Logic Supply, a hardware company known for selling all sorts of embedded and industrial PCs powered by Linux kernel-based operating systems, informs us about the general availability of a new tool that lets users find the best industrial computer for their needs.
Wait, what? You might be asking yourself what inspired a hacker by the name of George Hotz to build his own self-driving car. That's what we wanted to know, too. It would seem that Hotz decided to kick out a self-driving car using a 2016 Acura ILX in "about a month." He's using Ubuntu Linux as his operating system and has an absurdly massive 21.5-inch display sitting in the middle. A flight navigator joystick rests between the front two seats which, when triggered, engages a fully operational self-driving vehicle system.
The high energy physics team at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are part of a vast global network of researchers who are performing experiments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland and France - the world's biggest machine - to make new discoveries about how our universe evolves, and they're using Linux and open source software. This includes a search for the Higgs Boson, extra dimensions, supersymmetry, and particles that could make up dark matter.
The Linux project was announced by the Linux creator Linus Torvalds on August 25, 1991. With time, Linux has managed to earn a respectable place in the open source world. With other OS still struggling to provide security and reliability at the first place, here are 10 reasons to switch over to Linux.
Few years ago I got to learn a bit about Linux in order to deploy my application on remote deployment servers and I used to get it done using few comments and I never really bothered to learn Linux. A year ago one of my friend suggested to look at Ubuntu which is a Linux OS with a nice Desktop Environment (DE). I installed Ubuntu on VirtualBox and played with it couple of days and left it because it was too slow on my VirtualBox.
At the time of writing, the most popular laptop on Amazon.com in the US is the Toshiba Satellite C55-C5241 followed by the ASUS F555LA-AB31. If you are in the market for a new, sub-$500 laptop this holiday season, here are my findings when testing both of these popular laptops under Ubuntu Linux.
The move means that customers have access to pay-as-you-use billing, along with increased scalability.
cPanel is a platform that is used for simplifying the process of creating and managing websites. The latest version, v11.52, has made it possible to be billed for the exact amount of sever capacity used, instead of being billed for the amount provisioned, which can lower costs.
By calling attention to third-party Docker add-ons in various categories, Docker's working to defray criticism of how its native solutions are often the only ones used
As Docker container use grows, so too does the needs for increasingly advanced and scalable networking technologies. While Docker itself now provides some rudimentary networking, it has also enable a broad cross-section of third party vendors, like Weaveworks to extend container networking.
[...]
To date, Weaveworks has raised $5 million in funding, though there is likely to be additional funding rounds in 2016 as the company gears up for a commercial offering.
Rapid7, which recently acquired Logentries, brings a Docker Insights Dashboard to market to help solve the challenge of container visibility.
We may have to call 2015 "The Year of Docker." In the latest piece of news related to the company, it has announced its Ecosystem Technology Partner program, thorough which it will partner with nine organizations to offer customers better logging and visibility of their Dockerized applications.
IBM has scooped up talent, companies and technology in a race to establish a stronghold in IoT and cognitive computing via cloud services. In October, it announced it planned to acquire Weather.com and other digital assets from The Weather Company for the Watson IoT Unit. It has also appointed Harriet Green, former CEO of insurer Thomas Cook, as general manager of the group. In addition, over the past few years in the cloud arena, IBM has acquired a variety of companies including SoftLayer and Cloudant.
Perfect, the server-side development toolkit which enables Apple Swift developers to write their programs entirely in the open source programming language, is now available on Ubuntu Linux. Server-side Swift now works in an enterprise production environment.
I had the opportunity to host a (virtual) round-table discussion on the need (or lack of need) for compromise in Free Software with an absolutely stellar group of panelists.
Including: Richard Stallman (founder of the GNU Project and President of the Free Software Foundation), Aaron Seigo (of Kolab and KDE fame), Stuart Langridge (co-host of Bad Voltage and LUG Radio) and Swapnil Bhartiya (journalist for ITworld, Linux.com and more).
Linux kernel 4.1.15 was released today by Greg Kroah-Hartman, in a branch that's been declared LTS a while back. More importantly, it's also the Linux kernel that powers Arnold's T-800 Terminator model.
Canonical's kernel team will pick up stable maintenance where Greg KH left off with v4.2.8 (thanks, Greg!)...
Canonical's Ubuntu kernel team is pleased to announce that we will be providing extended stable support for the Linux 4.2 kernel until August 2016 as a third party effort maintained on our infrastructure.
Our linux-4.2.y{-queue,-review} stable branches will fork from v4.2.8 and will be published here:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git/ubuntu/linux.git
git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/linux.git
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today is announcing three new silver members are joining the organization: Autodesk, Concurrent Computer Corporation and DataKinetics.
We reported earlier today, December 15, that renowned kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the end of life for the Linux 4.2 kernel series, urging users to upgrade to the 4.3 branch of the Linux kernel.
Canonical's David Henningsson wrote a blog post today explaining why it's taken until this year for Linux to properly support 2.1 speaker systems (two speakers and a subwoofer) with ALSA and PulseAudio.
While the open-source Linux sound stack has supported more complicated surround sound setups with a greater number of speakers, 2.1 hasn't been supported right since ALSA previously relied upon fixed mapping of channels that would cause various issues.
So it has been always a pain but lately going and (yes, my mistake) reading Phoronix news is just horrible (the best word I could choose, other were much more nasty). So instead writing thousand of words I just choose to make a picture.
Accoding to Canonical'a latest Ubuntu Security Notice, it would appear that there's a zero-day security vulnerability in the GRUB2 (GNU GRand Unified Bootloader) packages, affecting all GNU/Linux distributions running 2.02 Beta.
After announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.2.8 and the end of life for the Linux 4.2 series, Greg Kroah-Hartman has published details about the immediate availability of the fifteenth maintenance release of the long-term supported Linux 4.1 kernel.
The Xen Project, which became a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project in 2013, is an open source virtualization platform. The Xen Project is licensed under the GPLv2 with a governance structure similar to the Linux kernel. Designed specifically for cloud computing, the project powers clouds used by Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, and Verizon and is integrated into cloud computing platforms such as OpenStack.
Autodesk, a design and fabrication software company best known for AutoCAD, has more than 150 specialized programs for visual effects, BIM (Building Information Modeling), simulation, 3D printing and subtractive manufacturing. The company is also active in the maker community with its Dynamo project (open source graphical programming for design) and Ember 3D printer.
As the desktop software industry moves to the cloud, Autodesk is in a unique position to bridge the gap between traditional design customers and the growing Maker Movement.
As of today, Linux is open to thousands of developers worldwide for improvisation and is also among the top choices of the developers. Now drawing from the personal experience, Linux users are one of the proudest and creative people I have ever met.
With Greg Kroah-Hartman being done with maintaining the Linux 4.2 kernel, Canonical's Kernel Team has stepped up to provide maintenance.
Since Ubuntu 15.10 utilizes Linux 4.2, Canonical is continuing to maintain the Linux 4.2 stable kernel. They intend to provide extended stable support for Linux 4.2 until August 2016.
AMD's position in the graphics market continues to be a tricky one. Although the company has important design wins in the console space—both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are built around AMD CPUs with integrated AMD GPUs—its position in the PC space is a little more precarious. Nvidia currently has the outright performance lead, and perhaps more problematically, many games are to a greater or lesser extent optimized for Nvidia GPUs. One of the chief culprits here is Nvidia's GameWorks software, a proprietary library of useful tools for game development—things like realistic hair and shadows, and physics processing for destructible environments—that is optimized for Nvidia's cards. When GameWorks games are played on AMD systems, they can often do so with reduced performance or graphical quality.
Both AMD and Nvidia claim to have the pulse of software development, regularly pulling in members of the community willing to stand behind their respective philosophies. It follows, then, that the two tend to tell hand-picked stories. Nvidia likes to advocate the advantages of its ready-to-integrate middleware, which is optimized for the company’s hardware but proprietary in nature, often causing issues for the competition. Conversely, AMD rallies behind the open source banner, promoting accessibility and the benefits of collaboration. That’s really what developers want more of, AMD argues.
Today, December 15, Collabora's Emil Velikov has once again had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the final release of the Mesa 11.1 3D Graphics Library software for GNU/Linux operating systems.
Mesa 11.1 is the newest stable version of Mesa 3D and it comes with many new features although the core Mesa OpenGL version level didn't advance this release cycle.
Check out that feature overview and our other Mesa 11.1 articles for more details. However, if you are a devout, daily reader of Phoronix you should already be well aware of the Mesa 11.1 changes and the work already queuing up in Mesa 11.2-devel.
AMD is making a very important decision for its future, and it looks like the company is orienting itself towards open source, by pushing for an open source AMDGPU Linux Driver and GPUOpen, a set of open source tools aimed at developers.
Earlier this month AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group held an event to brief the press of their plans for 2016. Part of a larger shift for RTG as they work to develop their own identity and avoid the mistakes of the past, RTG has set about being more transparent and forthcoming in their roadmap plans, offering the press and ultimately the public a high-level overview of what the group plans to accomplish in 2016. The first part of this look into RTG’s roadmap was released last week, when the company unveiled their plans for their visual technologies – DisplayPort/HDMI, FreeSync, and HDR support.
For the past few months a developer at Samsung has been working on VA-API support for the Nouveau Gallium3D driver. Those patches today are up to their fifth revisio
As of earlier this month in Mesa Git is finally OpenGL 4.0 and 4.1 support for the Radeon R600g driver for pre-GCN hardware, albeit the subset capable of advertising GL4 compliance is right now just Cypress and Cayman. I took this opportunity to run some fresh Mesa Git benchmarks on an AMD Cayman GPU and a third run when enabling DRI3.
AMD is making some big waves in the world of open source with its GPUOpen initiative. The company is pulling out all the stops to make it easier for developers to create games and applications via greater access to the GPU and its resources.
A few days ago I wrote about building an Intel Skylake Xeon E3 v5 "Skylake" system and my experiences under Ubuntu. Here's a few notes about this Xeon E3 1245 v5 system when trying Fedora 23 Linux, along with some comparative performance benchmarks.
Hot on the heels of the QEMU 2.4 release, we have QEMU version 2.5 releasing today.
QEMU creates the virtual machine which guest operating systems run on top off. QEMU also handles host-specific things, like the storage and networking on the host.
Previously in this space, I have covered software packages like Maxima that can be used to solve symbolic mathematics problems. Several packages are available that can do those types of calculations. In this article, I discuss Xcas/Giac. Xcas is the GUI interface to the system. Giac is the command-line program that provides access to the core engine. Xcas has the functionality to handle symbolic algebra, two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphing, spreadsheets and statistics. It even has its own programming language that you can use to add extra functionality of your own. Although you can use the default interface that comes with Xcas, you also can link the CAS (Computer Algebra System) engine as a shared library to your own C++ code.
Earlier today, December 15, Opera Software, through Zhenis Beisekov, has had the great pleasure of announcing the promotion of the Opera 35 web browser to the Beta channel for all supported operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
No fluff! I got your message about being too non-technical, so I’ll be more focused and review all the changes we stabilized in Opera 35 beta. In this version, we focused on removing duplicate bookmarks, introducing a separate search bar, cleaning up the settings page and a few other improvements.
LXDE is a powerful and lightweight desktop environment for Linux. Many Linux users prefer it to desktops that require more system resources. But can it be customized? Sure, and a writer at ZDNet shows you how to customize LXDE to meet your needs and preferences.
Valve continues to improve upon the Steam Controller, and the latest Steam Beta update is further proof that you can't beat Valve at their own game.
Unity's WebGL benchmarking with their latest engine and using the newest browsers (on Windows) found that Firefox 42 64-bit was the fastest shipping browser in most tests. Coming in second place was Microsoft's new Edge browser on Windows 10, but Internet Explorer 11 was by far the slowest. Safari and Chrome meanwhile were competing with one another behind Firefox 64-bit / Edge.
Good news AMD CPU fans, Feral Interactive has released a patch for Alien Isolation which should help you a little bit. There's other fixes too.
Not a lot in it for us right now, but it's good to see it get updated. I haven't really had any issues with it myself, apart from the slow performance.
Guild Software has announced the release of a new update for its cross-platform Vendetta Online MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) 3D space combat game for all supported operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, Android, and iOS.
Warsow, a rather stylish and free online shooter hit the big 2.0 release recently, and it seems to be pretty good.
Magicka 2 seems like a pretty cool game, and great that we now have it on Linux too. The idea of battling away by casting spells is quite cool, and this new DLC looks insane.
The game itself was likely covered by one of the past Funding Crowd articles, but here's a refresher.
The Linux version is deemed as "experimental"...
These are the types of projects I can really get behind. Much like CosixTH for Theme Hospital, openage is aiming to be a full open source engine for Age of Empires II.
According to their Steam page the Linux release is still planned for 2016. We will pick it up of course, so we can give you our thoughts on it.
Solus is now a gaming platform as well, after the developers managed to finally make Steam work on their platform.
The first maintenance release of the Enlightenment 0.20 open-source desktop environment has been published earlier for all GNU/Linux operating systems, fixing over 30 issues reported by users since the previous version.
The KDE community announced that the KDE Plasma 5.5.1 is now out and ready for download. This is just a bug fix release, but it's very likely that we'll see it available very soon in repos.
KDE is excited to announce the release of KDE Applications 15.12, the December 2015 update to KDE Applications. This release brings one new application and feature additions and bug fixes across the board to existing applications. The team strives to always bring the best quality to your desktop and these applications, so we're counting on you to send your feedback.
Renowned GNOME developer Allan Day talks in a recent blog post published on the GNOME website about the new keyboard shortcuts approach for the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment.
The GNOME developers are working hard these days to launch the third development milestone towards the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment, due for release on March 23, 2016.
Gadgets as explained by GNOME developer Ben Otte is, "A gadget is halfway between a widget and a CSS node. It's supposed to provide the minimum convenicence around CSS nodes until we've figured out how to integrate them with widgets."
I last reviewed Makulu Linux back in May 2014 when it was still at version 6. I summed up my feelings towards Makulu Linux by stating that I can't wait for versions 7, 8 and 9 and that I had the warm glow with Makulu which I had felt previously with SolusOS, Fuduntu and Point Linux.
The artwork in Makulu Linux has always been very good and it has been put together in a unique and interesting way with some eclectic software picks.
Makulu Linux Aero Edition has been made to look more like Windows. The Makulu webpage describes this version as follows.
There were no issues in my Live run of Manjaro Linux 15.09 Xfce, apart from some design details that I mentioned above and a small error message after the application installation.
The system felt very snappy, fast, responsive and usable.
I think Manjaro Linux's high ranking in the Distrowatch rating – it's in 7th place – is well deserved. It is higher than Arch itself. This team brings the Arch-based distribution into a form that is more widely usable and user-friendly.
Today, December 15, GNU/Linux developer Steven Shiau, the maintainer and creator of the well-known GParted Live and Clonezilla Live projects, announced the immediate availability for download and testing of Clonezilla Live 2.4.5-6.
The Solus operating system is almost in stable form, and the developers are putting the final touches to it. The leader of the project shared details about some of the biggest components in the Linux distribution so that users have a general idea about what to expect.
Today in Linux news, Jack Wallen predicts 2016 will be the year of Linux desktop, sorta. Blogger Dark Duck reviewed Manjaro Linux 15.09 today and Gary Newell reviewed Makulu Aero Edition. OpenSource.com has 10 handy tools for sysadmins and 10 amazing Open Source projects from 2015. Elsewhere, Bryan Lunduke spoke with community leaders about compromise and LinuxBSDos.com posted a look at elementary OS 0.3.2.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that speaking proposals are being accepted for Red Hat Summit 2016, the industry's premier open source technology event. The 12th annual Red Hat Summit is scheduled to take place June 28 – July 1, 2016 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Red Hat Summit has become a must-attend event for open source technology, with customers, partners, and open source industry leaders from around the world coming together for a high-energy week of innovation, education, and collaboration.
Software giants Oracle and Red Hat are all set to report their quarterly results this week. Can they follow industry group peer Adobe with earnings beats of their own?
Alcatel-Lucent entered into collaboration agreements with the cloud software and hardware companies, Red Hat, Advantech and 6Wind, to accelerate the delivery of commercial virtualised radio access network (vRAN) products.
We would like to announce the general availability of CentOS Linux 7 (1511) for 64 bit x86 compatible machines.
OpenShift, Red Hat's open source PaaS that was recently reworked as a container-centric solution, is now once again being offered as a service.
The target audience for OpenShift Dedicated is enterprise IT and development teams, according to Red Hat's press notes. Rather than take on other major PaaSes head on, Red Hat is aiming to satisfy OpenShift customers with a service that touts both public-cloud convenience and bare-metal performance.
Ansible has unveiled an update of its Galaxy App store, kicking off a beta release of the hub for pre-packaged automation modules for its configuration platform.
Galaxy 2.0 will feature tighter integration with GitHub, allowing users to import all their repositories, while allowing roles – those prepackaged modules – to be namespaced by GitHub users. To avoid confusion, Ansible said existing roles would remain associated with Galaxy user names.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, announced the general availability of OpenShift Dedicated, a new cloud-based service targeting enterprise IT and development teams. OpenShift Dedicated includes the Docker container and Kubernetes orchestration technologies included in the recently-released OpenShift Enterprise 3.1 and builds on OpenShift Online, Red Hat's offering for individual developers to build, launch and host their applications in a shared public cloud, supported by Red Hat.
and builds on OpenShift Online, Red Hat's offering for individual developers to build, launch and host their applications in a shared public cloud, supported by Red Hat.
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) has signed collaboration agreements with the industry-leading cloud software and hardware companies, Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND, to accelerate the delivery of commercial virtualized radio access network (vRAN) products.
Collaboration with these companies will enhance Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN technology, working on the CloudBandâ⢠NFV platform, ensuring that it will meet service providers’ large-scale performance and reliability requirements.
Red Hat Inc. (RHT), the world's largest seller of Linux software, continues "to drive and benefit from the adoption of open, hybrid cloud technology as companies look to modernize the data center and on-ramp to the cloud." Also, the company believes it is well positioned for the second half of the fiscal year as it continues to benefit from delivering innovation to customers.
Red Hat has been gaining market share and its Linux servers are well positioned to drive top line growth. We believe that the company also has significant growth potential in the public cloud segment over the long term.
Going back many years, SELinux would receive much criticism over slowing down the system's performance and causing an assortment of other problems. In the early days of Fedora it would often be wise to disable Security Enhanced Linux, but in the past few years it's been in good shape. With modern hardware, is there much of a performance impact in keeping SELinux enabled?
I didn’t find the time to announce it until today, though I have finished last Friday to package Mitaka Beta 1.
I know it’s kinda sad that I have to wait for these two special days to do my (volunteer but still) job.
During all the Pi Zero hype and showcasing, most of us probably didn’t realize that the Raspbian OS got a much needed update. While this update isn’t a major release, it still contained some amazing features. If you are running Raspbian Jessie, then take a moment to read over this article so you won’t be left out in the cold. I’ll go over the best parts of the update and also provide install instructions on how to get all this on your current Raspbian install. If you are eager to pull down the update, then feel free to jump to the end of the article and follow the instructions provided.
This release fixes numerous security issues. All users must upgrade as soon as possible.
Just a few moments ago, the development team behind the Tails amnesic incognito live Linux kernel-based operating system, which was used by the famous whistleblower Edward Snowden to stay hidden online, announced the release of Tails 1.8.
A few small fixes are being prepared for Ubuntu Touch, and an intermediary OTA update is scheduled to make an appearance.
We're all focused on the Ubuntu convergence and how the Ubuntu phone can turn into a desktop experience, but we forgot about the other side of the coin. We now also have a desktop that can turn into a phone.
Canonical's à Âukasz Zemczak has sent his daily report for the day of December 15, 2015, to inform all Ubuntu Phone users about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch developers in preparation for the upcoming OTA software updates.
Canonical is making good on its promises, and it has started to disable the online search functionality in Unity's dash, for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus).
Canonical's Joseph Salisbury has announced the availability of a new installation of the weekly Ubuntu Kernel Team Newsletter, which informs Ubuntu Linux users about the latest work done by the Ubuntu kernel developers.
Canonical has just revealed that OTA 8.5 hotfix for Ubuntu Touch has been released and users will begin receiving it during the next 24 hours.
We were expecting to see this new update for Ubuntu Touch land tomorrow or maybe next Monday, but it seems like the Q&A process has been smooth and no new problems have been spotted by developers or the automatic testing process.
This new update is marked 8.5 since it's a small one and comes at the halfway point between two major OTA updates. It only corrects a few problems that couldn't wait for a few more weeks, so it's likely that users will really appreciate it.
The Unity 8 desktop isn't ready yet, but all Ubuntu users will soon benefit from its more privacy-friendly approach.
elementary OS is a desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop. elementary OS Freya 0.3.2, the latest edition, is based on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty and was released just last week.
elementary OS Freya 0.3.2 is mostly a bugfix release, with a couple of new features. The most notable refinement takes care of issues associated with booting and installation on computers with UEFI firmware and Restricted Boot (more commonly known as Secure Boot).
When it comes to desktop Linux distributions, Linux Mint is often a top option. One of the reasons why Linux Mint has been so popular with users is the distribution's relentless focus on giving desktop users the best possible experience. With the Linux Mint 17.3 release that debuted on Dec. 4, stability and incremental improvements are once again paramount. Version 17.3, code-named "Rosa," is the second milestone update for Linux Mint in 2015, following the 17.2 update on June 30. Linux Mint 17.3 provides users with multiple desktop environments, though the primary choice for many is Linux Mint's own Cinnamon desktop, which has been updated to version 2.8, improving performance and usability. Users can also choose the MATE desktop, which is a fork of the GNOME 2 desktop environment. One of the biggest changes in Linux Mint 17.3 is the ability to configure software sources to get the fastest location for downloading updates from the various software repository mirrors for Linux Mint. Linux Mint 17.3 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release and is set to receive security updates until 2019. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the improvements in Linux Mint with the 17.3 release.
While Linux 4.5 is set to receive the DRM changes for supporting open-source 3D on the Raspberry Pi and in user-space those bits are settling down in the VC4 Gallium3D driver, the game isn't over and there still is more work ahead before this open-source Raspberry Pi 3D stack will replace the closed-source RPi 3D driver.
Axiomtek’s compact PICO843 SBC runs Linux on Celeron SoCs and offers four USB ports, two COM ports, dual mini-PCIe sockets, and wide temperature operation.
Samsung Tizen TV offers developers a great platform to create new and Interactive apps and games, breaking away from the shackles of only developing for Android & iOS. We have some Interesting news as the Accessibility ToolKit (ATK) will now be supported on the upcoming 2016 Samsung TV Line up, Including Text-to-Speech (TTS). This is a feature that is recommended by Samsung, but is not mandatory for you to pass Samsung QA. There is no news at the moment if ATK it will be brought to other Samsung TV ranges.
Android Wear is rolling right along, and the Fossil Q Founder is one of the newest Android watches. What makes it particularly interesting is that it is from Fossil, a company that certainly knows how to make a watch. But how does the Fossil Q Founder stack up as an Android Watch?
It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse for HTC. After years of struggles, one of the pioneering companies that helped build the modern smartphone was recently removed from the Taiwanese Stock Exchange’s list of 50 largest firms. It’s still a part of the stock market, but it’s clear that HTC’s days of blazing trails and blazing profits are behind it.
Google’s brand new flagship Nexus 6P smartphone has only been in the hands of owners for a little over a month, but it’s already getting a quick software update. Below is everything owners need to know about the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow update. From installing it right now, how it’s performing, what’s new and more.
On October 5th Google finally released Android 6.0 Marshmallow to the public, and for manufacturers. Along with it was the Nexus 5X, and the impressive new Nexus 6P smartphones. Now less than two month later Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow is arriving for owners.
Australian banks have snubbed Apple in favour of Google as six declared on Tuesday they will go with Android Pay in the first half of 2016, while Apple is salvaging its bid to grab a share of the banks' dwindling merchant card fees.
The deal with Google, announced in a blog post by director, product management Pali Bhat, will mean Australia becomes the second country where Android Pay will be rolled out after it was launched in the US in May.
Fossil knows watches: its wide selection of timepieces are made of quality materials and with a consistent style while remaining on the affordable side of luxury. Now the fashion company is bringing its watch expertise to Android Wear with the Q Founder smartwatch. The most expensive device in the new line of Q wearables from Fossil, the Q Founder represents the first Google-powered smartwatch to come from a company that focuses more on style rather than specs.
In mid-November we saw a report that the LG G3 will be getting updated to Android 6.0 Marshmallow in December, specifically between the 16th and the 18th. It seems that the update has passed the testing phase as LG has already released the open source code for it.
The update itself is not out yet, but be on the lookout for reports from Poland, which is LG's usual market of choice for the first soak test. Note that this file is for the international LG D855 version of the G3, carrier and regional versions may get the update with a delay.
Intrinsyc has launched three Android 6.0 dev kits — phone, tablet, and board — for Qualcomm’s 14nm Snapdragon 820, with four Cortex-A72-like cores.
We only have about one week to go before your holiday shopping is officially too late. And although Black Friday weekend and Cyber Week have all come and gone, that doesn’t mean retailers have given up on trying to persuade you to part with your hard-earned cash…
There are still some great prices on great tech out there. If it’s powered by Android, has great value for money, you’ll need look no further than right below.
Google announced Wednesday that it plans to ramp up its engineering presence in India. Part of that push will involve launching a program to train two million new Android developers over the next three years, the company said. To do so, it will partner with more than 30 universities in India.
This oddity would explain why many reviewers found the operating system, which is primarily designed for smartphones, to be lacking.
I'm talking, this time, about USB Type-C -- the up-and-coming standard that's showing up on more and more Chromebooks and Android devices (as well as products from other platforms -- including even those from a certain standard-resistant fruit-themed company!).
Google's Android Pay already handles tap-and-pay transactions just fine, and today the company is launching the other half of its mobile payment platform: in-app purchases. A little over a dozen apps including Lyft, OpenTable, and Hotel Tonight are getting in-app purchases at launch, and Google says many more will be integrating the feature over the coming months — hopefully at the same level of adoption that Apple Pay has seen on iOS. A few partners from the initial list are also offering limited-time deals to encourage users to get started with Android Pay. Google says in-app purchases are just as secure and time-saving as NFC-based payments.
iOS is generally thought of as the most slick and polished mobile OS out there–the one every other mobile OS should look up to. But the fact is that Android Marshmallow has plenty of features that your iPhone doesn’t, and some of those features are kick ass. As a major iPhone fan, I realize this any time I switch to my backup smartphone – a Samsung Galaxy S5. Sure, after a few days I really miss my iPhone, but when I inevitably go back to it there are some features I miss from Android. With that in mind, here are the top 5 features I hope iOS steals from Android.
The previous version of HabitRPG (which you can still download here) was nice. However, it never seemed to cater overly much to the Android platform it was on, as evidenced by even the iOS screenshots on Play Store listing. The new version, on the other hand, has been built with a brand new interface from the ground up. The beta requires no sign up, so check it out.
With companies like TAG Heuer and Fossil now investing in Android Wear, Google knows how important it is to keep smartwatches looking stylish. As such, the company has revealed a set of fashion-centric watch faces for Android Wear devices, as part of a partnership with nine different brands. This includes designs from Asics, Harajuku Kawaii!, Mango, Melissa Joy Manning, Nicole Miller, Ted Baker, Vivienne Tam, Y-3 and Zoe Jordan.
ReactOS, the open-source operating system aiming for binary compatibility with Windows programs and drivers, is finally closer to its next big release: v0.4.
ReactOS 0.4 has been talked about for more than a year and it's been a while since the last big update, but now it looks like ReactOS 0.4 is on finals with the first release candidate having been pushed out hours ago. If you are anxious for ReactOS 0.4, you can download RC1 right away via SourceForge.
Open source.
2015 was a fairly important year for open source technology. There was no doubting that Linux had made major inroads into enterprise computing. Android and Chrome OS continued their dominance, and plenty of other open source projects were gaining serious ground.
A survey of the open source hardware tools that are enabling the flexible, integrated design that so naturally fits with the Internet of Things.
Middleware tends to be the unsung hero of technical infrastructure. Middleware doesn’t prompt great debates, like Windows vs. Apple vs. Linux OS debates of years past, and there are no TV ads for middleware. Yet middleware – the software that sits between the OS and applications – is an essential element, especially for the Internet of Things. Among other tasks, middleware often provides messaging services so different apps can connect with one another. It also helps ease the work involved with the development of apps that get services from other apps. So the six open source middleware tools on the following pages may not stir a lot of argument, but they are highly important in enabling the vast, far-flung world of the Internet of Things.
Open source software (OSS) i accessible under a software authorization that enables individuals to access the source code and customize it according to their needs, thus providing the capability to tailor the software for different jobs. The program license keeps the right of the individual to modify and customize it in any way they desire.
Finally — the golden age of open source has arrived.
Companies 20 years ago built monopolies on licensed software; today, free and open–source code fertilizes economic growth. The way to win at tech is no longer to own code, but to serve customers — and service has open source at its roots.
Like cloud storage and hardware components, coding languages hold little value by themselves anymore. The services around the code are what differentiate commodity companies from those with market value in the billions. Tesla released all of its patents to the public in 2014, jump-starting a new ecosystem of electric vehicles without threatening its own dominance.
Facebook’s entire data-center architecture is available via Open Compute, and its Apache Cassandra, released into the wild, has become a cornerstone of many an enterprise database. And that didn’t stop the social giant from reporting $12.46 billion in revenue last year.
For years, I've wondered why anyone still bothers with proprietary software. Around the turn of the millennium, they might not have found an open source alternative, but today, that situation is rare enough that it comes as a surprise.
Force of habit is a likely explanation, but often users simply don't know what they don't know. In fact, thanks to obsolete rumors, sometimes what users believe about open source is the exact opposite of the truth.
BitPay, a global bitcoin payment service provider, on Tuesday rolled out version 1.6.1 of its open source bitcoin wallet Copay.
The Cloud Foundry Foundation on Wednesday launched a certification program. The certification is the first aimed at ensuring portability across platform-as-a-service offerings across multiple vendors and clouds. The Cloud Foundry Foundation is collectively owned by 55 member companies.
The planning of orthopedic surgeries is a difficult process. In a lot of ways, it's like working while wearing a blindfold; a surgeon can't see the bone that needs to be worked on until during the actual surgery, when time is most critical. Even with X-rays and CT scans, the raw data can be difficult to interpret correctly. Fortunately, open source software can (and does!) help reduce the guesswork.
We reported the other day that Mozilla started seeding the final build of its latest stable Firefox 43.0 web browser for all supported operating system, including GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X.
Firefox OS is dead. Mozilla is giving up (again) on its Thunderbird e-mail client. And, the Firefox web browser's market share continues downhill.
Today, we are giving you more control over how your data is shared in Firefox by letting you block additional trackers in Private Browsing with Tracking Protection.
The new Firefox 43 has arrived, and we would normally be happy about that. The problem is that Mozilla has finally taken the important step of forcibly disabling add-ons that haven't been verified, and there is no option to enable them at the user's peril.
Logging AWS resources can be cumbersome, but is necessary to ensure nothing goes awry. Open source tools help aggregate and visualize AWS resource data.
There is news rolling in on the OpenStack front, especially for organizations interested in cloud monitoring and security. Mirantis and Palo Alto Networks, a company focused on security, have announced a joint partnership and the availability of Palo Alto Networks next-generation security as a virtual network function (VNF) within the Mirantis OpenStack distribution.
The PostgreSQL 9.5 release change-log was recently updated in Git to reflect all of the latest changes for this next version of this database server due out in 2016.
The changes in Git yesterday now provide an up-to-date look at the PostgreSQL 9.5 additions. Some of the PostgreSQL 9.5 features worth mentioning include row-level security control, addition of Block Range Indexes (BRIN), "substantial" performance improvements for sorting, "substantial" performance improvements for multi-CPU machines, and much more.
Today, December 15, ownCloud, Inc. and Collabora have just announced a partnership to bring a new tool for LibreOffice and ownCloud users, based on the LibreOffice Online project and the robust, open-source ownCloud Server self-hosting cloud storage solution.
CODE is a distribution of LibreOffice Online and OwnCloud Server, providing an easy way to let developers/enthusiasts run untested feature additions and updates. CODE is basically for research and development with new features and the pairing of ownCloud and LibreOffice Online. In 2016, the two companies plan to provide a commercial solution based on Collabora CloudSuite and ownCloud Server.
Today we release an easy way to get stuck into playing with LibreOffice online alongside ownCloud - please do checkout the CODE page and have a play. The purpose of my blog here is to credit the people involved in the development so far: currently all of the core work is by Collabora - that's something we hope that making it easier to get involved will improve.
In our class, I asked students to do their own usability test as a final project, from capturing the Personas, documenting the use Scenarios, defining the Scenario Tasks, and moderating a usability test on their favorite open source software project. To get them ready for the final project, I had students moderate a "mini-project." I selected the topic for the mini-project, based on what open source software everyone claimed some level of familiarity with.
The dream of an open source replacement for Windows is still alive after 17 years of development. ReactOS, an operating built from scratch to be binary-compatible with Windows programs and drivers, is nearing its 0.4 release — you can download the release candidate right now.
[...]
ReactOS isn’t ready to be your primary operating system. And it doesn’t claim to be. The project’s homepage claims it’s only “recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes. Users have tested it, uploading videos of programs they’ve managed to make work (and some they haven’t).
Greater use of open-source software also is increasing security risks. According to the developer of a new DevOps firewall technology, one in 16 third-party components downloaded from public repositories brings with it a known vulnerability. Since open-source software development shows no signs of slowing, something has to give.
Enter Sonatype, a Maryland-based startup with a public software repository firewall that leverages software supply chain automation to block obsolete or malicious open-source code and other third-party components during application development. Automated policy enforcement is integrated with the repository manager, among the first stages of enterprise software development, Sonatype CEO Wayne Jackson noted in a statement.
Today is a big day for team communication app Slack — the company is releasing an App Directory for easily discovering third-party tools that plug into Slack. But Slack is also gaining a powerful new open-source framework called Botkit that makes it very easy for developers to build their own bots.
Codename One wants the open source community to take its relatively new iOS Java VM and run with it. The VM, which the company built to replace the no-longer-maintained XMLVM its namesake software development kit (SDK) was built with, is now available as the ParparVM on GitHub.
While the LLVM Clang compiler has been working on ARMv8.1 support since earlier this year, the developers focusing on GCC have been working on it still but the first bits have been committed to trunk this morning.
Norway’s Akerhus county is sharing its early warning and crises management system. The solution is published using the Mozilla open source licence. The system is in operation in two schools, and will be implemented by other schools in Akerhus in the coming months.
Written in Java, Gaffer is a "framework that makes it easy to store large-scale graphs in which the nodes and edges have statistics such as counts, histograms and sketches," GCHQ stated in the project description. Developed primarily as a graph database, the software is "optimised for retrieving data on nodes of interest."
Spy agency GCHQ’s new open-source database has been met with skepticism by hackers, who have demanded the agency stop spying on them.
Many organizations use at least some open source code within their programs. So it is surprising that recent graduates who work with companies using open source software are usually ill prepared (or not prepared at all) to deal with open source legal issues. However, it is not the attorneys’ fault.
Open source legal training is not easy to find, and if available it is not cheap. In the Bay Area, some law schools support an "open movement" policy. For example, some of them create and promote their own commons, meaning that the journals' articles are uploaded and distributed for free online. The schools' open access policies allow attorneys to stay up-€to-€date on their education, without the stress of paying for a subscription. (See SCU commons and UC Hastings.)
There's a peculiar mix of altruism and egotism that goes into releasing an open source project. On the one hand, you might be solving a problem that others are struggling with, and sharing your solution will save them a lot of time. On the other, the near-fantastic rock star status of those who have created successful open source projects (think John Resig, Ryan Dahl, and Linus Torvalds) drives people to overshare in the hopes of also achieving such status. This has resulted in a glut of open source projects being released into the wild and their creators venturing out on marketing campaigns to attract users.
Arduino-compatible chip lets makers embed cloud-connected mobile apps right in their devices.
Earlier this year, Ars Technica got a demonstration of a technology that seeks to change how we interact with embedded computing technology—tying together Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communications, Arduino-style microcontroller technology, and mobile Internet connectivity. The chip at the core of the technology, called Simblee, allows device developers to build and deploy their own mobile applications without having to write iOS or Android code or having to publish their applications through an app store. Eight months have passed, and Simblee Corporation's eponymous chip is now shipping to pre-order customers and is for sale through electronics distributors.
This new approach to CI has been implemented at scale in the OpenStack project to manage the CI of all the different sub-projects. To give you an idea of the scale, every day OpenStack handles 1,000 proposed patch sets, 7,500 posted comments and votes on Gerrit, 16,000 test environments spawned, and 250 changes merged (source).
Here are some fresh tests of Fedora 23 with the GCC 5.3.1 compiler when running a series of benchmarks after the binaries were compiled each time with an assortment of optimization levels.
The prpl Foundation today revealed prpl.works, an online community by and for open source developers and users. Active for just a few weeks, the community has already reached over 40,000 developers from around the world.
Okay, maybe not everything you know about latency is wrong. But now that I have your attention, we can talk about why the tools and methodologies you use to measure and reason about latency are likely horribly flawed. In fact, they’re not just flawed, they’re probably lying to your face.
Google's Project Zero security team have uncovered security flaws in FireEye products which could lead to remote code execution and the compromise of full computer systems.
Tavis Ormandy from the Google Project Zero vulnerability disclosure team said on Tuesday the flaws were serious enough for FireEye to ask for time to fix the problem, which had the potential to allow remote code execution to take place via a wide range of products.
Pressing the backspace key 28 times can bypass the Grub2 bootloader’s password protection and allow a hacker to install malware on a locked-down Linux system.
The Grub system is pretty common on Linux desktops. Grub stands for GRand Unified Bootloader, and Grub2 is a continuation of its development. For a long time, another bootloader was also used by many distributions, called LiLo, which was short for Linux Loader, and while it is still actively developed, most distributions opt for Grub anymore.
...Disney also required film-goers to give in their cell phones in a bid to prevent leaks.
Indonesia is set to name the companies responsible for illegal fires that led to this year's transboundary haze crisis. The firms, which mainly run plantations on concession land in Sumatra and Kalimantan, will also have their business licences suspended while a decision is made on whether to initiate legal proceedings against them for breaching environmental laws.
With global crude oil prices at their lowest point in seven years, and gasoline prices approaching their lowest point of President Obama's term of office, Media Matters remembers Fox News' hypocritical coverage of the relationship between presidential policy initiatives and fuel and energy markets.
Indonesia’s economy took a $16bn hit this year from forest fires that cloaked south-east Asia in haze, more than double the sum spent on rebuilding Aceh after the 2004 tsunami, according to the World Bank.
The fires and resulting haze are an annual occurrence caused by slash-and-burn land clearance. But the blazes in 2015 were the worst for some years, causing air quality to worsen dramatically and many to fall ill across the region.
In a quarterly update on the Indonesian economy, the World Bank said the fires had devastated 2.6 million hectares (6.4m acres) of forest and farmland across the archipelago from June to October.
Indonesia's economy took a US$16-billion hit this year from forest fires that cloaked Southeast Asia in haze, more than double the sum spent on rebuilding Aceh after the 2004 tsunami, the World Bank said Tuesday (Dec 15).
The fires and resulting haze are an annual occurrence caused by slash-and-burn land clearance. But the blazes in 2015 were the worst for some years, causing air quality to worsen dramatically and many to fall ill across the region.
In a quarterly update on the Indonesian economy, the World Bank said the fires had devastated 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) of forest and farmland across the archipelago from June to October.
The cost to Southeast Asia's biggest economy is estimated at 221 trillion rupiah (US$16.1 billion), equivalent to 1.9 per cent of predicted GDP this year, it said.
In contrast, it cost US$7 billion to rebuild Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh after it was engulfed 11 years ago by a quake-triggered tsunami, with the loss of tens of thousands of lives, the bank said.
"The economic impact of the fires has been immense," said World Bank Indonesia country director Rodrigo Chaves.
Three days before CNN hosted the fifth Republican presidential debate, leaders from every country in the world struck a historic climate change agreement in Paris to reduce fossil fuel emissions and face up to one of the greatest threats facing our country and our planet. The Paris agreement was a front page story in newspapers throughout the U.S. and around the globe. So considering that the Pentagon says climate change "could impact national security" and experts have identified a relationship between global warming and the rise of ISIS, the issue clearly belonged in the December 15 CNN debate, which co-moderator Wolf Blitzer described as a "discussion about the security of this nation."
The 536 questions asked in the first four Republican debates, four Republican undercard debates and two Democratic debates were divided into six categories: economic, social, international, immigration, environment and non-policy questions. If the same question was asked to multiple candidates, it was counted each time, but clarifying and follow-up questions to the same candidate were not counted.
FAIR also studied the percentage of questions each candidate was asked. While moderators clearly took candidates’ positions in opinion polls into account when distributing questions, some seemed to get asked more—or less—based on media assumptions about who was and was not a serious contender.
With stunning regularity, CNN’s reporters and producers have, for the last twenty years, egregiously misreported on the evidence and eyewitness accounts pertaining to TWA Flight 800. More recent crashes, this time Metrojet’s demise, are regularly seized upon to craft news packages in which the TWA Flight 800 crash is mentioned at length. These mentions consist of repeating the same “official source” false narrative that CNN and other major news outlets have been promulgating for years, even though the public is now well aware that at least half a dozen key members of the official Flight 800 crash investigation have presented evidence showing that the official probable cause of the crash is untenable and that the physical evidence indicates that explosive ordnance caused Flight 800’s demise.
Despite it being transparently obvious that non-disparagement clauses hidden in fine print serve the singular purpose of deterring complaints about bad products and services, companies still deploy them with little fear of retribution. To date, only one state has actually banned the use of non-disparagement clauses: California.
The issue appears to have finally reached the critical mass needed to propel it onto the national legislative radar. Back in May, multiple representatives started pushing for a federal ban on these clauses, prompted in part by the high-profile KlearGear debacle, in which a couple had their credit rating ruined by the online retailer in its pursuit of a BS $3,500 fee tied to its (nonexistent at the time of the negative review) non-disparagement clause.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that the NSA's massive surveillance program had a precursor: the Drug Enforcement Administration's USTO, which monitored almost every international call American citizens made since the 1990's. Now, the EFF has confirmed that the program was killed in 2013, and that most of the data it collected had already been purged. The non-profit was able to dig deeper into the situation, since it filed a case against the DEA earlier this year on behalf of Human Rights Watch, and a federal judge has recently ordered the agency to answer all of HRW's questions about the program.
Carly Fiorina wants the government to be able to "work around" encryption to aid intelligence agencies and law enforcement in thier investigations, she told Breitbart News on Monday.
The Republican presidential candidate and former HP CEO shifted the focus of her campaign to national security two days before the last Republican debate of 2015.
"One of the places we need help is to deal with all of these encrypted communications," she said. "You can’t outlaw encryption. Encryption protects American consumers from identity theft, and all the rest of it. But we have to be able to work around it where necessary to give our investigators the information they need. I’d ask the private sector’s help in that."
Remember CISA? The "Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act"? It's getting much, much worse, with Congress and the administration looking to ram it through -- in the process, dropping any pretense that it's not a surveillance bill.
New data protection rules being discussed on Tuesday mean that teenagers below the age of 16 will have to get permission from parents to access social media websites and apps.
Specific to the UK, the UK Data Protection Act requires every data controller, from the largest enterprise to a sole trader, to register with the Information Commissioner’s Office (unless exempted). It ensures that organisations are not collecting or using data unduly, and that the data that is collected is protected and used only in a manner that complies with the articles within the Act.
NSA propagandist John Schindler has used the San Bernardino attack as an opportunity to blame Edward Snowden for the spy world’s diminished effectiveness, again.
Perhaps the most interesting detail in his column is his claim that 80% of thwarted attacks come from an NSA SIGINT hit.
As politicians and counter-terrorism officials search for lessons from the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, senior officials have called for limits on technology that sends encrypted messages.
It’s a debate that has repeatedly recurred for more than a decade.In the 1990s, the Clinton Administration directed technology companies to store copies of their encryption keys with the government. That would have given the government a “backdoor” to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies easy access to encrypted communications. That idea was dropped after sharp criticism from technologists and civil liberties advocates.
More recently, intelligence officials in Europe and the United States have asserted that encryption hampers their ability to detect plots and trace perpetrators. But many have questioned whether it would be practical or wise to allow governments widespread power to read encrypted messages.
It’s the type of message no Twitter user wants to receive: their account has been targeted by “state-sponsored actors” attempting to swipe their email address and phone number.
But that’s exactly the news that an array of Twitter users, many who do privacy- and security-related jobs, began to get on Friday. Among those targeting: programmers working on Tor, a browser that helps users maintain anonymity online. While Twitter hasn’t revealed how many users were targeted, one public list includes 35 accounts belonging to security researchers, privacy activists, and developers.
For months, a political action committee supporting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been scooping up data about New Hampshire voters who show up at other Republican candidates' campaign events across the Granite State.
While voters have been willingly turning over these data — their names, email addresses, zip codes and candidate preferences — it's unclear whether they realized the information was benefiting Christie.
The America Leads effort springs from a simple campaign reality: When people want to see political candidates in person, they usually need to show up early. "And then while they're waiting, they're on their mobile phones," said Kurt Luidhardt, who runs digital operations for the America Leads PAC. "And a lot of them are on Facebook, looking at what their friends and other folks are saying on Facebook."
Late yesterday European institutions finally agreed the text of new data protection rules (GDPR), more than three years after new regulation was proposed. The 28 Member States of the European Union will have two years to transpose the provisions of the GDPR into their national laws, with the regulation set to come into force from 2018.
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, according to a statement published on the state news agency, SPA.
“The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations centre based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations,” said the statement, which was released on Tuesday.
The "credible" threat that caused the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to close all schools on Tuesday was sent from cock.li, the "meme" e-mail host that also provides e-mail services for 8chan, the 4chan splinter site.
School officials in New York and Los Angeles reportedly both received threats from madbomber@cock.li but only LAUSD took it seriously. All 640,000 LAUSD students were unable to attend classes on Tuesday.
Vincent Canfield, the founder of cock.li, posted a copy of the subpoena he received from a New York detective on his own website and included audio recordings of polite but brief conversations with two officials from the New York Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence Bureau.
It has been a source of astonishment to me that journalists are prepared to continue to publish Straw’s denials of involvement in torture, when there is indisputable documentary proof that he is lying. I offered these documents to the Guardian years ago, but was not surprised when that Blairite rag refused to publish.
I was however surprised by this. When Straw criticised Salmond on Monday, I immediately offered these documents to the National as proof that Straw was lying. The National too refused to publish. Firstly they said that they had to consult their lawyers about whether the government would sue them. Then they said they could not work out how to condense the information into a short article (which begs the question why it had to be short). They then said they were too busy.
That's a lot of sponsoring. More simply, the technology lets you pay Verizon to get a leg up over your competitors, who may not be able to afford to pay Verizon for the same privilege. It's an idea that's been highly criticized for the fact that it puts smaller companies (and especially independents and nonprofits) at a distinct and immediate market disadvantage. And while some implementations of zero rating may seem better than others (like T-Mobile's Binge On, which exempts all video from usage caps), the precedent of giving an ISP this kind of authority remains troubling to those intimate with the telecom industry's long, long history of anti-competitive behavior.
The world of connected devices is upon us and things have never been better. Criminals can access your email account by breaking into your fridge. Your child's toys and your television record your conversations and send them to manufacturers' servers, where criminals are (again) able to access them. Your home thermostat goes HAL 9000 and attempts to set your house on fire. And, now, your light bulbs won't do the one thing you expect them to do: produce light.