As computers shrink in size, the line between mini-PCs and small desktop PCs is getting blurrier every year. As the name suggests, however, mini-PCs, are smaller than usual, usually less than five inches square and a few inches tall, making them easier to carry and hide away on a crowded desktop or behind a signage or kiosk display. They're also usually fanless, which means they're quiet and have one less moving part to break, and they tend to be cheaper, with more limited I/O. That usually translates into lower prices.
Linux talent is in high demand, and the evidence is in the numbers. According to the 2015 Linux Jobs Report from the Linux Foundation, 92 percent of IT managers plan to hire Linux pros within the next six months. The 2015 Linux Jobs Report includes data from hiring managers (1,010) and Linux professionals (3,446) and provides an overview of the state of the market for Linux careers and what motivates professionals in this industry. With the rise of open cloud platforms positively affecting this ever-growing market, a new generation of open-source projects like Docker and OpenStack ensure the longevity of developers who can hone the most cutting-edge skills. Yet in the same report, 88 percent of companies stated it is somewhat difficult to find qualified candidates. Organizations are willing to pay big bucks for those with the right qualifications. To glean more perspective from a company that is constantly looking to hire the best open-source talent, eWEEK spoke with Marie Louise van Deutekom, global HR director at SUSE, to uncover tips for Linux job seekers and showcase which skills will help them stand out.
As expected, M$’s client division is doing poorly.
The drop was huge, though, meaning they’ve been diversifying sufficiently rapidly just to keep some growth on the bottom line. One wonders how bad it would have been if not for support from Android/Linux…
See? There’s a reason this is The Year Of GNU/Linux on the Desktop. That other OS has dropped out.
Dave Chinner has sent in his XFS file-system updates targeting the Linux 4.1 kernel.
Will Deacon sent in the "ACPI for arm64" pull request today with there already being 64-bit ARM hardware on the market that supports booting with ACPI tables -- or FDT tables. ACPI for ARM is possible in the latest revisions to the specification and Linaro has been focused on making the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface a reality for this x86 competitor.
Sasha Levin had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the Linux kernel 3.18.12, an LTS (Long Term Support) version that is maintained for a few more years.
Peter Hutterer has announced the release of xf86-input-libinput, the X.Org driver for making use of the libinput library under X11 environments.
For whatever reason, there's Google developers working on CUDA improvements within the LLVM/Clang compiler.
With yesterday's release of the new open-source "AMDGPU" Linux graphics driver stack we finally have a look at some of the hardware enablement code for the graphics processors of the upcoming "Carrizo" APUs.
For those running Linux on Apple MacBook Pro laptops that have both Intel HD Graphics and a discrete NVIDIA GPU, there's new patches underway for proper GPU switching support.
Independent developer Lukas Wunner has written up / revised 11 patches for enabling GPU switching on the Apple MacBook Pro via extending vga_switcheroo and the Intel/Nouveau drivers.
Linux 4.1 will feature an updated Multiple Device (MD) driver to improve the RAID 5/6 potential for those relying upon Linux Software RAID.
With the newest OpenGL 3.1+ game now updated on OpenBenchmarking.org, prepare yourself for a new flow of graphics tests from this GPLv3-licensed game. Feel free to run this test profile too, in order to see how your system compares against other Linux gamers.
SuperTuxKart 0.9 has been released! This is the very significant update to this open-source, penguin-themed racing game. SuperTuxKart 0.9 introduces its new engine that now requires OpenGL 3.1+ with providing significantly better graphics potential.
The Shadow Warrior release for Linux did miss out a few graphical features, but the developers have now implemented them all.
I’ve tested it out and wow, the performance with everything on Ultra is amazing. I was getting above 150FPS a lot on my Nvidia 970, and this is at 1920x1080 resolution. This is how you port a game folks! Can easily recommend it now.
A key fact here is that out of around 300 people, only two people work on the Linux version (the two presenting). While it’s true that throwing more people into it doesn’t always help, it’s hard to imagine the colossal project they had to port. This presentation will give you an idea of the struggle they had, and kudos to them for their work.
If you're into roguelike video games and you're one of those Linux geeks who loves playing great titles like Dungeons of Dredmor, Cargo Commander, Bionic Dues, or The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, you should know that there's a game sale on Steam for Linux.
Kubuntu is one of the best Plasma distros, along with openSUSE. Jonathan Riddell, the lead developer of the project, just announced the release of Kubuntu 15.04.
Kubuntu 15.04 is undoubtedly one of the most impressive and important releases due to many reasons. First of all it is the first major distro to ship Plasma 5 as the default desktop environment.
One of the most interesting developments I’ve seen recently inside KDE is KAccounts (or Web Accounts, as it used to be called). It’s not even a KDE project, but a project Nokia started some years ago, I’m guessing that on MeeGo days.
We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 3.4.0 today. I’m highlighting some of the many new features below. Please take a look at our change log for a more complete list of features and fixes.
The C++ support in Qt Creator now has a new refactoring action that moves all function definitions out of a class declaration. We also added auto-completion for signals and slots in Qt 5 style connects. Just type the “&” and let auto-completion figure out the type of the object. Also new is a locator filter, All Included C/C++ Files, which finds all files that are used in your project by including them, even if they are not explicitly mentioned in your project. The filter is part of the default that is used when you just type in the Locator input field, and shares the shortcut string with Files in Any Project.
Tarballs are due on 2015-04-27 before 23:59 UTC for the GNOME 3.17.1 unstable release, which will be delivered on Wednesday. Modules which were proposed for inclusion should try to follow the unstable schedule so everyone can test them. Please make sure that your tarballs will be uploaded before Monday 23:59 UTC: tarballs uploaded later than that will probably be too late to get in 3.17.1. If you are not able to make a tarball before this deadline or if you think you'll be late, please send a mail to the release team and we'll find someone to roll the tarball for you!
There are hundreds of actively maintained Linux distributions. They come in all shapes, sizes and configurations. Yet there’s none like the one you’re currently running on your computer. That’s because you’ve probably customised it to the hilt – you’ve spent numerous hours adding and removing apps and tweaking aspects of the distro to suit your workflow.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could convert your perfectly set up system into a live distro? You could carry it with you on a flash drive or even install it on other computers you use.
Besides satisfying your personal itch, there are several other uses for a custom distro. You can spin one with apps that you use in school and pass it around to everyone in class, stuffed with class notes and other study aids. You can do something similar within a professional organisation as well that uses a defined set of apps.
There are various tools for creating a custom distro. We’ll start with the ones that are simple to use but offer limited customisation options and move on to more complex ones that enable you to customise every aspect of your distro.
Henry Jensen announced today, April 23, that the first Release Candidate (RC) version of the upcoming ConnochaetOS GNU/Linux 14.1 distribution, a free/libre computer operating system for x86 computers with limited resources, is now available for download and testing.
You can download an ISO image of RC1 from Sourceforge (md5sum sha512sum)
Webconverger, a Linux distribution used for deployment in places like offices or Internet cafes, where only web applications are used, is now at version 28 and is ready for download.
Finally, we're releasing the first installable ISO for Qubes 3.0, the Release Candidate 1 (3.0-rc1)!
Red Hat has announced its Red Hat Developer Toolset 3.1, the company’s selection of some of the latest open source C and C++ compilers and complementary development tools. Available through the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program and related subscriptions, Red Hat Developer Toolset 3.1 is targeted at application development for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but is also potentially useful for all kinds of developers and administrators depending on Red Hat's cloud tools.
Corporate IT operators love Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for its stability and support options. Developers, however, want the latest programming tools. To help settle this eternal DevOps battle, Red Hat provides the Red Hat Developer Toolset and the Red Hat Software Collections so that programmers can have up-to-date tools on the operators' rock-steady RHEL 6 or 7 servers.
Potentially making work easier for system administrators, Red Hat has updated its development packages to support running multiple versions of the same programming language on its flagship enterprise operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
Red Hat has released updates to two of its packages of third-party open source software for running programs on RHEL, Red Hat Developer Toolset and Red Hat Software Collections. Red Hat Developer Toolset is a package of compliers and related tools for the C and C++ programming languages. Red Hat Software Collections assembles a set of tools, languages and databases for building Web applications.
We made a decision to split the desktop spins away from the functional spins. Functional spins will be housed at a new site catered specifically for them: labs.fedoraproject.org. ARM builds will also have their own one-page site with references to important documentation and the Fedora ARM community as well.
Debian and other Linux distributions are running into issues with packaging up QtWebEngine, which is becoming a problem since more of the new KDE stack is becoming dependent upon this addition to Qt 5.4 that provides a web rendering engine based on Chromium.
Canonical had the pleasure of announcing the release of the Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) operating system, as well as its numerous flavors, including Ubuntu Server 15.04, Kubuntu 15.04, Xubuntu 15.04, Lubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu MATE 15.04, Ubuntu Studio 15.04, Ubuntu Kylin 15.04, and Ubuntu GNOME 15.04.
The big story today, almost seemed like the only story today, was the release of Ubuntu 15.04. In the early announcement "a converged future" was touted as the 15.04 Desktop, Kylin, Snappy Core, and the Phone was introduced. Today José Antonio Rey said, "15.04 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution." In other news, Debian 8 is on track for its April 25 release date.
Ubuntu 15.04 is finally here. I am a known KDE Plasma user so my reader may assume that I don’t run Ubuntu (with Unity) on my desktops. Which is not true. I love technology so I use almost every possible technology, which I can afford or use (including Mac OS X and iOS). Using different technologies put me in a better position to evaluate the advantages of GNU/Linux or a particular distros or DE in comparison to the rest.
I am actually a heavy Ubuntu user. I run three Virtual Private Servers (all powered by Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) which host my cloud services as well as my web sites. I also run it on my home server because Ubuntu does a great job as a server.
Ubuntu Desktop will eventually switch to Snappy packages by default, while continuing to provide deb-based images as an alternative, at least for a while. I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise for some of you, but further details regarding this have been revealed today.
Will Cooke, Ubuntu Desktop Manager at Canonical, posted a notice for Ubuntu Desktop Next users which mentions that for 15.10, the plan is to have "a build based on Snappy Personal and so the current .deb based Desktop Next image will be going away and will be replaced with the new Snappy version".
Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) was released today and it brings updated applications, various small Unity improvements including an option to always show the menus, along with numerous bug fixes.
This year’s biggest Ubuntu release – Ubuntu 15.04 – is available for download. Ubuntu is the favorite platform of developers and it now it covers a variety of devices – desktop, mobile, cloud and IoT. This is the final release after the previously released beta releases.
For a moment, Ubuntu 15.04 won’t seem much different to you. But, there are a lot of changes incorporated for you under the hood. Let’s take a look at the new features in Ubuntu 15.04 and why you need to upgrade to the Vivid Vervet.
Ubuntu 15.04, code-named Vivid Vervet, launches today and it’s bringing the controversial systemd project along with it.
Today's release of Ubuntu 15.04 is yet another installment in the slow and steady march forward from Canonical. The company knows that not every OS release needs to be accompanied by fanfare and dramatic changes to your desktop. And this edition of the popular Linux distro perfectly epitomizes that philosophy. There are basically zero user-facing interface changes, except for the ability to set application menus to always show, instead of only popping up when you mouse over them. Otherwise most of the changes are under the hood. The OS should be faster and more stable, thanks to updates to updates to the underlying system, like the Unity desktop and Linux kernel. The default apps also got some minor version bumps, including Firefox and LibreOffice.
If it’s spring, that must mean a new release of Ubuntu. This latest one is codenamed the “Vivid Vervet”, but – as has become common for Ubuntu releases – you’ll have to squint to spot the difference between this and last autumn’s “Utopic Unicorn”.
Ubuntu 15.04 has arrived, but not without a bit of controversy. Jack Wallen highlights what you can expect from the latest iteration from Canonical by way of drama and improvements.
Ubuntu has long been one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions for desktop and notebook PC users. But the company behind Ubuntu has been working to expand its reach and with the launch of Ubuntu 15.04, the operating system supports a range of devices including PCs, servers, smartphones, and “internet of things” hardware.
Canonical has officially released Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet), a Linux distribution based on Debian that uses the Unity desktop environment.
While Canonical prepares an official announcement for the Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) operating system later today, they have already started uploading the Live ISO images on mirrors worldwide.
Brace yourself Ubuntu lovers!! Yes, the final stable version of Ubuntu 15.04, code named Vivid Vervet, is now ready for download. This release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Studio and Xubuntu flavours. Ubuntu 15.04 will be supported for 9 months for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin along with all other flavours.
Canonical has announced the launch of Ubuntu 15.04. The new release, which will be supported for nine months, features LibreOffice 4.4, version 3.19 of the Linux kernel and a switch from Canonical's Upstart init to systemd.
Canonical has just published details regarding the first vulnerability identified and fixed for a package present in Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet).
Canonical has been maintaining an Ubuntu Next version that features the Unity 8 desktop environment and the Mir display server, which is designed to work on the desktop. They have announced that the current .deb based version of Ubuntu Next will be replaced with a version based on Snappy.
Kubuntu 15.04 has been released. This features the beautiful new Plasma 5 desktop from KDE.
Kubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) has been made available, and users can now download and install this pristine KDE experience.
The final version for the 15.04 branch of Ubuntu GNOME has been released and is now available for download. As expected, it comes with the latest GNOME 3.14 packages, a new Linux kernel, and many other upgrades.
The final version for the 15.04 branch of Ubuntu GNOME has been released and is now available for download. As expected, it comes with the latest GNOME 3.14 packages, a new Linux kernel, and many other upgrades.
One of the most interesting changes for regular desktop users in Ubuntu MATE 15.04 is MATE Tweak, which is installed by default and comes with a couple of new features which many MATE users will love.
Canonical released today the final version of the Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) operating system, as well as its many flavors, including Kubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu MATE 15.04, Ubuntu GNOME 15.04, Ubuntu Kylin 15.04, Ubuntu Studio 15.04, and Lubuntu 15.04.
The new Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. are now available and include the change to systemd as the init system, new versions of LibreOffice, Firefox, Chromium, etc. The big change in Kubuntu is KDE Plasma 5 as the default desktop, and also KDE Applications 14.12.
Canonical had the pleasure of announcing the release of the Ubuntu 15.04 computer operating system, dubbed Vivid Vervet, a major version powered by Linux kernel 3.19 and some of the latest Linux technologies available.
Presented by an industry expert Richard Copeman of Lauterbach, the workshop will explore how to approach a Linux project from the perspective of the development environment and debug tools
Undo Software - which this week announced a successful new funding round - will be available to discuss and explain its Linux and Android reversible debugging tools at the UK Device Developers’ Conference next month.
And a $99 Ubuntu Linux version of the Compute Stick will arrive in June, albeit with slightly lower specs: 1GB RAM, 8GB storage.
Our appreciation of mini desktop PCs is well-documented at this point. In the age of the smartphone and the two-pound laptop, the desktop PC is perhaps the least exciting of computing devices, but there are still plenty of hulking desktop towers out there, and many of them can be replaced by something you can hold in the palm of your hand.
This week Google announced the latest update to their smart watch focused operating system, Android Wear. Google did not specify the exact version number, but the previous version was 1.0.5 and each release has bumped the last digit, so best guess is this is version 1.0.6. This update adds three main features: Wi-Fi support, Always-On application support, and several welcome usability upgrades.
Mortal Kombat X, the latest installment in the classic game series, is now available on both iOS and Android. Don't pop the champagne yet - it's nothing like the classic Mortal Kombat games we've once played and had fun with. This card-based "fighting" game indeed comes with fancy graphics, but the gameplay is as disappointingly out of sync with the roots of the legendary game series.
A few weeks ago, the latest title in the legendary Mortal Kombat game series - Mortal Kombat X - executed a fatality and landed on iOS. Fortunately for Android fans, the game has just "somersaulted" and soft-released on Android in select regions.
With a Nexus Android 5.1.1 Lollipop release now confirmed for Nexus smartphones and tablets, we want to offer up some helpful tips to Nexus users poised to get the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update from Google. These tips should help make release day go a lot smoother for owners of the Nexus 5, Nexus 9, Nexus 7, Nexus Player and more.
The long wait for the Apple Watch is almost over, but wait one second—you don’t necessarily have to rush out and spend $349 (or more) to get some of its most useful features on your wrist. You can add these tweaks and third-party apps to Android Wear to get a more Apple Watch-like experience from your wearable.
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Elephone is working on a feature-rich flagship smartphone which will ship in two variants -- one running on Android 5.0 Lollipop, and the other one offering dual-boot capability with Windows 10 for phones, the company confirms to BetaNews. The Android counterpart will launch next month while the dual-boot capable phone will launch in June.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 was the first device from the company’s S lineup to boast a fingerprint scanner, and people were pretty excited about it. But as it turns out, the fingerprint scanner inside Samsung’s previous flagship houses a very dangerous flaw.
Reading through your social streams probably results in a bit of link-clickage here and there. If you're on a computer, leaving those links open in other tabs is no big deal. However, if you're on an Android device, it starts to feel less convenient to open and read links from apps like Twitter or Facebook. Sure, you can use the in-app browser for most social apps these days, but they don't have the same convenient features you'll find with Flynx.
Ever since my "tiny $20 tablet" project (see my Open-Source Classroom column in the March 2015 issue), I've been looking for more and more cool things to do with cheap Android devices. Although the few obvious ones like XBMC or Plex remotes work well, I've recently found that having Android devices around the house means I can gain back an old-school ability that went out of style in the late 1980s—namely, an intercom system.
The web-based Galaxy Zoo has switched to showing subjects from two new surveys, with new sets of questions for these surveys. So I’ve updated (see in github) the Android app too and the new version is now available in the play store. These new images are less clear, and the questions are a little harder to answer. Apparently some clearer images are on the way.
If keeping up with all those tweets is starting to feel a little overwhelming, Twitter just announced a new feature that could help — at least if you own an Android phone.
Earlier this year, it launched “While You Were Away,” which can put older, popular tweets at the top of your feed. The theme here is helping users find relevant content even if it’s not the most recent thing posted — something that could help the service seem less intimidating to casual users.
Make sure you never miss an important tweet or conversation, by enabling Highlights.
Samsung is now seeding yet another Android Lollipop firmware update - this time around the Galaxy A3 is the lucky smartphone. Samsung previously announced the entire Galaxy A series will be treated to Lollipop, so we expect the Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A7 to follow suit soon.
Some people are perfectly happy to use one of the few stock wallpapers that came preinstalled on their smartphones. But you’re not “some people.” You’re a savvy Android user and you’ve gone to great lengths to personalize your device with the right apps, widgets and even launchers, in order to ensure that your device is set up exactly how you want it.
Android Wear is getting a big update that enables a top-level app list, always-on apps, a hands-free scrolling gesture, and it's also enabling Wi-Fi support. Wi-Fi is coming not just in the software; a lot of existing devices will have their Wi-Fi functionality enabled—but not all of them.
When it comes to updating to new versions of Android, Samsung generally isn’t the quickest OEM on the block. Thankfully, this situation has changed some with Lollipop, at least as far as many of their flagship handsets are concerned. Unfortunately, tablets have been a completely different matter, with Samsung being much slower to push out Lollipop, and has only recently started introducing 5.1 to its tablet range. With that in mind, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 (Wi-Fi) is the latest tablet to get Google’s sweet treat, moving from KitKat over to Android 5.0.2.
Earlier this month, an Android 5.1.1 update mysteriously appeared alongside an update to Google’s Android SDK. Earlier this week, Google finally confirmed the Nexus Android 5.1.1 release with an update for the Nexus Player. With an Android 5.1.1 update now on the minds of Nexus users, particularly Nexus 7 users dealing with Android 5.0 Lollipop problems, we want to take a look at what we expect from the Nexus 7 Android 5.1 release going forward.
It's safe to say that Acer's gone a little batty this morning - the company crammed announcement after announcement into a press conference overlooking the New York City skyline, but some of the most interesting stuff didn't get much detail. Case in point: The company's working on an Android-powered Predator tablet to go along with its series of angular, red and black gaming PCs and it's going to launch by the end of 2015.
NVIDIA updated their SHIELD website today with a bit more information on the SHIELD Console. And while an earlier $299 device listing ended up being erroneous – NVIDIA accidentally listed the developer edition console for a time – there is one other minor update that is true and bears mentioning.
With today’s site update, NVIDIA has updated the name of the SHIELD Console. All of their branding now refers to the device as the SHIELD Android TV, doing away with the “Console” branding. The original SHIELD Console name has been somewhat inconsistent on NVIDIA’s part – the company would call it the Console at times, and other times simply the NVIDIA SHIELD – so this slight rebranding is presumably NVIDIA settling on what should be the device’s final name for next month’s launch.
This weekend over 1,400 nerds will convene at the Southfield Westin Hotel for the 12th annual Penguicon, a technical conference and social convention that marries sci-fi fandom with collaborative, nonprofit software development.
Selecting a good browser for you Linux machine depends on your needs but nowadays most of us require to use browsers for surfing Internet without some special work like development or so on. Most of us use browsers to do social networking, watching lectures for hours and playing games in browser. So here I'm reviewing Top 4 Browsers for Linux with mentioning some good and bad that I've faced.
Still, as one of the longest-standing open source productivity apps, and one that played a major role in making desktop Linux viable, OpenOffice is a venerable project. Indeed, its history stretches all the way back to 1985 (when I was still merely an idea!), and it has been open source since 2000. If it folds, it will be one of the first big-name open source apps to do so—even if few people notice as they continue happily chugging along on LibreOffice.
A recent report prepared on the state of Apache OpenOffice shows that the organization is having a difficult time. While mailing list activity remains robust, there are few mentor for would-be developers and there’s currently no release manager. We won’t quote directly from the document, as its currently listed as a work-in-progress, but interested readers can find it here.
Businesses and development teams are under ever more pressure to produce new apps to meet tight deadlines, this can lead to the creation of apps that fail to meet user requirements.
Platform as a service company WaveMaker is looking to streamline the development process for enterprise developers and non-programming users with the announcement of WaveMaker Desktop, a free, open source, browser-based, single-developer version of its recent WaveMaker Studio 7 release.
Typesafe, provider of the world's leading Reactive platform and the company behind Play Framework, Akka, and Scala, today announced that Akka has been honored by JAX readers as the "Most Innovative Open Source Tech in 2015." Akka is a toolkit and runtime for concurrent, distributed and resilient message-driven applications on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Operating systems like CoreOS and Joyent's SmartOS/Triton have worked to redefine, in radically different ways, what an OS needs to be to run applications at scale in the cloud.
Now another OS is set to join the ranks of those trying to do the cloud-OS thing in a maverick way: OSv, an open source, hypervisor-optimized OS "designed to run an application stack without getting in the way."
On the 27th we get to officially announce the results from the GSoC application process to the students, so we should probably use this opportunity to also have a first discussion with those that have been selected. So, let's have the 6th develper Mumble on Monday, April 27th, 9pm CEST, as usual using the Mumble server on gnunet.org.
The open source tool is provided for three computer operating systems, two proprietary ones and Linux. According to Seres marketing manager Alberto Redondo Correas, the software is hindered by its dependency on Java, and has to deal with different versions and inconsistent updates per platform. “A web service would perhaps be better”, he says.
According to a new study that was discussed today, April 23, in a committee meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels, a group of IT security experts think that the European Union should finance key open source projects that strengthen privacy and security, and configure certification schemes for fundamental open source tools.
The growth of mobile traffic to news sites raises the challenge of packing large amounts of information onto a small screen, a challenge even more present in stories with data visualisations.
We’re excited to announce the upcoming launch of the CIR Impact Tracker, an open-source software platform for media organizations and content producers to keep track of outcomes and impact. We’ll be looking to have this new product live in early fall. Here’s a bit more about it and how it can help your newsroom.
The Bulgarian government wants to increase its eGovernment efforts. It is starting a new agency in the Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications, by splitting the current Information Technology and eGovernment department in two. The eGovernment agency “will focus on one of the main priorities of the government”, it announced on Wednesday.
Back in October of 2014, I was lucky enough to be elected to the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) board. Because the association received its nonprofit status, the board is finally able to begin increasing its reach in the community. Many new initiatives are being discussed, and we've been collecting a lot of community input on what is needed in the open source hardware world. One of the main objectives the board has in mind for the next year is to continue building up the community interaction and awareness of the association.
We used an Arduino open-source microcontroller between input and output sources. This allowed us to use hippocampal local field potentials (LFPs) to steer electrical stimulation in the mRt. Our results showed that closed-loop DBS significantly suppressed locomotion compared to no stimulation, and required on average only 56% of the stimulation used in open-loop DBS to reach similar effects. The main advantages of open-source hardware include wide selection and availability, high customizability, and affordability. Our open-source closed-loop DBS system is effective, and warrants further research using open-source hardware for closed-loop neuromodulation.
Sony Pictures Entertainment executives were concerned about a news report that showed one of its cameras being used to guide Israeli rockets bombing Gaza, company correspondance.
Correspondence about the situation from last August was part of the release by WikiLeaks last week of more than 173,000 emails and more than 30,000 company documents. The story was first reported by the Electronic Intifada.
The correspondence among Michael Lynton, the company’s CEO; Stevan Bernard, its head of corporate security; and David Diamond, executive assistant to the company chairman, included a link to an Iranian Press TV report in which the reporter held up a part of a bomb fired by Israel on Gaza during last summer’s conflict and said it contained a camera marked Sony.
"Global Warming" sounds like a nice respite on a cold winter's evening.
And that’s just last year; in 2013, BGR got another $590,000 from Chevron, and $450,000 in 2012. In 2011, they got a million dollars form Gas Natural SDG, a Spanish methane-burning utility. And on and on.
The creator of software that stops adverts from appearing on websites has defeated two news publishers that want to prevent its tech being used on their pages.
One of the world’s oldest and most venerable medical journals is under attack from an international group of more than 500 doctors over its coverage of the humanitarian disaster caused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Lancet and its editor, Richard Horton, have been targeted over what the group claims is the “grossly irresponsible misuse of [the journal] for political purposes”. The controversy was sparked by an article deemed to be critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
The protesting doctors, including five Nobel laureates as well as Lord Winston, the broadcaster and IVF pioneer, style themselves “concerned academics”, and accuse the journal of publishing “stereotypical extremist hate propaganda”. They also accuse the journal’s owner, the publishing firm Reed Elsevier, of “profiting from the publication of dishonest and malicious material that incites hatred and violence”.
We've written in the past how Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Senator Ron Wyden had introduced "Aaron's Law" (named after Aaron Swartz) as a way to fix the very broken CFAA law, which was used to throw the book at Swartz for downloading too many JSTOR journal articles on MIT's campus (where anyone on the network is allowed to download whatever they want from JSTOR). Swartz later committed suicide, which many blame on the aggressive prosecution against him (I hesitate to join those who do so, as you never know all the factors that went into the decision). Still, the CFAA has long needed a massive overhaul, as the law is frequently abused by law enforcement to threaten massive penalties for rather routine activities on a computer network.
If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide, right? That's what the government tells us when it wants to erect cameras and fund domestic surveillance efforts. So, what do you tell a police officer who demands a citizen hand over their phone? Even if the officer has done something wrong, he still can at least attempt to hide it. And even if the effort fails, he still likely has nothing to fear. That's the imbalance of power at work and it leads directly to this sort of thing.
New Jersey police may have gone too far when they took the cell phone from an onlooker who recorded their encounter with a suspect who was mauled by a police dog and later died.
The man, Phillip White, had dog bites all over his body last week, his lawyer said, and a jarring video shows cops struggling to pull the dog away.
“Freddie Black” is what GD and some of his other friends called him. His real name was Freddie Gray. Gray, 25, was minding his business near Gilmore homes when the cops tried to stop him for no apparent reason.
He ran, like a lot of black men do when we see cops, because for our generation, police officers have been the most consistent terrorists in our neighborhoods. Plus we are currently in a culture where a cop can shoot you if you put hands up, or if you follow their directions, or if you lie down, or if you are asleep. I swear they see black skin and think bull’s-eye.
A pack of BCPD officers pursued Gray in traditional bully fashion, caught him, found a legal pocketknife and arrested him for no reason. Who knew that running with a pocketknife is against the law in Baltimore? Once they got Gray into the van, he seems to have been taken on what we call a Nickel Ride, which is basically when cops throw you in a vehicle, drive crazy and beat you until you reach the police station.
The cops who arrested Gray apparently took it to another level, severing his spinal chord and smashing his voice box. Police officers are responsible for following the rules provided by the Red Cross or National Institute of Health: Do not bend, twist or lift the person’s head or body, do not attempt to move the person before medical help arrives unless it is absolutely necessary and do not remove any clothing if a spinal injury is suspected. Instead these officers beat and dragged his lifeless limbs across the pavement that probably caused further damage to his spinal column.
For a while now, Techdirt has been writing about the extraordinary corporate sovereignty chapters in trade agreements that grant foreign companies far-reaching powers to sue a government simply for issuing regulations that impact their investments. Recently, there has been a textbook example of how the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals that adjudicate corporate sovereignty cases are literally a law unto themselves.
Trying to justify the cable industry's latest lawsuit over net neutrality, former FCC boss turned top cable lobbyist Michael Powell has offered up an incredibly entertaining interview in which he struggles to understand why Google tends to see higher customer satisfaction ratings than the cable industry, and tries to brush away anti-competitive concerns as the ramblings of the uninformed masses who just don't understand what a sweetheart the cable industry truly is.
The European family of trade mark owners, practitioners, consumers, judges and administrators has been waiting patiently to find out what might be the fate of the European Commission's proposals for trade mark reform. Today we have found out: both the EU Council and the European Parliament are, at least in theory, supportive. This Kat reproduces today's media release below, with a few comments inserted in bold red print. This is how it reads:
The claimant was the leading sports article manufacturer Puma, who owns the well-known German word-device trade mark for the word element "PUMA" combined with the outline of a jumping puma. The sign is used on sports wear. The defendant was the owner of the younger German word device trade mark registration for the word element "PUDEL" (English: poodle) and the outline of a jumping poodle, which had been registered since early 2006 for clothing and t-shirts, among other goods.
The announcement of the Canadian Government's plan to extend copyright terms for sound recordings came as a surprise when it was released in Canada's federal budget yesterday. The smooth stage management of the announcement has to be admired, accompanied as it was by pre-prepared soundbites from Canada's music A-list extolling the benefits of this handout. In fact, with all the drama and glamor of the announcement, all that was missing was any prior public consultation or debate that could give the government an actual mandate to make this sweeping change to Canadian law.