, a Distinguished Network Architect at AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) who is also president of the Open Platform for NFV Project Inc. and one of the original players in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) NFV ISG, explained why open source is critical to AT&T’s Integrated Cloud (AIC) architecture — its converged services platform moving forward — and outlined the numerous open source groups in which the telecom giant is participating, which span 700 different projects.
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Google’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software uses Tesseract
Google’s OCR is probably using dependencies of Tesseract, an OCR engine released as free software, or OCRopus, a free document analysis and optical character recognition (OCR) system that is primarily used in Google Books. Developed as a community project during 1995-2006 and later taken over by Google, Tesseract is considered one of the most accurate OCR engines and works for over 60 languages. The source code is available on GitHub.
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Modest CEO on open source and acquisition by PayPal
Professionally, Harper was CTO of Threadless and then CTO of Obama for America. He’s currently CEO of Modest, Inc., which was recently acquired by PayPal. I asked him what really drives him and he said, “I like to have fun and do interesting things.” Also, in a talk Harper gave in Sweden in 2014, he said that he strives to hire people who looked different from him. In this interview, I ask him more about that and his upcoming All Things Open talk.
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Google, Twitter Forge Open Source Publishing Partnership
Google will be coming late to the publishing party, having failed to challenge Facebook with its own social media platforms — the short-lived Google Buzz and the faltering Google+, noted SEO researcher Joshua J. Bachynski. Google’s inability to understand its user base has forced it to form an uneasy partnership with Twitter and others, he suggested.
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Events
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A Preliminary systemd.conf 2015 Schedule is Now Online!
We are happy to announce that an initial, preliminary version of the systemd.conf 2015 schedule is now online! (Please ignore that some rows in the schedule link the same session twice on that page. That’s a bug in the web site CMS we are working on to fix.)
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Software Freedom Day 2015 Phnom Penh
The Digital Freedom Foundation is organizing our Software Freedom Day event in Phnom Penh together with the National Institute of Posts Telecommunications and ICT and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications on September 19, 2015 at the NIPTICT Building. There will be 10 presentations and several lightening talks with topics covering free and open source software ranging from operating system, virtualization, drones, mapping, servers, to security. Here is the detailed schedule.
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How will you celebrate Software Freedom Day?
Software Freedom Day is a global celebration of free and open source software (FOSS). What will you to on September 19, 2015 to celebrate?
We hope you can choose to do many of the options we listed in our poll to help celebrate FOSS on Software Freedom Day, but even if you can only do one that will be a great benefit to the community.
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Web Browsers
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Shopping for a Browser
I remain deeply suspicious of Chrome, since it has been reported to be snooping on its users and reporting back to Google. And, sadly, the latest news from Firefox is discouraging. It’s possible that that adware and snoopware will be left out of Mozilla’s SeaMonkey browser, which I have recently installed.
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Mozilla
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The Firefox Is in the Hen House
For a variety of reasons that nobody outside of Mozilla seems to completely understand, Mozilla ended its relationship with Google late last year to ink a deal with Yahoo. Some pundits are figuring that Yahoo offered better terms and that Mozilla stands to make more money now than before, especially since it’s now selling default search on a country-by-country basis instead of carte blanche for the entire planet. Others say the change in affiliation had little to do with money, but was brought about by ideological reasons, basically revolving around Mozilla’s Do Not Track system, which Google does not support. Reportedly, as part of the new deal, Yahoo has agreed to abide by Do Not Track requests.
Whether Mozilla receives more income from Yahoo than it did from Google is questionable, even if a majority of Firefox users keep Yahoo instead of flipping the switch to Google search, which is doubtful. Certainly, a recent move by Mozilla might indicate that the new deal with Yahoo isn’t as fruitful as the organization had hoped and that it’s scrambling to create new revenue streams.
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Announcing Rust 1.3
The gear keeps turning: we’re releasing Rust 1.3 stable today! As always, read on for the highlights and check the release notes for more detail.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Dutch Standards Board mulls making ODF mandatory
The Standardisation Board of the Netherlands wants to make the use of the Open Document Format mandatory for Dutch public administrations. ODF is one of the required ICT standards in the Netherlands, following a policy dating from 2007. However, the document format is ignored by most. This should change, said Nico Westpalm van Hoorn, the chairman of the standards board, speaking on Tuesday at the ODF Plugfest in The Hague.
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Italian military to switch to LibreOffice and ODF
The Italian military is transitioning to LibreOffice and the Open Document Format (ODF). The Ministry of Defense will over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations – making it Europe’s second largest LibreOffice implementation. The switch was announced on 15 September by the LibreItalia Association.
The migration project will begin in October and is foreseen to be completed at the end of 2016.
The deployment of LibreOffice will be jointly managed by the two organisations, announces LibreItalia. The NGO will help the ministry to ready trainers in different parts of the military, and the Ministry is to develop a series of online courses to help with the switch to LibreOffice. The material is to be made public using a Creative Commons licence.
An agreement between the Ministry and LibreItalia was signed on 15 September in Rome, by Ruggiero Di Biase, Rear Admiral and General Manager of the Italian Ministry of Defence Information Systems and Sonia Montegiove, President of Associazione LibreItalia.
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LibreOffice Installations In EU Governments Approach One Million
The government of the UK, in its guidance on using ODF (Open Document Format) surveys usage of ODF and LibreOffice by EU governments. Usage is huge and widespread and profitable. Lately, The Netherlands is considering making ODF mandatory in government. That this was obvious to me 15 years ago but is now being acknowledged shows the depth of lock-in M$ has caused in the world but, in 2015, folks are now running on the sandy beaches instead of in neck-deep water. The world is finally being freed. Better late than never.
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FSF turns 30, Italian Military Goes LO and ODF & More…
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Italy’s Ministry of Defense to Drop Microsoft Office in Favor of LibreOffice
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Making FLOSS The Default Option Helps Procurement For Government
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Italian Ministry of Defense moves to LibreOffice
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Forza open-source: Italian military to adopt LibreOffice
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CMS
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WordPress brings the freedom to the front
About 75 million Web sites depend on WordPress. If you are one of its many users who recently upgraded to Version 4.3, you may have noticed something new. Recently, a coop worker-member, Pea, informed me that this version includes a new tab with a reference to the GNU General Public License. With some quizzical interest, I ran the upgrade on a WordPress instance I maintain.
I eagerly waited for the upgrade to finish. When it loaded, what I saw was typical for a WordPress upgrade, a description of the version’s new features. Then I saw a tab prominently named “Freedom.” I clicked on it, and boom: right there were the four freedoms of free software, starting with Freedom 0. Take a look for yourself.
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Business
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Age-old question: Can commercial software succeed in an open-source world?
It became the first $1 billion open source company three years ago and closed its last fiscal year in February at almost $1.8 billion in revenue. That is not chump change, but it’s a far cry from the run rates proprietary software companies tout.
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Semi-Open Source
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VSCO Keys is now an open source project hosted on Github
VSCO says code for the installer can be found on Github. The company also notes “while the current layout editor has been discontinued, users can continue to edit their layouts with a text editor using resources that have been provided in the source code.”
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VSCO Keys Lives On By Going Free and Open Source
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BSD
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GhostBSD 10.1 Finally Available
After a year of development, testing and debugging we are pleased to announce the release of GhostBSD 10.1 MATE & XFCE which is available on SourceForge and torrents for the amd64 and i386 architectures.
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GhostBSD 10.1 Is Now Available for Download with MATE and Xfce Flavors
GhostBSD’s Eric Turgeon has the great pleasure of informing us earlier today, September 13, about the immediate availability for download of the final release of GhostBSD 10.1.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Pre-Order Your FSF 30 Commemorative Shirt and the third edition of Free Software, Free Society
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Tor relay reinstated in the Kilton Library: a win for free software-based anonymity
In July, Kilton Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire set up a relay server in the Tor network, which lets Internet users surf the Web anonymously. Tor is relied on every day by whistleblowers, journalists, and dissidents in oppressive regimes, and each relay makes the network stronger. This was the first time a library had set up a relay, and the FSF was excited to see the public institution participating.
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It’s Software Freedom Day!
This Saturday, September 19th, is the twelfth annual Software Freedom Day, an international celebration of our favorite thing: free software!
Software Freedom Day means hundreds of fun, educational events, planned by activists all over the globe using resources provided by the Digital Freedom Foundation. Here’s a map where you can find an event near you.
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Chris Webber talks about Guix in Chicago, September 30th
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Infinity compiler
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Public Services/Government
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Swiss checklist to procuring open source
A fifteen-point checklist to help public administrations to procure open source software solutions and services was published in August by Swiss open source procurement experts. The list helps to determine which procurement specifications take this type of software into account, and which criteria exclude open source.
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Openness/Sharing
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Apple uses Mesos, 3D printed syringe, and more news
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Open Access/Content
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SGA looks into open-source textbooks as alternative for UMD students
On the heels of the University of Maryland University College announcing its plans to eliminate textbooks this fall, the SGA is exploring the viability of open-source textbooks as a cheaper alternative for University of Maryland students.
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Open Hardware
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Virtual Reality & Open Source
OSVR is backed by many major companies, such as Intel, Ubisoft, Valve and GearBox, as well as by a long list of universities. The project also boasts many contributors of software design, sensory support, virtual world design, etc.
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Programming
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GitLab raises $4 million for its hugely popular open-source GitHub alternative
Developer collaboration services are back on investors’ agenda. Two months after leading a $1.5 million round into GitLab Inc., Khosla Ventures is coming back for more and pouring an additional $4 million into the startup’s coffers to help ramp its battle against the better-known and better-funded competition.
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We are the Knights who code Ni!
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Standards/Consortia
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UK Cabinet Office Says “Hello, You Must be Going” to ODF
Technological evolution is famous for obsoleting wonders created just a few years before. Sometimes new developments moot the fiercest battles between competitors as well. That seemed to be the case last week, when Microsoft announced its Azure Cloud Switch (ACS), a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on…(wait for it)…Linux, the open source software assailed by the company’s prior CEO as a communist cancer.
It also saw the UK Cabinet Office announce its detailed plans for transitioning to the support of the OpenDocument Format (ODF), a document format that was just as fiercely opposed by Microsoft in the most hard-fought standards war in decades. But at the same time, the Cabinet Office announced its commitment to work towards making document formats as close to obsolete as possible.
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Leftovers
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Security
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Security updates for Monday
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Tuesday’s security advisories
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Security advisories for Wednesday
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WordPress 4.3.1 Security and Maintenance Release
WordPress 4.3.1 is now available. This is a security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.
This release addresses three issues, including two cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and a potential privilege escalation.
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Let’s Encrypt Project issues its First Free SSL/TLS Certificate
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Let’s Encrypt issues its first open source certificate
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Friday’s security updates
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Lock screen security of phones
The tldr is “much ado about nothing”.
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Russian hacker pleads guilty in major US breach
Vladimir Drinkman, 34, said Tuesday in federal court in Camden, New Jersey, that he plotted with four other men to steal credit card numbers from payments processors Global Payments and Heartland Payment Systems, grocery chain Hannaford Brothers and at least 14 other organisations from 2005 to 2012.
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Red Hat’s Ceph and Inktank code repositories were cracked
Red Hat reports that the Ceph community project and Inktank download sites were hacked last week and it’s possible that some code was corrupted.
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Cisco routers found to be slaves of hackers
Security researchers from Mandiant, which is the computer forensic arm of U.S. security research firm FireEye have detected a real-world attack that has installed rogue firmware on business routers in four countries. It possibly allows cybercriminals to harvest huge amounts of data without being detected by existing cybersecurity defenses.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Burning the World’s Fossil Fuels Would Melt Antarctica Into the Sea: Study
Here’s another argument for keeping the world’s fossil fuels in the ground: If all the coal, gas, and oil on Earth is extracted and burned, the Antarctic ice-sheet will melt entirely, scientists warn in a “blockbuster” new study published Friday in the research journal Science Advances.
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Finance
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Uruguay: Governing Coalition Rejects TISA Negotiations
The executive branch will still make a final decision over the matter, to be presented in October.
The ruling progressivist coalition Broad Front overwhelmingly decided to withdraw Uruguay from the negotiations on the supra-national trade-deal TISA (Trade in Services Agreement) in a vote on Saturday.
With a 117 to 139 vote, the decision was backed by the Movement of Popular Participation (of former President Jose “Pepe” Mujica), the Communist Party, the 711 list (of Vice President Raul Sendic), the Party for the Victory of the People (PVP), the Great House (Casa Grande), the Federal League, and the Socialist Party (of current President Tabare Vazquez).
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‘Lesson 1: The enemy is always within’
When YANIS VAROUFAKIS appeared at TUC Congress, he said the ‘magnificent’ Greek people were ready for the struggle with financiers — only to be betrayed by his own party. And he warned that fearful leaders could one day be the downfall of Britain’s people too. Joe Gill reports
GREEK ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis brought some rock star glamour to the opening of the TUC Congress on Sunday in Brighton. He smiled for selfie shots with delegates at a 1,000-plus meeting. Delegates were high on the back of Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning victory in the Labour leadership battle the day before.
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EU Proposes New Corporate Sovereignty Court For TAFTA/TTIP; US Not Interested
As we have reported, the most problematic aspect of the proposed TAFTA/TTIP trade agreement between the US and the EU has been the proposed corporate sovereignty chapter, formally known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). The outcry over this was so great in Europe last year that the European Commission put negotiations of this topic on hold, while it carried out a public consultation on the matter — presumably assuming that the extremely technical questions about this complex issue would kill off any further interest by the public. Instead, an unprecedented 150,000 submissions were received, 145,000 of which said get rid of ISDS completely. In response, the European Commission merely promised to try to address the many concerns raised with a new and “improved” version.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The BBC is Irredeemable
The extent of BBC bias during the referendum campaign was breathtaking. I have worked, and specifically reported on the media, in dictatorships which had a less insidious and complete bias than the BBC has against Scottish independence. The relentless anti-Corbyn propaganda shows that the BBC exists to reinforce the neo-liberal narrative at all costs, both at home and abroad. Laura Kuenssberg achieved levels of disdain and ridicule in her report on Shadow Cabinet appointments this evening that ought to disqualify her forever from employment anywhere but Fox News. This was followed by ‘Reporting Scotland’ and a long propaganda piece against the idea of a second referendum, replete with lies about pledges of ‘once in a lifetime’.
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Fox & Friends Sunday Is Very Concerned Stephen Colbert Wore A Black Lives Matter Wristband
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Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind are cleared over “cash-for-access” allegations
Former Foreign Secretaries Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw were today cleared over lobbying allegations.
The pair, who both stood down at May’s general election, were apparently caught offering their services for cash in separate hidden camera stings by Channel 4’s Dispatches and the Telegraph.
Standards watchdog Kathryn Hudson investigated claims they had broken strict lobbying rules.
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Congress Is a Confederacy of Dunces
Already we’re deep into September and Congress has reconvened in Washington, prompting many commentators to compare its return after summer’s recess to that of fresh-faced students coming back to school, sharpening their pencils, ready to learn, be cooperative and prepared for something new.
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Censorship
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Heightened Trade Secrets Restrictions Could Chill Global Speech
Trade secrets are seeing a resurgence of attention by policymakers at home and around the world. While there can be legitimate reasons to keep commercially valuable information secret, particularly amongst those with whom it has been shared in confidence, the latest trade secrets push goes further, potentially entangling whistleblowers and journalists.
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Privacy
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Read the NSC draft options paper on strategic approaches to encryption
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Sexting Teens Sentenced To A Year Without Cellphones And All The Warrantless Searches They Can Be Subjected To
Earlier this month, we discussed (or rather, ridiculed) a North Carolina’s law enforcement agency’s stupid and bizarre prosecution of two teens who consensually sent explicit photos to each other. There was the first (and most familiar) layer of stupidity: the charging of both with distributing explicit material to minors (both teens were 16 at the time of the sexting). Then there was the unexpected stupidity: the charging of both for sexually exploiting themselves. This gained an additional layer of stupidity when the law treated the teens as both minors (being exploited) and adults (doing the exploiting) when processing them.
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Britain’s FBI wants ‘Five Eyes’ cosy hookups with infosec outfits
The UK’s National Crime Agency – Blighty’s equivalent of the FBI – wants its staff to “colocate” with private-sector IT security companies around the world. In other words, investigators and infosec employees placed alongside each other to sniff out cyber-criminals.
This will apparently help the agency reach across jurisdictions, and bust underworld gangs around the planet. This is according to a keynote address delivered on Thursday at the Cloudsec event in London – a presentation the media was banned from attending.
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Library’s Tor relay—which had been pulled after feds noticed—now restored
The New Hampshire library, which last week took down a Tor relay after federal authorities read about it on Ars, has finally restored its important link in the anonymizing network.
The node was turned back on Tuesday evening immediately after the board of the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon voted to do so.
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SAMIZDATA: Evidence of Conspiracy. Talking secrets and pandas with Jacob Appelbaum
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Civil Rights
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Moral Obligation = Conscience, Trump
Further, what does it say about the GOP that their front-runner for candidacy has no conscience? This latest gaffe is not the only indicator. Trump also thinks it would be a good idea to just round up ~11million “illegal immigrants”. How many Jews/communists/opponents did the Nazis have to round up before they committed a crime against humanity? Trump also holds that being born in USA should not convey citizenship… Trump is insane and the GOP is either insane or about to fragment to avoid schizophrenia. That a huge fraction of USAian citizens might vote for this guy is frightening. It’s like 1930s Germany/Italy all over again. Whether Trump could make political deals or get the trains to run on time, he should be shunned in the political arena. If, in our worst nightmare, Trump should be elected, the world should immediately sever all relations with USA to keep him in check.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig goes one on one with Ars
Lessig: The question isn’t just what policies a candidate supports. If that were the question, we’d have climate change, a public option for health care, immigration reform, background checks on guns, etc., etc., etc. The question instead is also: What is the plan to get that policy enacted?
What every presidency since Clinton teaches us is that presidents promise reform, and then fail to act on it. That’s not weakness. It’s structural. A regular president cannot take on Congress. It will take a president with a super-mandate. That’s what the referendum presidency is meant to achieve.
Ars: Campaign finance reform clearly is not a bipartisan issue. How are you going to get the GOP interested in this issue? And is this why you are running as a Democrat? In fact, given your platform, why have you chosen a party?
Lessig: Two words: Donald Trump. Until Donald Trump, it’s true that among GOP insiders in DC, corruption wasn’t an issue. After Donald Trump, it is as much a question for Republicans as Democrats: How can we have a Congress free to lead?
I wish there were a way to run as an independent. But the two parties have made that essentially impossible—at least to win. No doubt I could split the vote of the Democratic Party, but I have no desire to Nader this election.
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