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06.09.13

Links 9/6/2013: Android Tablets Domination, Many PRISM Links

Posted in News Roundup at 5:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Lilbits (6-06-2013): Angry Birds on E Ink, Linux on Haswell

    I love watching people make hardware do things it wasn’t necessarily designed for. E Ink was designed for reading books, but it turns out you can also use it in a fully-functional tablet. And while Intel’s new 4th-generation Core processors were designed first and foremost to power computers running Windows, you can also run Android, Ubuntu or other operating systems.

  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Linux Desktop

    How often do you stop to look at your desktop? I can honestly say, I look at my desktop more or less depending on what OS I’m using. Is that weird?

  • Distributions: The Evolution of Linux

    Having recently said goodbye to two really great distributions in Cinnarch (reborn as Antergos) and Fuduntu (replaced by FuSE Cloverleaf Linux), I was shocked at the number of people that still think there are too many Linux distributions out there. While I was sad to see these two great distributions go, I’m excited for what we’ll see in the future both because of these distributions and because of their teams. This is exactly how the Evolution of Linux works.

  • Tell people you use Linux

    But what if there are too many people, and you can’t talk to [all of] them really… But still want to get the message “I am a Linux user” delivered? In this case, put this message on something visible. Computer sticker, mug, pen – the options are there. And, of course, with this summer season asking us to change clothes to something light, T-shirt is a nice way to promote your favourite operating system too!

  • SphinUX OS Claims To Be ~150% Faster Than GNU/Linux

    SphinUX OS is an open-source POSIX-compatible operating system developed under the GPLv3 and running the Egyptian LSX Kernel Architecture. This open-source operating system claims to be much faster than Linux and that its memory usage can even be 3x less! This is an operating system with some of the most wildest performance claims we have ever seen.

    The SphinUX OS desktop operating system release supposedly performs around 150% better than GNU/Linux, which the developers describe as their closest rival in SpinUX results. The advertised system requirements for this operating system that uses the KDE desktop is a 333MHz CPU, 256MB of system memory, 10~20GB of disk space, and any graphics adapter.

  • AMD breaks from Windows exclusivity, adopts Android and Chrome OS
  • AMD will develop chips for Android and Chrome OS, but only if someone asks first

    AMD chips could make their way into tablets and laptops running Android and Chrome OS. According to PCWorld, AMD is willing to alter the design of its chips — which are currently tailored to run Windows 8 machines — and optimize them for other operating systems. However, it won’t be immediately going ahead with the plan. Instead, AMD appears to be interested in working with its partners on specific projects, rather than developing chips for broader availability.

  • Desktop

    • Checkbook NYC goes open source

      New York City Comptroller John C. Liu today published the source code for the Checkbook NYC financial transparency website, and announced several partnerships that will enable other governments to rapidly leverage New York City’s investment in order to create similar websites of their own. The announcements were made at an event held for the press during the 10th annual Personal Democracy Forum, currently underway in NYC.

    • Still More Work To Do

      Today, Walmart sent me an e-mail. It contained all kinds of links to wonderful stuff for Father’s Day. I am sad to report there is still very little choice of OS on their site… Of the hundreds of notebook computers offered, “7″, “8″, and XP were all over and there were just a few Chromebooks. No GNU/Linux at all. This is insane considering that they sell dozens of tablets running Android/Linux.

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • SATO Launches Linux and Mac OS X Printer Drivers
    • The People Who Support Linux: Giving a Public System a Web Interface Lift

      As an IT manager for the Mt. Lebanon Municipality near Pittsburgh, PA, Nick Schalles recently faced a familiar but difficult problem for those maintaining public infrastructure. How could they update an old system to meet the new demands of the digital age and stay within a public agency budget?

    • Kernel Log: Coming in 3.10 (Part 1)

      Linux 3.10 sees improvements in the way lost packets at the end of TCP transactions are handled, speeding up HTTP data transfer. It also sees the addition of support for VLAN stacking and Realtek’s RTL8188EE wireless chip.

    • TPPS: A New Linux Kernel I/O Scheduler

      The Tiny Parallel Proportion Scheduler (TPPS) is a new I/O scheduler for Linux to appear on the kernel mailing list.

    • GStreamer 1.1.1 Draws In New Features, Plug-Ins

      Version 1.1.1 of GStreamer Core and Plugins have been released, which provide new features and plug-ins for this important open-source multimedia framework.

    • GStreamer 1.1.1 introduces new APIs and plugins

      The GStreamer project has announced the release of GStreamer 1.1.1, the latest release in the development branch of the open source media framework. The development branch offers insights into what the framework will offer in its next stable release, which will be 1.2.x. Changes from the last stable version, GStreamer 1.0 (currently at 1.0.7) include eight new APIs, a number of new plugins, improvements to the framework’s video handling and a number of bug fixes. The GStreamer 1.x series is not backwards compatible with the 0.10.x series, which is no longer being maintained.

    • The Linus and Dirk show

      Linus Torvalds and Dirk Hohndel sat down at LinuxCon Japan 2013 for a “fireside chat” (sans fire), ostensibly to discuss where Linux is going. While they touched on that subject, the conversation was wide-ranging over both Linux and non-Linux topics, from privacy to diversity and from educational systems to how operating systems will look in 20-30 years. Some rather interesting questions—seemingly different from those that might be asked at a US or European conference—were asked along the way.

    • Linux Kernel 3.9.5 Is Now Available for Download

      A few minutes ago, Greg Kroah-Hartman happily announced that the fifth maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.9 kernel series is now available for download.

    • Allwinner SoC Still Unlikely For Upstream Linux Kernel

      While Allwinner ARM SoCs are found within massive amounts of the low-cost Android tablets manufactured in China, and there is some open-source Allwinner Linux kernel support, it’s still unlikely that the patches will land upstream anytime soon.

    • New stable kernels

      A new batch of stable kernel releases is available.

    • ARM Mali Mesa Driver, New Code & Overclocking

      The Lima driver is slowly but surely progressing for supporting ARM Mali graphics hardware in an open-source world. A Mesa driver has been started, their demo code can be faster than the binary driver, user-space memory management is being tackled, and evidently the management at ARM Holdings isn’t too happy.

    • KVM/MIPS: Implement hardware virtualization via the MIPS-VZ extensions.

      These patches take a somewhat different approach to MIPS virtualization via the MIPS-VZ extensions than the patches previously sent by Sanjay Lal.

    • Graphics Stack

      • The Wayland Situation: Facts About X vs. Wayland

        With the continued speculation and FUD about the future of Wayland at a time when Canonical is investing heavily into their own Mir Display Server alternative, Eric Griffith with input from Daniel Stone have written an article for Phoronix where they lay out all the facts. The “Wayland Situation” is explained with first going over the failings of X, the fixings of Wayland, common misconceptions about X and Wayland, and then a few other advantages to Wayland. For anyone interested in X/Wayland or the Linux desktop at a technical level, it’s an article certainly worth reading!

      • Intel 2.21.9 X.Org Driver Calls Out More Regressions

        Chris Wilson of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center is back to pushing out xf86-video-intel driver updates at an expedited rate. Rather than the new releases being about advancing the SNA acceleration architecture or new features, the past few have been about correcting regressions and other bugs.

      • Weston 1.1.1 Release Brings Bug-Fixes

        As the first point release since the exciting release of Wayland/Weston 1.1, important bug-fixes have landed for the display protocol’s reference compositor.

      • Intel Graphics Get Ready For Linux 3.11 Kernel

        While the Linux 3.10 kernel hasn’t even been released yet, the Intel Open-Source Technology Center developers working on the Linux graphics stack already have a lot of worthwhile changes heading into the Linux 3.11 kernel.

      • VIA DRM Driver Finally Proposed For Mainline Linux

        It looks like with the Linux 3.11 kernel there is finally the potential for the VIA DRM graphics driver that’s long been in development to enter the mainline kernel source tree.

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Haswell HD Graphics 4600 Performance On Ubuntu Linux

        After delivering the Intel Core i7 4770K Haswell benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux this week already, which focused mostly on the processor performance, in this article are the first benchmarks of the Haswell OpenGL Linux performance. Testing was of the Intel HD Graphics 4600 graphics core found on the i7-4770K, which under Linux is supported by Intel’s open-source driver.

      • The Linux Evolution For Intel Haswell’s Performance

        While the Intel Haswell CPUs were just launched days ago, there’s already quite a Linux story to them. The Haswell CPU is interesting and the performance is good, but there’s still extra headroom to make especially when it comes to the graphics driver and performance relative to Intel’s Windows driver. Even so, the Intel Haswell Linux support has already evolved a great deal.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • The state of FOSS Desktop Environments and Window Managers. Pt 1

      First off, I would like to preface this by saying that I am one of the Project leads for Cloverleaf Linux, which is a continuation of a design ideal from Fuduntu, the things I write here for FOSS Advocates are *my* opinion, and my opinion only, I am not speaking on behalf of Cloverleaf Linux, or it’s development team in any of my postings here, developing a distribution just tends to give a guy some insight into certain things… I would also like to say, that I am not a fan of GTK/Gnome, and haven’t ever been, *but* I am going to try to remain somewhat objective here.

    • Xfce Theme Manager: A Single GUI To Change Any Xfce Theme (With Previews)

      Xfce uses multiple settings GUIs for setting the window border, controls, icons, mouse cursor theme and so on and it doesn’t include any thumbnails. However, if you customize your Xfce desktop frequently, you can use a tool called Xfce Theme Manager which allows you to change the themes from a single GUI and it also includes thumbnails so you can see how the theme looks like before applying it.

    • New X DRI3 Extension Starts Working On GNOME, KDE

      Keith Packard has announced that the first of two new DRI3 (DRI3000) extensions for X.Org is working and the new extension can cooperate with the loading of the complete KDE and GNOME desktops.

      DRI3 (also known as “DRI3000″) is an update to the Direct Rendering Infrastructure that’s been talked about since last September when the X.Org crew were drinking beers in Bavaria.

    • The Snowy Desktop

      We’ve highlighted Dobbie03‘s linux desktops before, and they’ve all been great, but this week he’s changed things up a bit. There’s more useful data on-screen, ringed around the edges so it’s visible but doesn’t get in the way. The wallpaper and some themes are all you need to bring this desktop to your Linux system.

    • How-To: Make Xfce Like Unity

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • A bit more about Artikulate
      • A bit more about Artikulate

        This post is to explain to the readers more about Artikulate. Artilkuate is the pronunciation trainer software for different languages. Currently supported languages are: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Catalan, Greek, British English and American English. The user can choose the language that he would like to perfectionate and follow the units prepared for this language course such as: Tourism, Alphabet, numbers, sports, etc. In each of the units the user can choose between practicing words, expressions, whole sentences or paragraphs (2-3 sentences) which all together are called phrases. The phrases are pre-recorded by native speakers and the user can listen to them. The user can also record himself speaking the same phrase and compare how close he is to a native version. There is also an option of practicing a particular phoneme that the user has particular difficulties with.

      • New Plasma scripting features in 4.11

        Since Martin blogged about the new scripting related features in kwin coming to 4.11 today, I figured that I would do the same for plasma-desktop.

      • New KWin Scripting Feature in 4.11
      • June Updates to KDE Plasma and Applications
      • KDE 4.10.4 Officially Released, Fixes over 50 Bugs

        The KDE Project happily announced last evening, June 4, the immediate availability for download and update of the fourth maintenance release for the KDE Software Compilation 4.10 desktop environment.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Gnome Sound Recorder mock-ups!

        Gnome Sound Recorder that is now considered to be obsolete, is on the way of finally returning as a new project through the hands of Meg Ford and Google Summer of Code 2013. Although the work is still on a very early phase, some mock-ups popped up in the last few days and along with those already existed for months now, they are forming a general logic behind the design we should expect.

      • New GNOME Control Center Unstable Release Brings Dozens of Features

        The GNOME Project announced a few days ago the immediate availability for download and testing of a new development release for the upcoming GNOME Control Center 3.10 application, which will be part of the GNOME 3.10 desktop environment.

      • One Week With GNOME 3 Classic: Days Six and Seven (Conclusions)
      • How to try GNOME OS ..yes GNOME OS ;)

        A while ago I had made that post “Welcome the 50GB RAM 32Cores GNOME OSTree Server“, which is basically a server that creates boot-able daily images of GNOME Desktop. Since then I forgot to give some info how you can try them.

        At this point -just to make clear- this is not about a GNOME Distro but about a testing platform. There isn’t an upgrade tool (like yum or apt-get) and is strongly recommended to do not use sensitive data (as SSH private keys) in this installation, as there aren’t any security updates.

      • GNOME 3.9.2 Is Now Ready for Testing

        Javier Jardón Cabezas from the GNOME Release Team announced a couple of days ago that the second development release of the upcoming GNOME 3.10 desktop environment is ready for download and testing.

      • Telling GNOME’s Story

        The 2013 GNOME Marketing hackfest finished yesterday. We did many things over the course of the three day event: we updated the design of the website, discussed new outreach initiatives and planned how to clean up the marketing wiki pages. But our main focus was the development of a clear story for the GNOME Project. We spent a long time talking about why GNOME is important and how we think that contributors think and feel about what they do.

        We refined and defined these ideas, pulled them together to form an integrated identity, and started the work of translating them into text and pictures with which they can be communicated.

  • Distributions

    • Meet Puppy Linux

      Many geeks know about Puppy Linux and use it for their daily needs, but there are many others that have not heard about Puppy. Puppy is an extremely small Linux operating system in which its main goal is to stay small and fulfill all daily user’s needs.

    • Review: Semplice 4 “Atom Heart Mother”

      A couple of people have asked in comments (especially of my review of #! 11 “Waldorf”) that I review Semplice. I took a look at its website and was pretty intrigued, so here is the review.

    • Void Linux: A Rolling-Release Distro From Scratch

      Void Linux is a rolling-release Linux distribution that focuses upon speed, reliability, and flexibility. Void Linux deploys is built from scratch, deploys its own XBPS package manager, and builds upon existing packages like systemd and DKMS.

    • New Releases

      • TurnKey 12.1
      • Clonezilla 2.1.2-11
      • ROSA Presents ROSA Desktop R1

        Yesterday the ROSA Company announced the release of ROSA Desktop Fresh R1, “a new name distribution based on the ROSA Fresh platform.” The announcement explained that this new “R” series is for “advanced users and enthusiasts who will appreciate rich functionality and freshness of distribution components without serious loss of quality.”

      • ROSA Desktop Fresh R1: For advanced users, but even better for new users

        Summary: This article is about ROSA Desktop Fresh R1, a “new” Linux desktop edition from ROSA Laboratory, a Linux software provider based in Moscow, Russia.

        I’m always on the search for desktop distributions that make computing very easy for new users. Whether such distributions use GNOME or KDE or any other desktop environment, if they are new user-friendly, I love to take them out for a spin.

      • SystemRescueCd 3.7.0 Includes Linux Kernel 3.9.4

        François Dupoux proudly announced last evening, June 5, the immediate availability for download of the SystemRescueCd 3.7.0 Linux-based operating system, which can be used for rescue and recovery tasks.

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva 2013…What it might look like

        Because of all the problems that Mandriva experienced, many people have assumed that the distro is quite dead by now. However, the foundation OpenMandriva has been busy gathering infrastructure, collecting historical releases, organizing teams and basically, doing everything that they must not to let the distro that freed many from Redmond’s OS disappear.

      • They Make Mageia – the Sysadmin team : Installation and configuration of software on Mageia servers

        In the Mageia project the sysadmin team is responsible for the setup and maintenance of all the Mageia infrastructure, for users and contributors alike. To help people understand what this team does, and to share some ideas with other sysadmins, we will publish a series of posts to explain the things that we do.

      • New videos for Mandriva Pulse 2

        As the next release of Pulse 2 is almost out of the door Mandriva has uploaded a set of videos showing Pulse 2, its management software for heterogenous and distributed I.T. infrastructures.

    • Gentoo Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Gluster Community and New Charter Members Take Next Step in Driving Open Software-Defined Storage Innovation

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that seven charter member organizations have signed letters of intent to join the Gluster Community, the leading open source community for open software-defined storage. This marks the second major expansion of the Gluster Community in recent weeks and follows the expansion from a single project, GlusterFS, into multiple projects under the Gluster Community umbrella.

      • OpenStack Cloud Builder Mirantis Raises $10M In Second A Round From Red Hat, Ericsson And SAP Ventures
      • Red Hat Promotes GlusterFS Distributed Storage System

        In a move that underlines the growing importance of distributed storage systems to the growth of open source in the Big Data and cloud computing worlds, Red Hat (RHT) announced this week the launch of the Gluster Community, a new consortium of organizations with stakes in open storage systems. And the identities of the charter members say a lot about where exactly this niche is headed.

      • Red Hat discloses RHEL roadmap

        We think that people who are accustomed to Gnome 2 will use classic mode until they’re ready to experiment with modern mode. Classic mode is going to be the default for RHEL 7, and we’re in the final stages now. We’re tweaking it and having people experiment with it. The last thing we want to do is disrupt our customers’ workflows.

      • Red Hat betas web-developer tool collection

        Red Hat has released a beta of its new Software Collections 1.0 add-on package for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, which is designed to help web application developers by packaging together dynamic languages and databases. The 1.0 version of the collection contains Ruby 1.9.3 with Rails 3.2.8, Python versions 2.7 and 3.3, PHP 5.4, Perl 5.16.3, and a technology preview of node.js 0.10, which can be coupled with stable versions of MariaDB 5.5, MySQL 5.5 or PostgreSQL 9.2, all of which are also included. These versions are a lot newer than the versions that come with RHEL 6 – most of the programs in RHEL 6 are around the same versions as they were when RHEL 6 was released in November 2010.

      • Red Hat packages newer versions of Ruby, Python

        Red Hat has put out a beta release of Software Collections 1.0, in a bid to let developers use newer versions of languages such as Ruby and Python with support.

        For certain applications, a more recent version of a language than what’s included in the base Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system is needed, according to Red Hat. Software Collections 1.0 is the first in a series of releases designed to allow developers to take advantage of new capabilities in their web apps faster with the safety net of support from Red Hat, it said.

      • Red Hat announces ceremony date surrounding office tower

        Open source software giant Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) has publicly announced a date for the ribbon cutting at Red Hat Tower, formerly the Progress Energy building.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora Day One: Installation

          So far my first day with Fedora 18 has been quite a pleasant experience. However, I’ve been doing nothing but installing and configuring the OS instead of actually doing any real work. So far I have all my data moved over, some applications installed, and some basic tweaks to the system.

        • Fedora 19 XFCE + Compiz

          Recently I decided to make it effective XFCE desktop so and on XFCE Desktop If we wanna activate compiz and emerald effects. That’s easy now.

        • The heroes of Fedora 19 Beta testing

          Fedora 19 Beta was released last week. As usual, here are some interesting statistics from different areas of our testing efforts. No matter how large your contribution was, if you’ve helped us, thank you.

        • A Look Ahead to Fedora 19

          Fedora 19 is the community-supported Linux distribution that is often used as a testing ground for features that eventually find their way into the Red Hat Enterprise Linux commercial distribution and its widely used noncommercial twin, CentOS. Both distributions are enormously popular on servers and so it’s often instructive for sysadmins to keep an eye on what’s happening with Fedora.

          Fedora prides itself on being at the bleeding edge of Linux software, so all the cool new features tend to get implemented there before they are included in Ubuntu and the other popular distros.

        • Fedora’s DNF May Have App Store

          Following Rahul Sundaram’s recent update on DNF, the new Fedora software manager, comes Richard Hughes and his bullet points on the subject. A lot of brains were stormed in the making of this list and it appears that “users” are first in mind.

        • Fedora Day Two: Customisation
        • Fedora 19 Installer Comes For Google Nexus 4

          An installer has come about to easily install Fedora 19 for ARM on the unlocked Google Nexus 4 smart-phone.

        • fedora 19 installer for nexus4
        • Korora 19 (Bruce) beta is out
        • Weekly Fedora kernel bug statistics – June 07 2013

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Phone Video Demo

            Today I recorded a video demo of Ubuntu running on the Galaxy Nexus and showcasing much of the progress in May to turn the phone into a usable daily phone for early testers. The demo shows recieving a call and text, web browser, social networking integration, multitasting, a number of the apps, messaging menu, and more.

          • Ubuntu Touch progress shown off in latest video

            A lot has changed since the first images of the phone were released. The phone functionality, for instance, actually works this time. The video gives us a look at a number of things, including gestures, a couple of the native apps and notifications. As we’ve heard before, Ubuntu for mobile will use the Unity launcher—the same interface that is used in the desktop version of Ubuntu.

          • Ubuntu Tweak ready for Ubuntu 13.04
          • Ubuntu 13.10 to Bring Vastly Improved Unity Dash with 50 New Scopes

            The “Unity Dash” in Ubuntu has always been designed around the goal of delivering relevant information to the user, but come version 13.10, due out in October, things are about to become vastly improved. With that release will come 50 brand-new “Scopes”, along with a “SmartScope” filtering service. With these, users will be able to fine-tune their results like never before, and also access a bunch of information that wasn’t previously possible.

          • Ubuntu 13.04 Unity Desktop Privacy Settings

            Ubuntu is taking further steps toward online integration, and it appears that these changes will continue. The last few Ubuntu releases left several users concerned about their privacy and security, but control is still in the hands of the user. Here, I will point out some of the privacy settings that will keep your data safe. 13.04 brought few significant changes for privacy settings, but more upgrades are expected for 13.10.

            [...]

            When this option is turned on, users will see Amazon listings in their dash search results.

          • Ubuntu Phone OS now supports cellular data, social sharing, more

            Ubuntu Phone OS is a Linux-based operating system for smartphones and touchscreen devices such as tablets, and it’s still very much a work in progress. When the developers at Canonical started showing off Ubuntu Phone OS in January, it didn’t support phone calls, cellular data, or much of anything else. It didn’t even really run any apps.

          • Ubuntu 13.10 Readies Arrival of Smarter Unity Dash

            Unity’s much-delayed Smart Scopes Service is preparing to land in the daily builds of Ubuntu 13.10.

          • Ubuntu Tweak 0.8.5 Fixes Ubuntu 13.04 Issues

            Ubuntu Tweak, a very useful utility designed for Ubuntu users who want to tweak various aspects of their open source operating system, reached version 0.8.5, as announced by its developer, Tualatrix Chou.

          • Introducing Ubuntu Touch Manager
          • The Current State, Preview Of The Ubuntu Phone

            For those that haven’t yet tried out the Ubuntu Phone first hand by loading it onto one of the supported devices, here’s a video of the latest Ubuntu Phone version on the Galaxy Nexus smart-phone.

          • Ubuntu Touch progress shown off in latest video

            A lot has changed since the first images of the phone were released. The phone functionality, for instance, actually works this time. The video gives us a look at a number of things, including gestures, a couple of the native apps and notifications. As we’ve heard before, Ubuntu for mobile will use the Unity launcher—the same interface that is used in the desktop version of Ubuntu.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon

              Linux Mint 15 “Olivia” has been released so it’s time for another review of one of the most popular distros of all time. Linux Mint has always been one of my favorite distros, it has so much to offer any desktop linux user. This release doesn’t disappoint either. There’s quite a bit here for fans of Linux Mint, and it’s almost certain that most of them will want to upgrade to Linux Mint 15.

            • Linux Mint 16 Will Have Cinnamon 2.0

              In a recent interview for the Linux User & Developer magazine, Clement Lefebvre, revealed some of the goals for the next major release of the Linux Mint operating system.

              When asked by the Linux User & Developer magazine reporter whether the upcoming Linux Mint 16 will include the Cinnamon 2.0 desktop environment, Clement Lefebvre answered yes, revealing that this is definitely on their to-do list.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi’s Father Speaks: Eben Upton On The Future of Technology And More

      Enthusiasm radiates from Eben Upton. By day he’s the Technical Director and ASIC architect for Broadcom. By night, and on weekends, he’s the driving force behind the Raspberry Pi, that small computer that has been revolutionising hobbyist computing and the future of technology itself since its launch in 2012.

    • Raspberry Pi gets new installation system

      A new installation system for the Raspberry Pi that allows users to experiment more easily with different Linux systems on the device has been released. Called NOOBS (New Out Of Box Software), the software installs onto a 4GB or larger SD card and offers a choice of operating systems to install on first boot.

    • Young maker says Raspberry Pi is way to go

      A few weeks ago I was able to attend the Mini Maker Faire in Cleveland, Ohio where I got to meet with local makers and discuss a variety of subjects including Raspberry Pi, 3D Printing, and programming. One of the highlights of my trip there was meeting Dave and Lauren Egts. Lauren was there presenting on the Scratch Game she designed: The Great Guinea Pig Escape.

    • BeagleBone Black: Walking the dog.

      My software guy with a soldering iron fun has recently extended to the BeagleBone Black. This is a wonderful little ARM machine with a 1Ghz CPU, a whole bunch of GPIO pins, I2C, SPI, AIN.. all the fun things packed into a $45 board.

    • Raspberry Pi offers free software for newbies

      The Raspberry Pi Foundation has introduced free software designed to get people using the tiny Linux-based computing more quickly.

      New Out of Box Software (NOOBS) has been developed with first time users in mind.

      “We don’t want people to put their Raspberry Pi down in horror after five minutes,” says the team.

      Partners will ultimately start offering SD cards pre-installed with NOOBS, but the download link at http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads exists for now.

    • NOOBS: A New Way to Begin Using Raspberry Pi

      As funny as the name may sound, NOOBS (New Out of Box Software) is actually designed to get newbies comfortable with their first-time exploits of the wonderful little Pi. The Raspberry Pi Foundation released NOOBS to ease the installation of one of four most popular operating systems for the Pi out there.

    • Phones

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Report Finds Open Source Software Quality Better than Industry Average

  • Web Browsers

    • SlateKit 0.2 Shell Improves Its Web-Browser

      Last month I wrote about SlateKit Shell, a new Qt5/QML web-browser using WebKit and written entirely in QML and JavaScript. The second release of SlateKit is now out there for those entertained by this mobile-oriented open-source browser.

      Ping-Hsun Chen, the lead developer of SlateKit, wrote into Phoronix with details about their new SlateKit 0.2 release. Features include:

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla is planning a major design overhaul with the release of Firefox 25 in October: Here’s a quick peek

        Mozilla is planning a major design overhaul of its flagship browser with the release of Firefox 25, slated to arrive in October. The company makes a point to discuss its plans for changes openly, and this upcoming new version is by no means an exception.

      • Meeting Mr Firefox: Johnathan Nightingale

        Mozilla and its central Firefox project are themes that I have returned to often on this blog. That’s not so surprising: Mozilla is one of the oldest free software projects, starting back in 1998 when Netscape stunned the world by announcing that it would open up its key product, Netscape Navigator.

      • Firefox OS to Arrive at the Low End — Then Spread Out

        Back in April, Mozilla officials made clear that their plans for the first crop of phones based on Firefox OS would be focused on five global markets: Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Since then, there have been announcements of expanded plans to deliver phones in Latin America, and Foxconn has announced a broad partnerhship with Mozilla to deliver smartphones, television sets and large display boards based on the mobile operating system.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Lightweight Alternatives to WordPress

      Now don’t get me wrong, WordPress is one of my favorite applications. With good reason, it is a high quality, open source blog publishing application. It is a mature and highly polished application with development starting a decade ago, and it has an active community. The largest self-host blogging tool, a full content management system, which can be extended through thousands of widgets, plugins, and themes, is a good fit for many projects. The software was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL.

  • Education

    • Stanford and edX Collaborate on Open Source edX Platform

      When we launched edX with Harvard and MIT, one of our core beliefs was that the online learning platform we were building should be freely available to students and institutions everywhere. This belief went beyond the open access typical of massively open online courses (MOOCs). Not only did we believe our courses should be freely available, we wanted the platform technology itself to be open sourced and available to all.

    • EdX Open Sources Its Super-Influential Online Learning Platform

      EdX, a non-profit online learning organization with nearly 30 global institutions under the xConsortium participating, has been a leader in the free online education arena for several years. As of June 1, the organization has released the code for its learning platform under an open source license. The goal is to get developers to contribute to a next-generation online learning platform that can be best-of-breed. Given the success that EdX has had with institutions ranging from MIT to U.C. Berkeley to Stanford, this could be a fruitful pursuit.

  • Funding

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 8.4

      FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE is now available. Please be sure to check the Release Notes (detailed version) and Release Errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 8.4. More information about FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Information page.

    • FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE Available

      The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE. This is the fifth release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.3 and introduces some new features.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government


    • Award for Czech open source library content management system Kramerius

      Kramerius, an open source database application and content management system was award this year’s Infoforum Award, at the eponymous conference, which took place in Prague on 21 May. “The award is for most important and the best Czech or Slovak product, service or action related to electronic information resources.”

    • Finnish education board funds open source cloud services for schools

      Finland’s Board of Education is funding the maintenance and enhancement of a school network, called Dream School. The network enables participating schools to procure open technologies, including solutions based on open source.

    • The New York City Comptroller Built a Fiscal Transparency Website, and Now It’s Open Source

      The source code of New York City’s Checkbook NYC platform is now available for other governments to download, modify and reuse, New York City Comptroller John Liu announced during Thursday’s Personal Democracy Forum.

      Checkbook NYC is a web application that presents data from the city’s financial management systems online. Users can view or download information about city spending, broken down by agency or vendor, for example. In addition, information about contracts, payroll and disbursements is linked together, rather than existing in separate silos. It also offers API access that developers can use to build other applications on top of raw data about city spending, as well as bulk data downloads. The comptroller’s office has also promised to make city income data available on the platform soon.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Python Software Foundation publishes Code of Conduct

      After approving a Code of Conduct (CoC) for its community in April, the Python Software Foundation (PSF) has now published the text of the guidelines. The PSF’s Code of Conduct is partly based on similar documents that have been adopted by the Ubuntu and Fedora communities. The foundation also points out that the newly adopted document is separate from the PyCon Code of Conduct, which is “an entirely different document, written for use at an in-person conference.”

    • LLVM May Expand Its Use Of The Loop Vectorizer

      LLVM’s Loop Vectorizer, which is able to automatically vectorize code loops for performance benefits in many scenarios, may find its use expanded for other optimization levels in future LLVM releases.

    • An Important Radeon R600 Change In LLVM 3.4

      While LLVM 3.3 hasn’t even been released yet, there’s already an important change found in LLVM 3.4 for Radeon R600 GPU users.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Google re-opens CalDAV

      When Google announced on March 13th that it would no longer be supporting the CalDAV application programming interface (API), developers were not happy. In early June, Google reconsidered its position and re-opened CalDAV and, to top it off, Google said they’d be opening CardDAV’s API as well.

    • Feds propose agency requirement to support Open Document Format

      The once mighty proprietary influence of Microsoft over government software and operating environment standards has been dealt a further blow after the Australian Government Information Management Office revealed that it now wants the Open Document Format to be supported as a file standard in productivity application suites used by most federal agencies.

    • New HTML 5.1 working draft released

      The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has presented a new working draft for the HTML markup language; version 5.1 of the markup language is currently being developed. A draft of a second document describes the differences between the current state of development and the previous major version, HTML 4. This second draft lists all details that affect HTML5, or its HTML 5.1 update, compared to HTML4 in chronological order.

    • Google’s calendar API stays open for everyone

      Google has announced that it will not go ahead with its earlier plans to restrict API access to its Calendar product to registered developers. Access through the CalDAV protocol will stay open for everyone, says Google Tech Lead Piotr Stanczyk in the company’s Developers Blog. “We received many requests for access to CalDAV, giving us a better understanding of developers’ use cases and causing us to revisit that decision,” Stanczyk says.

    • Google continues CalDav support for everyone, now also adds CardDav

      A couple of weeks ago Google announced that they would restrict CalDav access to their calendars to registered developers only. That resulted in a huge uproar among developers, users and open standards advocates and made many people wondering if Google will become a closed standards/software company in the future.

Leftovers

  • Prosecutor poses as accused killer’s ex-girlfriend on Facebook, fired

    An Ohio prosecutor believes that he must break two witnesses’ alibis in a murder case. He goes on Facebook, pretends to be the accused’s ex-girlfriend and tries to contact the witnesses. His bosses aren’t impressed.

  • Science

    • Dan Brown: Video Games Lead To Violence

      Let’s get the obvious out of the way: an exhaustive look at the research into the question of violence and its relation to video games should probably be labeled inconclusive, with a nod to a ton of research that says there is simply no link. I can’t say for certain that Brown is simply shooting from the hip, here, without really researching what he’s putting out for public consumption, but I will say that he’s demonstrated the ability to do so with his books.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • New Drugs Are Barely An Improvement Over Decades-Old Standbys, Study Finds

      Despite the more than $50 billion that U.S. pharmaceutical companies have spent every year since the mid-2000s to discover new medications, drugmakers have barely improved on old standbys developed decades ago.

    • Tobacco industry-commissioned report: large decline in EU consumption, almost no change in illegal trade

      On April 17, 2013 Philip Morris International (PMI) issued a press release, based on an annual study conducted by KPMG. PMI claimed the most significant finding of the study is that: “For the sixth year in a row, the illegal trade of cigarettes in the European Union reached a new record high: in 2012 the levels rose to 11.1%, compared to 10.4% in 2011.”

      However, further analysis tells a different story. It is true the numbers show that proportion of illegal sales increased as a percentage of total tobacco sales; however this is actually due to an overall decline in the EU tobacco market. The volume of the illegal cigarette trade has barely changed.

    • OCA and Our Allies Pressure 10 Senators Who Voted Against States’ Rights to Label GMOs

      eventy-one senators voted against the Sanders Amendment to the Farm Bill, an amendment to uphold states’ rights to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food.

      It’s time to take action. The Organic Consumers Association has selected 10 of the 71 senators (listed below). With help from several of our ongoing allies in the GMO labeling battle, along with MoveOn.org, and some of the state GMO campaigns, we’re launching a campaign to start pressuring these 10 senators to support their state’s right to enact a GMO labeling law.

    • Former Pro-GMO Scientist Speaks Out On The Real Dangers of Genetically Engineered Food

      I retired 10 years ago after a long career as a research scientist for Agriculture Canada. When I was on the payroll, I was the designated scientist of my institute to address public groups and reassure them that genetically engineered crops and foods were safe. There is, however, a growing body of scientific research – done mostly in Europe, Russia, and other countries – showing that diets containing engineered corn or soya cause serious health problems in laboratory mice and rats.

    • Monsanto Says Rogue Wheat in Oregon May Be Sabotage

      Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s largest seed company, said experimental wheat engineered to survive Roundup weedkiller may have gotten into an Oregon field through an “accidental or purposeful” act.

      Monsanto and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are investigating how genetically modified wheat that hasn’t been approved for commercial planting was found growing on an Oregon farm eight years after nationwide field tests ended.

    • G8 Hunger Summit demo

      This is part of what is called the New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition (called at the G8 last year). In actual fact, this New Alliance is going to be the vehicle to spread land grabbing and genetically modified crops across the African agricultural economy. African countries are going to be signed up to aid conditionalities that will open them up for private takeover of their land and seeds and further resource extraction. Civil society in Africa is not being consulted; their demands would be to put power into the hands of small producers not large corporations.

    • Meet a plasticarian (that’s a person who does not use plastic)

      The staff might not have come across a person trying to live a plastic-free life before, but it is likely they will again. The ubiquitous material, found in or on everything from your toothbrush and your shampoo bottle to your ready meals and your computer, has become the subject of international scrutiny. And consumers are listening.

      The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) issued startling advice last week, warning pregnant women to take a “precautionary approach” and avoid food in plastic containers or cans where possible. The report highlighted “endocrine-disrupters” found in certain plastics, including Bisphenol A plastics (BPAs) and phthalates, which can disrupt normal foetal development. BPA has also been linked to breast and prostate cancer, heart disease and sexual dysfunctions. The RCOG report noted that there was “considerable uncertainty about the risks of chemical exposure”.

  • Security

    • Linux Non Root Exploits – 4 Ways In which Even A Normal User Can Cause Real Damage To Your Linux System
    • Why we need an Anti-Virus in Linux?

      The definition of a Computer Virus is kinda unclear according to Wikipedia: “A computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another” and instead by Virus definition I will include all the types of malware (viruses, ransomware, worms, trojan horses, rootkits, keyloggers, dialers, spyware, adware).

      By Malware Wikipedia defines: “Malware, short for malicious (or malevolent) software, is software used or programmed by attackers to disrupt computer operation, gather sensitive information, or gain access to private computer systems”.

    • Apache Struts gets another important security fix

      Just a week ago, the Apache Struts developers released an important security fix which has now been followed by another important fix for a highly critical security flaw in the web framework. The vulnerability being closed is a combination of two problems. The framework allows action mapping based on wildcards and when a request doesn’t match an action, it tries to load a JSP file based on the name of the action. That name can be treated as an OGNL expression and in turn, that allows an attacker to execute Java code on the server side.

    • Serious vulnerabilities in QNAP storage and surveillance systems

      Many of QNAP’s NAS products are affected by security problems that, when combined, potentially allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on a system at administrator privilege level – at worst, even via the internet. Apart from pure network storage systems, this particularly affects QNAP Security’s VioStor video surveillance systems.

    • China has ‘mountains of data’ about U.S. cyber attacks: official

      China’s top Internet security official says he has “mountains of data” pointing to extensive U.S. hacking aimed at China, but it would be irresponsible to blame Washington for such attacks, and called for greater cooperation to fight hacking.

    • Police admit they’re ‘stumped’ by mystery car thefts

      This is a real mystery. You think when you lock your car and set the alarm, your car is pretty safe. But criminals have designed a new high-tech gadget giving them full access to your car. It’s so easy, it’s like the criminals have your actual door remote. Police are so baffled they want to see if you can help crack the case.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Latest Leak: Obama Wants A List Of Countries To Cyberattack
    • Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks

      Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.

    • Ex-CIA boss accused of ‘leaking’ Osama raid details to writer of Zero Dark Thirty

      Wellington, June 6 (ANI): Former CIA Director Leon Panetta has been accused of violating security rules by revealing the name of the commander of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, to the writer of the film Zero Dark Thirty, according to US Defense Department investigators.

    • The FBI Raided Steubenville Anonymous Guy’s House. Here He Is.

      According to the warrant obtained by Gawker, FBI agents were looking for evidence related to the hacking of Rollredroll.com—the website of a Steubenville High School booster club that was defaced during the height of the Steubenville campaign—and the unauthorized access of the webmaster’s email address. Rollredroll.com webmaster James Park’s email account was broken into, and many of his private emails dumped online. In February, a hacker named Batcat took responsibility for the hack in an article in the Steubenville Herald-Star. He claimed he hacked Rollredroll.com in 15 minutes by guessing Jim Parks’ password security question, after being approached by KYAnonymous.

      In a statement posted on his website, Lostutter described the raid: “As I open the door to great the driver approximately 12 F.B.I. Swat Team agents jumped out of the truck screaming for me to ‘Get The Fuck Down’ with m-16 assault rifles and full riot gear armed.”

    • Hacker Who Exposed Steubenville Rape Case Could Spend More Time Behind Bars Than The Rapists

      The Steubenville rape case, in which two high school football players were convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl at a party, helped spark a national conversation about consent, victim-blaming, and rape culture. The case gained national attention after the “hacktivist” group Anonymous leaked significant social media evidence implicating the assailants — including tweets, Instagram photos, and a 12-minute video of Steubenville high schoolers joking about the rape. But it turns out that working to expose those rapists may land one Anonymous hacker more time in prison than the rapists themselves will serve.

    • Hacker Who Exposed Steubenville Rape Case Could Spend More Time Behind Bars Than The Rapists

      The Steubenville rape case, in which two high school football players were convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl at a party, helped spark a national conversation about consent, victim-blaming, and rape culture. The case gained national attention after the “hacktivist” group Anonymous leaked significant social media evidence implicating the assailants — including tweets, Instagram photos, and a 12-minute video of Steubenville high schoolers joking about the rape. But it turns out that working to expose those rapists may land one Anonymous hacker more time in prison than the rapists themselves will serve.

    • Philly Closes 23 Public Schools, Generously Builds $400 Million Prison Where Kids Can Hang Instead

      Philadelphia is so broke the city is closing 23 public schools, never mind that it has the cash to build a $400 million prison.

      Construction on the penitentiary said to be “the second-most expensive state project ever” began just days after the Pennsylvania School Reform Commission voted down a plan to close only four of the 27 schools scheduled to die. Facing a $304 million debt, the Commission instead approved a measly $2.4 billion budget that would shut down 23 public schools, wiping out roughly 10% of the city’s total.

    • Anonymous Just Leaked a Trove of NSA Documents
    • Woman in red dress, sprayed with tear gas by masked policeman, becomes symbol for Turkish protesters

      In her red cotton summer dress, necklace and white bag slung over her shoulder she might have been floating across the lawn at a garden party; but before her crouches a masked policeman firing tear gas spray that sends her long hair billowing upwards.

      Taken in Taksim Square in central Istanbul, the image has been endlessly shared on social media.

      The woman in red has even been replicated as a cartoon on posters and stickers and has become a symbol for female protesters during days of violent anti-government demonstrations in Istanbul.

      Some posters show the woman towering over a police officer and say “the more they spray, the bigger we get.”

    • New York Anarchist Jerry Koch Is in Jail for Refusing to Testify Before Grand Jury

      A New York anarchist has been jailed for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury about his political beliefs, his friends, and the legal support he provided to Occupy Wall Street.

      Gerald “Jerry” Koch, 24, was subpoenaed before a grand jury that is believed to be investigating the 2008 explosion outside a military recruitment center in Times Square. The blast damaged the front door of the center and injured no one, but the FBI began a “terrorism” investigation of local anarchists.

      Koch isn’t accused of this crime—or any other crime.Prosecutors told his lawyers that they think he was at a bar in 2008 or 2009, after the bombing, and that someone else at the bar knew about another person who was involved. Koch was subpoenaed to a grand jury in 2009—when he was only 19—and publicly stated that he didn’t know anything about it and wouldn’t cooperate.

    • How Many Iraqis Died in the Iraq War?

      How many Iraqis died in the Iraq War? That’s the kind of question that should be asked, especially if you happen to live in the countries that launched the war that killed so many.

    • HASC approves anti-China equipment language in fiscal 2014 NDAA

      The House Armed Services Committee approved June 6 a national defense authorization act for the coming fiscal year that includes language critics say would likely lead to the exclusion of Chinese-manufactured electronic parts from the defense industrial base, including in unclassified networks.

    • Pakistan Officials Say US Drone Strike Kills 7

      During his campaign, he sometimes criticized the U.S. and its policy of using drones to kill militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Speaking to parliament earlier this week, he once again called for an end to the drone policy.

    • U.S. Drone Strike Kills at Least 7 in Pakistan as New Prime Minister Announces Cabinet

      During his campaign, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif often criticized the United States for using drone aircraft to kill militants.

      The drones that struck Friday targeted a house in Mangroti village in the Shawal area of North Waziristan, the tribal region straddling the border with Afghanistan. The identities of the victims were not immediately known, but an intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described them as militants.

    • First since Nawaz sworn in as PM, US drone kills 7

      The drone fired two missiles which hit a compound in Shokhel village in Shawal area, more than 100 kms southwest of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan Agency, which is known as a stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
      “The US drone fired two missiles targeting a militant compound and killing at least seven militants”, a senior local security official told AFP.

    • Q&A with Jeremy Scahill on drones, counterterrorism and ‘Dirty Wars’

      Jeremy Scahill is an investigative correspondent for The Nation magazine and has reported from hot spots around the world including Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. “Dirty Wars,” a new documentary on U.S. covert wars based on Scahill’s book of the same name, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is set for release in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, June 7. Yahoo News recently spoke to Scahill about drones policy, President Barack Obama’s recent speech on U.S. counterterrorism policy, and what Scahill believes are the greatest security threats still facing the U.S.

    • Africa: The Frontier That Drones Can Never Cross

      Waging war without any declaration is now facilitated by drones. But there are limits that drones can never cross, as machines can never handle sociopolitical contradictions. Initiating counter-moves against political maneuvers is beyond the capacity of machines.

    • EXCLUSIVE: CIA didn’t always know who it was killing in drone strikes, classified documents show

      The CIA did not always know who it was targeting and killing in drone strikes in Pakistan over a 14-month period, an NBC News review of classified intelligence reports shows.

      About one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011, were classified as “other militants,” the documents detail. The “other militants” label was used when the CIA could not determine the affiliation of those killed, prompting questions about how the agency could conclude they were a threat to U.S. national security.

    • Drone strikes: For better or for worse?

      However, whatever the case may be, I as a Pakistani, still find the topic of drones confusing because on one hand, the foreign office issues open protest after every drone attack and on the other hand we have ex-rulers like Pervez Musharraf conceding that the government had tacit drone agreements with the Americans.

    • Drones mean RAF Waddington could become a new Greenham Common

      We pulled up to the peace caravan, Simon and I, his maroon taxi making its diesel noises, which is the only way I can account for the speed with which the police caught up with us. RAF Waddington spreads across the road, its planes sharp-nosed and incongruously aggressive against the Lincolnshire countryside. We didn’t see any drones.

    • UN drone investigator expecting ‘dramatic’ decrease in US strikes

      Ben Emmerson tells the Guardian drone use likely to be curbed in coming months as program shifts from CIA to US military

    • Protest at the proposed drone command center

      The Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs announced on March 19, that the Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s 111th Fighter Wing, located at Horsham Air Guard Station, will take on ground control for the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial system starting Oct. 1.

    • ‘Drone strikes in Pakistan completely negate the right to life’

      When President Obama tells people that drones are more humane weapons, he tries to be a good salesman for the weapon, but forgets that it’s a weapon which kills, Shahzad Akbar, a human rights lawyer representing drone victims, told RT.

      Shahzad Akbar, Director of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, and a member of the British human rights organization Reprieve, is a human rights lawyer representing drone victims in a criminal case against US officials.

    • Thank God for Drones

      Now some say hellish robotic gunfire raining down from the sky will cause an eradication of our civil liberties. But I say why is that bad?

      In the old days, cops needed warrants to take you into custody, and had to read you your rights before questioning. But that is so last century. And time-consuming! I’m sure the military wanted Drones to question people from 2000 feet but they just don’t have an app for that yet. I am told by a credible source that they do have several missiles with some excellent questions written on them.

      So if you’re accidentally killed for suspicious behavior and targeted for your high internet bandwidth, regardless if it’s for terrorism or a shopping spree on Amazon, you probably deserved it. We can sort out all those annoying accuracy factoids about your death later after we get some kill numbers up to show the system works! Just remember as you’re taken down on main street by those unseen snipers in the sky — to think of those job numbers! You’ve helped them go up!

    • The Lushest ever drone attack

      A dramatic protest against drone warfare took place on Cornmarket on Saturday of 6th week.

      The protest was staged by the Lush cosmetic store. A loudspeaker was used to stimulate a drone attack, and Lush employees, one by one, fell to the ground and acted dead. White chalk was then used to draw around each of these individuals.

      The campaign was designed to raise awareness of the American military’s use of drone warfare in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

    • Drone protest hits the Quad-Cities

      The protest is being called “Covering Ground to Ground the Drones,” and it will leave from Rock Island on Monday.

    • Lawlessness of drones coming to haunt US?

      DID the FBI execute Ibragim Todashev? He appears to have been shot seven times while being interviewed at home in Orlando, Florida, about his connection to one of the Boston bombing suspects. Among the shots was the assassin’s hallmark: a bullet to the back of the head. What kind of an interview was it?

      An irregular one. There was no lawyer present. It was not recorded. By the time Todashev was shot, he had apparently been interrogated by three agents for five hours. And then? Who knows? First, we were told, he lunged at them with a knife. How he acquired it, five hours into a police interview, was not explained. How he posed such a threat while recovering from a knee operation also remains perplexing.

    • Who’s the US Killing in Pakistan? Even the CIA Doesn’t Know

      The CIA didn’t know who it was killing about 25 percent of the time it targeted suspects with drones, NBC News reports. Still, the government insists, all of those unknown people definitely deserved to die. According to classified CIA documents, only one of about 600 people the CIA killed in Pakistan in a 14-month period beginning in September 2010 was a civilian, and therefore was not a proper target.

    • Leon Panetta May Have Been the One Who Spilled CIA Secrets to Hollywood Filmmakers
    • CIA invests in robot writers

      The CIA says that it has spent a small fortune on software which can look at all the facts and write reports on them.

    • Exposed: New website reveals extent of secret CIA flight network

      A team of academics have launched the world’s largest interactive database detailing suspected CIA rendition flights, many of which may have transported detainees to Guantanamo Bay.

      Scotland is the only country so far which has raised any questions on the alleged rendition activity on home soil.

      The Rendition Project is a product of a collaborative research between Dr. Ruth Blakely from the University of Kent and Dr. Sam Raphael from Kingston University, London.

    • Ex-CIA agent insists on innocence while his national security case is stuck in limbo

      Sterling stands accused of leaking information regarding a failed CIA mission in which a Russian spy was to give erroneous plans for a nuclear bomb to Iranian scientists. Sterling is accused of giving this information to author Risen in 2003.

    • Pablo Neruda May Have Been Killed By a CIA Double Agent

      Neruda, a Nobel laureate described by famed Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, as “the first great poet of the Spanish language since the 17th century,” died in September 1973 of apparent natural causes. But in 2011 the Chilean Communist Party filed a civil case arguing that Chile’s most important literary figure was in fact murdered by a mysterious agent of the country’s right-wing dictator, Augusto Pinochet.

    • When the C.I.A. Gets Too Cozy with Hollywood

      The past six months have been a high point for the C.I.A. and Hollywood. Together, they created two of the most highly acclaimed films ever to depict the C.I.A.: “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and “Argo,” about the rescue of Americans during the Iran hostage crisis.

    • Report: CIA Unsure of Identity of Many Drone Targets

      According to one former senior intelligence official, as many as half the strikes in Pakistan between 2009 and 2010 were signature strikes.

    • CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher

      The CIA has a lot of legal restrictions against spying on American citizens. But collecting ambient geolocation data from devices is a grayer area, especially after the 2008 carve-outs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hardware manufacturers, it turns out, store a trove of geolocation data; and some legislators have grown alarmed at how easy it is for the government to track you through your phone or PlayStation.

    • Mission: Assassination

      Written back in the Clinton era, the Studies in Intelligence article may seem somewhat out of date. As a recent New York Times piece on the same issue noted, after the 2001 terrorist attacks, any internal concerns over CIA involvement with targeted killings “were quickly swept aside.” But at least one major fact has not changed — the only formal constraint that exists against assassinations by the CIA is not the law but a mere presidential order, which the commander-in-chief can, in theory, easily revoke.

    • Brennan’s CIA purging political dissidents, purged CIA agent speaks out

      The news was received by the PCRE by Kent Clizbe, a former CIA counter-terrorism operations officer and author of Willing Accomplices and Obliterating Exceptionalism, of the purge of non-supporters of Obama and vicious reprisals and threats against anyone who dared to speak out against the CIA or the administration and that it began in 2009 and has escalated ever since.

  • Cablegate

    • As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, Press Predictably Misses the Point

      Well, the Bradley Manning trial has begun, and for the most part, the government couldn’t have scripted the headlines any better.

      In the now-defunct Starz series Boss, there’s a reporter character named “Sam Miller” played by actor Troy Garity who complains about lazy reporters who just blindly eat whatever storylines are fed to them by people in power. He called those sorts of stories Chumpbait. If the story is too easy, if you’re doing a piece on a sensitive topic and factoids are not only reaching you freely, but publishing them is somehow not meeting much opposition from people up on high, then you’re probably eating Chumpbait.

      There’s an obvious Chumpbait angle in the Bradley Manning story, and most of the mainstream press reports went with it. You can usually tell if you’re running a Chumpbait piece if you find yourself writing the same article as 10,000 other hacks.

    • WikiLeaks trial is high-profile case for low-profile lawyer

      When Private First Class Bradley Manning was seeking a civilian defense attorney to bolster his government-appointed legal team in 2010, he considered a number of lawyers experienced in courts-martial.

      His aunt, herself a lawyer, helped vet names of possible lawyers for the case suggested by Army veterans and activist supporters. The family fielded unsolicited offers from attorneys eager to take the high-profile case in which Manning is accused of passing more 700,000 classified files to WikiLeaks in the biggest unauthorized release of secret files in U.S. history.

    • Whistleblower ‘may be next Bradley Manning’, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says

      WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange said he fears the whistleblower who exposed a US surveillance program could be treated like Bradley Manning.

      In an interview with CBS This Morning from the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he has been holed up for nearly a year, Assange defended the public’s right to know about the Internet data mining program revealed late Thursday.

    • Assange: US rule of law suffering “calamitous collapse”

      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday that the US justice system was suffering from a “calamitous collapse in the rule of law”, as Washington reeled from the sensational exposure of vast spy agency surveillance programmes.

    • Being cynical: Julian Assange, Eric Schmidt, and the year’s weirdest book

      Highlights from Cohen’s All-American Speakers Bureau bio include positions with the National Counterterrorism Center and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a highly publicized phone date with Jack Dorsey. Not bad for a man who was once labeled “Condi’s Party Starter” by The New Yorker, presumably through no fault of his own. Most recently, Cohen was named the director of Google’s “think/do” tank, Google Ideas.

      Indeed, under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the US State Department at times resembled nothing less than a “think/do” tank for the Hoover Institution, the prominent conservative policy research institute based at Jared Cohen’s alma mater, Stanford University. And it’s this world of think tanks and foundations that provides the true intellectual center of Schmidt–Cohen’s book. Rice knows this world well. She left the faculty of Stanford University to work at the Pentagon (paid for by a fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations) before going to the National Security Council. Now that her government service is done, she’s gone back to Stanford.

    • WikiLeaks’ cables say George Fernandes sought funds from CIA to sustain anti-government activities

      In a sensational revelation, the WikiLeaks have alleged that firebrand socialist leader George Fernandes had sought funds from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to overthrow Indira Gandhi’s government in the 1970s.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Delight to Disappointment as Herakles Farms’ suspension order lifted

      There was dancing in the streets of Mundemba and Fabe when the news came two weeks ago that the Cameroonian government had suspended Herakles Farms’ forest clearing operations.

      Communities in this region of South West Cameroon, who had feared that they would lose their lands and their livelihoods to Herakles’ industrial palm oil plantation, now believed that their forest had been saved.

  • Finance

    • David Cameron faces battle at G8 over anti-corruption deal for firms

      With fierce opposition from some members of economic summit, getting an agreement to stop tax evasion is now looking unlikely

    • David Cameron to attend Bilderberg group meeting

      Downing Street defends visit to secretive group, where prime minister will not be accompanied by civil servants

    • O’Reilly Spins a Correction on ‘White House Visits’

      On last night’s O’Reilly Factor (6/5/13), the Fox News host asserted that there’s still a lot the White House isn’t telling us about the IRS/Tea Party scandal

    • What Goldman Sachs should admit: it drives up the cost of food

      Today, 23 May, is the annual general meeting (AGM) of financial speculator Goldman Sachs, the archetypal villain of the global economic meltdown, bailed out by US taxpayers to the tune of $5.5bn. Perhaps they’ll hand out last year’s Community Impact report, which shows how they’ve tried to redeem themselves with charity, like serving up almost 30,000 meals and preparing about 250,000 others in community projects in the US and around the world.

    • IRS Audited Over Inappropriate Spending, Claims It Can’t Find Its Receipts

      Just a guess, but it probably sucks to be the IRS right now. Between reports about them snooping on people’s emails and their targeting of conservative groups, it’s quite easy to paint them as a big, evil bureaucracy. Actually, it was pretty easy to do so before all that. You can generally rely on the hatred of the people for a group that requires meticulous spending records and then collects taxes. Big, bad, evil. What could be worse?

    • The dangerous aristocrats of finance

      In many ways, the financial world has changed remarkably little in the five years since the 2008 financial crisis. Yes, banks, brokers and other intermediaries are neither as profitable nor as popular as in the pre-crisis years. However, the industry is still arrogant, isolated and ridiculously lucrative. Leading financiers look more like pre-revolutionary aristocrats than normal businessmen.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • CMD Files Open Records Suit Against ALEC Board Member Sen. Leah Vukmir

      The Center for Media and Democracy filed suit Thursday against Wisconsin State Senator Leah Vukmir, a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the treasurer of ALEC’s national board, over her failure to disclose ALEC-related materials under Wisconsin’s public records law – possibly because ALEC told her to keep the documents secret.

      CMD has discovered that ALEC has started stamping its materials with a disclaimer asserting “[b]ecause this is an internal ALEC document, ALEC believes it is not subject to disclosure under any state Freedom of Information or Public Records Act.” There is no provision in Wisconsin law allowing private organizations to declare themselves immune from the state’s sunshine-in-government statutes.

    • What Charles G. Koch can teach us about campaign finance data

      On May 13, I wrote up an analysis of campaign finance data that asked “Did almost 600 donors break campaign finance law in 2012?” Truth is, I wasn’t sure. The bulk data made it appear that way, but as I noted at the outset, “our most troubling finding may be just how difficult it is determine with legal certainty exactly how many campaign scofflaws there are, or how much over the limit they gave.”

    • Cyber soldiers promote the monarchy

      Rangers Task Force 45, in response to Army policy, has put its troops to the task of promoting and protecting the monarchy in cyber space, claiming to have posted 1.69 million comments on webboards and social media during a 4-month period of last year.

    • Turkish Protestors Take To Indiegogo, Raise Over $50,000 For Full-Page New York Times Ad

      Protests erupted in Turkey last week, fueled by government plans to redevelop an urban park and build a shopping mall and military barracks, among other things. Protestors gathered in Gezi Park and what started as opposition to redevelopment quickly transformed into widespread protests against the Turkish government.

  • Censorship

    • Grand Jury Refuses To Indict Teen Arrested For Posting ‘Threatening’ Rap Lyrics On Facebook

      Cameron D’Ambrosio, the teen charged with “communicating terrorist threats” via some daft rap lyrics posted to his Facebook profile, is apparently no longer a threat to the people of Methuen, MA, and parts beyond. Facing a possible 20-year-sentence for his inclusion of such explosive terms as “White House,” “murder charge” and “Boston bombinb” in his one-man online rap battle, D’Ambrosio has been held without bail since May 2nd. As of Thursday night, however, D’Ambrosio is free to kill terrorize rhyme again. And, as an added bonus, he now has something in common with many of the rappers he clearly aspires to be: time served.

    • Opinion: Parenting by proxy

      In a week where there has been a lot of argument about what Internet service providers and search engines should do to protect children and adults from harmful content online, we seem to have lost sight of what we want to achieve. The government, it seems, wants to teach children how to use technology and the internet, but at the same time presents a view of the internet as a medium where grave danger exists around every digital corner. This sends a contradictory message to parents about their responsibilities and does nothing to provide the resources needed to meet them.

    • DCMS call summit on dealing with extreme or illegal content online

      This morning comes news that Maria Miller, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has summoned internet companies to a summit on how they deal with illegal and extreme content online. This morning we will be writing to the Minister to make sure that Open Rights Group and representatives of civil society are present.

    • Civil society groups express concern to Culture Secretary about online content restrictions

      ORG, Index on Censorship, English PEN and Big Brother Watch have written to the Culture Secretary this morning, setting out concerns about possible new measures to deal with illegal or extreme content online.

    • Lindsey Graham Isn’t Sure If Bloggers Deserve ‘First Amendment Protection’

      Of course they do. But the question at hand is whether a media shield law should protect them as well.

    • Saudi Arabia blocks Viber messaging service

      The head of the messaging application Viber has said people in Saudi Arabia have had basic freedoms taken away, after his service was blocked there.

      Talmon Marco told the BBC he did not know the reason for the move, but that Viber would be restored soon.

    • How ASIC’s attempt to block one website took down 250,000

      Australia’s corporate watchdog has admitted to inadvertently blocking access to about 250,000 innocuous websites in addition to the 1200 it had already accidentally censored.

    • Fox News Too Cowardly To Refuse Critical Ad Because It’s Critical, Claims Copyright Instead

      It’s become something of a sport in the past decade for roughly half of America to mock, dismiss, and otherwise tear down the Fox News channel. Personally, I’d rather like to see all of cable news go away, but there are times when I think the criticism is a tad selective and unfair. For instance, it’d be very easy to lambaste the network for the man-clowns they trotted out in the wake of a Pew Research study that showed that mothers currently make up nearly half of American household’s primary wage-earners. What was for me a meh-inducing announcement was a sign of the surely-coming apocalypse for Lou Dobbs, Erick Erickson and Juan Williams. They’re easily targeted as examples of the bad on the station, but if you’re blinded by ideology or party alliance, you probably didn’t bother to shine a light on the absolutely glorious rebuttal by Fox News host Megyn Kelly.

  • Privacy

    • More Details On PRISM Revealed; Twitter Deserves Kudos For Refusing To Give In
    • Rendition link to PRISM

      The Guardian is reporting that Britain’s GCHQ first started getting produtive with PRISM early 2012. It was about the same time that their buddies down under, ASIO revised their earlier assessment of a refugee, Ranjini, and scooped her up in Australia’s domestic rendition program.

      This may be more than a notable co-incidince, because it adds further support to the hypothesis that Ranjini is a victim of Big Data and PRISM. If ASIO first gained access to PRISM at the same time as GCHQ, then they may have used some tenuous PRISM data to form their revised assessment of her suitability for a visa. Making such inferences, and using them as the basis for a cruel program of indefinite detention is a gross violation of human rights and goes far beyond the claim that PRISM is about catching real terrorists.

    • Opinion: PRISM, Suspicious until proven innocent.

      It seems that every other week we have a whistleblower to thank for making us more aware of what is being done on our behalf and apparently for our own good. The most recent revelations give us a far better idea of the sorts of wide spread, in depth monitoring and surveillance that governments feel they can subject their citizens to.

    • Oh, And One More Thing: NSA Directly Accessing Information From Google, Facebook, Skype, Apple And More
    • CISPA Will Legalize PRISM Spy Program

      The PATRIOT Act and the FISA court led to the blanket wiretapping of every American citizen and a PRISM lens into all Internet activity for the NSA.

    • Once Again, Courts Struggle With Whether Or Not Forcing You To Decrypt Your Computer Is Unconstitutional
    • What We Don’t Know About Spying on Citizens: Scarier Than What We Know

      Yesterday, we learned that the NSA received all calling records from Verizon customers for a three-month period starting in April. That’s everything except the voice content: who called who, where they were, how long the call lasted — for millions of people, both Americans and foreigners. This “metadata” allows the government to track the movements of everyone during that period, and a build a detailed picture of who talks to whom. It’s exactly the same data the Justice Department collected about AP journalists.

    • NSA spying scandal fallout: Expect big impact in Europe and elsewhere (Updated)

      UPDATE: I’ll admit I am shocked to have received this response from the European Commission to my request for comment, with particular regard to the impact on EU citizens’ privacy: “We do not have any comments. This is an internal U.S. matter.” For the reason behind my surprise, read on…

      This is a great day to be a conspiracy theorist. Vindication! The National Security Agency – part of the U.S. military – reportedly has a direct line into the systems of some of the world’s biggest web and tech companies, all of which are of course sited in the U.S.

    • Cowards

      Will not one tech CEO stand up and tell the truth?

      The NSA story of the secret assassination of the Fourth Amendment continues to unfold. Today we heard from Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

      Page was confused (the title of his post is “What the…?). Zuckerberg claimed the press reports were outrageous. Both made strong denials of specific allegations (“direct access,” “back doors”). Both were technically telling the truth. Both were also overtly misleading people.

    • How the NSA, and your boss, can intercept and break SSL

      Is the National Security Agency (NSA) really “wiretapping” the Internet? Accused accomplices Microsoft and Google deny that they have any part in it and the core evidence isn’t holding up that well under closer examination.

      Some, however, doubt that the NSA could actually intercept and break Secure-Socket Layer (SSL) protected Internet communications.

    • The NSA’s Favorite Weasel Word To Pretend It’s Claiming It Doesn’t Spy On Americans

      Most people would read this to be him saying that they do not spy on Americans. And that’s obviously what he’s trying to imply. But that’s not what he’s actually saying. He’s using the NSA’s favorite weasel word: “target.” Now, most people assume that means one of the people on the call must be outside the US. But, you could — if you were devious intelligence official trying to mislead Congress and the American public (hypothetically) — interpret the word “target” to mean “if we, in general are ‘targeting’ foreign threats, no matter what they might be like, and this information we’re collecting might help in that process, then we can snarf up this data.”

      In other words, most people think that “target” would mean one of the people on the phone. But, the NSA means “this overall investigation is about targeting foreign threats, so we can take whatever data we want because the goal is to stop foreign threats with it — and therefore our mandate not to spy on Americans doesn’t apply.”

    • U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program

      The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

    • EMERGENCY ACTION: Stop The Massive Government Spying Program

      A leaked court document obtained by The Guardian, and since reported on by numerous news outlets, has exposed that the government is spying on Americans.

      Using the Patriot Act, the U.S. government has been secretly tracking the calls of every Verizon Business Network Services customer—to whom they spoke, from where, and for how long—for the past 41 days.

      Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and internet providers for corporations, so this could apply to the calls of millions of Americans.

    • UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation

      Exclusive: UK security agency GCHQ gaining information from world’s biggest internet firms through US-run Prism programme

    • Could the NSA be spying on the wife of China’s president?
    • US surveillance revelations deepen European fears
    • PRISM Companies Start Denying Knowledge of the NSA Data Collection
    • A Trip Down Memory Lane: People Warned What Would Happen When Congress Passed Bills To Enable Vast Spying
    • Washington Post Quietly Backtrcks On Claim That Tech Companies Knowingly Gave NSA Data, As Denials Get Stronger

      Some have pointed out that these claims can still be read carefully to mean that other forms of data access potentially did happen, though some of the direct claims are pretty strong. It’s also noteworthy that Page and Zuckerberg seem to mimic each other’s word usage. Furthermore, it does seem odd that the President more or less confirmed the existence of the program, which all these tech companies are denying. Does that mean that something else is going on? Is the NSA doing this without letting the companies know? It’s certainly unclear at this point, but it’s going to come out eventually.

    • Obama Administration Declassifies Details On “PRISM,” Blasts “Reckless” Media And Leakers
    • Tech Companies Deny Letting NSA Have Realtime Access To Their Servers, But Choose Their Words Carefully

      Note the fine distinction. Giving the NSA a clone of their data wouldn’t be giving them “access to our servers.” It would be giving copies to the NSA… and then the NSA could “access” its own servers. And you were wondering why the NSA needed so much space in Utah. If they’re basically running a replica of every major big tech company datacenter, it suddenly makes a bit more sense. Of course, at this point there’s no evidence that this is necessarily the case — and some are insisting that the denials are legit, and that the Washington Post’s story is not entirely accurate. But… the wording here is extra careful, and the government’s report really does seem to indicate that these companies are deeply involved.

    • Identi.ca and privacy

      I can say pretty clearly: categorically no. We’ve never had a request from the NSA or any other government organization to turn over data from identi.ca or status.net or any of the E14N pump servers.

    • PRISM: The FISAAA smoking gun

      Caspar Bowden has been expressing concerns about the FISAA provisions for some time.

    • European Commission should revoke US Safe Harbour status immediately.

      Given the news over the past 24 hours of the activities of the US National Security Agency, it is critical that the EU Commission immediately revoke the Safe Harbour status of the United States of America under the Data Protection Directive.

      It all started with news that the National Security Agency (NSA) are being provided “meta data” of all calls sent and received on the Verizon telecommunications network via a secret order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court under “Business Data” provisions of the PATRIOT Act – domestic and foreign.

    • Looking at PRISM – NSA’s mass surveillance program

      This recent news reveals a long-held suspicion that the GCHQ had the very powers they were seeking to place on a statutory footing with the Snooper Charter, a bill that was knocked back for being unnecessary and disproportionate. Keeping the public in the dark about secretive and potentially unlawful programs must stop – and greater oversight is needed to ensure human rights are not being trampled.

    • Why, Yes, Of Course The NSA Spying Involves More Companies Than Already Listed
    • PRISM is bigger than anything that came before it—but no-one knows how much bigger

      The mystery surrounding how much domestic spying the US government has been conducting on its own citizens will only intensify in the coming days, as a growing number of the nine major internet companies linked to an alleged top-secret data-mining program deny they had anything to do with it.

    • Intelligence Boss Claims The Real Villain Here Is The Press For Revealing His Secret Spying Program
    • Verizon: We Protect Our Customers’ Data… Until The Government Asks For It
    • Sources: NSA sucks in data from 50 companies

      Analysts at the National Security Agency can now secretly access real-time user data provided by as many as 50 American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers, two government officials familiar with the arrangements said.

      Several of the companies have provided records continuously since 2006, while others have given the agency sporadic access, these officials said. These officials disclosed the number of participating companies in order to provide context for a series of disclosures about the NSA’s domestic collection policies. The officials, contacted independently, repeatedly said that “domestic collection” does not mean that the target is based in the U.S. or is a U.S. citizen; rather, it refers only to the origin of the data.

    • What does the Prism logo mean?
    • PRISM – Diffracting non-US Citizens’ basic privacy since 2007?

      It’s being reported by the Guardian and Washington Post that the US National Security Agency can routinely access the sensitive data stored by big web firms including Facebook, Google, Skype, Microsoft, Yahoo, YouTube and Apple.

    • EE debate mobile weblogs and privacy
    • Anonymous Leaks Some NSA Documents About PRISM
    • The NSA surveillance story reinforces why an entity like WikiLeaks is so important

      WikiLeaks, the secretive repository for government malfeasance, hasn’t been in the news much lately except for occasional updates about founder Julian Assange, who remains in exile inside the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain. And neither WikiLeaks nor its supporters had much to do with the latest blockbuster leak of government intelligence, which confirmed that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone-call data from Verizon customers thanks to a secret court order. But despite all that, the NSA story helps to highlight why having an independent repository for high-level leaks is a valuable thing.

      The original report on the NSA’s surveillance effort came from Glenn Greenwald, who writes about politics for The Guardian, courtesy of a leaked document that confirmed the existence of an order signed by the ultra-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. As the New York Times explains, even the existence of this kind of order is subject to the highest levels of U.S. government secrecy — much higher, in fact, than the diplomatic cables that former Army private Bradley Manning is accused of providing to WikiLeaks.

    • President Obama ‘Welcomes’ The Debate On Surveillance That He’s Avoided For Years Until It Was Forced Upon Him

      In other words, he’s not “welcoming” the debate at all. The debate is happening with or without him, and when he had the chance to “welcome” the debate, he didn’t. Now, it appears, he’s trying to appear willing “to talk” about something that’s now gone way beyond the stage where “welcoming the debate” is sufficient.

      If anything, his helps explain why over-aggressive secrecy is such a stupid government policy. If they had been open about this and there had been public discussions earlier, and people were free to express their concerns, and the government could explain its position, then the discussion would have been different, and more interesting. But having all this information denied by government officials for years, only to come out via a leak just looks so much worse.

    • Press comment: NSA spying, GCHQ and Prism
    • Blockbuster Reports Reveal Widespread Surveillance of Phone and Internet Records by Obama Administration

      In a series of blockbuster reports published in the Washington Post and in the British newspaper The Guardian, sources reveal that the National Security Agency (NSA) is running a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows federal officials to collect material including “search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats” from an array of internet companies including Google, Skype, YouTube, Facebook, Apple, and more without a court order. The papers gained access to a 41-slide top secret PowerPoint presentation that lays out the parameters of the program, which has apparently been operative since 2007.

    • PRISM US Surveillance – Serious Questions for the UK Government

      Digital rights campaigners Open Rights Group are extremely concerned by these unprecedented revelations of US spying on foreign citizens.

    • Was the Communications Data Bill just a cover for Prism Data?

      Rather more concerning is the UK involvement in this. According to the Guardian, “Prism would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside the UK.”

      This is interesting in light of the recently proposed Communications Data Bill. If the security services already have access to the data, what was the bill for? One option is that it would have allowed open use of Prism data in UK courts, without raising questions as to it’s origin.

    • Told You So: If You Have Been Using A Centralized Comms Service, You Were Wiretapped

      This night, news broke that the USA’s security agencies have been wiretapping essentially every major centralized social service for private data. Photos, video conferences, text chats, and voice calls – everything. We have been saying this for years and been declared tinfoil hat and conspiracy nuts; it’s good to finally see the documents in black on white.

    • Entire Internet Thunderstruck To Discover That US+UK Intelligence Agencies Do Their Job

      It doesn’t matter how much data you collect.
      What matters is having the eyeballs to read that data.

    • Pointless Partisanship on Surveillance

      “Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other” is the way conventional Beltway reporters seem to see the world–and it’s reflected in their reporting on political events.

    • Free Software Foundation statement on PRISM revelations

      To protect their freedom and privacy, the FSF urges everyone to contact their representatives, avoid Software as a Service, and donate to support projects working for a better, safer world.

    • PRISM: Write to your MP

      If like us, you oppose mass surveillance, we would encourage you to write to your MP to make your position clear and ask them to act.

    • A lesson from history for those who strive to bring intelligence agencies to account

      The sign is deceptive in two respects. First, the facility is not controlled by the RAF. Second, its function has little to do with traditional Air Force operations. The role of Menwith Hill is to act on US instructions to spy on the world’s communications systems. The presence of at least thirty huge spherical raydomes masking the base’s satellite receiving dishes gives testimony to what goes on there. Only in recent times has this place become infamous as the world’s biggest electronic monitoring spy base.

    • Triangulating On Truth – The Totalitarian State

      The Guardian breaks a big story yesterday – a court document authorizing the FBI and NSA to secretly collect customer phone records. All of them, for all Verizon customers.

      Then today the Washington Post breaks an even bigger story – a leaked presentation stating that the NSA is “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies” to collect information on users. The project is code-named PRISM.

      These are the huge repositories of user information from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. Dropbox, we’re told, is “coming soon.” Twitter is noticeably absent.

    • The Googlisation of Surveillance: The UK Communications Data Bill

      There is a belief that democracies respect the rights of their citizens. Well, they don’t. There is a great deal of cant written about that but even the democratic modern state has become so big, so intrusive and utterly overbearing that its cancerous tentacles have insinuated themselves into every orifice of the body politic. No sooner has one threat to personal and internet freedom receded than another springs up like proverbial dragon’s teeth. One of Hecate’s children of the night has been brewing for a while and is set to make its way onto the statute book here in the UK. It’s called the Communications Data Bill and with Jimmy Wales threatening to encrypt UK users visits to the website in order to protect their privacy it’s clearly a live issue and worth looking at.

    • Senators: Why Is Everyone So Worked Up About Verizon Spying? We’ve All Known About It Since 2007
    • NSA chief, two weeks ago: ‘We’re the only ones not spying on the American people’

      The National Security Agency recently asked Verizon to turn over telephone metadata for tens of millions of Americans, the Guardian reported Wednesday, based on a leaked court document that appears to show an NSA request for customer data from April through July.

      The NSA is both vast and secretive, one of the less-understood agencies of the U.S. intelligence community. And at the top of it is Gen. Keith Alexander, the longest-serving NSA chief ever, who took over in 2005 and is planning to retire early next year. His tenure, like so much the NSA has done in the past decade, has been controversial from the beginning. At the end of the year he took over, it was revealed that the Bush administration had authorized the NSA to run a vast, warrantless program spying on Americans.

    • Privacy Advocates Demand Government Stop Snooping on Private Citizens

      Taking its cue from George Orwell’s famous novel 1984, the Obama administration is mining customer data from major Internet vendors and collecting telephone records of millions of U.S. citizens indiscriminately—regardless of whether they are suspected of a crime.

      The National Security Agency (NSA) is currently collecting the records of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order issued in April. It is requiring Verizon to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its system—and also demanding Verizon’s silence on the order.

    • Modern Data Centers Fuel NSA’s Verizon Phone Spying
    • Assange: NSA leaker could face same fate as Bradley Manning

      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday that the source who leaked details about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program could face the same fate as Bradley Manning, the Army private on trial for espionage and treason.

    • Assange fears for US Internet spying whistleblower

      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Friday he fears the whistleblower who exposed a vast US surveillance programme could face the same fate as the US soldier who leaked files to his website.

      In an interview from the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he has been holed up for nearly a year, Assange defended the public’s right to know about the Internet data mining programme revealed late yesterday.

    • COLUMN – Obama’s overdue reckoning on secrecy

      All day Thursday, Washington officials from across the political spectrum scrambled to explain reports in the Guardian and Washington Post of unprecedented government collection of the phone records of Americans and the tracking of the Google, Facebook and Skype activities of Americans and non-Americans worldwide.

      James R. Clapper, director of National Intelligence, insisted in an unusual public statement that the phone programs did not involve the surveillance of American citizens. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee, asserted the government needs the information to someone those who might become a terrorist. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the ranking member and vice chairman of the intelligence committee, described the program as “meritorious” because it allows government to collect information about “bad guys.”

      President Barack Obama Friday defended his administration’s unprecedented level of surveillance.

    • GAO tells CIA to reopen $600 million cloud deal to competition
    • GAO says “not so fast” on proposed secret Amazon-CIA cloud

      Remember that proposed secure cloud that Amazon was building for the CIA but that no one would acknowledge? Well it looks like it’s on hold, because the U.S. Government Accountability Office has sided with IBM, which filed a formal protest of the awarded contract. News that the GAO was telling the CIA to re-open bids was reported by Federal Computer Week.

    • Amazon confirms CIA spook cloud contract

      Amazon Web Services has confirmed to The Register that it is set to build a massive cloud for the CIA. IBM, however, is still in the running, after the company’s protest at the choice of Amazon was recognized by the US Government Accountability Office.

    • Rand Paul: Orwell’s ’1984′ has arrived

      Senator warns of ‘astounding assault on Constitution’ by NSA

    • NSA Spying Revelations Start To Cause Outrage In Europe; China Next?

      Guardian has confirmed today that the UK has been tapping into Prism for a while

    • Uk To Brit Hacks: Shut Up

      A British Defense Ministry press advisory committee, reacting to a flurry of revelations in the American press about massive warrantless US government electronic surveillance programs, quietly warned UK organizations Friday not to publish British national security information.

      Defiance of the advisory could make British journalists vulnerable to prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

    • Renowned Rights Watchdog to Downgrade United States in Freedom Rankings

      If you thought the astounding (and ongoing) revelations about the NSA’s PRISM regime were going to hurt America’s reputation, it appears you were right. Freedom House just made it official.

    • Staffordshire police officers and PSCO quit over ‘misuse of data’

      TWO police officers and a PCSO have quit after they were arrested for ‘inappropriately’ accessing the force’s computer system.

      All three were suspended last year as anti-corruption detectives launched a major investigation into their separate cases.

    • Obama defends surveillance tactics

      Barack Obama defended two secret programmes that allow the US to collect telephone records and emails on Friday amid accusations from Europe that his administration’s embrace of sweeping surveillance tactics had become “monstrous”.

    • Obama deflects criticism over NSA surveillance as Democrats sound alarm
    • NSA Says It Doesn’t Spy On Americans As Obama Administration Defends Letting NSA Spy On Americans
    • Cameron under pressure over spying claims report
    • Let’s All Just Believe What This Shifty CIA-Funded Data-Collecting Company Says

      Talking Points Memo reintroduced us all to Palantir Technologies, a data-collecting semi-private intelligence service that may or may not have been involved with the mass collection of data from private citizens by the National Security Agency. The NSA’s program is called PRISM. Palantir has a program called Prism. Connections were made.

    • Pure Storage Boosts Crypto Features, Takes CIA Money

      While the amount In-Q-Tel paid out wasn’t made public, investment from the spook community is a major endorsement when selling to security-centric government and military clients.

      On the security front, the new version of Pure’s software encrypts all data on the system at rest using self-encrypting SSDs and AES-256 encryption. I assume the self-encrypting drives come from Samsung, as it’s another of Pure’s investors.

    • Trust in government eroding, former CIA director Porter Goss says

      President Barack Obama’s appointment this week of Susan Rice as national security adviser, along with disclosures Thursday about government scrutiny of phone records and Internet data further deepen Americans’ “trust deficit” in government, said Porter Goss, former CIA director and Southwest Florida congressman.

      Goss, a Sanibel resident who’s summering on the family’s farm in Virginia, was CIA director and Director of Central Intelligence from May 2004-September 2006, appointed by President George W. Bush after 16 years in Congress.

    • On Prism

      Prism shouldn’t be viewed as a calamity but an opportunity and we should learn from China and game the market. Regardless of the trade agreements in place, parliamentary sovereignty of EU and the various nation states is absolute and there is no reason why given a will to do so that a ban on US internet giants (even if only temporary) cannot be applied. This would naturally create a vacuum for these services which then could be filled by local EU services with appropriate funding. From a national and EU security stand point this is beneficial along with providing a welcome boost to local economies remembering that many of these giants pay little taxation in the EU.

    • How supermarkets get your data – and what they do with it

      It doesn’t matter if you are part of a loyalty scheme, pay by card or even cash, ‘Big Brother’ supermarkets know your every move

    • Was Canada part of secret NSA spy operation?

      The UK’s electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world’s biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America’s top spy agency, says the Guardian.

      The news came just after US president Barack Obama, “offered a robust defense of the government surveillance programs revealed this week, and sought to reassure the public that his administration has not become a Big Brother with eyes and ears throughout the world of online communications,” according to the New York Times, which quoted him as promising:

    • [Old] An Israeli Trojan Horse

      As early as 1999, the National Security Agency issued a warning that records of U.S. government telephone calls were ending up in foreign hands – Israel’s, in particular. In 2002, assistant U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Diegelman issued an eyes only memo on the matter to the chief information technology (IT) officers at the Department of Justice. IT officers oversee everything from the kind of cell phones agents carry to the wiretap equipment they use in the field; their defining purpose is secure communications. Diegelman’s memo was a reiteration, with overtones of reprimand, of a new IT policy instituted a year earlier, in July 2001, in an internal Justice order titled “2640.2D Information Technology Security.” Order 2640.2D stated that “Foreign Nationals shall not be authorized to access or assist in the development, operation, management or maintenance of Department IT systems.” This might not seem much to blink at in the post-9/11 intel and security overhaul. Yet 2640.2D was issued a full two months before the Sept. 11 attacks. What group or groups of foreign nationals had close access to IT systems at the Department of Justice? Israelis, according to officials in law enforcement. One former Justice Department computer crimes prosecutor tells me, speaking on background, “I’ve heard that the Israelis can listen in to our calls.”

    • Secret NSA Program Gives the Agency Unprecedented Access to Private Internet Communications

      The PRISM program, unlike the NSA phone records program, does not sweep up all data in a vacuum. Rather, it enables government analysts to search the private Internet company’s own data for key terms that are supposed to make it more likely than not that the target is “foreign.” But this requirement of only 51 percent certainty means that much of the information disclosed will inevitably concern Americans. The extent of the information available to the government is extraordinary. The Post reports that, according to a PRISM “User Guide,” Skype “can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of ‘audio, video, chat, and file transfers’ when Skype users connect by computer alone. Google’s offerings include Gmail, voice and video chat, Google Drive files, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms.”

    • Obama defends NSA spying program as new Prism details emerge – live
    • NSA Building $860 Million Data Center in Maryland

      As its current data collection makes headlines, the National Security Agency is continuing to expand its data storage and processing capabilities. The agency recently broke ground on an $860 million data center at Fort Meade, Maryland that will span more than 600,000 square feet, including 70,000 square feet of technical space.

      Last month the NSA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building the High Performance Computing Center-2, an NSA-run facility that will be located on base at Fort Meade, which is home to much of the agency’s existing data center operations. The data center will be supported by 60 megawatts of power capacity, and will use both air-cooled and liquid-cooled equipment.

    • Inside PRISM: Why the Government Hates Encryption

      Google’s Larry Page and David Drummond are categorically denying that Google gives the government open-ended, back-door access to user data. This appears to confirm my speculation (for Google at least) that these firms are still tightly controlling data access by reviewing and addressing each data demand on an individual and responsible basis. And keep something in mind — the government can use legal means to try force you to be silent about a matter, but they can’t force you to lie, unless they’re resorting to waterboarding and shock collars for Internet executives.

    • Boundless Informant: the NSA’s secret tool to track global surveillance data

      The top-secret Boundless Informant tool details and maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks

    • Boundless Informant NSA data-mining tool – four key slides
    • Leader’s Update: The Pirate Party and PRISM

      …we do know that PRISM exists. It’s vital we get clarity.

  • Civil Rights

    • Dept. of Homeland Security: Laptops, Phones Can Be Searched Based on Hunches

      U.S. border agents should continue to be allowed to search a traveler’s laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal Homeland Security Department study. It contends limiting such searches would prevent the U.S. from detecting child pornographers or terrorists and expose the government to lawsuits.

    • Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes
    • DHS Says Agent ‘Hunches’ Trump Citizens’ Rights In Searching Your Computer At The Border
    • Why Canadians Should Be Demanding Answers About Secret Surveillance Programs

      Privacy and surveillance have taken centre stage this week with the revelations that U.S. agencies have been engaged in massive, secret surveillance programs that include years of capturing the meta-data from every cellphone call on the Verizon network (the meta-data includes the number called and the length of the call) as well as gathering information from the largest Internet companies in the world including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple in a program called PRISM. This lengthy post provides some background on the U.S. programs, but focuses primarily on the Canadian perspective, arguing that many of the same powers exist under Canadian law and that it is likely that Canadians have been caught up by these surveillance activities.

    • Aaron Swartz’ Dad Wants Justice For His Son

      This morning I received an email from Aaron Swartz’ father, Bob Swartz. It was a politically motivated mass email sent by Demand Progress. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. I get a lot of such emails, from organizations like MoveOn and Common Cause. I get so many that I don’t usually open them. There seems to be a lot of issues facing our country these days.

    • One-quarter of Gitmo prisoners now being force-fed
    • The situation in Turkey

      …website blocking used frequently and abusively; excessive fines on media outlets; journalists imprisoned.

    • Be Prepared for the Inevitable and Unpredictable Mass Movement

      People who seek justice and an end to militarism feel like they are laboring in relative obscurity, organizing seemingly unnoticed actions, but at some point a wave of mass resistance arises.

    • Will Texas Nullify Both NDAA and TSA?

      The measure also forbids removing a child younger than 18 years of age from the physical custody or control of a parent or guardian. The act would put an end to the most intrusive pat-down searches conducted by the TSA.

    • California Assembly passes bill in opposition to indefinite detention provisions of NDAA

      A California bill, AB 351, passed by the state Assembly on 5/31/13, if also passed by the California Senate and signed by the governor, would make it illegal for any California agency or employee to cooperate with the US Armed Forces in any investigation, prosecution, or detention of a person within California under the NDAA, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or any other federal law. Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a national organization which organizes grass roots support for this bill and for others like it around the country, said that the passage of AB 351 by the California Assembly demonstrates support across California “… for due process principles that have been largely ignored by Congress in its ongoing bipartisan assault on the rights of the American people.”

    • While No One Was Looking: House GOP Voted Against GITMO Closure

      Just because the whole world seems to be talking about closing Guantanamo Bay prison — not to mention the President of the United States — doesn’t mean it’s going to happen any time soon. Not if congressional Republicans have anything to do with it.

    • They Should Have Listened To Feingold: Obama Vs. The Only Senator Who Voted Against The PATRIOT Act

      Today, the President of the United States made the case for Big Brother. Yes, he said we should have a public dialogue about these issues, but the fact that it took a bunch of high-profile leaks to make him say that means it’s a load of bullshit anyway. If Obama really wanted debate on these issues, more debate would have been encouraged before quiet and not-much-talked-about votes on PATRIOT Act and NDAA reauthorizations.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Web inventor Berners-Lee warns forces are ‘trying to take control’

      The inventor of the World Wide Web said the internet is facing a “major” threat from “people who want to control it on the sly” through “worrying laws” such as SOPA, the US anti-piracy act, and through the actions of internet giants.

    • What’s the Net Net on Neelie Kroes’s EU Net Neutrality?

      It’s been a while since I wrote about net neutrality, but of course it’s never gone away as an important theme. Indeed, it was inevitable that it would start to rear its ugly head again, since so many powerful companies have vested interests in destroying it. For example, in Germany the telecom giant Deutsch Telekom (DT) has already made a move to kill net neutrality by giving preference to its own IPTV platform. This has led to a heated debate about net neutrality in that country (for those who read German, the site hilf-telekom.de offers some hilarious satire of DT on the subject.)

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • US Businesses Urge Obama To Stoke Trade War With India

      The heads of seventeen United States industry associations, including the US Chamber of Commerce, today (6 June) issued a letter to President Barack Obama alleging that the Indian government is engaging in discriminating policies against US exports and encouraging swift action by the US government. Among the concerns is the country’s treatment of patents.

      The businesses expressed concern that recent policy decisions in India undermine internationally recognised intellectual property standards that are ultimately “jeopardizing domestic jobs.”

      “Over the last year, the courts and policymakers in India have engaged in a persistent pattern of discrimination designed to benefit India’s business community at the expense of American jobs,” the letter [pdf] said. “These actions are unacceptable for a responsible middle-income country and rising global power to treat its second-largest export trading partner.”

    • People Begin To Wake Up To Massive Dangers Of Investor-State Dispute Resolution

      Techdirt has been writing about investor-state dispute resolution (ISDR) mechanisms in international trade treaties like TPP and TAFTA/TTIP for two main reasons. First, because of the scale involved: ISDR allows companies to sue entire countries for huge sums, alleging loss of future profits. And secondly, because few seem aware of this growing threat to the national sovereignty of many countries around the world. That finally seems to be changing, with a number of articles warning about the dangers of ISDR appearing recently.

    • Back African smallholders, not agribusiness

      Today sees David Cameron host a “hunger summit” in London, the first in a series of events leading up to the G8 summit in 10 days’ time. The event will include a meeting of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a private investment initiative launched by the G8 in order to expand the reach of multinational companies into Africa. The UK government has pledged £395m of taxpayers’ money to the scheme.

    • Copyrights

      • Warner Bros: We’re Fining File-Sharers Who Use Non Six-Strike ISPs

        Customers of ISPs not involved in the so-called ‘Six Strikes’ anti-piracy scheme in the United States might be under the impression that warning notices are something they can avoid. However, TorrentFreak has learned that Warner Bros. are specifically targeting users of non-participating ISPs not only with warnings, but also with fines to settle the alleged copyright infringements.

      • Audiovisual Materials in the Classroom and the WIPO treaty for the blind

        My name is Fedro De Tomassi. I am a student at St. Olaf College, class of 2014, and next week I will be a volunteer (as a guide and interpreter) at the Diplomatic Conference to Conclude a Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities (June 17 to 28, 2013 – Marrakesh, Morocco) http://www.wipo.int/dc2013/en/

        People with disabilities including the blind and visually impaired persons must have the same educational opportunities and access to information as any other person. To do that we need to make sure this treaty includes all current and future educational methods. It has to be a relevant treaty for the 21 century and I hope the delegates will pay attention to my generation and the next one too.

      • Apple Ordered to Pay €5 Million in Private Copy Levy on iPads

        In a high profile ruling handed down on May 30th, the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance (trial court) ordered Apple to pay the princely sum of €5,000,000 to Copie France, the body tasked with collecting the private copy levy that applies to blank media and equipment capable of recording and storing such copies.

      • Utah Sheriff Claims Copyright On Mugshot Photos To Avoid Releasing Them
      • Mug shot website sues Utah sheriff for jail photos

        he owner of a website that publishes inmate booking photos is suing a Utah sheriff for denying a public records request for more than a thousand mug shots.

        The Salt Lake County Sheriff denied the records request in February, saying his office could refuse because it holds copyright control over the images.

      • Prenda seeded its own porn files via BitTorrent, new affidavit argues

        Graham Syfert is a local Florida lawyer who has been defending people caught up in Prenda purported copyright suits. Last we heard from the defense attorney, he appeared to have settled some cases with the porn trolling outfit. Nearly two weeks ago, Syfert told Ars that he was still involved in two more Florida Prenda-related cases: Sunlust Pictures v. Nguyen, and First Time Videos v. Oppold.

      • US opposes safeguards in WIPO treaty for the blind that are included in ACTA, and Beijing treaty

        As Love notes, similar language has appeared in a variety of other agreements, including ACTA and the Beijing Treaty (which would give Hollywood stars their own special copyrights). Why is this language important? Because TRIPS includes key provisions that allow countries to make some of their own decisions about how they implement the agreements, to protect the public’s rights. But, the content industry doesn’t want that same language in this treaty, which is focused on the public’s rights, because they’re afraid it will, once again, open the door to countries expanding the public’s rights, and pushing back on egregious copyright restrictions on those rights.

      • Debate Over Mobile Phone Unlocking Highlights Fantasy Thinking vs. Real World

        Today in the House Judiciary Committee, they’re holding hearings concerning cell phone unlocking, focused specifically on Rep. Goodlatte’s proposed bill, which actually seems to be the weakest of all the proposed bills. It doesn’t offer a permanent fix. It doesn’t fully tackle the problem. Actually, it barely tackles the problem, and serves only to punt the issue down the road. That is, it would “repeal” the rejection of the exemption to the DMCA for cell phone unlocking by the Librarian of Congress (if you don’t recall, the whole fight is because the DMCA ridiculously makes it illegal to circumvent “technology protection measures” even if the reason has nothing to do with infringing on someone’s copyright, but every three years, the Librarian of Congress gets to issue “exemptions”), but would allow the Librarian of Congress to revisit the issue at the next triennial review. It does nothing to address the actual problem, which is a ridiculous and broken anti-circumvention clause, section 1201 of the Copyright Act.

      • Why Did Congress Abdicate Its Power To Make Copyright Policy?

        Earlier today, we wrote about today’s Congressional hearings about legalizing the unlocking of mobile phones. That post fretted about the unwillingness of Congress to take on the actual issue. The only reason that mobile phone unlocking is illegal today is because of a broken copyright law, specifically section 1201 of the DMCA, which isn’t about copyright per se, but rather a bizarre, indirect way that entertainment industry lawyers think protects copyright by making technology illegal, and effectively gives those legacy industries veto power over technologies they don’t like. So when Congress realizes how this is abused for reasons that have nothing to do with protecting copyrights, they should respond by fixing section 1201. But that’s not what they’re doing.

      • Morgan Pietz Objects To Duffy’s Bond In Prenda Case, Points Out More Typical Prenda Tricks

06.06.13

Links 6/6/2013: Ghana Linux Update, AMD Turns to Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 4:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source: Does a Collaborative Process for Developing Ideas Imply Innovation?

    A goal of Open Source is that the model allows alliances to be built among randomly distributed remote developers. The theory goes that the collective ingenuity of many remote contributors can focus together on improving and creating a much more rich product than what can be created by a single individual or small closed group. The success of Linux springs to mind immediately as an example of Open Source collaboration work well and what many people would consider to be even better than the traditional process of closed development.

  • edX learning platform now all open source

    The edX learning platform has now completed its transition to open source and is available under an AGPL licence. The core of the system is the edx-platform which includes both the LMS (Learning Management System) and Studio, a tool for creating courses. Other parts of the system, such as the XBlock component architecture for courseware, machine-learning-based grading such as EASE, the discern tool, deployment tools, interfaces to external grading systems and Python execution utilities, can all be found on the new code.edx.org.

  • EdX Goes Open Source To Woo MOOC Developers
  • Has Open-Source Technology Grown Up?

    If open-source software and technology was a brand in its own right, it might borrow the popular 1968 tagline for Virginia Slims: You’ve come a long way, baby.

  • Linux source code for Rockchip RK3188 devices now available

    Rockchip’s RK3188 processor is one of the fastest ARM Cortex-A9 chips around. The 28nm quad-core processor outperforms the chips found in the Samsung Galaxy S III and Google Nexus 7, for instance. And it’s a relatively inexpensive chip, which explains why it’s proven popular with Chinese tablet and TV box makers.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozillux: A Nice Linux Distro With a Unique Software Set

        French Mozillux may look a lot like LXDE-based Lubuntu Linux, but don’t be fooled. This portable Linux distro, which targets both beginners and intermediate users, offers a surprisingly comprehensive selection of installed software for users with a wide range of interests. It’s easily as flexible and usable as Puppy and Knoppix; just make sure you follow the developers’ download instructions.

      • Firefox’s New Interface Is Already Looking Good on Linux

        It’s been a few months since I last checked in on the progress of Australis, the new Firefox interface coming to Windows, Mac and, of course, Linux.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Semi-Open Source

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Licensing

    • Forking and Standards: Why The Right to Fork Can Be Pro-Social

      It is often said that open source and open standards are different, because in open source, a diversity of forks is accepted/encouraged, while “forked” standards are confusing/inefficient since they don’t provide “stable reference points” for the people who have to implement the spec.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Google Gives Training Wheels To App Developers

      Want to build an Android app but don’t want to bother with the backend nuts and bolts that keep it running properly? Google has got you covered. The Android maker has released a cloud-based backend kit which handles some of the nitty-gritty work of creating an app which requires authentication, cloud storage, server queries and push notifications. This offering also operates on Google’s App Engine cloud service which offers server scaling and a host of Google APIs, all manageable through a web-based dashboard. In essence, Google wants developers to not to just write apps for Android, but to write apps using their APIs and standards, and they’re willing to give away the keys to do it.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The Reality of WebRTC…All Hype?

      Actually, WebRTC is the biggest change we face today. The full impact is probably 2 years out–but it’s coming. Here are the critical issues still to be resolved.

    • Google to keep CalDAV, CardDAV API open

      Google has reversed its previous decision to restrict access to CalDAV API to only select and large partners. The decision raised questions over Google’s commitment to open standard and open source. Google says that the decision was based on impression that “almost all the API usage was driven by a few large developers,” says Piotr Stanczyk, the Tech Lead of the Google Calendar APIs group.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Ben & Jerry’s Is Going Non-GMO

      Ice cream man­u­fac­turer Ben & Jerry’s has com­mit­ted to switch­ing to all non-GMO ingre­di­ents in its ice cream prod­ucts by the end of this year.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • After a Massacre, a ‘Glimmer of Hope’?

      In a courtroom base near Tacoma, Washington, Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales will plead guilty today to killing 16 civilians–most of them women and children–in an Afghan village on March 11, 2012. Bales will give his first account of the attack under oath as part of the hearing, in order to avoid the death penalty (New York Times, 6/05/13). The incident remains one of the most shocking slaughters of civilians in the Afghan War. The massacre received some media attention at the time, though much of that discussion was about the problems it would pose for the U.S. war there.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Environmental Groups Split on Illinois Fracking Bill

      The Illinois legislature has passed a fracking regulatory bill, expected to be signed into law by the governor, hailed by some environmental groups as the “toughest in the country.” But other groups are highly critical, both of the bill and of the way some big environmental groups worked with legislators and industry to pass it into law.

  • Finance

    • Sure, Go Ahead and Invest in Goldman Sachs’ Hedge Fund for Average Joes (Just Don’t Expect to Make Money)

      Much attention has been paid lately to Goldman Sachs’ decision to “help” average folks (a.k.a. the 99% crowd) access the kind of high-stakes hedge funds once available only to the superrich (a.k.a. the 1%). And while all sorts of pundits and investor advocates have noted the folly of this and similar ideas, there’s a case to be made that the opposite is true — that average investors might do well by throwing some money Goldman’s way. In fact, there are two cases to be made. Allow me to explain.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • WI Legislature Fast-Tracking “War on Democracy” Bill, Business Lobby Misleads on Disclosure Provisions

      Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin are fast-tracking a controversial bill to keep political donors secret, enact voter ID, and limit early voting, among other measures, with a vote scheduled for next week. The only public hearing on the bill was held Tuesday, where a representative of the business lobby made several misleading assertions about the bill’s disclosure provisions.

      “Our main message today to the committee is to please slow down,” Jonathan Becker and Mike Haas of the state Government Accountability Board told the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.

  • Censorship

    • Who decides what we can see online?

      Today, along with the Open Rights Group, English PEN and Index on Censorship, we have signed a letter to Culture Secretary Maria Miller highlighting our concerns about the current debate around ‘blocking’ internet content.

      It is absolutely right to pursue the removal of illegal content from the internet, but moving to a system where legal content is blocked poses a clear and significant risk to freedom of speech. The triviality of circumventing blocks aside, such a policy risks blocking legitimate websites and setting a dangerous international precedent. After all, who gets to decide what legal content is deemed to be unfit for the British public?

  • Privacy

    • Fighting Facebook, a Campaign for a People’s Terms of Service

      Facebook is on the defensive again. Members of the social networking site sued the company for co-opting their identities in online ads, and Facebook agreed to revise its “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” and offer a $20 million settlement. The case has drawn less attention than the dorm disputes portrayed in The Social Network, but the impact is far wider. An underpublicized aspect of the dispute concerns the power of online contracts, and ultimately, whether users or corporations have more control over life online.

  • Civil Rights

    • Judge Blocks Order Demanding Suspect Decrypt Computer Drives or Face Jail

      A federal judge today halted an order that a Wisconsin man decrypt 16 computer drives the authorities suspect contain child pornography downloaded from the peer-to-peer file-sharing site e-Donkey.

      The brief ruling (.pdf) by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa of Milwaukee came a day after the suspect’s attorney urged Randa to halt a magistrate’s earlier order that Jeffrey Feldman decrypt the drives by today or potentially face indefinite detention until he complied.

    • Bangladesh police open fire at collapsed garment factory protest

      Hundreds of Rana Plaza workers and their families take to the streets to demand back pay and compensation

  • DRM

06.05.13

Links 5/6/2013: Calligra 2.6.4 Released, Facebook Collapses

Posted in News Roundup at 3:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • ZorinOS – Gateway to Linux for Windows Users

    Linux currently has probably the largest selection of desktop environment options that any OS has ever had in their entire life. ZorinOS is yet another derivative of the popular Ubuntu Distro and is currently in Version 7. It is based on Ubuntu 13.04 thus offering the latest of what Ubuntu has to offer to the Linux community. But the look and feel is classic Windows 7.

  • 25 Lesser Known Facts About GNU/Linux

    Linux is not an OS, but it is the kernel, GNU Linux is the OS

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • US UNIVERSITY LEVERAGES LINUX FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING (PART II)

      This ease of use was especially appreciated when the Banner student system was being deployed. No real standardised configuration and provisioning methodology exists for Oracle Real application Clusters (RaC) nodes. “as a team, we had to come up with a design that we could repeat for all RaC clusters within the infrastructure,” said Swaminathan.

  • Kernel Space

    • PulseAudio 4.0 – Better Performance Less Resources

      PulseAudio is a sound server that’s become quite popular in Linux distributions and has, in fact, replaced most other sound systems in recent years. It was a rough transition there for a while, but most of all that is over now. And today, PulseAudio 4.0 was released, a version which will soon begin to appear on our desktops. Arun Raghavan, PulseAudio developer and Collabora employee, in his announcement said, “this release brings a bunch of Bluetooth stability updates, better low latency handling, performance improvements, and a whole lot more.”

    • Linux Boot Process Chart
    • F2FS Patches Provide Support For Inline Data

      For potential merging in an upcoming Linux kernel release are new patches that allow storing small files as inline data for F2FS.

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Core i7 4770K “Haswell” Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux

        This past weekend I shared the first experiences of running Intel’s new Haswell CPU on Linux. While Intel Haswell is a beast and brings many new features and innovations to the new Core CPUs succeeding Ivy Bridge, there were a few shortcomings with the initial Linux support. It still appears that the Core i7 4770K is still being finicky at times for both the processor and graphics, but in this article are the first benchmarks. Up today are benchmarks of the Intel Core i7 4770K when running Ubuntu 13.04 with the Linux 3.10 kernel.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • Snowlinux 4 arrives with frosty MATE and Cinnamon flavours

      The developers of Snowlinux have announced the latest release the Ubuntu-based version of their Linux distribution. Snowlinux 4 “Frosty” is based on Ubuntu 13.04 and is available with both MATE and Cinnamon desktops. The latest release of the distribution introduces Cinnamon 1.8, which debuted in the recently released Linux Mint 15, with features such as a new screen locking application and a redesigned control centre. Users who prefer the MATE environment can take advantage of the latest version of this desktop, MATE 1.6 from April.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • Arch Family

      • Arch Linux developers warn of update problems

        The Arch Linux developers are warning users of problems they might encounter when updating their systems. The Arch maintainers are staging a merge of the distribution’s /bin, /sbin and /lib directories into the /usr directory that has already been undertaken in distributions such as Mageia and Fedora; openSUSE also moved its directories in a similar way with version 12.2 of its distribution last year. In contrast with these distributions, Arch operates on a rolling release system, which means that there is no “full release” in which the developers can make these changes. The developers therefore have to make the change in a regular update.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Upgraded by Ned Davis Research to “Neutral” (RHT)

        Other equities research analysts have also recently issued reports about the stock. Analysts at TheStreet reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Red Hat in a research note to investors on Tuesday, May 28th. Separately, analysts at BMO Capital Markets downgraded shares of Red Hat from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note to investors on Monday, May 20th. They now have a $54.00 price target on the stock, up previously from $52.57. They noted that the move was a valuation call.

      • Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • Debian vs CentOS

        When it comes to setup web servers, or Internet servers (web, email and ftp) there is usually two GNU/Linux distributions that comes to mind, Debian and CentOS. Some people are starting to use Ubuntu server, but let’s focus on CentOS and Debian, as Ubuntu is a Debian derivative.

      • Debian Stable to track Firefox ESR
      • Debian Wheezy vs Intel 4965AGN: flop-flop

        Installing Debian may be a trivial task for someone.

      • Derivatives

        • Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier

          It has been a while since my last English Debian Edu and Skolelinux interview last November. But the developers and translators are still pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators in the project, Cédric Boutillier.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • 30 Things I did After Installing Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail

            And here we go again. Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail was released almost a month ago and unlike previous releases, this has been more of a silent affair. Mainstream blogs and news websites didn’t cover much about the release. Ubuntu 13.04 is mostly an incrementally updated release and that could be the reason. But from a user-perspective, “Raring Ringtail” has a number of very important qualities, significant performance improvement being one of them. Leaving all that aside for now, lets discuss what all can be done to further enhance Ubuntu 13.04 for every-day use. 30 things to do after installing Ubuntu 13.04 raring Ringtail.

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 319
          • Ubuntu Cloud: Canonical, Inktank Ceph Storage Partnership

            In a move that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, given the close collaboration between Canonical and Inktank—not to mention Mark Shuttleworth personally—around the open source Ceph storage system for Big Data and the cloud, the two companies on Monday announced a deal to provide full support for Ceph on Ubuntu. Here are the details, and what they mean for the channel.

          • Ubuntu Eon Superphone envisioned, could win fans

            We brought readers news about the Ubuntu operating system for mobiles back in January, developed by Canonical. Ubuntu for phones prompted the possibility of a Ubuntu superphone, and we heard that new Ubuntu smartphones could become available by October this year. Now we have a look at one such possible device with the Ubuntu Eon Superphone envisioned, and we reckon that if this phone ever came to fruition it could win fans.

          • Canonical’s free Ubuntu Operating System breathes life into old PCs

            This is a story of how a botched Windows 8 upgrade on an older Windows 7 notebook led me to try and discover the free Ubuntu OS.

            Like many users faced with an opportunity to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 with an early adopter discount, I jumped at the opportunity to move to the latest and greatest OS.

            My mistake was not backing up my Windows 7 system, which proved to be fatal when various errors led to a crashed system sometime after the OS was upgraded to Windows 8.

          • Ubuntu holds its own

            Ubuntu is a free operating system available for desktops, notebooks, phones, tablets, servers and even TVs. For the individual, it offers a simple, intuitive interface that can be customised on many levels. For the business user, Ubuntu offers access to legacy applications, remote management, and, with a full office suite, it eliminates the need for costly software licences. For a support fee, businesses can manage thousands of devices. Furthermore, it’s certified for hardware including Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba and HP, and for software including Centrify, Likewise and LibreOffice, among others.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source evangelist Atul Chitnis passes away
  • Tech World Mourns Death Of India’s Open Source Proponent Atul Chitnis
  • Atul Chitnis, champion of open source tech, dies
  • New RSS Feed Reader and Open Source Project, Newsline Pro, Announced by Fortunate Bear
  • Could open source experience land you a job?

    It’s that time of year. The weather is warming, summer is upon us, the school year is at its end—and many folks are celebrating graduation from their university. If you’re one of those people, congratulations! Now that you’ve completed your studies, you’re probably looking forward to the next big challenge: choosing a career path.

  • Checkbook NYC advances civic open source

    New York City Comptroller John Liu is about to do something we need to see more often in government. This week, his office is open sourcing the code behind Checkbook NYC, the citywide financial transparency site—but the open-sourcing itself is not what I’m referring to. After all, lots of governments open source code these days.

  • Events

    • FOSDEM 2014 dates announced

      The organisers of FOSDEM, Europe’s biggest open source and free software oriented conference, have announced the dates for the next instalment of the event. FOSDEM 2014 will take place over the weekend of 1 and 2 February 2014 at the Université Libre in Brussels. The organisers say that attendees “may also safely assume that there will be a beer event on Friday 31 January.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Epiphany 3.9.2 Drops Support for WebKit1, Embraces Wayland

      The Epiphany development team announced a few days ago that the unstable version 3.9.2 of the Epiphany web browser for the GNOME desktop environment is available for testing.

    • Mozilla

      • Foxconn taking Firefox OS to tablets, not just phones

        The Chinese electronics manufacturer plans multiple devices, including tablets and phones, as part of a strategy to supply software and services along with hardware.

      • Foxconn Jumps on Firefox OS Bandwagon

        The Firefox OS and browser are creating “an ecosystem where you truly can have anybody and everybody chip in,” said analyst Jeff Orr. The value of HTML5 devices brought out by organizations such as the Mozilla Foundation and the Linux Foundation is “not to overthrow Apple or Google; it’s in promoting interface standards that the larger companies may be holding back.”

      • Mozilla Prepares to Re-Invent Firefox with Australis Update
      • Foxconn Can Help Mozilla with its Major Mobile Evolution

        esterday, The Foxconn Technology Group announced at a press event in Taipei a wide-ranging partnership with Mozilla to develop devices based on the Firefox OS open platform, which has until now been primarily emphasized for use on phones (as shown here). We had reported on the likely of this partnership last week, and it does indeed look like Foxconn will produce tablets based on Firefox OS, although there aren’t many specifics about them. What’s really notable is that this partnership is one that could carry Mozilla forward into the next chapter of its evolution.

      • Firefox Redesign: What Is Australis? Mozilla’s New Browser Offers Clean, Simple Design & More Customization Options [PHOTOS & REPORT]

        A Firefox redesign project is currently underway at Mozilla, titled Australis. Firefox release channels should see the results of this new and exciting project starting with Nightly once it hits version 25 shortly. Then the usual release channels will be employed, but the stable channel will be held off on until the Mozilla team knows that everything is working smoothly – the stable channel probably won’t see Australis before October. A version of Firefox can be installed from Mozilla’s UX branch, available for testing in its current condition, but there is a risk of crashing and hard-drive depletion, according to TechCrunch.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • LPI partners with Big Data Cloud

      (Sacramento, CA, USA: June 4, 2013) The Linux Professional Institute, the world’s premier Linux certification organization, announced a partnership initiative with Big Data Cloud (http://www.bigdatacloud.com/) — a not-for-profit organization evangelizing the new technology movement regarding Big Data and the Cloud. The partnership initiative will promote events and other educational resources for LPI alumni on topics related to Big Data and the Cloud. Big Data Cloud hosts annual events and monthly meetups and has over 2700+ members. It is founded and operated by Third Eye Consulting Services & Solutions LLC (http://thirdeyecss.com/).

    • Waratek ships open source API for Java virtualisation

      Java virtualization and cloud specialists Waratek announced today the release of the Java Virtualization Interface (JVI) empowering developers to deliver customized Java virtualization solutions for their applications.

    • OpenStack Open Source Cloud Crosses 1000 Author Threshold

      There are a lot of different metrics to validate the health of an open source project. In my opinion, one of the most critical is the number of different code authors.

    • Cloudera Democratizes Apache Hadoop for Enterprise End Users With Open Source, Interactive Search
    • Apache CloudStack grows up

      On June 4th, the 4.1.0 release of the Apache CloudStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud orchestration platform arrived. This is the first major CloudStack release since its March 20th graduation from the Apache Incubator.

    • digiKam Software Collection 3.3.0-beta1 is out..

      With API discovery service and a new event framework the latest version of Apache CloudStack, version 4.1, is expanding its capabilities in managing and coordinating cloud infrastructures. The IaaS platform has, in its first release since the project graduated from the Apache Incubator in March, added a service which allows end points in the infrastructure to describe the APIs they support and their associated details. According to the documentation there are over 300 APIs in CloudStack and the discovery service is used by the CLI to generate up a DSL on demand for controlling nodes. Future plans include using it to orchestrate API deployment on the cloud.

  • Databases

    • Enterprise Big Data: Open Source Database PostgreSQL Grows in Popularity

      There may be no part of the channel in which open source is better positioned to dominate than Big Data. Not only are open source solutions such as Hadoop and Ceph enjoying huge popularity for building Big Data infrastructure, but open source relational database technologies are also proliferating among enterprises looking to cut software costs. Survey results released Tuesday by EnterpriseDB on PostgreSQL adoption show just how much that’s the case.

    • “Business Source” not in SkySQL’s MariaDB plans

      Patrik Sallner, CEO of SkySQL, has told The H that Michael “Monty” Widenius’s “Business Source” is not part of SkySQL’s plans for MariaDB. “It is by no means something that has been or will be applied to MariaDB, especially not the server”, Sallner told The H. SkySQL and Widenius’s Monty Program recently merged.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Features Coming To LibreOffice 4.1

      The LibreOffice 4.1 Beta has been available for one week now ahead of the official release coming by the end of July. For those curious about the features of this next major OpenOffice.org-fork successor, there are early release notes on the DocumentFoundation.org Wiki. To point out at this time is also a new blog post by Charles-H. Schulz, a LibreOffice developer, about the upcoming features.

  • CMS

    • WordPress Jetpack Plugin – An Overview

      A couple of years back we ran a series of articles on plugins we considered useful for running websites on the free and open source WordPress platform. Times change. Some of those plugins we still use. Some are no longer being developed. Others, we’ve had problems with and replaced. Along the way, we found some other plugins that offer new features as well. Anyway, we thought it was time to update you–especially those of you who might be contemplating cranking-up your first WordPress site.

  • Project Releases

    • Symfony 2.3 to be maintained for the next three years

      Symfony 2.3.0 is the first long-term-support (LTS) release of the PHP framework for web applications since the introduction of a formal release process. Version 2.3 will be maintained for the next three years through to May 2016, after which a new LTS version will be released. There will also be standard releases with new features every six months and these will be maintained for eight months.

    • Symfony 2.3.0, the first LTS, is now available

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • SDL 2.0 Finally In Release Candidate Stage

      For those who missed it, the widely-used SDL library among commercial and open-source games is finally up to its version 2.0 release candidate. SDL2 has long been in development and as of last week the release is quite near.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Whatever happened to Google?

      Although Google continues to support a variety of open projects and people, Glyn Moody notes that, following recent changes to Google Code and Google Talk, concern is growing that something fundamental has changed.

Leftovers

  • Smart Move: New Asus Laptop Runs Windows 8 and Android
  • Wishful Thinking In Wintel: M$ Will Innovate…
  • New laptops and hybrids emerge as ‘fatbooks’ are kicked to the curb
  • Facebook’s Stock Is Back In Free Fall And Nobody Seems To Care

    Instead, Sandberg focused on Facebook’s growing user base and engagement, pointing to Facebook’s growth from 845 million to 1.1 billion users in the last year and the fact that 60% of those users return to Facebook each day as opposed to 58% one year ago.

  • Facebook Removes Downloads of Your Posts

    This post isn’t exactly about math, but it is technical in nature, so I figured I’d get it out there. As part of my regular data-backup process, I routinely download my information archives from whatever online presences I can, such as Facebook (which I’ve been on since early 2010), Google Blogger (this blog you’re reading right now), etc. Obviously on Facebook the thing that I’m most interested in is what I actually write, which are usually called “wall posts” (as opposed to photos or media, which I retain locally anyway). Once in a while I’ve found it very useful to pull up the downloaded posts file and search it for some particular bit of info, contact, or date. What I seem to have discovered is that sometime in the last few months, Facebook silently and completely removed our ability to download that “wall posts” information.

    This first dawned on me the other day when I used the Facebook “Download Info” process (Gear icon > Account Settings > Download a copy of your Facebook data), and tried to search for a particular post. Well, the normal file was just entirely missing. You can see the difference below in the downloaded archive from March 2013 versus the download from June 2013. The file “wall.html” — which actually contains all of my posts and is by far the largest data file in the old archive — is missing from the new archive.

  • Science

    • TEPCO to use frozen contaminated soil to stop groundwater leakage

      The Japanese central government has ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) to freeze the contaminated soil that surrounds the damaged No.1 nuclear power station in Fukushima in an attempt to stop groundwater entering the reactor. The nuclear plant was damaged in the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 and has since suffered problems with groundwater becoming contaminated with radioactive substances when it enters the damaged reactor.

  • Security

    • How I used eog utility to pull off a small Linux exploit

      Back in 2012, after my article on Linux ELF Virus was published in Linux Journal, I was curious to come up with a trigger point for this virus. I mean what would compel a Linux user to execute it for the very first time? I thought about it many times but could not come up with something in a working state.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • UK and France claim Syrian attack victims have tested positive for sarin

      The British and French governments have said that medical samples smuggled out of Syria have tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, and added that they have shown the evidence to a UN investigation.

    • Devices Linked To Alleged Chemical Weapon Attacks Captured By The Syrian Opposition

      Over the past few weeks I’ve been examining the evidence of chemical weapon use in Syria, and one key piece of evidence in at least two of the attacks, Saraqeb, Idlib, and Sheikh Maghsoud, Aleppo, has been the presence of what seems to be a unknown type of gas grenade at both attacks, later spotted with a Jabhat al-Nusra member

    • What Turkey reminds us about tear gas

      Over the past five days Turkey’s government has unleashed thousands of canisters, cartridges and helicopter drums of tear gas onto its people. This has resulted in hundreds of tear gas-related injuries. Protesters have been repeatedly shot directly and intentionally in the face with canisters, and in at least one instance this has caused permanent damage to the eye. On May 31, two journalists were hospitalized for head wounds from tear gas projectiles. Tear gas has also been fired into enclosed locations, a practice designed to torture and able to kill.

    • Social media and opposition to blame for protests, says Turkish PM

      Thousands of protesters have controlled Istanbul’s main square once more after two days of violent clashes with rampaging riot police, as Turkey’s prime minister vowed to press on with the controversial redevelopment that provoked the clashes.

    • Erdogan rejects ‘dictator’ claims

      Turkey’s prime minister on Sunday rejected claims that he is a “dictator,” dismissing protesters as an extremist fringe, even as thousands returned to the landmark Istanbul square that has become the site of the fiercest anti-government outburst in years.

      Over the past three days, protesters around the country have unleashed pent-up resentment against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who after 10 years in office many Turks see as an uncompromising figure with undue influence in every part of life.

    • Update: Was Pablo Neruda Murdered By a CIA Double Agent Working for Pinochet?

      New evidence shows that the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda may have been murdered by a CIA double agent, according to the Associated Press. The American agent was working for the CIA in Chile when he was recruited by DINA, Augusto Pinochet’s secret police.

    • CIA Releases Analyst’s Fascinating Tale of Cracking the Kryptos Sculpture
    • Studies in Intelligence: New Articles from The CIA’s In-House Journal

      Unofficial Intelligence Community Views on Assassinations, James Angleton’s ‘Monster Plot,’ Agent Protection, and More

    • Police to look into claims Scottish airports were used by CIA to transfer people on ‘rendition flights’

      AN academic study claims to have proof prisoners were flown to destinations, via a number of Scottish airports, before allegedly being tortured.

    • Zero Dark Thirty’s access to secret-keepers revealed

      An draft internal Pentagon report suggests that Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers revealed to filmmakers the name of a special operations planner who participated in the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden even though the head of the Special Operations Command, Adm. Eric Olson, had specifically asked that the man’s name and the fact of his participation in the raid not be revealed.

    • The CIA Invests in Narrative Science and Its Automated Writers
    • The CIA Invests in Robot Writers

      The Obama administration may be shifting control of the country’s drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon, but robots can still find jobs at Langley — as writers, apparently.

      The CIA’s venture capital wing, In-Q-Tel, has invested an unknown amount in a company called Narrative Science, which codes software capable of turning massive data sets into easy-to-read written prose, according to All Things D.

    • Can Pakistan shoot down US drones?

      Waliur Rehman was one of the few TTP leaders who supported the idea of negotiating with Islamabad to bring an end to the civil-war like situation in the country. And he is not the only supporter of the dialogue process with the Pakistan army whom Washington has assassinated with drone strikes. Many of his like-minded contemporaries were killed in the same manner during the last nine years, shortly after they had struck some kind of peace deal with Pakistan’s army and government.

    • German Drone, Afghan Passenger Plane Near-Collision Shown In Terrifying Footage (VIDEO)

      Footage apparently recorded by a German drone shows what looks like a terrifying near-collision between the unmanned craft and an Afghan passenger plane.

    • Plurality supports targeted killings of U.S.-born terrorists living outside the country: poll

      In the letter, Mr. Holder said that the U.S. “specifically targeted” Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born preacher, during strikes in Yemen and listed the three other Americans who he said had been accidentally killed in the strikes: Samir Khan, Jude Kenan Mohammed and Abderrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, the targeted man’s son.

    • Stop drone attacks!

      Obama and the US government have consistently downplayed the use of drones and the havoc they cause, but in truth their use has grown exponentially during his presidency. It is yet to be seen if Obama’s most recent speech is any more genuine.

      Afghanistan is undoubtedly the epicentre of unmanned drone attacks, with 506 incidents in 2012 and no way to verify the number of civilian casualties accurately.

      In Pakistan there have been 369 since 2004, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 2,541 and 3,540 people have been killed, and that between 411 and 884 of those have been civilians.

    • A drone war over semantics

      In sum, after years of ideologically driven effort, Mr. Obama has failed to produce a practical — or politically viable — alternative to the Bush paradigm of the “global war on terrorism.” Instead, the tribunal system goes unused, indefinite detention continues, and suspected terrorists — even American ones — are killed without due process, or even the benefits of interrogation, enhanced or otherwise. Verbal acrobatics aside, suspending the use of the term hasn’t brought an end to the reality.

    • UK anti-drone activists arrested and charged after peaceful action

      Six peace activists, representing the group Disarm the Drones, have become the first in Britain to be arrested and charged for anti-drones related offences.

      The nonviolent peace activists managed to breach security at Britain’s top security drone control base in Lincoln.

      The six, who are Christian peace campaigners, planted a peace garden in RAF Waddington yesterday morning (3 June 2013).

      They also displayed images of the victims of drone attacks and may have located the precise place where UK attacks are programmed.

      The campaigners were detained for 24 hours overnight at Lincoln police station and held incommunicado for eight hours. Some of their homes have been raided by the police, with computers and other personal effects seized.

      There was an attempt to charge the anti-drone activists with Conspiracy and Intent to Trespass and Cause Criminal Damage. Due to a failure of process, the charge of Criminal Damage was levied instead.

    • Obama National Security Policy Wasn’t Bait And Switch, Journalist Says
    • Moving Towards the “Unmanned War”

      On Tuesday May 14th, the US military succeeded in launching a drone from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Virginia, marking a historical first. The aircraft, an “X-47B” produced by Northrop Grumman, is considered to be the first unmanned aircraft that is able to be launched from a ship. The prototype had a successful flight of around 65 minutes, and ultimately landed at a base in Maryland. This event represents another step towards the mass production of drones, which will considerably boost US military capabilities.

    • Page: Loose drone policy risks U.S. lives, too

      Could a president order drone strikes against journalists? I’m not worried. No, really. Not much.

      The broad sweep of our government’s counterterrorism policy on targeted killings by unmanned drones, coupled with the Justice Department’s new aggressiveness against media leaks, makes me wonder whether we journalists should watch our step.

    • Peace activists in Lincoln court after planting peace garden at RAF Waddington

      THIS MORNING six peace activists, representing “Disarm the Drones” will become the first activists in Britain to be arrested and charged for anti-drones related offences, they were kept over-night at Lincoln police station after they planted a peace garden in RAF Waddington yesterday morning, they’ve been charged with Conspiracy and Intent to Trespass and Cause Criminal Damage.

    • German defense chief under fire over drone program
    • This Memorial Day: Remembering 4,700 Killed by U.S. Drones

      Pick an X below and imagine a person. Then kill him. It is your right.

  • Cablegate

    • Bradley Manning on TV Network News

      So “trial of bin Laden accomplice begins” is really how they’re framing it?

    • Brian Williams Makes the Case for Putting NBC on Trial

      But giving classified information to the public is something that news outlets–including NBC News–routinely do, and each time they do it they too could be accused of “aiding the enemy.” For example, NBC’s Michael Isikoff reported on February 4 that a “confidential memo” produced by the Justice Department held that “the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of Al-Qaeda or ‘an associated force’–even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.”

    • Constitutional Scholar Who Taught Obama Comes Out Against Bradley Manning Trial

      I know that some people have pre-convicted Manning, but the charges here are simply crazy. He’s already pled guilty to certain charges, but this trial focuses on whether or not he was “aiding the enemy,” which would require to show that he did this knowing that it would help Al-Qaida and [classified enemy]. The supposed “proof” of this is going to be the fact that Osama bin Laden apparently had Wikileaks documents in his compound in Pakistan. But that’s ridiculous. Under that theory, anyone reporting information that terrorists found useful would be guilty of violating the Espionage Act and could face the death penalty. As others in the article note, this would create a tremendous chill on investigative reporting.

    • Crowd-funded Stenographers Denied Press Passes to the Bradley Manning Court Martial

      About a month ago, Freedom of the Press Foundation launched a campaign to crowd-fund a court stenographer to provide transcripts of the unclassified portions of the Bradley Manning court martial, given that the military refuses to release transcripts of their own. On Thursday, we learned that all three of our media partners – the Guardian, the Verge, and Forbes – were denied the media passes they requested in order to allow court stenographers to accompany their reporters into the media tent. Each organization asked for a press pass for their reporter and a second press pass for a stenographer to accompany their reporter. Each was issued only one press pass.

    • ‘No hatred of US’ revealed on Manning computer
    • Ten Revelations From Bradley Manning’s WikiLeaks Documents

      There were 109,032 “violent deaths” recorded in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, including 66,081 civilians.

    • Hypocrisy lies at the heart of the trial of Bradley Manning

      It is an outrage that soldiers who killed innocents remain free but the man who exposed them is accused of ‘aiding the enemy’

    • Assange lawyer: DOJ has likely prepared indictment

      The publisher’s attorney says a sealed indictment is possible, as the government war on leaks drives on

    • Manning trial a ‘show of wasteful vengeance’ – Assange

      WIKILEAKS founder, Julian Assange has described the trial of Bradley Manning which began today as “a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience”.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Federal Court Criticizes Wisconsin Republicans for “Peculiarly Furtive” Redistricting, Closes Case

      A federal court hearing a challenge to Wisconsin’s Republican-led redistricting sharply criticized the expensive, secretive, and “peculiarly furtive process” employed by the GOP in drawing and defending the maps, but announced a close to “this unfortunate chapter in Wisconsin political history.”

    • Lois Lerner’s “Hands-Off” Approach Likely Contributed to IRS Mess

      The official at the center of the IRS mess, Lois Lerner, gave indications months ago that she was refusing to provide meaningful guidance about how to interpret and apply ambiguous rules for nonprofit political activity.

      Lerner was the head of the IRS’ division on tax-exempt organizations, and was recently suspended after declining to testify before a House Committee investigation into the IRS singling-out Tea Party groups for scrutiny based only on their names or political views.

  • Censorship

    • Sky Broadband Starts Blocking Pirate Bay Proxies

      UK Internet provider Sky Broadband has quietly started to restrict access to a wide range of proxy sites through which subscribers could reach The Pirate Bay, Kat.ph, Movie2k and other blocked sites. The new blockades go beyond the initial court orders and appear to adjust automatically to IP-address changes. TorrentFreak talked to several proxy site operators who are determined to bypass the new measures.

    • Researcher Tries To Connect Violence And Video Games During Murder Trial; Gets Destroyed During Cross Examination

      Violence and violent video games still remain connected in the eyes of many despite a lack of supporting evidence. When an act of violence occurs, the more horrific it is, the more certain it is that people will try to connect the two. We’ve seen it happen time and time again.

    • Video Game Expert Can’t Sway Jury in Mass Murder Trial

      A man who murdered an entire family with a tire iron in 2009 in their Beason, Ill. home tried to use video games as part of his defense earlier this week. After one day of deliberations a jury delivered a stinging verdict.

  • Privacy

    • What are Mobile Providers Doing with Customer Data? – The results so far

      O2, Vodafone and EE have all replied to their customers to say that they provide analytics on aggregated and anonymised data sets of their customers to third party companies. Their privacy policies have sections to this effect.

      Virgin Media say that they don’t sell their customers’ data and their privacy policy says they may pass on aggregate information about their customers’ mobile use to third parties.

      EE have told us that all customers have agreed to their Privacy Policy and implied that this counts as customers giving consent. O2 and EE argue in their responses to customer emails that because they are aggregating and anonymising data, the law does not require them to ask customers to opt-in or opt-out.

    • Liberal Super PAC Goes After Mitch McConnell’s ‘Chinese’ Wife

      A Democratic group is under sharp criticism for controversial online messages about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife.

    • The McConnell Taper’s Ill-Considered, Unrepetant Confession

      Curtis Morrison, the guy behind the recording of a Mitch McConnell campaign strategy session, has confessed to the deed in a lengthy post at Salon. The wisdom of doing so while the FBI convenes a grand jury on the matter is one thing. Morrison’s somewhat deluded overestimation of his actions is another thing entirely.

    • Why I secretly recorded Mitch McConnell

      My effort to expose the Senate minority leader’s ugly campaign upended my life. Here’s what happened

    • Judge: Child porn suspect doesn’t need to decrypt files

      Earlier court order requiring a Wisconsin suspect in underage porn case to decrypt his hard drives for the FBI by the end of the day Tuesday — or face contempt of court — has been lifted.

    • U. of U. training 20 students to work at NSA complex

      They won’t be trained for espionage, but about 20 University of Utah students will learn how to run the National Security Agency’s new data collection center in Bluffdale.

    • Spooks nicking your tech? What you need is THE CLOUD – NSA boss

      Nations swiping intellectual property from rival states and corporations are a much greater threat to economies than private cyber-criminals, America’s spymaster reckons.

      General Keith Alexander, National Security Agency (NSA) director and commander of US Cyber Command, made his comments during the NATO-organised CyCon conference in Estonia today.

    • Onsung Speaks of Re-defector NSA Link

      The source said that Kang also has a long history of aiding in the activities of the security forces in the area, by both reporting on the “anti-socialist” acts of others and seeking out new informants for the NSA.

  • Civil Rights

    • Turkey’s Urban Revolt Signals a Critical Phase in Turkish Politics

      Despite the astonishing, far-reaching changes that Turkey has undergone in recent years, clouds of anxiety are gathering over the country.

      The apprehension has little to do with the economy. The negative energy emanating from Syria has a partial impact. The jitters in public sentiment stem essentially from increasingly pronounced links between politics and religion, interventions in lifestyles and the demands of various social groups going unheeded.

    • Ending Violations of Indigenous Rights: Indigenous Governments Propose Action

      On Tuesday May 28, 72 Indian nations in the United States and 10 Indian and Hawaiian Native organizations — speaking at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues — jointly proposed action be taken to give indigenous peoples, especially indigenous constitutional and customary governments, a dignified and appropriate status for participating regularly in UN activities. As a problem that has already been studied and examined within the UN system, they noted, “it is time to take action at last so that indigenous peoples do not have to call themselves NGOs or depend upon ad hoc resolutions to be able to participate in UN meetings, processes, and events.”

    • Panama’s Indigenous People Reject UN Forest Plan

      Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation – is designed to slow climate change by preventing the destruction of the world’s most vulnerable forests. It is a key part of the UN’s attempts to tackle a warming climate, and failure in Panama will have impacts much further afield.

    • Which Media Outlets Are Attending Or Not Attending Holder Meeting?

      Media executives and editors are divided over whether to attend an off-the-record meeting this week with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss guidelines for dealing with journalists in leak investigations, an issue that’s gotten a lot of attention amid controversies involving the AP and Fox News.

    • Eric Holder’s ‘Off-The-Record’ Meeting With Journalists Leads To ‘On-The-Record’ Quotes, But Not Much Else
    • Horrifying Supreme Court Ruling Lets Police Collect DNA Because You Might Just Be A Horrible Criminal

      I had a busy day on Monday, so it took a bit of time for me to finally get around to reading the full Supreme Court ruling in the Maryland v. King case, in which the court ridiculously ruled that law enforcement can take DNA samples from everyone arrested for a “serious” new crime in the hopes that it might help solve old crimes. We’ve discussed this issue in the past, but the reasoning of the majority ruling in the Supreme Court is rather horrifying. It’s interesting to see that the court did not split along its “traditional” lines. Scalia split with Alito, Thomas and Roberts — who often form a single voting block, while Breyer also was on the other side of his more natural allies, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. Kennedy is the usual “swing” vote, and wrote the decision here, decimating the basics of the 4th amendment. I mean absolutely decimating it.

    • Constitutional Sheriffs Convention a Successful Promotion of Liberty

      Representing The John Birch Society, this reporter spoke during the fourth segment, describing threats to liberty posed by the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the effectiveness of state measures refusing to enforce those provisions inside state borders.

    • The Center Cannot Hold: Era of a New Democracy: Part II

      …NDAA was passed and FBI escalated infiltration of peaceful activists and prosecution of environmentalists under the pretext of terrorism….

    • Conservative groups reveal ‘chilling’ information requests from the IRS

      Leaders of conservative groups targeted for extra scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service testified Tuesday on Capitol Hill about the “chilling” demands from the agency as they sought tax exempt status over the last several years.

    • Top Obama political appointees use secret email accounts

      Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees are using secret government email accounts to conduct official business, The Associated Press found, a practice that complicates agencies’ legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails under public records requests and congressional inquiries.

    • Acting IRS head: The IRS has ‘betrayed the trust of the American people’ [VIDEO]

      The acting head of the IRS told congressional investigators Monday morning that his agency has “betrayed the trust of the American people.”

    • Turkish authorities arrest social media users; calls for Erdogan to resign continue

      Thousands of people of all ages gathered Wednesday evening in Ugur Mumcu square in Antakya, a picturesque town in the Hatay province of Turkey.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Net neutrality – safeguarding the open internet for all

      My speech yesterday where I set out how the EU plans to safeguard the open internet for all.Watch below, orcomment on the text here.

    • Whatever Happened To The Exaflood?

      If you remember, about five years ago, a bunch of astroturfing and front groups for the broadband companies started spreading this myth that the internet was facing a catastrophe known as the the exaflood, in which internet traffic would swamp capacity and the internet would sputter to a crawl. They talked about things like “brown outs” where so much traffic would make the internet difficult to navigate. Of course, it was all FUD and scare tactics to hide the real intent: to allow the telcos to put more tollbooths on the internet, to double charge some popular internet companies, and to generally try to avoid investing in basic infrastructure. Of course, it was easy to debunk those claims, but five years later, Broadband Reports takes a look at some of the latest data to note that the feared exaflood never showed up, and the predictions of clogged pipes never appeared — and the data on internet growth shows little likelihood of that ever happening.

    • Comcast’s Top Lobbyist Pens Editorial To Remind Americans That US Broadband Service Is Awesome

      We live in a nation of wondrous technological advancement, where our average broadband speed and super low prices are the envy of the world, And if Google shows up to throw fiber around, the local citizenry simply shrugs its shoulders in indifference. Life is good… especially if you’re paid to believe it is.

    • Comcast: U.S. The Global Leader on Broadband

      In an editorial in the Philadelphia inquirer last week, Comcast’s top lobbyist and policy man David Cohen proudly proclaimed that the U.S. is “the leader” globally in broadband.

    • Switzerland tops IPv6 adoption charts

      According to recent statistics by Google and Cisco, Switzerland has aced the IPv6 adoption charts by leapfrogging Romania, which topped the charts for nearly a year.

    • EU outlines proposal for network neutrality guarantees

      The European Union wants network neutrality enshrined in law, with guaranteed access to the full and open internet in order to ensure future innovation and strengthen democracy.

    • Speech: The EU, safeguarding the open internet for all

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Coming soon to your backyard, Monsanto and gang!

      When the handful of corporations set on owning, controlling and über-profiting from our common seed heritage — Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, BASF and Bayer — began experimenting with their proprietary chemicals and genetically engineered crops in Hawaii in the 1990s, barely a peep was made. Two decades later, we can’t even convince our Hawaii state government to pass a law making these companies release basic information about the pesticides they spray next to primary schools. Children are sent home vomiting and with nose bleeds.

    • California Makes A Move To Further Separate The Public From Its Public Records

      The fact that the public is still charged fees to access public records already seems rather questionable. After all, the creation of these documents is paid for by taxpayers. Keeping them locked up behind a governmental paywall often seems like double-dipping.

    • Searching Court Records Will Cost a Lot More, if California Senate Has Its Way

    • Trademarks

      • Twisted Sisters Coffee Shop Decides To Fight Back Against Trademark Bully Band Twisted Sister

        We recently wrote about how the band Twisted Sister was acting as a trademark bully and threatening a small coffee shop in Kansas, called Twisted Sisters. As we noted, the coffee shop name had nothing to do with the band, but actually was named after (you guessed it) a pair of sisters who had been called that by their brother decades ago (long before the band existed). The coffee shop had indicated at the time that it was going to change its name, but it looks like it’s now decided to fight back. jupiterkansas lets us know that a lawyer agreed to represent them pro bono and is trying to explain trademark law basics to the band’s lawyer. In the meantime, the coffee shop’s owner sent a friendly letter to the band, saying that the shop’s name has nothing to do with the band and that she really can’t think of a better name, so she’d like to keep it.

    • Copyrights

      • Few People Are Pirating ‘Arrested Development’ Because Netflix Is Affordable Enough Already
      • Once Again, Convenience Trumps Free, As Few People Pirate Arrested Development

        We’ve pointed out over and over and over again for years that for many people (certainly not all, but enough to make a huge difference) convenience trumps free when it comes to getting content. The latest example of this in action is the fact that way fewer people downloaded the new Arrested Development from unauthorized sources than other similarly hyped TV shows. As you probably know, the new Arrested Development was released via Netflix, rather than TV, and all episodes were immediately available. Unlike other TV shows that are tied to cable and hardly available online at all, Arrested Development was easy to watch online for those who had a Netflix account (which also doesn’t require additional fees to watch the show if you already have a subscription).

      • France Ready To Shut Down Hadopi As It’s ‘Incompatible’ With Digital Economy

        It’s amazing how frequently we still hear from entertainment industry folks or politicians pointing to Hadopi as an example of “success” in a three strikes program. Of course, the reality is that it has been a colossal failure by nearly every measure possible. The industry has had to seriously massage the statistics, but they can’t deny the simple fact that it hasn’t helped drive sales, which really seems like the key metric. In fact, the latest reports show that music sales — including digital sales — have continued to drop. Even more telling: the decline in sales in France has outpaced the decline elsewhere. In other words, nothing about Hadopi worked.

      • New Filing Presents Evidence That John Steele Uploaded Videos To BitTorrent Himself

        If you thought Graham Syfert was done with taking on John Steele and Prenda law with the closing of the Sunlust case in Florida, you’d be wrong. Today he’s filed an incredible filing not just hitting back at Prenda in another case, First Time Videos vs. Paul Oppold, and asking for attorney’s fees, but also including an affidavit from an actual expert (i.e., not a Prenda-style “forensic” expert) named Delvan Neville, who lays out in astounding detail how it’s almost certain that John Steele himself uploaded the various videos to BitTorrent that were then used to sue various defendants for either “hacking” or copyright infringement. Oh, and in doing so, Steele appears to have made some choices that are pretty damning, including suggesting that he set up the file to effectively broadcast that it was free for the taking. In other words, there’s an incredibly strong argument that the release of the file on BitTorrent was very authorized.

      • Blind Law School Dean Explains Why We Need The WIPO Copyright Treaty For The Blind

        As the MPAA and other copyright maximalist organizations continue to try to block the WIPO copyright treaty for the blind, which will make it easier for blind people around the globe to be able to access creative works, I was touched by this incredible video from Ron McCallum, the former dean at the University of Sydney Law School, where he is now an Emeritus Professor. McCallum has been blind since birth, and in the video he talks about how technology changed his life and allowed him to do so much — and how important the treaty in question is, to allow that same revolution to help others, especially in less developed countries.

      • MPAA: Oh, Of Course We Want To Help The Blind Read More… Just As Long As You Don’t Touch Copyright

        So it appears that late last week, the MPAA realized that their whole stance on trying to block the approval of an important copyright treaty for helping the visually impaired and the blind gain more access to works was a PR nightmare, and decided to put out a joint statement with the National Federation for the Blind. Apparently, Chris Dodd’s initial weak attempt at claiming that it loved helping the blind, despite working hard to stop the treaty, wasn’t enough. Of course, the new “joint statement” is really more of the same when you peel back the basics.

      • Court Says Copying Journal Articles To Show Prior Art In Patent Proceedings Is Fair Use

        Here’s one that touches on both patents and copyrights. Last year, we wrote about how some academic journals were ridiculously claiming that law firms, who made copies of journal articles to submit to the US Patent and Trademark Office to show examples of prior art, were infringing on their copyrights. Yes, they were arguing that you couldn’t use their journals as examples of prior art without paying them for the privilege. Thankfully, the USPTO stepped up and issued a memo explaining why they believed such usage was clearly protected as fair use. Still, the American Institute of Physics and Blackwell Publishing decided to sue a law firm, Winstead PC, and patent filers over the matter. The USPTO then stepped in as an “intervening defendant.” Over the course of the case, the publishers finally admitted that articles submitted with patent filings themselves probably weren’t infringing and dropped that claim. However, they still argued that other copies made “during the process of evaluating and
        selecting” material to be submitted to the USPTO were infringing (in other words, the clients and the lawyers sharing copies of the articles back and forth — and later copies of the articles associated with patent files).

      • EU’s Chief Negotiator Has Learned Nothing From ACTA, Will Negotiate TAFTA In Secret

        The EU trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht, was a driving force behind ACTA, and apparently he’s learned nothing about why ACTA failed so spectacularly in Europe. MEP Christian Engstrom pointed out to De Gucht that a big part of the reason why ACTA failed was the lack of transparency, and asked him to be more transparent with TAFTA (the Trans Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, but which many are calling TTIP — for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).

      • EU Commissioner De Gucht says no to transparent TTIP negotiations

        The new TTIP agreement between the EU and the US will be negotiated in the same secrecy as the ACTA agreement was, EU trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht told the European Parliament on Wednesday evening.

      • UK Police Launch Campaign to Shut Down Torrent Sites

        City of London Police inform TorrentFreak that they have begun targeting sites that provide access to unauthorized content for “criminal gain.” The initiative is part of a collaboration with Hollywood studios represented by FACT and the major recording labels of the BPI. In letters being sent out now, police accuse site operators of committing offenses under the Serious Crime Act. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau further warns that the crimes carry a jail sentence of 10 years.

06.04.13

Links 4/6/2013: Honouring Atul Chitnis

Posted in News Roundup at 2:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • US University leverages Linux for high performance computing (Part I)
  • The Linux Setup – David Burke, IT Consultant

    What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

    ChromeOS with Ubuntu 12.04 in a chroot environment using crouton. This is pretty recent. Before that I was using stock Ubuntu.

  • Linux Top 3: Linux Mint Olivia, Fedora 19′s Cat and Ubuntu’s Mission Accomplished Moment
  • A house divided: Linux factions threaten success

    Linux is at a major tipping point, yet it faces being undermined from within. Jack Wallen calls for the Linux community to end the fighting between the Linux camps.

  • A Community Being Built

    This is, again, another rant along the lines of “fragmentation is killing FLOSS…”.

  • The University of Linux

    No degree? No problem. Free software companies value aptitude and community involvement, and apprenticeships offer a leg up

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • What Linux OS Is On Your Web Server?

      Well, that’s really not the question. Most of you probably don’t have a web server. If you do, you very well might be using something that’s not on our list. There are some great distros, known to make dependable and trouble-free servers, that aren’t listed here. The most glaring omission is probably Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), considered by some to be the Cadillac of server distros.

      The list of GNU/Linux operating systems we’ve supplied in our poll is one we’ve compiled from looking at the choices of operating systems being offered by many hosting companies in virtual private servers (VPS) packages and on dedicated servers.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Freedreno Running On Nexus 4 With The GNOME Shell

        The Freedreno Gallium3D graphics driver that’s a reverse-engineered incarnation of the Qualcomm Snapdragon driver, has support for the A320 graphics core coming along quite well. The A320 found in the Nexus 4 is now running the Freedreno 3D driver and can even handle bearing the load of the GNOME Shell desktop.

      • How Microsoft shattered Gnome’s unity with Windows 95

        There never will be a year when Linux conquers the desktop, because desktop computers are going to merge into tablet-style touch-driven devices and disappear. But desktop Linux was getting close, until Microsoft derailed it a few years back.

        The GNOME project’s recent release, GNOME 3.8, served to remind me of the significance of Microsoft’s actions.

        That’s because GNOME 3. 8 introduces a new GNOME desktop, something it’s calling Classic mode and which the project describes as “the traditional desktop experience”.

        GNOME Classic mode brings to six the total number of GNOME desktops and takes the Linux and open-source community down a path of fragmentation they seem only too willing to venture down.

  • Distributions

    • Linux Lite 1.0.6 Beta
    • Chakra 2013.05 gets graphical package manager

      Chakra 2013.05 is the third edition of the Arch-Linux-based distribution to come with KDE 4.10 – the latest version uses KDE 4.10.3 – and makes use of more applications built for the Qt-based desktop environment. For example, the default package manager is now Oktopi, a graphical frontend for pacman that has only recently made its way into the stable package repositories. The Akabei tool, a similar tool that the Chakra developers have been working on, is still unfinished. The new release also includes kio-mtp, which ensures that file manager Dolphin is able to access mobile devices that use the MTP protocol.

    • Manjaro Linux 0.8.6 Unleashed, Uses Linux Kernel 3.9
    • Chakra 2013.05 gets graphical package manager – Update

      Chakra 2013.05 is the third edition of the independently developed distribution to come with KDE 4.10 – the latest version uses KDE 4.10.3 – and makes use of more applications built for the Qt-based desktop environment. For example, the default package manager is now Oktopi, a graphical frontend for pacman that has only recently made its way into the stable package repositories. The Akabei tool, a similar tool that the Chakra developers have been working on, is still unfinished. The new release also includes kio-mtp, which ensures that file manager Dolphin is able to access mobile devices that use the MTP protocol.

    • New Releases

      • antiX 13
      • Manjaro 0.8.6 got unleashed!

        We are happy to announce our stable release for June 2013 – Manjaro 0.8.6 – a set of installation medias for Manjaro Linux. With this update we present to you more than 25 mirrors hosting our packages all over the world. To get the fastest mirror nearest to your current location we introduced pacman-mirrors, a tool adjusting your mirrorlist. You can rank your list by connection speed or by country. A random option is also available.

      • Snowlinux 4 “Frosty” released!

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • I am a Mage!

        I officially became a packer on Mageia, Mandriva-based Linux distro. The date marks the creation of an account with access permission to repository and build system for me.

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • First Impressions of aptosid 2013-01

        After spending a peaceful week with Debian’s latest Stable release I decided it was time to experiment with something a little less predictable, something a little more cutting edge. In short, I was looking for a distribution which would offer the opposite experience from Debian’s dependable, conservative approach. As it happens, the opposite of Debian Stable is Debian Unstable. One of the Debian project’s repositories is called “sid” and this repository provides a collection of new and ever changing software. The aptosid project tracks this sid repository and spins it into a cutting-edge distribution. The aptosid distribution is available in a variety of editions including KDE Full, KDE Lite (for people who wish to balance performance with features) and there is an Xfce spin. Each of these editions is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. For my experiment I decided to try aptosid’s Xfce edition, the download for which is 530MB in size.

      • DreamHost Gives Debian Wheezy Linux the Boot in Favor of Ubuntu

        Dreamhost is one of the most popular web hosting companies and it has long been a strong support of Debian Linux.

        Dreamhost isn’t making the move to Wheezy which was recently released. Instead Dreamhost is moving to Ubuntu – apparently because they see it as being more stable.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Full Circle Magazine #73 is OUT!
          • Hello, My Name is

            This project is awesome because we are all part of the same community and are all working on the same thing together. This project is important because it’s free and open, and it is reaching out to all kinds of people. This project is revolutionary because it is taking risks, redefining concepts, and developing more than just a product.

            This project has a name: Ubuntu. And, therein lies the problem.

          • Linux News: 100 Scopes Is Not Ready for Ubuntu 13.10 Yet

            Because Canonical was blamed for not bringing new features to Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail, they work hard in order not to get the same treatment with Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander.

          • Inktank’s Ceph solidifies OpenStack role with Ubuntu enterprise support

            Canonical isn’t the first Linux player to provide full support for the Ceph distributed storage system, but with Ubuntu’s popularity in the OpenStack world, the addition of this subscriber option is timely.

          • Unity 8, Mir Changes Landed Last Week

            Here’s an update on the Mir display server changes and the adjoining next-generation Unity 8 user-interface that were made to end out May.

          • The Ubuntu PC Case Mod

            Since my current case mods are nearly finished (i still need a pump and the final photoshoot), i’m going to try and make a case mod based on Ubuntu. I have no money however, so i’ll either be re-using parts or needing sponsorship. I’ve sent out a few emails but i’ve not got any good responses. If anyone is willing to sponsor the build, let me know.

          • Full Circle Magazine #73 is OUT!
          • Smart Scopes Update

            One feature that didn’t land in Ubuntu 13.04 was the new Smart Scopes functionality in the Ubuntu dash. This feature greatly widens the scope (pun intended) of the dash returning results for a wide range of online services as well as local results. The whole system was re-architected to be more efficient, and designed to scale across our multi-device strategy.

          • Canonical Launches Ubuntu Community Website

            Canonical, through Daniel Holbach, had the pleasure of announcing on the last day of May that the community.ubuntu.com website is now online.

          • Canonical and Inktank get closer on storage

            Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and Inktank, the company behind the open source distributed storage technology Ceph, have announced a collaboration which will result in an integrated and supported implementation of Ceph for OpenStack on Ubuntu. Ceph offers object and block storage for cloud platforms and has been available on Ubuntu for some time. The new arrangement means that customers of Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage Cloud will also get Inktank-backed support for Ceph.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Use Raspberry Pi to stream to any device with SqueezePlug

      Outside of education, the most popular use of a Raspberry Pi is to play multimedia. For starters, you can use it as a nifty little HTPC with the XBMC media centre. In this tutorial, we’ll transform the Raspberry Pi into the ultimate media streaming box.

    • Haswell CPUs shrink TDP to 7-15W, says Intel

      Intel has released new information on its more power-efficient next generation “Haswell” family of Core processors. Quad-core Core i7 Haswell CPUs will offer 15W TDP power consumption, down from 20W on similar Ivy Bridge processors, resulting in up to 9.1 hours of HD playback, while future tablet-ready dual-core parts could lower power consumption by up to 50 percent, to 7W TDP.

    • Real-time friendly Linux for communications uses Yocto

      Enea has integrated Yocto technology into its third generation of Linux to provide a comprehensive cross-development tool chain and runtime environment with guaranteed performance and quality of service (QoS) for communications systems.

    • Linux and Android gain NIST-certified security support

      Inside Secure announced that its Linux- and Android-ready SafeZone Encryption Toolkit has achieved U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) FIPS 140-2 certification. SafeZone, which is integrated within Inside Secure’s MatrixDAR and QuickSec VPN Client for Android products, now secures data in transit over SSL/DTLSand IPSEC, as well as “data at rest” on Android devices.

    • ARM aims speedy, power-stingy Cortex-A12 at mid-range mobiles

      ARM announced a 28nm-fabricated Cortex-A12 processor design claimed to offer 40 percent higher performance than the Cortex-A9, while drawing the same power. The Cortex-A12 is paired with a power-efficient Mali-T622 GPU and Mali-V500 video coprocessor, and supports hybrid Big.Little SoC configurations in partnership with the Cortex-A7.

    • APC Paper nabs Computex ‘s Design and Innovation Award

      Taiwan External Trade Council (TAITRA) and the International Forum Design Hannover (iF) have awarded the APC Paper the Design and Innovation Award at Computex 2013, which kicks off tomorrow and ends June 8.

      APC Paper is one of two Neo-ITX form-factor computers announced by VIA Technologies in January. The other is the APC Rock, which is a plain motherboard (it has no built-in case).

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Twitter brings Vine to Android

          Twitter has announced the availability of Vine app for Android devices. The app was already available for iOS devices. Android Vine users will get what iOS users don’t yet have – zoom. Twitters also teased that there may be some features which will be available exclusively to Android only.

        • Android porting suite targets x86 devices

          Insyde Software announced a development platform for deploying Android on Intel x86 reference platforms. “Software Platform for Android” offers production-ready software components built around Insyde’s UEFI Secure Boot technology and “Humanos” version of Android, and provides a variety of Android tools, as well as customization and testing services.

        • Attack of the Intel-powered Androids!

          Several Android tablets running on Intel Clover Trail+ Atom processors broke cover at Computex Taiwan. Intel’s dual-core, 1.6GHz Atom Z5260 is fueling a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 tablet, as well as Asus’s 6-inch Fonepad Note and 10-inch MemoPad FHD10 tablets, while Asus also unveiled a hybrid 11.6-inch Transformer Book Trio, combining an Android slate based on a 2GHz dual-core Atom Z2580 with a keyboard dock running Windows 8 on an Intel Haswell processor.

        • Asus announces Transformer Book Trio, runs Windows 8 and Android with two Intel CPUs
        • Samsung unveils 8-inch and Intel-powered 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3 tablets, coming in June
        • ARM: A ‘generation ahead’ of Intel?

          A senior ARM executive claims that ARM is generations ahead of Intel, according to reports.

        • ARM’s new Cortex-A12 is ready to power 2014′s $200 midrange smartphones

          We already know what ARM has planned for 2014′s high-end smartphones, but what about cheaper handsets? The company is preparing new mid-range silicon that it believes can offer increased performance in phones which could cost as little as $200 off-contract. The new Cortex-A12 core will offer 40 percent more performance as the existing Cortex-A9 which appears in chips like today’s Tegra 3, though it won’t be quite up to the standard set by the Cortex-A15 you’ll find in devices that have Samsung’s Exynos 5250 or Nvidia’s Tegra 4, to say nothing of next year’s Cortex-A57 based chips.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • ASUS Announces Transformer Book Trio, Dual-Boots Android and Windows

        ASUS have taken their love for Android one step ahead. As part of their products unveiling at Computex 2013, Taipei, ASUS announced a bold new member of their Transformer family, the Transformer Book Trio. This new device looks much like its not-so-distant cousin, the Transformer Book, but comes with a big differentiating edge, apart from some better hardware specs.

      • Samsung launches Intel powered Android tablet, also goes 8-inch

        Samsung, the Android market leader, has added two new tablets to its Android family of devices. The 8-inch tablet is powered by 1.5 GHz Dual Core processor and features a 8-inch WXGA TFT(1280 x 800, 189PPI) display. With 5Mpx main and 1.3 front facing camera, the tablet is complimenting its 7-inch devices. The tablet runs Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) with TouchWhiz on top of it. The tablet is clearly targeted at average tablet users who want it mainly for ‘reading.

      • Tablet Growth in USA Education

        Tablets are just about ideal for school in terms of mobility, compact size and ease of use. One downside is loss/theft/breakage but that is offset by the lower cost of a tablet. Compare a ~$200 tablet with a notebook of ~$300 or ATX setup at ~$400. Some schools solve this problem by giving ownership of the tablets to students. Over the career of a student, two or three tablets is just a small part of the cost of education. Mobility may be just a matter of clearing desks/tables from time to time or students lugging tablets around instead of books. It’s all good. Typing is another downside but students tend to have good dexterity so they may be able to type acceptably well on touch-screens.

      • Android tablet, phone kits use 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800
      • HP’s First Android Hybrid SlateBook x2 Slated for an August ’13 Release

        HP’s first Android-based hybrid tablet, the SlateBook x2, is set to make its appearance in markets sometime in August 2013, as per HP’s official SlateBook page. With SlateBook x2, HP has finally joined ASUS in the Android-powered hybrid tablet market. For starters, a hybrid is a kind of tablet with a detachable keyboard that gives it a notebook-like experience.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Clavin seeks to make its mark in open-source world

    But what makes Clavin — an acronym for Cartographic Location and Vicinity Indexer — more unusual, its founders and others say, is that it is open-source software. Its source code is available for free so that users can change and customize it.

  • RIP Atul Chitnis
  • Atul Chitnis—champion of open source in India

    In Atul Chitnis’s untimely death, the world of open source has lost a passionate advocate

  • R.I.P Atul Chitnis : The Man Who Changed the Open Source World

    He was involved in much of India’s open source activities and was a columnist and consulting editor for PCQuest magazine. He was instrumental in setting up communities around Linux and open source software.

  • Open Source guru Atul Chitnis, 51, no more

    FOSS.in founder and former PCQuest consulting editor, Chitnis, loses his battle against cancer and leaves a huge void to fill

  • Open source advocate Atul Chitnis passes away
  • Open source luminary Atul Chitnis dies of cancer at age 51
  • Blinkx Provides App, Open Source Video Player for Tizen Device Platform

    Tizen, the open source, standards-based mobile device platform that resides in the linux foundation now has a dedicated blinkx app, plus an open source blinkx video player. The blinkx API requires registration to see any documentation but more information on the video player for Tizen is available.

  • Review: LiveCode Community is open-source HyperCard for the 21st century

    Many years ago, there was HyperCard, included free with the Macintosh in the late 1980s. It got a lot of attention because it was one of the first tools that made it trivial to create GUI applications. Apple couldn’t figure out how to properly market or position it, so it eventually died of apathy. RunRev has been publishing Revolution, now named LiveCode, as a spiritual successor to Hypercard, for a while, and LiveCode now shares one more important trait with Hypercard: It’s now free.

  • How the ‘internet of things’ can spark an open source community
  • Open source crusade blocks geospatial standard

    An open standard proposal by mapping giant Esri has failed after a backlash from open source developers within the geospatial community led it to withdraw from the process.

  • The Value of Free Software

    I think it is invaluable, but let’s try to figure out how important is, as assigning a monetary value is almost impossible.

  • Hacking the change you want to see

    On June 1, the City of Oakland will co-host ReWrite Oakland as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. ReWrite Oakland will be an all day writeathon that will culminate with the launch of a new website called “Oakland Answers,” based on last year’s Code for America project “Honolulu Answers.”

    Oakland Answers will be citizen-focused website, written in plain-language, that makes it quick and simple for people to find City information and services they are looking for online. City staff and the community will collaborate to answer common questions generated by citizens.

  • Behind the scenes with Bugzilla Project Leader Dave Miller

    Bugzilla is an open source bug-tracking system that prides itself on offering server software that is free but skillfully designed to help developers manage their work. Their installation list is long and robust. So, how do they manage to not charge expensive licensing fees like most other commercial vendors?

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google to Deliver Two Chrome Mobile Events This Month

        If you use Google’s Chrome Mobile on either an Android or iOS device, you’re not alone. Google has been steadily increasing its focus on mobile browsing, even as Mozilla prepares to align its whole company strategy around its Firefox OS mobile platform. Now it looks like June will bring some significant news regarding Chrome Mobile, as Google has officially announced two events focused on it, one to take place on June 7, and one on June 13.

    • Mozilla

      • Foxconn and Mozilla confirm Firefox OS partnership

        Mozilla has confirmed earlier reports saying that Foxconn is entering into a “wide ranging partnership” with it to develop and use the Firefox OS in Foxconn devices. Mozilla’s SVP of Mobile Devices said: “This cooperation demonstrates the full potential of Firefox OS, the open Web mobile operating system, to enable not only the smartphone but also a wide range of mobile devices”.

      • iPad manufacturer Foxconn puts its weight behind Firefox OS

        Contract manufacturer Foxconn is backing Mozilla’s open source Firefox OS. The company made the announcement in Taipei. Firefox OS already has a decent partnership will carriers and device makers to bring the OS to the market.

      • Mozilla Prepares to Re-Invent Firefox with Australis Update

        Mozilla is gearing up for a major user interface overhaul for the open source Firefox web browser. Code-named Australis, the new UI is likely to debut as part of Firefox 25, due out in October of his year.

        The Australis overhaul will be the biggest UI change since Firefox 4, which became generally available in March of 2011. After Firefox 4, Mozilla changed its release approach, from having only one or two releases in a year, to a rapid release cycle with new browsers released every six to eight weeks.

      • Foxconn backs Firefox OS play

        Can the open-source, Linux-based Firefox mobile operating system become a mobile-space player? The question is far from answered but Mozilla has a new supporter: major electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn.

      • Firefox OS: Go away fanbois, fandroids – you wouldn’t understand

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Why The Data Problem Is A Good Thing For The Open Cloud Movement

      Piston Cloud Co-Founder Joshua McKenty says the OpenStack customer ecosystem has four emerging market segments. On one side are the customers who hire consultants to build them a cloud. On the other side are the IBM customers who will always be IBM customers.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Making sense of the new features in LibreOffice 4.1

      As the LibreOffice project moves forward with the development on its 4.x branches we sometimes get the feedback that while new features are documented in detail as well as in a summarized fashion (on the wiki and on the website), it is not easy to understand what’s unique about the features in LibreOffice. We often hear things like “but their interface is outdated!” or people asking us to compare LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice.

    • Oracle sets out future Java security plans

      From October 2013, Oracle will be releasing Java security updates as part of its Critical Patch updates. The announcement came as part of the company’s plans to revamp how it will secure Java over the coming years. In a blog post, the lead for the Java platform software development team, Nandini Ramani, outlined both the scheduling and technical security plans.

  • CMS

    • Disaster relief now from DrupalCon

      In an overnight, grassroots movement, the open source platform Drupal has made an impact in Oklahoma. A group of more than 70 volunteer code sprinters—made up of developers, designers, and sys admins—congregated late Tuesday night at DrupalCon in Portland to create help4ok.org.

    • WordPress Development-Amazing Open Source CMS Platform

      WordPress is most popular open source CMS Blogger Platform based on PHP and MySQL. It has many beautiful options and user-friendly plug-in, which help to custom temple and individual web page. WordPress Contain almost 60 million websites worldwide.
      WordPress has strong and easy content management system. As WordPress is open source software it can be operate by any one for personal or professional use.
      Best Part of WordPress is it’s plug-in, and this make wordpress out of the box. There are numbers of effective plug-ins in wordpress which can be use to develop website easily and make it user friendly.

  • Education

    • Open source software experience for educators

      The Professors’ Open Source Software Experience (POSSE) workshop is being held this year in Philadelphia from June 2-4. To prepare for the workshop, online activites are were assigned to be completed in stages and culminated on June 1.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • APJ Abdul Kalam for open source R&D for medicines

      If the concept of ‘open source’ (universal access and contribution to a budding idea/technology via free licence) can be applied to developing software, then why not to promoting research and development into finding cure of diseases like malaria? Former president APJ Abdul Kalam put forth this thought at an event in the city on Sunday.

    • The OWL: open-source, programmable effects pedal
    • Software aids ex-prisoners’ reintegration

      A grassroots organisation is using an open source business intelligence program to improve its chances of helping integrate ex-prisoners into the community.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Aaron Swartz: hacker, genius… martyr?

        Aaron Swartz was a tech whiz-kid and political activist devoted to a free and open internet. When he hacked a website to ‘liberate’ data, US authorities responded fiercely. He faced a fine of up to $1m and 35 years in jail. Then he took his own life. Here, his former girlfriend talks about the circumstances of his death

  • Programming

    • Open Source: Density of Software Defects Increase with the Size of the Code Base

      Coverity has published an annual update of those results over each of the last seven years.

    • GCC 4.8.1 is C++11 feature complete

      The GCC developers have now released GCC 4.8.1 – the latest update to the GNU Compiler Collection after completing their switch to C++ as the implementation language for GCC in March. With this release, the developers now consider their compiler to be the first to implement all major language features of the C++11 standard. LLVM’s Clang compiler is close behind, however, with its upcoming version 3.3 also implementing the major features of C++11. LLVM 3.3 is scheduled for release on 5 June.

    • GitHub releases API libraries for Ruby and Objective-C
    • Processing goes 2.0 with an OpenGL core

      Version 2.0 of the open source Processing language and development environment for creative arts and visual design has been released. Processing was created in 2001 by Ben Fry and Casey Reas as a way for non-programmers to create electronic sketchbooks that could give instant gratification through visual feedback. Based on the Java language, but using a simplified syntax and graphics model, Processing allows creative users to build interactive, graphical programs, or sketches as they are called in Processing, quickly with a supporting simplified IDE. The project’s mission statement explains, succinctly, that

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Zynga lays off 580 employees

    Social gaming company behind FarmVille is also closing offices in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles to save $80m a year

  • Hardware

    • Small Business Less Dependent On Wintel This Year

      Eliminating complexity and bloat is undoing a lot of the lock-in that M$ has cultivated over the years. Instead of needing a super-computer on every desk, small businesses are discovering they just need a network and any old client and OS will do the job. Step forward, */Linux, ready, willing and able to work for less.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Google’s New Disclosure Policy: Helpful, or Who Cares?

      Google shakes up the InfoSec world with a new seven-day disclosure policy. But do top security researchers think it’s a good idea?

    • Google Sets New ‘Aggressive’ 7-Day Deadline For Vendors To Reveal Or Fix Zero-Day Bugs Under Attack

      New policy narrows window for software vendors’ public response to zero-day bugs discovered by Google researchers

    • EVE Online servers suffer two-day DDoS attack

      CCP Games has published details of repeated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks it has suffered over the last two days. The company develops and runs the popular massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) EVE Online. Attackers targeted the “Tranquility” server cluster and managed to exploit a vulnerability in the backend services that support the game servers. After detecting the attack, CCP decided to take the cluster offline while “a taskforce of internal and external experts” investigated the situation. The company now says it has closed the vulnerability and all game services are back to normal.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Pablo Neruda, Murdered by US corporations.

      For Contreras, whoever the man was, “the important fact is that this was the person who ordered the injection” that allegedly killed Neruda.
      Neruda’s former assistant Manuel Araya also said he believed the poet was poisoned by Pinochet’s agents.

      The Nobel Prize winner’s body was exhumed on April 8, and is being analyzed by Chilean and international forensic specialists.

    • House Bill Would Give Military 1.8 Percent Pay Raise

      Members of the military would receive a 1.8 percent pay increase in 2014 under legislation the House Armed Services Committee is considering on Wednesday.

      Lawmakers are proposing a higher annual raise for service members next year than the 1 percent pay increase that President Obama recommended in his fiscal 2014 budget. Current law mandates a 1.8 percent boost for service members for 2014; the formula for determining service members’ annual pay increases is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Employment Cost Index and the growth in private-sector wages.

    • War and drones

      The fact that drones have now caught the imagination of some in the US as the secret weapon that administrations since 9/11 have resorted to for killing – some call them assassinations – of terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, means there are questions now being asked of the legality of these engagements and the consequent issue of morality in using drones for such killings.

    • The CIA: Keepers of the Hit Lists. War Crimes as Policy

      Including economic sanctions, and a 50 year history of sabotage and subversion, America and its Iraqi collaborators visited far more death and destruction on Iraq than Saddam Hussein and his regime.

    • Jill Kelley, Tampa socialite embroiled in CIA Director David Petraeus scandal, sues government

      Jill Kelley, the woman described as a “Tampa socialite” who became enmeshed in last year’s scandal involving former CIA Director David Petraeus, filed a lawsuit Monday alleging employees of government agencies violated her privacy.

    • Jill Kelley, Florida socialite who helped expose shamed former CIA Director David Petraeus’ career-ending affair, sues federal government for leaking her identity
    • Keeping things secret: Reporter should have avoided revealing CIA’s source

      As Attorney General Eric Holder wrings his hands in remorse over his feverish pursuit of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s phone records, it’s worth noting that, when it comes to national security leaks, some things are secret — and should be kept that way — for a reason.

    • CIA blamed for intelligence failures
    • Could clearance rules put whistleblowers at risk?

      A proposed rule change to streamline the process of conducting security investigations of federal workers in sensitive posts potentially expands the number of positions deemed “sensitive,” and critics worry that the measure could be used to deprive whistleblowers of civil service protections.

      The proposal, from the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is intended to harmonize the way agencies determine eligibility for posts requiring security clearances, or otherwise afford access to sensitive information or restricted facilities. The goal is to allow agencies to rely on one another’s assessments for federal workers moving between departments, eliminating the need for duplicative investigations.

  • Cablegate

    • Suppressed By The BBC

      I was asked to appear twice, once after 7 and once after 8, and to explain why the case of Bradley Manning ought to concern people in the UK. BBC Breakfast is based in Salford. So the BBC sent me train tickets, booked a room in the Holiday Inn and organised a cab for me from Manchester Piccadilly. I had reached so far as Euston from St Pancras yesterday when I discovered, rather by chance that my slots on BBC breakfast had been cancelled. I was instead offered a single live interview at 6.40 am that would not be repeated.

    • Bradley Manning, Thank You For Your Service

      This is a critical time in US History, when the US Government, desperate to cover up war crimes it is committing in the Middle East and Africa, are imposing the most cruel and illegal torture against members of the US military; the sons and daughters of this nation who stepped up to fight for what they believed to be wars for our freedom. The US Government lied to them then, just as the US population is being lied to now by our government, that these wars are anything other than a profit machine for a few rich men. But now we are waking up.

    • No signs of hatred in WikiLeaks soldier’s laptop – investigator

      An Army investigator testified on Tuesday he found no evidence that a soldier accused of the biggest breach of classified information in U.S. history hated his country or had any terrorism-related material on his laptop.

    • Bradley Manning trial ‘dangerous’ for civil liberties – experts

      The trial of Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked a trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, could set an ominous precedent that will chill freedom of speech and turn the internet into a danger zone, legal experts have warned.

      Of the 21 counts faced by the army private on Monday, at his trial at Fort Meade in Maryland, by far the most serious is that he knowingly gave intelligence information to al-Qaida by transmitting hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the open information website WikiLeaks. The leaked disclosures were first published by the Guardian and allied international newspapers.

    • What did WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning do for us?

      As Bradley Manning stands trial in the US, Channel 4 News looks back at what the soldier’s leaks published by WikiLeaks revealed – and the impact they had.

    • WikiLeaks’ Assange says leaker Manning is ‘political prisoner’ in show trial

      Assange called the court-martial a “fully choreographed extravaganza” and said that rulings from the judge have compromised Manning’s ability to mount a complete defense.

      The real defendant, Assange wrote, is the United States: “A runaway military, whose misdeeds have been laid bare, and a secretive government at war with the public. They sit in the docks. We are called to serve as jurists. We must not turn away.”

    • Julian Assange: Media’s Failure To Defend Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks Emboldened DOJ
    • Britain and Ecuador May Discuss Assange Status

      The development concerning Mr. Assange came the day that the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning of the Army, who is accused of passing on sensitive diplomatic and military information, began in Maryland. Private Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 counts, but he has not admitted to the more serious charges of violating the Espionage Act and aiding the enemy, which could bring a life sentence.

    • Michael Ratner, lawyer for Julian Assange and Wikileaks
    • Film Commissioned by Comcast-Owned Studio Tries to Smear, Discredit Assange, Manning

      Alex Gibney’s new film, “We Steal Secrets,” is about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It dutifully peddles the state’s contention that WikiLeaks is not a legitimate publisher and that Bradley Manning, who allegedly passed half a million classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is not a legitimate whistle-blower. It interprets acts of conscience and heroism by Assange and Manning as misguided or criminal. It holds up the powerful—who are responsible for the plethora of war crimes Manning and Assange exposed—as, by comparison, trustworthy and reasonable. Manning is portrayed as a pitiful, naive and sexually confused young man. Assange, who created the WikiLeaks site so whistle-blowers could post information without fear of being traced, is presented as a paranoid, vindictive megalomaniac and a sexual deviant. “We Steal Secrets” is agitprop for the security and surveillance state.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Solar’s Rise, Nuclear’s Demise: June Issue of TerraJoule.us
    • Documents Reveal Exxon Mobil Lied and Downplayed Contamination from Pipeline Rupture

      A new batch of documents received by Greenpeace in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has revealed that Exxon downplayed the extent of the contamination caused by the ruptured pipeline. Records of emails between Arkansas’ DEQ and Exxon depict attempts by Exxon to pass off press releases with factually false information. In a draft press release dated April 8, Exxon claims “Tests on water samples show Lake Conway and the cove are oil-free.” However, internal emails from April 6 show Exxon knew of significant contamination across Lake Conway and the cove resulting from the oil spill.

    • Masses turn out to protest nuclear power

      Muto, whose group is studying the prefecture’s future after the Fukushima No. 1 plant is finally decommissioned, told the crowd that since March 11, the people in Fukushima have had to make decisions every day on matters ranging from whether to evacuate and force children to wear masks to such mundane tasks as drying laundry outside and plowing their fields.

    • ‘No nukes’: Thousands in Tokyo rally against nuclear power (PHOTOS)

      Thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Tokyo to protest restarting of nuclear reactors the government is considering.

    • California Democrats experience anti-fracking setback

      California Democrats have suffered a setback in their anti-fracking efforts, but will continue to push for more rules on the controversial drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing.

      The California legislature opted not to follow in the footsteps of New Jersey and New York, defeating a bill that would have put a moratorium on fracking within the state until regulations could be imposed.

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • Turkish protesters using encryption software to evade censors

      Facebook and Twitter reported to have been blocked in run-up to protests, with people turning to VPNs to broadcast content

    • British Politicians: There’s Child Porn On The Internet And Google Needs To Do Something About It

      It’s that time again. Something bad happens and someone thinks it’s the “internet’s” fault. Where do they turn? Google. If people are seeing and/or doing bad things, it must be Google’s fault for not policing the internet thoroughly enough.

    • Google must take more action to police explicit content, says Vince Cable

      Business secretary admits policing the internet is very difficult, as Keith Vaz calls for code of conduct to be set up for ISPs

    • Sky Broadband blocks Piratebay proxies

      Those blocked from the PirateBay and in possession of a little common sense merely accessed TPB via a proxy and now, as Sky Broadband is stealthy blocking access to these proxies, one has to question, why?

      When you consider that the people this will effect are the ones whom have sought out and facilitated a proxy for access to TPB, any blocking of these will merely result in another search? On top of that there’s hundreds of proxies out there with new ones being created far quicker than Sky Broadband or anyone else can block.

    • Google bans the first Glass porn app Tits & Glass

      Google has removed the first porn app from its Glassware hub, a store for Glass apps. The app was published by a porn company Mikandi and was aptly named Tits & Glass. Google banned and pulled the app within hours of availability. Mikandi says the app was already a success, “Since we announced the availability of Tits & Glass this morning, nearly 10,000 unique vistors have visited TitsAndGlass.com, and a dozen Glass users have already signed up with our app.”

    • June 4th: The Struggle Of Memory Against Forgetting

      Today is June 4th, a day pretty much like any other day in most parts of the world. But in China, June 4th has a unique significance because of the events that took place in Tiananmen Square on that day in 1989.

  • Privacy

    • Disk encryption: This is why you should always use it
    • The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’

      “THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

      The authors met in occupied Baghdad in 2009, when the book was conceived. Strolling among the ruins, the two became excited that consumer technology was transforming a society flattened by United States military occupation. They decided the tech industry could be a powerful agent of American foreign policy.

      The book proselytizes the role of technology in reshaping the world’s people and nations into likenesses of the world’s dominant superpower, whether they want to be reshaped or not. The prose is terse, the argument confident and the wisdom — banal. But this isn’t a book designed to be read. It is a major declaration designed to foster alliances.

      “The New Digital Age” is, beyond anything else, an attempt by Google to position itself as America’s geopolitical visionary — the one company that can answer the question “Where should America go?” It is not surprising that a respectable cast of the world’s most famous warmongers has been trotted out to give its stamp of approval to this enticement to Western soft power. The acknowledgments give pride of place to Henry Kissinger, who along with Tony Blair and the former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden provided advance praise for the book.

    • Kids and the cloud – who is protecting their privacy?
    • Schools conducted iris scans on students as young as six without permission (Photos)
    • FL Schools Go Minority Report On Students, Give Parents Opt Out Choice Afterward

      In past discussions around the use of technology to achieve school security, we have typically found that the practice has more to do with money than safety. Such was the case when a Texas school district issued RFID-chipped student IDs, the impetus for which was actually all about receiving government funding based on attendance. While there was backlash from students and parents in that case, the ire was likely somewhat muted by the fact that these were still basically just ID cards with a little extra juice in them.

    • Google+ isn’t a social network; it’s The Matrix

      Pretty much everyone (myself included) has been reading Google+ wrongly. Because it bears many superficial resemblances to social networks such as Facebook or Twitter – you can “befriend” people, you can “follow” people without their following you back – we’ve thought that it is a social network, and judged it on that basis. By which metric, it does pretty poorly – little visible engagement, pretty much no impact on the outside world.

    • Mobile data for sale: meeting with EE sheds new light

      Last Friday ORG met with representatives of EE to discuss the details of their mobile data analytics operation. The discussion was triggered by a Sunday Times article apparently claiming that Ipsos Mori was trying to sell highly personal information about EE customers to the Met Police, and our campaign following it.

    • How Extensive is the NSA Domestic Surveillance of U.S. Media? Is it legal?

      When the Obama administration started to pursue whistleblowers they took it to a whole new level than previous administrations by going aggressively after the journalists—the government watchdogs, and their whistleblowing sources by misusing government agencies.

    • Need A Job? The NSA’s Utah Spy Center Is Hiring

      A recent, two-year bipartisan investigation by the U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations demonstrates concern – even among some members of Congress – that data centers (also known as “fusion centers”) represent a major source of government waste.

  • Civil Rights

    • Blockupy paralyzes Frankfurt for second year in a row

      On June 1, the next Blockupy action took place: a demonstration in Frankfurt. The march started peacefully – until riot police blocked the route. Fighting broke out, with a demonstrators throwing objects at police, and with police kettling demonstrators and attacking them with pepper spray. Exact numbers are not clear, but the Turkish news site Zaman mentions 7,000 protesters, signs reading ‘Make love, not war’ and ‘IMF, get out of Greece’”. Dutch media speak of “thousands of demonstrators”, which, translated back into the reality-based community, probably means many thousands.

    • Turkey protests unite a colourful coalition of anger against Erdogan

      Be they lecturers or street vendors, Turkish nationalist or Kurdish separatist, the Taksim Square protests have brought together Istanbul’s disparate groups … but for how long?

    • Did Obama Flip Flop on the War Against the Press?

      One of the hallmarks of the Tim Russert era of Meet the Press was the gotcha video: A politician would be confronted with some archival footage demonstrating that they had, once upon a time, taken a different position than the one they were taking today.

    • Supreme Court says police can take DNA from arrestees

      A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday said police can routinely take DNA from people they arrest, equating a DNA cheek swab to other common jailhouse procedures like fingerprinting.

      “Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s five-justice majority.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Defending Internet Freedom at ORGCon2013

      ORGCon2013 has expert speakers responding to the way the latest tragic news stories are being used for point scoring and clamping down on online freedoms, focusing on online censorship, the Snoopers’ Charter and the Digital Arms Trade, plus many more on relevant current issues.

    • Neelie Kroes sets forth her vision of European net neutrality

      VICE PRESIDENT of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes has spoken up on net neutrality policy, saying that choice, preferred services, and openness are key.

      Kroes was talking about net neutrality and the open internet last week, and she returned to the topic today in a speech entitled, “The EU, safeguarding the open internet for all”.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Watch Out for the Coming TAFTA/TTIP “Science-Based” Negotiating Trick

      As anyone who has been following me recently will know, one of the most important geopolitical developments is the decision to negotiate a Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), also known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which makes clear its kinship with the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) currently being drawn up.

      Equally, you will know that my chief concern with TAFTA/TTIP is not so much any section on intellectual monopolies – although those might well turn out to be ACTA 2.0 – but the clauses dealing with unmemorably-named “Investor State Dispute Resolution”.

      I’ve explained what these are and why they are so dangerous on Techdirt (twice, actually.) In a sentence, this system allow a company to sue a country, directly, for alleged loss of future profits caused by tiresome things like environmental legislation or health and safety laws.

    • Copyrights

      • ARM Launches Hollywood Approved Anti-Piracy Processor

        Chip manufacturer ARM has announced a Hollywood-approved video processor that enables content producers to prevent piracy on mobile platforms. The Mali-V500 video chip features hardware embedded anti-piracy capabilities which secure playback of high-definition video. According to ARM the new chip meets the toughest anti-piracy standards for mobile devices.

      • Canadian ACTA Compliance Bill Inches Forward

        Earlier this year, Industry Minister Christian Paradis introduced a bill aimed at ensuring that Canada complies with the discredited Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The bill raises a host of concerns including granting border guards increased powers without court oversight or review. The bill had not been heard from since its introduction, but yesterday Paradis moved that the bill be read a second time and referred to committee for further study.

06.02.13

Links 2/6/2013: Arch Linux 2013.06.01, Slackpkg

Posted in News Roundup at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Reinventing Simple

    The days when Linux applications were small and simple are long gone. With Firefox and LibreOffice installed on most desktops, the community has embraced monster-sized apps so unreservedly that you can sometimes need to look twice to see what operating system you are using. In fact, the complexity has become so great that simplicity is being reinvented again and again — by adding complexity.

  • Desktop

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • The systemd journal is a broken piece of crap.

      Why, you ask? Well, it is a write-only database, which means there is no tool to actually read or fix a journal files, should they become corrupt. Or even notice the corruption. And they become corrupt all the time.

    • You’re Invited to Contribute to the Future of Linux.com
    • Intel Linux Driver For Ivy Bridge Still Catching Up To Windows

      After yesterday’s Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Linux graphics comparison using the very latest Intel Linux graphics driver, here are new benchmarks using the latest Windows and Linux Intel OpenGL graphics driver. Facing competition this morning is Microsoft Windows 7 Pro x64 and Ubuntu 13.04 with its updated open-source stack.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Intel Works On Intermediate Pixel Storage

        A new feature being worked on for the Intel DRM Linux kernel graphics driver is IPS. Short for Intermediate Pixel Storage, this feature should allow modern Intel HD graphics cores to let the CPU enter deeper PC states to increase power-savings.

      • Genode OS 13.05 Brings Automated Tests, Exynos 5

        New features to this original open-source operating system is automated quality assurance testing, improvements to the terminal infrastructure, there’s support for Samsung Exynos 5 platforms with drivers for USB 3, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit networking, eMMC, and SATA. The ARM-based Freescale i.MX53-based devices has new display, touchscreeen, and GPIO drivers. Lastly, the TI OMAP4 display driver has better LCD and HDMI support. There’s also been a custom kernel added for the Raspberry Pi.

    • Benchmarks

      • The First Experience Of Intel Haswell On Linux

        Haswell is here, Haswell is here, Haswell is here!!! After talking for months about the Linux kernel and driver development for Intel’s Ivy Bridge successor, the heatsink can be lifted today on talking about Intel’s Haswell processor. For the past few weeks I have been running and benchmarking an Intel Core i7 4770K “Haswell” processor on Linux to mixed success. While the Haswell improvements are terrific, the Linux experience now is awaiting improvements.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Kévin Ottens – Akademy 2013 Community Keynote

        Kévin Ottens is a long-time KDE hacker, known as ervin on IRC and email. He contributes to the KDE Community at large, with a strong emphasis on API design and frameworks architecture. He was instrumental in developing the KDE Manifesto, a process that started during Akademy 2012.

      • This month (May) in Redhat KDE
      • Marble and the KML Editor

        I am Adrian, a Romanian first-year student majoring in Computer Science at Imperial College London. I have recently been accepted to work on a KML Editor feature for the Marble Virtual Globe as part of KDE and this blog is where I plan to regularly post updates on the progress of the project.

      • Kdenlive: spring cleaning

        Here are some news on what is happening with Kdenlive’s video editor. Last year, we launched a successful IndieGoGo campaign to sponsor Till Theato’s work on Kdenlive.


      • KStars Summer of Code 2013

        Hello Planet KDE — my name is Henry de Valence, and I’ll be doing a GSOC project this summer for KStars. The main goal of the project is to rewrite the astronomy engine in KStars so that it runs much more efficiently and in parallel.

      • Supercharge Your Desktop With Kupfer

        Gnome-Do was once my application launcher of choice, but soon after I adopted it the project seemed to go stale. Luckily, a new project has stepped up to fill the void, and so far I’m impressed. Kupfer has all the feature I’m looking for, and a fantastic Python API for easy expansion.

        Kupfer is another clone of the popular OS X application Quicksilver. At it’s most basic level, Kupfer is an application launcher, but if that were all that it did there would be little sense in running it. The function of launching applications, once the domain of the quicksilver clone category of apps, has made it’s way into to the main desktops. Unity, Gnome, KDE, and their respective derivatives all have basic app and file launching support, but none are quite as full featured as Kupfer. The main benefit of a keyboard launcher is the expandability of its feature set. In fact, launching applications is one of my least used features of Kupfer. For example, here are a few things I use it for every day.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • One Week With GNOME 3 Classic: Day One (Paradigm Shift)

        tl;dr GNOME Classic has some polish problems, but it’s a solid desktop and a significant improvement in workflow over GNOME standard.

        Over the course of a week, I’m going to be experimenting with the new GNOME Classic desktop in Fedora 19 beta. I will be recording my experiences (hopefully) daily on this blog. This series of blog entries are entirely my own opinion and do not reflect the opinions of my employer, the Fedora community or anyone besides myself (though I hope my findings will be useful to all).

      • One Week With GNOME Classic: Day Two (Reorientation)

        After my experience on Day One, I decided to make two significant changes to my working environment in order to adapt to the GNOME Way. Despite many years of using Pidgin as my primary communications application (since way back when it was still called gAIM… get off my lawn), I decided that the lack of notification availability was a significant detriment to my ability to get things done in my day job, so I bid it a tearful farewell and started looking for an alternative.

  • Distributions

    • Review: SolydXK 2013.04.06

      What is SolydXK? Debian-based Linux Mint never had a KDE edition, so SolydK was born out of the unofficial project featuring KDE in Debian-based Linux Mint. Then, Linux Mint pushed its Xfce edition back to an Ubuntu base, necessitating the emergence of SolydX. Together they form SolydXK, based on Debian Testing but with update packs, just as Debian-based Linux Mint is.

    • Selecting a distribution is a personal decision

      maddog explains what’s behind his use of particular Linux distributions.

    • 10 Linux Distributions and Their Targeted Users

      Do you know from where does the power of Linux comes from? Well Linux is getting richer everyday with the presence of so much distros and every distro possessing a large group of users and developers working voluntarily on the project. Linux distributions come in all shapes and sizes, and they’re aimed at addressing every conceivable need. This article aims at briefing why a certain distro exist, who are the targeted user of the distro, and what special features it has as compared to its’ counterpart.

    • Comment: Don’t develop just for your favourite distribution

      The Cinnamon desktop has yet to be updated in such a way that it can be installed on a system together with GNOME 3.8, released in late March. That makes Cinnamon, developed as part of the Linux Mint project, yet another example of software built by short-sighted developers – who are only hurting themselves, since this behaviour hinders growth and deprioritises users.

    • SolydK Linux review – Very solid

      SolydXK is probably the weirdest name you can give your Linux distributions, mostly because it is an amalgamation of two names, SolydK and SolydX, two sub-versions of this distribution, graced with the KDE and Xfce desktop environments, respectively. See the confusion already? But never mind that.

      I was asked to take a look and review, if I please. And I did please. Now, as always, with any small distro, there’s the huge risk of one-man-show development and all the other associated issues. But I will put these aside now. Just be aware that SolydXK, no matter how good or bad, might simply vanish, just like the ultra-awesome Fuduntu did. With that in mind, it’s time to check the KDE flavor of this distro, hence the SolydK review.

    • New Releases

    • Slackware Family

      • Slackpkg Update Fixes Long Standing Annoyance

        Slackware’s Slackpkg has long had a design flaw default behavior that could result in inoperative applications or systems. But Patrick Volkerding recently addressed the issue with a simple but significant change. In addition, Slackware is getting some new native packages and updates.

        Willy Sudiarto Raharjo, Slackware enthusiast and contributor, recently reported of a significant change in slackpkg that will instruct the package manager to download all packages needed when installing a new application or applying updates. This avoids the condition where a package in a series is installed or updated before its full dependencies and, in some extreme cases, rendering the application or subsystem inoperative. Now, as Raharjo says, “In the normal operations, slackpkg will download the packages one by one and install/upgrade them sequentially.”

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Fedora’s Schrödinger’s Cat Linux gives coders claws for thought

          The Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, devised by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, pits the theory of quantum superposition against what we observe to be true.

          In the world of Linux distros, in theory the beta version of Fedora 18 was slated for release in early October 2012; what we actually observed in practice was six rounds of delays until the end of November 2012 when the software finally emerged.

        • Pidora: The Raspberry Pi Fedora remix
        • Get Java 8 Tech Preview in Fedora 19

          One reason that someone will pick Fedora is to get the latest and the greatest open software available. Well, that isn’t always true and you might find more updated distros around, but Fedora additionally is quite user friendly and it has evolved in a pretty nice Operating System -for any taste.

        • tboot in Fedora 19: Don’t worry, it’s just a bug

          After installing Fedora 19 beta and rebooting my test computer, I noticed that one of the options available in GRUB’s menu is tboot 1.7.0. Not sure what it’s for, I selected it and hit the Enter key.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Opens Portal to Rejected Community

            Ubuntu, or its managers, have snubbed their loyal users more times than I can even remember now, but they’ve more or less let it be known by their actions that they aren’t interested in the community anymore. They have commercial aspirations and prospects now, but constantly reassure users that they’re all about the community. Apparently their users aren’t buying it. So, today brings just the latest attempt at wooing the community back under their rock.

          • Surface Pro Owner? Here’s How to Install Ubuntu
          • Ubuntu Phone Dogfooding Update

            A while back I blogged about dogfooding Ubuntu Phone; that is, eating our own dogfood by using it on a daily basis. I have been tracking this here.


          • community.ubuntu.com

            For some time now we have wanted to improve the community pages on ubuntu.com. While the pages there provided an overview of the community they really didn’t serve us or our new community members very well.

          • Ubuntu Opens Portal to Rejected Community

            Ubuntu, or its managers, have snubbed their loyal users more times than I can even remember now, but they’ve more or less let it be known by their actions that they aren’t interested in the community anymore. They have commercial aspirations and prospects now, but constantly reassure users that they’re all about the community. Apparently their users aren’t buying it. So, today brings just the latest attempt at wooing the community back under their rock.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Minty fresh Linux: Olivia hits the virtual shelves

              The Linux Mint project has released version 15 of the desktop that they’re calling the “most ambitious release since the start of the project.”

            • Linux Mint 15 hits the web, begs for ‘Olivia’ Munn endorsement

              As with previous releases, the newest Mint iteration, “Olivia,” comes in two distinct flavors: Cinnamon and MATE. While both have received a bit of polish, it’s the fresher Cinnamon that has gotten the most attention. Version 1.8 of the desktop environment has received plenty of bug fixes, along with a new dedicated settings panel that bypasses the GNOME control center. Support for “Desklets” (read: widgets) has also been added and the log-in screen is completely customizable through HTML5. Both versions benefit from the addition of MintSources, for managing software repositories, and MintDrivers, for managing drivers, obviously. While they’ll come in handy for consumers, the biggest advantage is that IT managers may now be more accepting of the refreshingly green Ubuntu derivative. The developers are calling version 15 their most ambitious release yet, and while we’re not completely convinced that’s true, it’s certainly a significant upgrade over November’s Nadia. You’ll find the full changelog
              and download links at the source.

            • Linux Mint 15 ‘Olivia’ Features Update With An Ambitious Release
            • Linux Mint 15 MATE and Cinnamon screen shots
            • Linux Mint 14 : Nadia released

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Gumstix touchscreen baseboard can be customized online

      Gumstix announced a touchscreen baseboard for its Linux-ready Overo computer-on-modules built entirely with the company’s new Geppetto custom design platform, and available for further modification via the web-based Geppetto. The Alto35 is available with a 3.5-inch resistive touchscreen from InTouch Electronics.

    • Tiny module runs Linux on Altera ARM+FPGA SoC

      Critical Link announced a tiny, Linux-ready, SODIMM-style module based on the Altera Cyclone V SX-U672 ARM/FPGA SoC. The MityARM-5CSX builds on the Cyclone V’s mix of FPGA logic and dual-core 800MHz ARM Cortex-A9 processing power, adding two GigE channels, a PCI Express bus, and 145 GPIO lines.

    • ARM Launches DS-5 Development Tools for ARM Linux-Based Systems

      ARM [(LSE: ARM); (Nasdaq: ARMH)] today announced, at the Embedded World conference in Nuremberg, Germany, the launch of the Keil™ Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Application Edition, a software development tool suite which simplifies the development of Linux and Android native applications for ARM® processor-based systems, reducing the learning curve and shortening the development and testing cycle.

    • UDOO: Android Linux Arduino in a tiny single-board computer

      UDOO takes your DIY projects to the next level and it’s a powerful tool for education and creativity.

    • Raspberry Pi Gains Graphics Speed as Wayland Replaces X

      On May 24, Raspberry Pi Foundation executive director Eben Upton announced that the open source board’s recommended Linux distribution, Raspbian, will be adding support for a customized Wayland display manager.

      While the Pi’s Broadcom BCM2835 system-on-chip may be limited to a 700MHz ARM11 processor, it also has an impressive graphics processing unit (GPU) called the VideoCore 4. The Wayland windowing interface is optimized for the VideoCore and will offer much faster and more capable display performance compared to the current X Window, wrote Upton.

    • Phones

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Tizen Linux running on the Google Nexus 7 (video)

        Tizen is an open source, Linux-based operating systems designed for smartphones, tablets, TVs, laptops, and just about anything else that needs an operating system. It’s backed by Intel and Samsung, and it’s been in development since the MeeGo Linux project shut down two years ago.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Program Can Turn Humans Into Robots [Video]

    Graduate students in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) have developed an open API platform that allows users to move another person’s arms remotely, using an internet connection and an iPhone.

  • Open Source Phones May Have Brighter Futures Than You Think

    Three years ago, In a post here on OStatic, I asked this question: “Is It Too Late for an Open Source Challenge to Android?” And now, as we’ve been covering recently, a number of players are seeking to answer that question. Mobile phones based on Mozilla’s Firefox OS and Ubuntu are imminent, as are smartphones based on Tizen Linux. There are other smaller players in the mix as well.

  • Events

    • TrueAbility Sponsors Contest at the 2013 Texas Linux Fest

      The 2013 Texas Linux Fest takes place today in Austin at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center.

      And the team from San Antonio-based TrueAbility will be holding a Linux showdown, similar to the one they had at SXSW Interactive earlier this year.

      The contest will test the skills of Linux administrators and the top programmers will be awarded prizes. First place will get a Lenovo laptop, second place a Nexus tablet and third place with get a Beagle Bone Black starter pack. This contest is only open to those in Texas attending the conference, said Luke Owen, co-founder and CEO of TrueAbility.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Hortonworks release HDP 1.3 with Hive enhancements

      Hortonworks has announced HDP (Hortonworks Data Platform) 1.3, the latest version of its all open source Hadoop platform. The company points out that it has achieved a steady rate of releases of the platform – 1.0 in June 2012, 1.1 September 2012, 1.2 February 2013 and now 1.3 in May – and with the latest release it has been able to focus on Hive and SQL access in Hadoop; Hive is the de facto route for accessing Hadoop data in SQL.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • Funding

    • Open source mentoring scheme to select talented developers

      International Centre for Free and Open Source Software here has launched a joint mentoring programme with the Apache Software Foundation, a leading producer of free and open source software.

    • Students to rock on open source platform this summer

      While more and more users worldwide are moving towards open-source platform such as Android and Linux, the developers from the city see it as a major opportunity for future. A large number of students are all ready to participate in Google Summer of Code this year. A total of 22 students from colleges of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar will be working with open source giants to develop applications and platforms to get practical exposure.

      Mitesh Sanghvi, manager of Google Business Group in Ahmedabad, told TOI that from this year onwards, they are trying to reach out of metros to create awareness about the event that has more than 100 companies working in open source software. “The students will work from India and abroad for three months and apart from stipend, would get invaluable experience by working with experts,” he said.

    • State to tap expertise in open source software domain

      Kerala that lagged behind its counterparts in the IT race, is tapping its expertise in the open source software domain, for a paradigm shift. The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), one of the largest global companies on free and open source software, has now launched its pilot project in the country in Kerala. Oracle had sent in its feelers, while discussion with other IT giants, including Google, are on the cards.

      Satish Babu, director, International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an autonomous institution under the Kerala Government, told Express that the tie-up with the ASF would give open source developers in the state an international exposure. “Compared to other states, Kerala has a good talent pool in the open source software as the state was one of the pioneers in the country to promote free and open software movement.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Crowdsourcing- The Good, The Bad, And the Uglords

      However, too much of a good thing can be bad, as old dearies like to say. Crowdsourcing is full of projects that have become victims of their own success, and come close to imploding from all the effort to cope with subsequent demand.

    • Science finds a better foundation for research in the open
    • The sharing economy blooms on campus, saves Higher Ed?

      Burdened by runaway costs, unsustainable infrastructure, outrage over tuition increases, declining public dollars, and outmoded degree programs, colleges and universities are struggling to satisfy the needs of their current patrons, let alone cater to a global student population that is expected to double by 2025.

    • Anesthesia Illustrated Tests Open-Source Education Model

      In its first year, Anesthesia Illustrated, an open-source repository of anesthesia video lectures, attracted users from more than 150 countries who downloaded videos 94,213 times, according to an assessment presented at the 2013 Society for Technology in Anesthesia meeting.

    • Open Data

    • Open Hardware

      • Arduino Robot to Drive Robotics Concepts on Wheels

        Perhaps you have already found some time to do a bit of tinkering with Arduino. It’s a popular open source electronics platform based on a microcontroller and microprocessor with I/O capabilities that allow it to drive many kinds of surprising inventions. We’ve covered the platform and the community that creates with it before.

  • Programming

    • Dynamic languages have jumped the shark

      I still remember the heated arguments I’d have with my high school professors about dynamic languages. What do you mean python isn’t a real language? What’s wrong with you!? Dynamic languages are the coolest thing ever!

Leftovers

  • HTC , The Problem Is Not The Hardware. It’s The Monopolist’s Software.

    A 7 inch tablet with that other OS still won’t match the price/performance of */Linux on ARM. To compete, you have to sell Android/Linux or GNU/Linux on your products. Check out ASUS… They even sell gadgets with keyboards running Android/Linux.

  • Amazon cloud threatens ENTIRE IT ECOSYSTEM – report

    The moneymen have finally looked up from beneath their golden canopies and noticed, hovering above them, a cloud named Amazon that is putting traditional IT companies in the shade.

    Amazon’s cloud poses a major threat to most of the traditional IT ecosystem, a team of 25 Morgan Stanley analysts write in a report, Amazon Web Services: Making Waves in the IT Pond, that was released on Wednesday. Brocade, NetApp, QLogic, EMC and VMware are said to face the greatest “challenges” from the growth of AWS,

  • Amazon cloud threatens ENTIRE IT ECOSYSTEM – report

    Microsoft has just released some information about Windows 8.1 and the Start button isn’t being reinstated. If you have read other headlines and new reports that say that it is, then you are simply being misled.

  • Lawsuit Over Who Gets Starbucks Tips

    I imagine Mr. Pink doesn’t tip at Starbucks. Hell, I don’t “tip” at Starbucks. Occasionally, I don’t feel like having 30 cents clanging around in my pocket all day, so I throw it in the tip jar. But there’s only so much I can pay for a cup of coffee in good conscience.

    Apparently, there’s a lawsuit kicking around the New York Court of Appeals over who owns the tips at Starbucks. The baristas are fighting to keep control over the jar and not share the tips with assistant managers.

  • Retired Justice warns against ‘politicians in robes’

    Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made a plea for preserving the impartiality and independence of the American judicial system in a lecture Thursday at Elmhurst College.

    O’Connor, who addressed a crowded audience at Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel on the west suburban campus, delivered the Rudolf G. Schade lecture on history, ethics and law.

  • Science

    • Awesome Stuff: Print Stuff, Make Stuff

      from the make-stuff-in-your-home dept
      One of the biggest and most important trends right now is the increasing ability for people to make physical stuff that used to be impossible to make themselves. 3D printing is, obviously, a big part of that, but a variety of other advancements are happening at the same time. We’re in the very early days, but machines that help you make stuff are getting cheaper and cheaper, as they get more and more powerful.

    • Graphene-based image sensor to enhance low-light photography

      A team of scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore has developed a new image sensor from graphene that promises to improve the quality of images captured in low light conditions. In tests, it has proved to be 1,000 times more sensitive to light than existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) or charge-coupled device (CCD) camera sensors in addition to operating at much lower voltages, consequently using 10 times less energy.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Obama and Drone-Speak: Targets Intentional or Otherwise

      Well it was that President Barack Obama would make the claim that the way prisoners are detained and the way drones are used in terms of targeting would “define” the United States as a nation. A nation of opportunistic, moneyed hustlers intent on bruising the next foreign nose is already a definition worth having. But Obama wants something else. He wants a different style in counter-terrorism strategy, one of death under the guise of law. This has been every nation’s greatest challenge: finding the legitimate means of killing your opponents without feeling too bad about it.

      [...]

      Obama claims that a new classified policy will deal with the use of unmanned aircraft in areas where the term war is simply not used – Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen. Lethal force will be deployed against those who pose “a continuing, imminent threat to Americans”, and cannot be captured in any practicable way. That, at least, is the drone-speak humming from the pen of Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr.

    • Obama speech can’t bury drone damage

      “America is at a crossroads,” declared President Obama in a major speech he delivered at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. The speech was essentially a lengthy, carefully argued, yet contradictory defense of his highly controversial drone war.

    • Obama’s Willful Foreign-Policy Blindness

      There is a vast chasm between “saying” and “doing” in the Obama administration.

    • Legalize murder via ’69 Cambodian mayhem!

      Where are similar figures of conscience in the Obama White House, or even the Democratic Party? Where are the leaks and resignations? Perhaps this is the ultimate object lesson on display in the ongoing persecution of Bradley Manning. Internal dissent, regardless of its legal and moral standing, shall not be tolerated. Indeed, it will be considered sedition and will be smothered by the supreme sanction of the government. Acts that were once considered outrages against conscience are now routine.

    • Drone crashes in southern Somalia, may have been shot down

      Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was seeking to send drones to Kenya as part of a $40 million-plus military aid package to help four African countries fighting al Qaeda and al Shabaab militants

    • Four numbers that everyone needs to know about drone strikes

      49
      The number of people killed in U.S. drone strikes for every high-level suspect.

    • Prison officers ‘treat us like subhumans’, claims former CIA officer convicted of leak

      John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer jailed for revealing the name of a covert agent in charge of the US government’s Bush-era enhanced interrogation programme, has claimed he is treated as “subhuman” by wardens at the Pennsylvania prison where he is held.

      Kiriakou began serving a 30-month sentence in February, after being convicted of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert CIA agent to a freelance reporter, who did not publish the name. He is the first current or former CIA officer to be convicted of leaking classified information.

    • Op-Ed: Obama refuses to pardon or commute sentence of CIA whistleblower
    • The Rendition Project: Secret CIA Flight Network Revealed?

      A team of academics have launched the world’s largest interactive database detailing suspected CIA rendition flights, many of which may have transported detainees to Guantanamo Bay, RT Reported.

    • Bishops Say Grave Concerns Remain Over Obama Drone War

      The president insists the U.S. will use drones in accordance with just-war principles, but Catholic leaders say some moral questions still remain.

    • Add morality to list of drone victims
    • When it comes to unmanned warfare it’s nothing personal
    • ‘Killer robots’ which are able to identify and kill targets without human input should be banned, UN urged

      Human rights investigator Christof Heyns to lead calls against lethal robotic weapons

    • Agonizer in chief

      The hypocrisy of praising Obama for ‘asking the right questions’

    • Civilization has no place for drones

      There is no avoiding an international drone race; they should be banned like chemical weapons

    • Inside the Murky World of ‘Signature Strikes’ and the Killing of Americans With Drones
    • Syrian opposition fighters arrested with chemical weapons

      While widely reported in the Turkish press, the arrests Wednesday have been virtually blacked out by the corporate media in the US. Newspapers like the New York Times, which have openly promoted a US intervention in Syria, citing alleged chemical weapons use by the regime of Bashar al-Assad as a pretext, have posted not a word about the raids in Turkey.

    • Drones Kill Seven People in Yemen

      Yemeni political media affirm the majority of victims of those attacks are civilians that are then identified as members of Al Qaeda…

    • Two U.S. Drones Kill Seven in Southern Yemen

      Two cars, traveling on a Yemen highway, exploded Friday. There were seven al-Qaeda militants inside. Two U.S. drone strikes killed all seven.

    • UPDATE 1-Two drone strikes kill seven in southern Yemen-local official

      Two drone strikes killed seven suspected al Qaeda militants in southern Yemen on Saturday, a local official said, nine days after U.S. President Barack Obama said he would only use such strikes when a threat was “continuing and imminent”.

    • US drone attacks are further radicalising Pakistan

      President Obama might believe he is rooting out terrorists, but the drone attacks in Pakistan are also creating more radicals

    • Bush policies still alive in Obama White House

      President Obama came into office promising to be the opposite of George W. Bush, but after nearly five years as commander in chief, his policies are more like his Republican predecessor than he would care to acknowledge.

    • How Many People Has Barack Obama Killed With Drones?

      The actual number of drone deaths is at least 200 times the “22 top Al-Qaeda leaders plus Bin Laden” noted by President Obama. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) recently floated the number 4,700. Independent studies by both U.S. and British investigators have confirmed numbers in that ballpark, with many of those being “collateral damage.” But let’s, for the sake of simplifying the arithmetic, take a conservative round number of 4,000 deaths against a hypothetical 300 senior operational enemy leaders. After all, President Obama did not say that we have killed only 23 people with drones.

      [...]

      The reality is that U.S. drones have killed thousands, rather than dozens or a few hundred, and that many of them were civilians. The lion’s share of these killings surely could not occur under any dictionary definition of “imminent threat.” Most questionable are the so-called “signature strikes,” where targeting is based on circumstantial evidence rather than known identity of the target.

    • John Kerry’s iffy drone, climate claims

      KERRY on drones: “The only people that we are going after are confirmed terrorist targets at the highest level. … We will not fire when we know there are children or collateral damage. … I am convinced that we have one of the strictest, most accountable and fairest programs.”

      THE FACTS: President Barack Obama’s recently amended drone policy includes some of these elements, but that was not always the case. According to the New America Foundation, the CIA and U.S. military have killed 3,364 militants and civilians with drones over the last decade. Although the number of noncombatants killed is not known, the dead have not all been “highest level” terrorists.

      The New America Foundation maintains a database of the strikes and compiles its numbers from reports in major news media that rely on local officials and eyewitness accounts. It estimates that one in five of those killed by drones is a noncombatant. The Obama administration said the number of civilians killed is in the single digits. As for comparisons, no other country is known to use armed drones to kill individuals in foreign lands.

    • Germany shies away from comment on possible role in US drone war

      It looks like a computer game, but it’s deadly serious news in Germany: US soldiers control drone attacks with a joystick. According to new media reports, military bases on German soil play a key role in the drone war.

    • Report: US drone attacks via US bases in Germany

      The US military’s use of unmanned aircraft to kill terror suspects in foreign countries has come under media scrutiny in Germany. US bases in Germany may be involved in drone killings.

    • Kotarski: Obama’s drone jokes gloss over real casualties

      Another joke. According to a May 2012 New York Times report, Obama’s drone policy “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

    • Beyond the drones

      THE renewed debate on drone attacks in Fata and the response from the Pakistan authorities deserve due attention.

  • Cablegate

    • New poll reveals that Julian Assange could win senate seat in Australian elections

      Assange’s bid for a senate seat was seen by many as a stunt, but a poll has found 26 per cent of Australians would vote him in.

    • Julian Assange miffed by mainstream media

      Julian Assange has accused the conventional media of losing their bite and behaving like a “fresh-faced coquettes with too many suitors”. Writing in The Spanner journal, the WikiLeaks founder argues that most print and online journalists have become lazily reliant on press releases or stories that are fed to them by lobbyists.

      “These coquettes long ago stopped cooking their own food and now expect everything to be lovingly presented on a silver platter,” complains Assange, who has been eating from the Ecuadorean Embassy’s crockery since he claimed asylum there last year.

    • Guarding Assange in London

      Whether the British tax payer starts foaming at the mouth at the extensive and expanding bill will be something worth seeing. The bloody mindedness of the British government is considerable. The spectacle has ceased merely being absurd. It has become absurdly expensive.

    • Bradley Manning Accused Of Aiding [Classified Enemy]

      Okay, so in Orwell’s 1984, the powers that be may have switched who the “enemy” was arbitrarily and then rewritten history to argue we were always at war with Eurasia or Eastasia. But, at least there was a defined enemy. In the court martial case against Bradley Manning, for supposedly “aiding the enemy” by releasing State Department cables and other documents to Wikileaks, he’s being charged with aiding a “classified enemy” along with aiding Al-Qaida. We’ve already explained why the aiding the enemy charge is highly dubious, since that charge is normally reserved for directly handing information to an enemy, not leaking it to the press.

    • Protesters Support Soldier Ahead of WikiLeaks Court-Martial

      Hundreds of protesters gathered outside a U.S. army base Saturday to voice support for Private First Class Bradley Manning, whose court-martial begins there Monday for the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history.

    • Bradley Manning Wikileaks Trial to Spur US Demonstrations [VIDEO]

      US authorities were accused of torture after putting Manning on “extreme suicide watch”, meaning he was held in solitary confinement, kept in his cell for 23 hours a day, had all possessions withheld. and was held overnight under lights and repeatedly stripped of his clothes.

    • Protesters rally at Fort Meade before WikiLeaks trial

      Members of the Bradley Manning Support Network and others gathered Saturday near Fort Meade’s main gate.

    • US: Protesters Support Bradley Manning Ahead of WikiLeaks Trial [photo,video]

      Hundreds of protesters gathered outside a U.S. army base Saturday to voice support for Private First Class Bradley Manning, whose court-martial begins there Monday for the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history.

    • Protesters Support Bradley Manning Ahead Of WikiLeaks Court-Martial
    • Daniel Ellsberg: WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning deserves to be seen as a hero

      Former Defense Department official Daniel Ellsberg praised WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning in video published Thursday.

    • CODEPINK to Stage Creative Action on the Eve Of WikiLeaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning’s Court Martial

      The peace group CODEPINK will join the efforts of the Bradley Manning Support Network in a march and rally outside Ft. Meade where the WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning is scheduled to face court martial on Monday, June 3, 2013. They will dress as Lady Justice, blindfolded, with togas and scales, in front of a huge mural depicting Manning with a Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award. They will speak out about how Manning’s revelations have contributed to the group’s work for peace and justice.

    • Bradley Manning Trial: Support Surging For Wikileaks Whistleblower

      The trial of Army Private First Class and two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning is set to finally begin on Monday, at Fort Meade, Maryland. Supporters are planning a rally for Manning on Saturday, with ABC News reporting that large crowds are expected to come out in a demonstration of support for the intelligence analyst who leaked over 700,000 government and military documents to WikiLeaks in the largest leak in U.S. history. Manning potentially faces up to life in prison if found guilty of the most serious charges against him, aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act. The trial is expected to last three to four months.

    • Feds, soldier’s supporter in Wikileaks case settle

      BOSTON (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union says the federal government has agreed to destroy all data obtained from a computer and other electronic devices seized from an advocate of the Army soldier accused of sending classified U.S. documents to Wikileaks.

  • Finance

    • Time Magazine Stands With Rahm

      Time doesn’t dwell on criticisms of Emanuel’s policies; readers are told that “the Chicago Teachers Union, a power unto itself, loosed its heavy artillery”–which sounds menacing–and that some people “charged that the closures targeted majority-black schools with majority-black faculties.”

    • Former Cahill aide, Goldman banker fined $100,000

      In its toughest sanction yet on pay-to-play-schemes, the Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered Neil M.M. Morrison, a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and former top aide to ex-state treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, to pay a $100,000 civil penalty for his role as chief political adviser and fund-raiser for Cahill.

    • CME Group Fines Goldman Sachs and Former Partner

      Goldman Sachs and Glenn Hadden, one of Wall Street’s top traders, have been fined by the CME Group over a Treasury futures trade in 2008.

      The CME Group, which runs commodity and futures exchanges, has notified both Goldman and Mr. Hadden, once a trader and partner at Goldman Sachs who now runs the global interest rates desk at Morgan Stanley, that both face fines and other sanctions in connection with the trade, according to a disciplinary action reviewed by The New York Times.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Scaife-Funded Network Works Hard to Kill Immigration Reform

      With immigration reform advancing through Congress, an anti-immigrant network funded by a small group of right-wing foundations is trying to kill reform by pressuring moderate Republicans and appealing to the party’s xenophobic wing. The groups could stymie efforts by some Republicans to appeal to the country’s growing Latino population by moving to the center on immigration.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • UK needs prompt action on human rights record, UN panel warns

      The British government’s human rights record since the attacks of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq is facing ferocious criticism from a United Nations panel, which warns that prompt action is needed to ensure the country meets its obligations under international law.

    • American Muslim Who Claims He Was Tortured Abroad Sues FBI

      Yonas Fikre, an American Muslim who claims that he was tortured in the United Arab Emirates at the behest of the US government, sued the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department on Thursday. Fikre, whose story was first reported by Mother Jones in April 2012, claims he was abused by local authorities in the UAE after refusing to become an informant for the FBI.

    • Sacrificing freedom on the altar of political fears

      The news debate moves onto more calls for Internet restrictions debates today, prompted by April Jones’ murderer possessing illegal child abuse images. Some commentators have sought to blame Google – who takedown links to such material – and others have sought to link access to child abuse images to access to pornography in general, advocating restrictions for all adults.

    • What mobile internet filtering tells us about porn blocks

      Whether you think that website blocking is a good idea or not, it is important to at the very least recognise that it has serious, tangible, negative consequences, especially when it is switched on by default at the network level. This post helps demonstrate what some – but by no means all – of these issues are and why they happen.

    • UN Condemns UK

      Trenchant criticism of the UK by the United Nations over its human rights record would have been major news in the pre-Blair days. One of Blair’s “achievements”, which in the 1990s I should have thought impossible, was to win the acceptance by the public and the media of the practice of torture and other gross abuses by the state.

    • Schools scanned students’ irises without permission

      Parents in Polk County, Florida are outraged after learning that students in area schools had their irises scanned as part of a new security program without obtaining proper permission.

    • TSA Eliminates All Invasive, ‘Gumby’ X-Ray Machines

      The Transportation Security Administration announced it has finished removing from all airports the X-ray technology that produced graphic and controversial images of passengers passing through security screening checkpoints.

      In a letter released Thursday, TSA administrator John Pistole told the House Homeland Security committee that as of May 16, all US airports scanners equipped with the ability to produce the penetrating images will now only show a generic outline of a passenger to the operator. A colored box pops up if the full-body scanner detects a potentially forbidden item.

    • Google: ‘We won’t be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this time’

      While the public decides how to deal with Google Glass-wearing cyborgs walking among us, there are already startups trying to add facial recognition to the device. That includes the MedRef for Glass app for Doctors and an API created by Lambda Labs that’s on the way. Unfortunately, apparently due to privacy concerns, a post tonight by the Project Glass team says that it will not approve any app using the tech for release — at least until it has some privacy protections in place. That’s the same standard it previously said would need to be met before it added facial recognition to its own services.

    • Talking Turkey

      In fact civil conflicts are usually horribly complex, anent a variety of very bad people all trying to gain or retain power, none of them from an altruistic desire to make the world a better place. There may be ordinary people on the streets with that altruistic desire, being used and manipulated by these men; but it is not the ordinary altruistic people on the streets who ever come to power. Ever.

    • The NSA Reportedly Tested Its Top Spyware on New Zealand

      The United States’ war on its citizens’ privacy has been so successful in the last decade that now even well-respected judges are stating that privacy is not a right. But it hasn’t stopped there: with the cooperation of allied governments, the US reportedly tested its most sophisticated surveillance software on the citizens of friendly nations.

    • NSA Whistleblower: Obama’s Attacks on the Press Indicate a ‘Soft Tyranny’

      Drake accurately describes himself as someone who “became a criminal and was labeled an enemy of the state because I was calling out government wrongdoing and illegality.” Someone that has gone through that experience can be expected, at this point, to be calling out the Obama administration attacks on press freedoms.

    • Jim Comey’s shining moment

      All true. But Comey also helped to institutionalize the very program — the National Security Agency’s orderless domestic collection — that his refusal to sanction had put the breaks on. He did not object to the part of the program declassified by the Bush administration. He believed that the president’s Article II power did in fact provide enough cover for the NSA to collect call records from subscribers who were reasonably believed to be connected to overseas terrorists or their associates.

    • On Indefinite Detention, California Assembly Tells Washington DC, Not Here!

      Today, the California Assembly voted to approve a bill that will help render toothless the federal “indefinite detention” powers under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The bill, by Assemblymember Tim Donnelly, was previously passed unanimously by both the Public Safety and Appropriations Committees and now moves on to the State Senate for concurrence. The final vote was 71-1 (roll call here)

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • DRM

    • EFF files formal objection against DRM’s inclusion in HTML5

      Regular readers will know that there’s a hard press to put DRM in the next version of HTML, which is being standardized at the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3), and that this has really grave potential consequences for the open Web that the WC3 has historically fought to build.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • EU Mandate For TAFTA Leaked: Includes Investor-State Dispute Resolution For Intellectual Monopolies

      One of the concerns about TAFTA/TTIP is that it would repeat the mistakes of ACTA and SOPA as far as intellectual monopolies were concerned. This led to a call by a group of public interest organizations for things like copyright and patents to be excluded from TAFTA (disclosure: I was involved in the drawing up of the text.)

    • Trademarks

      • New York Continues Its Trademark Bullying Ways: Threatens Coffee Shop With Bogus Threats

        I recall, a few years ago, filmmaker Kevin Smith talking about how the state of NY demanded money because a background player (I think a dancer) in Clerks II was shown wearing an “I ♥ NJ” t-shirt, and NY, somewhat infamously, holds the trademark on “I ♥ NY.” I don’t recall all of the details, but I’m pretty sure Smith said that a significant sum of money had to be paid to the state of NY. Of course, that’s an abuse of trademark law on multiple levels. The likelihood of confusion is likely nil, and even if they were arguing dilution, that seems unlikely as well. The t-shirt was in a movie, not for sale by the movie. Another time, NY threatened the guy who created the I ♥ NY design in the first place when he tried to make a new version after September 11. Because NY is an obnoxious trademark bully, that’s why.

    • Copyrights

      • Canadian ACTA Compliance Bill Inches Forward

        Earlier this year, Industry Minister Christian Paradis introduced a bill aimed at ensuring that Canada complies with the discredited Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The bill raises a host of concerns including granting border guards increased powers without court oversight or review. The bill had not been heard from since its introduction, but yesterday Paradis moved that the bill be read a second time and referred to committee for further study.

      • Meet the New George Soros

        On the night of March 23, 2011, four political operatives arrived for dinner at Scarpetta, a posh Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills’ Golden Triangle. They wore DC power suits but ditched the ties—their one concession to LA fashion. For a bunch of hacks more at ease on Capitol Hill than Rodeo Drive, they blended in well enough. Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney had spent their adult lives climbing the rungs of Democratic politics, including a stint together in the Obama White House; pundit and consultant Paul Begala had advised Bill Clinton in the 1990s; Geoff Garin had been a top pollster for some 30 years. A hostess led them through the Mediterranean-themed dining room, all dark woods and tan walls lit by golden glass lamps, then up a flight of stairs to a private room. Awaiting them was the man they hoped would be their bell cow.

      • IP Commission: Cut Off WHO Funding If It Doesn’t Make IP Protection Priority One

        The IP Commission Report on the “theft” of American IP is the gift that keeps on taking. We’ve already discussed the commission’s suggestion that infringers’ computers be loaded up with spyware and malware and the apparent “fact” that China has singlehandendly destroyed every IP-reliant industry in America.

      • Universal Music Demands $42,000 From Danish Mayors For Gangnam Style Parody

        Last year, we noted that one of the reasons why Psy’s Gangnam Style video and song had become so incredibly popular was Psy’s decision not to crack down on copies at all. Instead, he’s mostly celebrated the copycats and parodies, talking about how awesome they were. But, of course, once a major record label gets involved… TorrentFreak reports that Universal Music is demanding $42,000 from four mayors in Denmark who teamed up to produced a video of the four of them dancing to the song.

      • Prenda Law, the Porn Copyright Trolls

        Tony Smith had a porn problem. A 27-year-old nursing student in Collinsville, Ill., Smith was listening to music and doing homework one night last August when he heard a knock on his apartment door. He opened it and an imposing-looking man with a flashlight handed him a lawsuit and his business card. A name was written in pen on the back. “Give this guy a call, he can help you get through this,” the man told Smith. “He’s looking out for people like you.” Smith turned it over and read the name: John Steele.

      • Prenda’s Former Porn Client Comes Forward About His Fears Of Working With Prenda
      • Florida ‘Abbott And Costello’ Prenda Case Ends Not With A Bang, But A Whimper
      • Art And Copyright In The Age Of Compulsive Looking
      • Why Can’t We Take Pictures in Art Museums?

        In an attempt to balance copyright restrictions and ever-present camera phones, some museums are loosening their ‘no photography’ policies

      • Three Strikes For File-Sharing Fails to Halt Music Sales Decline

05.31.13

Links 31/5/2013: Vivaldi Tablet is Coming, GNU/Linux Growing In China

Posted in News Roundup at 10:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Ask Slashdot: Is GNU/Linux Malware a Real Threat?
  • GNU/Linux flag at the top of the Americas

    GNU/Linux enthusiast Sebastian Satke has taken GNU/Linux to new heights — literally. He summited Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, with a GNU/Linux flag in tow.

  • In Case You Missed It: Linux In Space!
  • GNU/Linux Doing Well In China

    16.84 million of 55.01 million PCs shipped with an OS in 2011 bore GNU/Linux. That’s 30.6%. Only a million or so shipped without an OS but I would bet a good share of them had GNU/Linux as well. Good show, China. I doubt “8″ would have helped M$’s numbers in 2012.

  • GNU/Linux News From Brazil

    If a national government of a substantial nation can run on GNU/Linux, FLOSS and open standards, anyone can.

  • Desktop

    • Google Chromebook Pixel Review

      Earlier this year, Google did something almost ground-breaking when it introduced the Chromebook Pixel. Sure, the Chromebook line as a whole has existed for a few years, but the entire premise of such a range of notebooks revolved around only a couple of design goals. One of those was accessibility, and almost by default, the other was affordability. The original Chromebooks were priced at $500 or less — in some cases, far less. The reason seemed obvious: Chrome OS was a great operating system for those who did little more than browse the Web and connect to cloud-based services such as Evernote, but it served less of a purpose in the productivity-minded “real world.”

    • Why I bought a Samsung Chromebook

      It’s no secret that I find Chromebooks to be extremely useful laptops. I have come to that conclusion from actually using them, and most of them on the market at that. All of that hands-on usage led to my hitting the One-Click button on Amazon to buy the Samsung Chromebook for $249.

      It’s the end of the month and that means packing up test laptops to send back to the companies that sent them for review. This month the returns include the HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook, the Chromebook Pixel, and the Lenovo ThinkPad T432s.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Podcast Season 5 Episode 9

      In this episode: Mint 15 is here! There’s a new Fedora-based respin for the Raspberry Pi. The city of Munich and the country of Australia make great progress in moving towards open source and there’s a new Humble Bundle. Hear our discoveries and your own Open Ballot opinions, plus, we welcome a new member to the team.

    • Mayan EDMS

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Thermal Daemon Monitors and Controls Temperature in Tablets, Laptops

      Intel’s Open Source Technology Center has released an open source tool to monitor and control temperature in tablets, ultrabooks and laptops. The Linux Thermal Daemon can use the latest thermal drivers in the Linux kernel, not just the standard cpufreq subsystem, to provide CPU temperature control.

      Due to constrained system size, small form factor devices reach their maximum temperature with relatively less load than desktops and servers. And as they get smaller and thinner, traditional cooling methods such as heat sinks and fans are being designed out of the devices. Developers can’t rely only on hardware and BIOS to regulate temperature without negatively impacting performance.

    • What IT Managers Can Learn About Retention From 2013 Linux Job Report

    • Graphics Stack

      • NVIDIA Introduces $400 GeForce GTX 770 GPU

        To join the GeForce GTX TITAN and GTX 780 as the newest high-performance NVIDIA GPUs, rolled out this morning was the GeForce GTX 770. NVIDIA has introduced the GTX 770 as a new high-performance graphics card that’s priced at $399 USD.

      • Intel HD 2000/2500/3000/4000 Linux OpenGL Comparison

        For seeing where the current OpenGL driver performance stands for Intel’s open-source Linux graphics driver on Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors, the very latest Linux kernel and Mesa development code were tested across four different processors to stress the HD 2000, HD 2500, HD 3000, and HD 4000 graphics capabilities atop Ubuntu.

      • X.Org Foundation BoD Summaries
      • X.Org Has Some Interesting Summer GSoC Projects

        The accepted Google Summer of Code 2013 projects concerning X.Org, Nouveau, and Mesa / Gallium3D is now known. There’s some exciting stuff!

        Martin Peres on the behalf of the X.Org Foundation has shared the X.Org GSoC 2013 projects on the X.Org mailing list. The projects to be attempted this summer include:

      • Intel Begins Lining Up Graphics Changes For Linux 3.11

        While the Linux 3.10 kernel is only mid-way through its development cycle, the Intel Open-Source Technology Center has already begun piling up many changes they would like merged for their DRM graphics driver into Linux 3.11.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • wattOS R7 – release

        wattOS-R7 has been released – . The 64bit and 32bit versions are available for download immediately. Spread the words to friends and have fun with the latest version. Help is always welcome in the forums.

      • Chakra-2013.05-Benz ISO released

        The Chakra Project team is very happy to announce the third release of Chakra Benz. “Benz” is the name of a series of Chakra releases that follow the KDE Software Compilation 4.10 series.

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Hands on with Mageia 3

        But if you want to look at an alternative for any reason (perhaps you just don’t like Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth, you don’t like Cinnamon or MATE, you prefer a smaller, more “personal” distribution, one where you might be able to get involved and really make a contribution, or you are just curious), I would strongly encourage anyone to give Mageia 3 a try, it is very likely to impress you, as it did me.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Has Ubuntu bitten off more than it can chew?

            Canonical wants to put Ubuntu onto our TVs, tablets and smartphones, as well as our PCs. Barry Collins weighs up its chances of success.

          • Printing with Ubuntu and Why Microsoft Will Never Be Obsoleted

            Recently my Olivetti Olibook S1300 – a gift of Salvo Mizzi, of the Working Capital fame – died. I decided it was great time to face the experience of making my Acer Aspire one printing. While below you’ll find a detailed report about my journey to make possible to print via Linux with a Canon LBP 810, first I wish to share my thoughts about what all this means.

            Plug&Play maybe a frustrating experience if something goes wrong for some reason, since most of the times you have little chances to fix an issue if that arise. On the contrary with Linux you’re given the unique opportunity to be in full control of your destiny, and you can litterally build your own future (no pun intended).

            As you can easily figure out yourself – or if you don’t have the time just go on and read my painful experience to make it print – freedom really come at a price here. Note that the problem is not that by bad luck my old Canon printer for some weird reason doesn’t come with Linux drivers. To be honest the LBP810 doesn’t even come with Mac drivers.

          • Has Ubuntu bitten off more than it can chew?

            Canonical wants to put Ubuntu onto our TVs, tablets and smartphones, as well as our PCs. Barry Collins weighs up its chances of success.

          • You Want Ubuntu On Your Phone Says Poll

            The votes have been counted and most of you want Ubuntu on your smartphones, according to our unscientific poll. This doesn’t come as a surprise, since an earlier poll showed a preference for Ubuntu on tablets as well. Not bad for an OS that’s not really available yet on those hardware platforms.

          • Create your second QML app for Ubuntu touch

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 15 “Olivia” released
            • Linux Mint 15 “Olivia” released ! May 29th, 2013
            • Linux Mint 15 review

              Linux Mint is a comprehensive and beginner-friendly Linux distribution. To that extent it’s a rival to Ubuntu – and in fact it’s derived from the Ubuntu codebase, which means all the same software and drivers can be used. Releases run to a similar six-monthly schedule, with periodic long-term support releases following Ubuntu’s. This newest release is Linux Mint 15, known to its friends as Olivia.

            • Linux Mint 15

              The Linux Mint project has released the latest version of its Ubuntu-based Linux distribution and its developers are setting their sights on making the distribution the go-to choice for all Linux users on the desktop. With Ubuntu and Canonical apparently being focused on the mobile and entertainment spaces, Linux Mint 15 has a shot at accomplishing this goal. The H investigates whether “the most ambitious release since the start of the project” delivers on it.

            • First Look: Linux Mint 15 “Olivia”

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Enea AB: Real-time Friendly Linux for Communications

      Enea® (NASDAQ OMX Nordic:ENEA), is today announcing Enea Linux v3.0 – a comprehensive cross-development tool chain and runtime environment with guaranteed performance and quality of service (QoS), flexible support offerings, worldwide support and maintenance, and expert professional services.

    • Hacker-friendly SBC runs Linux on ARM+FPGA SoC

      Avnet Electronics Marketing has begun shipping an improved, production-grade version of its community-supported, Linux-ready Xilinx Zynq-7020-based development kit. The $395 ZedBoard includes a Zynq-7020 SoC with dual 667MHz Cortex-A9 cores and FPGA programmable logic, and offers gigabit Ethernet, USB OTG, HDMI, A/V ports, and more.

    • Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 SoC integrates 3G and WiFi
    • Enea Linux turns 3.0, offers real-time and QoS features

      Enea announced a new version of its embedded Linux distribution compatible with Yocto Project 1.4 code, and available with extensive service and customization options. The Enea Linux 3.0 cross-development tool chain and runtime environment also features varying levels of real-time Linux support for guaranteed performance and quality of service (QoS).

    • Phones

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Is On The Way

          Samsung has officially confirmed the Galaxy S4 mini, a smaller version of the flagship smartphone Galaxy S4. The android phone manufacturer will target the mid range market with this moderate version of its flagship phone.

        • DARPA unveils Android-based ground sensor device

          DARPA announced a sensor reference system device based on a new Android-based sensor processing core called the Adaptable Sensor System (ADAPT). The initial ADAPT reference device, called UGS (unattended ground sensor), is designed as the basis for a series of lower-cost, more upgradable sensor devices for military applications.

        • Is Android a Suitable Software Platform For Home Phones?

          A growing number of manufacturers are integrating smartphone operating systems into home phone handsets. But is this software actually appropriate for use as part of a landline setup in the domestic environment? Here is an overview of the ins and outs of this trend.

        • Google Makes Android Design Decisions Using ‘Jars of Emotion’

          According to the noted psychologist Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, it takes three positive emotions to balance out a single negative. As Fast Company reports, Fredrickson’s findings are at the heart of Google’s Android design philosophy. When considering any user interface decision, designers working on Android have to work out how to inform users of an issue — such as reaching the final homescreen — without making them feel like they’ve done something wrong, meaning pop-ups and other invasive techniques are a no-go. For the homescreen problem, Google settled on the now-familiar glimmering animation, which subtly shows that a user has no more homescreens to swipe across to, while rewarding them with an artistic flourish.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • An update on KDE’s ambitious Vivaldi tablet

        A KDE Plasma Active powered tablet has been in works for quite some time. Aaron Seigo, the lead behind the project has given a quick update on the Plasma Active powered tablet hardware.

      • Vivaldi Tablet Finally (Almost) Finalized

        Per Aaron Seigo, the once-hotly anticipated –and still hotly-anticipated-by-me — Vivaldi tablet is in the very final stages of design. Many of the necessary components are in place and the new design belongs almost entirely to the Plasma Active team. Many of you might remember that we’ve covered Plasma Active and the Vivaldi tablet quite a bit when it was a hot topic. We even went so far as to purchase the reference hardware that most closely resembled the Vivaldi tablet. Aaron will have you think that was only months ago, and he’s not lying, but those months are now dangerously close to turning into years.

      • Vivaldi “Flying Squirrel” Linux tablet is making progress (still not ready to ship)

        It’s been more than a year since KDE developer Aaron Seigo announced plans to build a tablet designed to run open Mer Linux and the KDE Plasma Active environment. The Vivaldi tablet project’s hit a few speed bumps since then, but this week the team has a mostly working prototype.

      • KDE Vivaldi Tablet Upgraded, Closer To Release

        The KDE Vivaldi Tablet, which has been a project led by Aaron Seigo for having a Linux-friendly tablet powered by Plasma Active and Mer Core, is finally getting closer to hopefully seeing the light of day.

        This project has been going on for more than a year and originally was conceived as the KDE Spark Tablet, but then renamed to Vivaldi. In September of last year as the tablet project was struggling, they switched to a new design.

      • quick update on vivaldi hardware
      • theming plasma

        Lately I’ve noticed a number of new themes popping up for Plasma Desktop, which is quite cool.

      • Android poised to overtake Apple in tablets, ABI says

        Apple shipped half of all tablets in the first quarter, but the popularity of low-cost Android tablets in China is boosting that OS.

Free Software/Open Source

  • MIT’s Einsteinian game engine goes open source

    OpenRelativity, the game engine designed by the MIT Game Lab for its educational game A Slower Speed of Light, is being released as an open-source toolset.

    The engine was designed to model Einstein’s special relativity in a game environment, to communicate its principles in an exploratory format. “Education can be assisted through the use of games and other interactive media,” says MIT Game Lab’s Rik Eberhardt. “Especially for topics that frequently are hard to understand and visualize.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Tests In-App Payments Functionality for Chrome

        Several users of the latest build of Chromium, the open source core of the Chrome browser from Google, have taken note of the fact that Google is adding in-app payment functionality to Chrome. As noted on The Next Web: “The addition was first spotted by developer and Google open-source Chromium evangelist François Beaufort. He points to a Chromium code review titled ‘Make sure the Google wallet in-app payment support app is always installed.”

    • Mozilla

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • OpenStack Branches Out with ‘Messaging as a Service’

      It’s a rare enterprise cloud manager today who isn’t already familiar with OpenStack, the open source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing project for building public, private and hybrid clouds. Included in OpenStack are several key components dedicated to virtual machine provisioning and management, storage, virtual disk management and more, but recently a new service made its debut.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Exiting new design initiative

      Through out the last couple of years we have seem quite a few suggestions to a new and more modern look and feel for LibreOffice. Some of these initiatives has already found its way into the product, and you can e.g., see a much more light weight ruler in Writer and the whole sphere around using and handling templates has been reworked with a new design. Each of these examples are small steps ahead towards a more modern layout. But when will we see something more like a jump into the future?

  • CMS

    • Drupal.org compromised

      The Drupal.org security team says it has discovered unauthorised access to Drupal.org and groups.drupal.org account information which has exposed user names, country, and email addresses along with hashed passwords. No credit card information was stored on the servers, but the investigation is ongoing and the team says it “may learn about other types of information compromised”.According to Drupal.org, there are over 967,000 registered users on the Drupal.org.

    • Important Security Update: Reset Your Drupal.org Password
    • Semantria Announces an Innovative Open Source Plug-in for WordPress

      Semantria announces a new innovative Open Source Plug-in for WordPress that will assist bloggers, writers, and authors in streamlining their publication processes. As a leader in cloud based text and sentiment analysis, Semantria is excited about the application of its services to a major blogging and publishing platform.

  • Education

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Government supports open-source RF initiative

      Universities and companies are being given the opportunity to use the open source RF hardware platform, MyriadRF and configurable transceiver technology developed by Lime Microsystems as a result of a tie-up with Europractice, a government-funded project of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council.

      Europractice will promote Lime’s LMS6002D field programmable RF transceiver and associated boards for use in research and teaching of wireless technology to its member establishments throughout Europe.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Prank Resulting In 2 NFL GMs Talking To Each Other Results In Up To 5 Years Of Prison, $500k Fine

    Insane legal actions over relatively mild pranks are coming fast and furious these days. We just recently discussed the 17 years old high school girl staring down felony charges over a childish year book prank. There have also been several cases of those that fall victim to pranks turning to intellectual property law as a way to hide their gullibility. There’s something — embarrassment perhaps — that spurs victims into unreasonable legal action once the trap has been sprung.

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Hackers Disable Monsanto’s Web Site

      Protesters from at least 268 cities in 40 countries participated in the May 25 international outcry against that company.

    • Monsanto website downed as Anonymous claims hack

      Hackers from the Anonymous collective claimed to have infiltrated the website for the biotech giant Monsanto, which has been the subject of recent international protests.

    • Russians Proving That Small-Scale, Organic Gardening Can Feed the World

      When it’s suggested that our food system be comprised of millions of small, organic gardens, there’s almost always someone who says that it isn’t realistic. And they’ll quip something along the lines of, “There’s no way you could feed the world’s growing population with just gardens, let alone organically.” Really? Has anybody told Russia this?

  • Security

    • Log file vulnerability in Apache server
    • Robert Kugler and Paypal’s bug bounty eligibility requirements

      For professional security researchers, participating in bug bounty programs is one means of earning money on the side. It is also the easiest means of building up street-cred. And many companies take advantage of their skills, recognizing that its either they find and fix bugs in their products first or the bad guys do and exploit them. For Black Hats, the underground market for exploit code is a very lucrative one.

    • PayPal vulnerability finally closed

      On Wednesday night, payment processor PayPal closed the security hole in its portal that had been publicly known for five days. The company had been aware of the vulnerability for about two weeks. The hole was a critical one: it allowed attackers to inject arbitrary JavaScript code into the PayPal site, potentially enabling them to harvest users’ access credentials.

    • Judge orders porn suspect to decrypt his hard drives

      After having first decided against forcing a suspect to decrypt a number of hard drives that were believed to be his and to contain child pornography, a U.S. judge has changed his mind and has now ordered the suspect to provide law enforcement agents heading the investigation with a decrypted version of the contents of his encrypted data storage system, or the passwords needed to decrypt forensic copies of those storage devices.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • CIA Thwarts Polio Vaccination Campaign

      A polio vaccination campaign worker was shot to death in Pakistan on Tuesday, which The New York Times wasted no time in reporting. What the Times article neglected to mention was that the killing followed a CIA operation in which agents orchestrated a fake vaccination program in order to gain entry to Osama Bin Laden’s home.

      [...]

      Like some kind of Billy Mays infomercial—‘But wait, there’s more!’—the Times’ shameful coverage doesn’t end there. They go on to say that, “Also [in addition to the Taliban], religious extremists claim that the real aim of vaccination campaigns is to sterilize Pakistan’s Muslim population.” The implication is again that Pakistan is populated with menacing religious zealots whose fundamentalism stands in the way of scientific progress. Characterizations such as these conform very nicely to the view that clashes between the West (i.e. NATO) and the Middle East are not rooted in any sort of real economic or political grievances (e.g., the U.S.’ installation of dictators like the Shah in Iran; or the U.S.’ theft of oil resources), but rather “a clash of civilizations”, as Foreign Affairs once put it. The view that there are irrevocable religious differences between the West and the Middle East is very useful to Western leaders seeking to justify acts of aggression, like the invasion of Iraq.

    • Guns in the home proving deadly for kids

      While efforts at gun control are still being fought, children’s advocates are urging parents and communities to take their own steps to protect kids.

    • Gun Deaths Since Newtown Now Surpass Number of Americans Killed in Iraq

      The number of gun deaths in the U.S. since the Newtown elementary school massacre has exceeded the total number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war.

      According to a tally of gun deaths from Slate, the number of people killed since the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary is now 4,499. The number of U.S. armed forces killed during the Iraq war was 4,409, according to the Defense Department.

    • CIA Nominee John Brennan Had Detailed Knowledge of Bush-Era Torture

      While serving as deputy executive director of the CIA under the Bush administration, President Obama’s nominee for CIA chief and current counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan “had detailed, contemporaneous knowledge” of the use of torture on detainees in US prisons, Reuters reports.

    • SNP demands answers over alleged CIA torture planes

      The UK Government faced fresh questions last night over what it knew about CIA-linked flights which landed in the north and north-east at the height of the US “extraordinary rendition” programme.

    • CIA rendition flights ‘landed at north of Scotland airports’

      Researchers looking at the use of CIA-linked planes for prisoner transfers in the “war on terror” have highlighted “conclusive” evidence of landings at Scottish airports.

    • The Danger of Overcorrecting on Terror

      Thus, in the mid-1970s the Church and Pike Committees revealed abuses by the CIA, FBI and NSA, including “domestic spying on Americans, harassment and disruption of targeted individuals and groups, assassination plots targeting foreign leaders, infiltration and manipulation of media and business.” As a result, Congress created in 1978 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which greatly limited the surveillance of U.S. citizens.

    • US military bases in Australia: The role of Pine Gap

      The purpose of the stepped-up military activity and basing arrangements are surrounded in secrecy, misinformation and outright lies—including the claim by Defence Minister Stephen Smith that “there are no US bases in Australia.” In fact, the new facilities being opened up represent an expansion of the US military’s longstanding use of Australia, facilitated by successive Labor and Liberal-led governments since World War II, for some of its most critical bases in the world.

      Chief among them is what is known as Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, which was established in central Australia near the town of Alice Springs in 1970. Pine Gap is one of three major satellite tracking stations operated by US intelligence agencies and military. The others are located in Colorado and Britain.

    • 5 Reasons to Challenge Obama’s War on Terror Speech
    • CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou shares prison experience in open letter
    • CIA whistle-blower John Kiriakou shares letter from prison

      Through his lawyer, the former agent who spoke out against torture, details federal prison experience

    • CIA Global Renditions: Abductions and Extrajudicial Transfers from one Country to Another

      Extraordinary renditions include arbitrary abductions and extrajudicial transfers from one country to another. Targeted individuals are called terrorists.

      Corroborating evidence isn’t needed. What Washington says goes. Rogue hegemons operate that way.

      International, constitutional, and US statute laws don’t matter. They’re spurned. Victims are guilty by accusation. It’s official US policy.

    • The CIA And The Comedy Of Errors

      The CIA recently had another embarrassing reminder that it remains a spy agency without many competent spies. This incident occurred in Russia where a CIA agent was expelled from the country on May 14th after getting caught while trying to carry out an embarrassingly amateur operation. The man (operating as a junior State Department employee at the U.S. embassy) had been arrested earlier while trying to recruit a senior Russian security official. That offer failed and the CIA man did not detect a trap. Russia later revealed that this also happened back in January but was kept quiet so as to maintain good relations with the U.S. But now the Russians saw an opportunity to use these sloppy CIA operations for domestic propaganda, to remind Russians that in one area at least they are better than the Americans. To add insult to injury the Russians also showed their displeasure by revealing the name of the senior CIA official (the “resident” in spy-speak) in Russia. This fellow will also have to leave now, which is what the Russians apparently want. They hold the CIA resident responsible for this sloppy and embarrassing use of spy craft. By mutual consent, Russia and the U.S. usually keep the names of their own and the other nation’s residents secret. That rule is only breached when you want to send an important message to the other side.

  • Cablegate

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Walker’s Dismal Jobs Performance Gets a Gold Star in ALEC’s “Rich States, Poor States” Report

      Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker got a boost last week from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in its annual Rich States, Poor States report. Despite Bureau of Labor Statistics data putting Wisconsin in 44th place for private-sector job creation, ALEC placed the state as 15th in the country in its ranking of economic outlook, giving Walker — a former ALEC member — a boost as he lays the groundwork for a re-election campaign and a possible Presidential bid.

    • WI Appellate Judge Upholds WI Voter ID, But Indicates Another Challenge Could be Successful

      A Wisconsin appellate court has overturned one decision by a lower court finding the state’s voter ID law unconstitutional, but the legislation remains blocked, with a separate challenge to the law pending before a different appellate court. Despite upholding the voter ID law, the judge deciding today’s case appeared to imply that there could be a different outcome for a challenge that provides more evidence of the law’s burdens on the right to vote.

  • Censorship

    • Raspberry Pi puts holes in China’s Great Firewall

      A tech-savvy China-based Redditor has spotted a hassle-free way of ensuring he or she is always able to bypass the Great Firewall, even when out and about, using the Raspberry Pi to connect to a virtual private network (VPN).

      VPNs are a necessity for foreigners living in the People’s Republic who want to access sites prohibited by the country’s ubiquitous internet censorship apparatus – business users and consumers alike have come to rely on them to connect to a banned site.

    • Singapore Seeks Even More Control Over Online Media

      Currently ranked 149th globally in terms of press freedom, alongside Iraq and Myanmar, the Singapore government has chosen to further tighten its grip on the media instead of letting up.

    • Singapore to regulate Yahoo, other online news sites

      Websites that regularly report on Singapore including Yahoo News will have to get a license from June 1, putting them on par with newspapers and television news outlets, in a move seen by some as a bid to rein in free-wheeling Internet news.

    • Matthew Rhys interview for The Americans: ‘Our scripts go to the CIA for approval’

      Most actors are good at deception. But Matthew Rhys – a Welshman playing a Russian pretending to be American – takes things to extremes in ITV’s new US spy thriller, The Americans. He talks to Craig McLean.

  • Privacy

    • CIA’s sugar daddies shovel MEELLLIONS into Pure Storage

      All-flash array upstart Pure Storage has received the blessing of the CIA after the spooks’ venture capital arm In-Q-Tel made an investment in the firm.

    • How Chinese hackers steal U.S. secrets [example of CBS government propaganda]

      While no computer networks are impenetrable, federal agencies like the FBI, DOD and NSA devote significant resources to guard their computer networks, and also have in place rules to protect sensitive data.

    • Leak investigations: What happens to those under the microscope?

      It is not clear how often the government has obtained communications records of reporters. While Fox News was informed nearly three years ago about the subpoena for call logs for five lines related to Rosen – apparently after the phone company had already provided them – it did not publicly disclose the action. Instead, it emerged only this month when court papers were unsealed that also showed that the government had separately obtained a warrant for the contents of Rosen’s private email account. A lawyer and spokesmen for Fox did not respond to requests for comment.

    • Do we already live in a police state?

      Many people fear that the government will use the Boston Marathon bombings as an excuse to push more surveillance on us. However, the National Security Agency has spied on American citizens since at least 2001, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    • Don’t freak out, but the government records and stores every phone call and email
    • Snoopers’ Charter debate at ORGCon

      This week has seen an extraordinary deluge of comment on the Snooper’s Charter, seemingly co-ordinated by the Home Office. A succession of hardline Home Office sympathisers have sought to link the events at Woolwich with a need to spy on every citizen: despite the fact that the perpetrator was known to the police.

      Even MI5 agents have declared that the Snooper’s Charter could not have prevented Woolwich, and that calls for its revival are a “cheap argument”

    • NSA Hacking Unit Targets Computers Worldwide

      New details have emerged about a secretive unit inside the National Security Agency called Tailored Access Operations that hacks into foreign computers to conduct cyber-espionage. According to a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article titled “How the U.S. Government Hacks the World,” the Pentagon hackers harvest nearly 2.1 million gigabytes every hour.

    • How the U.S. Government Hacks the World

      The key role NSA hackers play in intelligence gathering makes it difficult for Washington to pressure other nations—China in particular—to stop hacking U.S. companies to mine their databanks for product details and trade secrets. In recent months the Obama administration has tried to shame China by publicly calling attention to its cyber-espionage program, which has targeted numerous companies, including Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Intel (INTC), to steal source code and other secrets. This spring, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Beijing to press Chinese officials about the hacking. National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon is scheduled to visit China on May 26.

    • NSA Caught Unawares By Data Center Tax

      The whole purpose of an organization like the National Security Agency (NSA) is to know things far enough ahead of time that its human nodes are never surprised. Certainly that’s a big part of the reason the agency has been building a heavily fortified, $2 billion data center on the thinly populated, dry mountain plain just south of Salt Lake City.

    • Looking back at Tony Scott’s Enemy Of The State

      Dreamt up by Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson in 1991, Enemy Of The State follows the exploits of naughty NSA director Thomas Reynolds (played by professional scene chewer Jon Voight), who, angry that he can’t blackmail a congressman into supporting a law giving the NSA greater snooping powers, decides to kill him instead and make it look like a heart attack.

    • Would you like the truth about the NSA? Watch this one minute video

      Much of the details of NSA’s work must be kept secret, but processes are in place to let leaders like John talk about the agency, which means when he speaks it can be a great opportunity to learn about an important agency.

    • White House has legitimate concerns in press cases

      Almost needless to say, Republicans sensing an Obama weakness are going along for the ride — even many who thought Bush attorney general Alberto Gonzales’ threat to prosecute New York Times reporters for revealing the existence of a massive NSA eavesdropping operation was a terrific idea.

    • The FBI’s New Wiretapping Plan Is Great News for Criminals

      The FBI wants a new law that will make it easier to wiretap the Internet. Although its claim is that the new law will only maintain the status quo, it’s really much worse than that. This law will result in less-secure Internet products and create a foreign industry in more-secure alternatives. It will impose costly burdens on affected companies. It will assist totalitarian governments in spying on their own citizens. And it won’t do much to hinder actual criminals and terrorists.

    • Will journalists take any steps to defend against attacks on press freedom?

      Media outlets have awakened to the serious threats posed to journalism, but show little sign of doing anything about it

    • Shaming Chinese hackers won’t work because cyber-espionage is here to stay

      Economic cyber-espionage is particularly thorny point of discussion because the US, unlike China, distinguishes between attacks on private industry and more bread and butter political and military espionage. The US would like to limit Chinese theft of intellectual property from American companies, but is not particularly interested in negotiating any constraints over US intelligence gathering. As Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA, put it: “You spy, we spy, but you just steal the wrong stuff.’ That’s a hard conversation.”

    • What a REAL White House Scandal Looked Like: James Comey’s Riveting 2007 Testimony

      AP and others are reporting that President Obama plans to nominate, for FBI Director, Republican James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General under then AG John Ashcroft, during some of the darkest days of the George W. Bush Administration.

      The news offer a moment to revisit what a real White House scandal looked like — back when Republicans had no interest in them and back when there were real investigative Congressional hearings and no need to create pretend “whistleblowers” in order to gin up political “outrage” and “scandal”!

    • Revealed: Australian spies seek power to break into Tor

      In a major admission, the Attorney-General’s Department has revealed Australia’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies are seeking the legal power to break into internet routing encryption services such as Tor, after admitting the centerpiece of its proposed national security reforms, data retention, will be “trivially easy” to defeat.

      The admission by officials to Senate Estimates last night will give rise to further concerns that the department, which has systematically and aggressively expanded the powers of intelligence and law enforcement agencies at the expense of civil liberties and privacy, wants far stronger powers to regulate the internet and break into encrypted systems in order to keep an eye on what Australians are doing online.

    • Bridgewater Counsel Comey Is Lead Pick For New FBI Director

      Comey resigned from Bridgewater in February and is currently serving at Columbia University as senior researcher and lecturer. Comey is a registered Republican and has served as Deputy Attorney General under the Bush administration. During that time, Comey received high praise for his vicious opposition of Bush’s no holds barred surveillance program. Reports say that he had threatened to quit if the NSA implemented the intrusive program. He was also against the interrogation tactics practiced under the Bush regime.

    • A Contrarian Futurist

      Indeed, the stigma associated with offensive cyber activity is breaking down, now that cyber attacks have exploded in frequency and scale. The banks are now asking the Feds to join the fight, so DHS, FBI and NSA are trying to figure out how to collaborate, without going to jail themselves for hacking or disclosing classified data.

    • The White House War Against Whistleblowers
    • What can government snoops get by with?

      Big Brother has become more emboldened than ever with the recent revelation that the Justice Department had obtained from telephone companies the records of Associated Press and other reporters to investigate an alleged national security leak, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

    • Government still spying on emails and phone calls with no stinkin’ warrant
    • Secret Court Document Finds Spy Techniques Unconstitutional, Justice Department Fights To Keep It Hidden

      The Justice Department may soon be forced to reveal a classified document that details unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens. The Justice Department has fought to keep the document secret for about a year, but a recent court order demands that they respond to a formal request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation by next week, June 7, 2013.

    • Kotarski: The snoop factor is shocking

      In October 2008, a 39-year-old former U.S. navy linguist who worked at a National Security Agency (NSA) centre in Georgia went on ABC News and blew the whistle on himself and his fellow NSA operators for listening in on the private conversations of hundreds of American aid workers and soldiers calling home to the United States from Iraq.

      “Hey, check this out,” David Murfee Faulk says he would be told. “There’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out.”

    • TechMan Texts: Take advice from the National Security Agency

      Well, put out is not quite the right phrase, because the super-secret NSA won’t tell you anything about what they are doing with your tax money unless forced to.

  • Civil Rights

    • Father of man FBI shot claims his son was executed

      The father of a Chechen immigrant killed in Florida while being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to a Boston Marathon bombings suspect said Thursday that the U.S. agents killed his son ‘‘execution-style.’’

      At news conference in Moscow, Abdul-Baki Todashev showed journalists 16 photographs that he said were of his son, Ibragim, in a Florida morgue. He said his son had six gunshot wounds to his torso and one to the back of his head and the pictures were taken by his son’s friend, Khusen Taramov.

    • ‘Why did the FBI execute my boy?’ Father of Boston bomber’s friend displays gruesome photos of his son’s corpse showing unarmed man was shot SEVEN times during questioning – including once in the back of the head
    • What’s Happening at ORGCon2013: Digital Arms Trade Debate

      ORGCon2013 is a great place to find about new threats to our online rights – and ways to combat them. One of these issues is the Digital Arms Trade, a new area for ORG, but one that is increasingly gaining attention and action. We’re delighted that Eric King of Privacy International, Hauke Gierow, Reporters without Borders and Simone Halink, Bits of Freedom will be sharing their expertise at the conference.

      The Internet is a tool for communication that has been shown over and over again to be a source of empowerment. It connects the LGBT teenager who is being bullied to find support and a network of friends online, it connects the activists suffering under oppressive regimes to one another, and allows groups on the ground to communicate human rights abuses to the world.

      But the trade in surveillance technology undermines this potential and treats this technology as a tool for governments to surveil citizens and control their communications.

    • The U.S. media muddle

      …governmental action against leaks and the constitutional right of the press to inform the public.

    • Constitutional Sheriffs Convention Focus: States’ Rights, 2nd Amendment
    • “Conservative” Magazine Counsels Rand Paul to Join the CFR

      Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is currently on his nationwide “I’m probably running for president” tour. He’s made the requisite stops in the early election states of Iowa and New Hampshire, courting the GOP faithful and bringing the figurative freezers full of red meat to throw their way. Demonstrating impressive political savvy, he’s also making a habit of making bold statements that set him apart from potential Establishment competitors from both sides of the aisle.

    • The Obama Doctrine: Kill civilians to save them from ‘terrorism’

      Obama’s speech included a full-throated defense of drone strikes. Disturbingly, the speech all but wrote off the hundreds – if not thousands – of civilians who died from U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other nations. Obama claimed that as president, he “must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies [civilian causalities from drone strikes] against the alternatives.” He followed this assertion with the equally bizarre justification, “Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians.” This is the Barack Doctrine: To save the civilians who would die in terrorist attacks, we need to kill them before the terrorists do.

      Although the U.S. media already clamors over the very minor changes to the president’s drone program – the Los Angeles Times called it “throttling back on drones” – these changes will do little to nothing in reducing civilian casualties. The president calls for tougher standards when deciding to launch drone strikes. This requires “a near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,” according to White House staff.

    • Media Gets Targeted by Obama, Discovers No One Cares Except the Media

      This leads me to more salient matters. While my local press corps was babbling about some ancient history-Michael Jackson-related minutia bullshit, another media storm was brewing. Apparently the Associated Press and Fox News recently found themselves on the business end of the Obama Administration’s hostility toward journalists. The AP learned the Justice Department searched troves of their phone records. Meantime, Fox News’ James Rosen had his personal email account scoured by the DOJ and he’s being called an “aider and abettor” and “co-conspirator” in a criminal case regarding classified document leaks.

    • Priests in training allegedly gave Nazi salutes

      A Catholic seminary in Germany says it is investigating claims that trainee priests made anti-Semitic jokes, played far-right music and gave Nazi salutes.

    • Is This Nazi-Killing Video Game Hero Jewish? Maybe.

      In one level, Blazkowicz discovers some Nazi plans. He looks over some documents. They’re written in Hebrew. He’s able to translate.

      The hints are there that B.J. Blazkowicz, video game killer of Nazis since his debut in 1992′s Wolfenstein 3D, is Jewish.

    • President Obama uses a sledgehammer against dissent

      From Jeremy Hammond to Bradley Manning and the AP, Obama’s ‘assault on journalism’ is a threat to our democracy

    • Reporter Who Connected CIA, Crack Epidemic Now the Subject of a Film

      In 1996, the newspaper and its fledgling website published a jaw-dropping series called “Dark Alliance,” in which Webb drew a connection between the Central Intelligence Agency and the crack cocaine epidemic plaguing U.S. inner cities.

      The series was not well received by the nation’s top newspapers. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the L.A. Times all attacked Webb’s reporting, and his career sharply declined. He committed suicide in 2004.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Innovators, Public Interest Groups & Open Access Supporters Pull Out Of Talks On EU Copyright In Protest

        Back in February we reported on a worrying attempt by the European Commission to reframe the discussion about modernizing copyright in Europe purely in terms of licensing, reflected in the name of the initiative, “Licences for Europe”. Although originally a series of discussions were promised to “explore the potential and limits of innovative licensing and technological solutions in making EU copyright law and practice fit for the digital age,” in practice moderators shut down discussions of things like exceptions or even Creative Commons licensing. As far as the Commission was concerned, it seemed the answer to updating copyright for the modern age was just old-style licensing and nothing else.

      • Taiwan’s Copyright Proposals Would Combine SOPA With A Dash Of The Great Firewall Of China

        The new measures will move Taiwan closer to China’s Great Firewall in terms of censorship, and will therefore probably be well-received on the mainland as a result. But there are surely better ways of improving relations between the two countries than instituting these kind of measures that won’t stop people sharing unauthorized copies online, but will damage the Internet, and not just in Taiwan.

      • FBI and New Zealand police ordered to return all personal data seized from Megaupload

        The FBI and authorities in New Zealand have suffered a blow in their pursuit of Kim Dotcom and Megaupload, after a New Zealand court ordered them to return all personal data from the service that was seized during raids last year. Furthermore, they must specify exactly what information is at the core of their case against the file-sharing service.

        High Court Justice Helen Winkelmann ruled (once again) that the raid on Dotcom’s mansion in January 2012 was illegal due to incorrect warrants. Today, the Justice ordered the national police to return to Megaupload any digital data they possess that is not relevant to the case, as Stuff NZ reports.

      • Rapidgator Not Responsible for Pirating Users, Court Lifts ISP Blockade

        As part of a criminal investigation by Italian authorities, 27 file-sharing related sites had their domains blocked by local ISPs last month. Rapidgator, one of the largest cyberlockers on the Internet, was among the targeted sites and chose to appeal the verdict. This week Rome’s Court of Appeal ruled that the Rapidgator blockade should be lifted as the site’s operators are not responsible for alleged copyright infringements carried out by their users.

      • Universal Music Tells Gangnam Parody Mayors: Pay $42,000 By Tomorrow, Or Else

        The guys over at Humble Bundle are offering another set of great games to users, for which they can pay as much or as little they want and as always the money raised is used to support good causes.

        This package, the Humble Indie Bundle 8, includes five games for those who pay below the average (which stands at $5.69 at the time of writing) and seven for those who pay above the average.

        The five games that are unlocked, through Steam, to those who pay between $1 and the average are Little Inferno, Awesomenauts, Capsized, Thomas Was Alone and Dear Esther, with the two extra unlockable games that come with a payment larger than the average being Hotline Miami and Proteus.

      • CBS Tells Court: No One Could Possibly Read Our Statements ‘We Will Sue Aereo’ To Mean We Will Sue Aereo

        Aereo then did exactly what it should: it sued first, seeking a declaratory judgment that its service was legal and that it could launch in other markets without fear of expensive lawsuits from CBS. This is what the whole declaratory judgment setup is for. Exactly cases like this where one party threatens another in an effort to scare them off by the threat of expensive court battles.

      • Italian Court Overturns Seizure Of Cyberlocker Rapidgator

        In April we wrote about how Italian law enforcement had blocked over two dozen websites after the industry claimed they were responsible for copyright infringement. There was no trial, no adversarial hearing where the sites were able to defend themselves. Just: entertainment industry complains, law enforcement buys the complaints, tells a judge and boom, site gone. One of the cyberlockers blocked in this effort, Rapidgator, challenged this blockade, and it has quickly won a reversal. Rapidgator’s lawyer, Fulvio Sarzana, was kind enough to send us the details, and it appears the court understood why the initial blockade was hugely problematic.

      • IP Commission Thinks YOU Should Pay For China’s Infringement

        As Mike discussed in a previous post, the IP Commission’s report on “theft of American IP” points a finger almost exclusively at China. And, as was pointed out in another post, the report is also loaded with some genuinely terrible ideas (protect IP with malware, anyone?). Here’s another one: starting a trade war with China over intellectual property. This recommendation, taken from the final pages of the document, is both a broadside against China and a genuinely terrible idea.

        Generally speaking, instigating a trade war is a bad idea, even when you have the upper hand. Instigating a trade war over something as poorly defined (especially in this report) as “IP theft” is a worse idea. Instigating a trade war with a country that already has you staring down the barrel of a steep trade deficit is just asking for trouble. The US has tried this sort of thing before (to protect the American steel industry) and found itself facing retaliatory tariffs from European nations as well as having its tariffs declared illegal by the World Trade Organization.

      • Massive Growth In Independent Musicians & Singers Over The Past Decade

        We’ve discussed in the past a favorite talking point of the RIAA, claiming a 40% decline in employment for musicians over the past decade or so, which simply isn’t supported by the numbers. We’ve been seeing a lot of people claiming this again lately, so we decided to take a look at what the numbers actually showed, and can’t seem to figure out where that decline is coming from, because the numbers show a very different story — one that suggests things are actually much better for independent musicians than in the past, just as we would expect. In fact, there’s been an astounding 510% increase in independent musicians making their full time living from music in just the past decade.

      • John Steele’s Claims About Alan Cooper Contradicted By History

        Earlier this week, we wrote about John Steele’s attempt at the character assassination of Alan Cooper, his former home caretaker who accused Steele of forging his name on various documents concerning shell companies associated with Prenda, the law firm Steele worked for. As part of that filing, Steele tried to suggest that Cooper was a willing participant, and that Steele was merely helping his “friend” get introduced into the porn copyright trolling business. As we noted, Steele’s story directly contradicts Cooper’s story, which certainly suggests that one of them is not telling the truth in court. That’s generally a bad idea. As more people look into Steele’s claims, they don’t seem to hold up under scrutiny, suggesting that if one of the two has a credibility problem, it’s probably Steele.

      • RIAA: There’s Been No Innovation Stifling Here!

        In the end, though, the crux of the RIAA’s argument entirely misses the point of Carrier’s piece. It basically says “look, there are lots of services today, what are you complaining about?” But the point was never that killing Napster stopped innovation, but rather that it hindered the pace and nature of that innovation. And the RIAA doesn’t address it at all. There’s a difference between the direction of change and the rate of change, and the key point is the rate of change, but all the RIAA wants to discuss is the direction, which is meaningless. Innovation can’t be denied forever, so of course the direction will move forward. What Carrier’s piece discussed, quite clearly, was the pace — and the RIAA wants to avoid that, and pretend that everything that happened between 15 years ago and now didn’t happen to get here. If we were at the point we’re at today in 2003, they might have a point. The fact that it’s taken us this long and we’re still just reinventing radio… well, we’ve got a long way to go and should have been much further along.

05.30.13

Links 30/5/2013: Linux Mint 15 Released, Linux Reigns in Embedded

Posted in News Roundup at 4:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Transformers: More Than Meets the Automotive Eye

    Cadillac, Ford, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota. These carmakers are transforming their industry through software. Cars are no longer just about metal. A new car already has 5 to 15 million lines of software code that are reliant on and integrated with thousands of mechanical and electrical components. If you’re in the car business today you’re also a software maker.

  • [VIDEO] Former Microsoft Exec Embraces Linux for Networking Software

    For more years than I care to count, I read statements and saw Microsoft server events where Bob Muglia declared why Microsoft’s server was so good.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • Wayland they’d called it

        Let’s commence with a joke. If the British automotive industry of the 70s had been the one to invent the display server protocol, they would have called it British Wayland. Get it? It’s subtle. Very subtle. Anyhow, without focusing too much on the technical lingo, Wayland is a new protocol, designed to replace the sturdy and reliable X Windows System. The idea is to create a more modern, more relevant method of transferring video frames from applications to the on-screen display, in a manner that is fast, efficient and extensible. On paper, it’s an interesting approach to an old problem, but the question is, is there a problem really?

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Ivy Bridge: UXA vs. SNA – Updated Benchmarks

        With the testing of the very latest Intel X.Org graphics driver, the SNA 2D acceleration back-end for the Ivy Bridge graphics is now the clear-cut winner for the Linux desktop over using the default UXA back-end.

        If you aren’t familiar with Intel SNA, you surely haven’t been reading enough of Phoronix as it’s been extensively covered on the site over the past two years through many articles. Long story short, SNA is an experimental 2D acceleration architecture that’s been extensively tuned to insane detail by Intel OTC’s Chris Wilson. For the past several months now it’s generally been working well across all generations of Intel hardware from Sandy/Ivy Bridge to even old Intel IGPs.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • XBMC running in Linux on a TV box with an Amlogic AM8726-MX chip (video)

      The folks behind the XBMC media center application have made a lot of progress porting the software to run on Android. But if you’d rather have a small, low-power XBMC box that runs on Linux, new options might be available soon.

    • Linux strong, Android surging says embedded survey

      Linux crept up slightly in the EE Times 2013 Embedded Market Study, representing 34 percent of current projects while Android showed the greatest growth, jumping to 16 percent, for a total of 50 percent for Linux-based platforms. Meanwhile, ARM processors continue to attract more embedded developers.

      In early March, UBM Technology shared some preliminary details on current OS use from its survey-based EE Times “2013 Embedded Market Study.” Now, UBM has released the full report, showing further details on future OS plans among embedded developers, processor preferences, and much more.

    • BeagleBone Black Review
    • Add More Fruit to Your Raspberry Pi!

    • Phones

      • Android

        • How to Get Android as Google Intended

          Ever since Android became a mainstream mobile operating system, companies like Samsung and HTC have continuously tinkered with their phone and tablet interfaces to deliver their own unique take on the platform. While these manufacturer modifications have improved over time, some users still yearn for the stock Android experience — one that can only be found on a handful of devices, primarily with Google’s own Nexus line of smartphones and tablets. Fortunately, there is more than one way to use the OS in the way Google intended, which can be enjoyed by owners of both rooted and non-rooted devices.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nivis Announces Open Source ISA100 Wireless Software Platform

    Nivis, a global company active in smart grid and industrial wireless networks, has announced the release of an ISA100 Wireless Application Layer Software Development Kit (SDK) along with the availability of the ISA100.11a communication stack and related code on an open source basis. The SDK and open source ISA100.11a code can improve supplier’s ROI for ISA100 Wireless products by reducing development time and per-unit costs.

  • Web Browsers

    • What’s the best Firefox or Opera browser alternative?

      One of Google Chrome’s major weaknesses or shortcomings is the browser’s lack of user interface customization options. It is a take it or leave it interface that is giving users no options whatsoever to customize it.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla’s WebFWD accelerator helping Anahita become ‘the Linux of social’

        Anahita is the ancient Persian goddess of water, which is essential for life, health, and fertility. It’s also a very modern set of software building blocks for a social infrastructure for everything essential for enterprise-level life, health, and — in a sense — fertility.

        At least, according to Vancouver-based project founder and core architect Rastin Mehr.

      • Foxconn to announce Firefox OS devices, maybe a tablet

        Apple OEM contractor Foxconn is prepping several products based on Mozilla’s Firefox OS, says an industry report. The new products, one of which is rumored to be a tablet, are expected to be announced on June 3 in collaboration with Mozilla.

        On May 27, Focus Taiwan reported that Mozilla and Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., better known as Foxconn, will on June 3 unveil a device running Mozilla’s Linux- and HTML5-based Firefox OS. The story also noted that an industry insider told the publication the product was likely to be a tablet.

      • Rumour: Foxconn Firefox Tablet Coming June 3rd

        Foxconn is rumoured to be making a new tablet PC for Firefox OS, and we could catch our first glimpse next week.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Healthcare

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Take action for free JavaScript

      Choosing to run free software on your computer is a powerful statement. Unfortunately, regardless of what you have installed on your desktop or laptop, you are almost certainly running hundreds of nonfree programs as you surf the Web. Web sites often use programs written in JavaScript to expand the capabilities of HTML, adding menus, buttons, text editors, music players, and many other features. Browsers come configured to download and run the JavaScript without ever making the user aware of it. Contrary to popular perception, JavaScript does not run “on the Web site” — it runs locally on users’ computers when they visit a site.

    • Free Software is Activism

      The Free Software is defined such as software that gives some freedoms to his users: use, copy, modify and redistribute modified copies. So, we can understand the free software as collective property generated by the users and developers.

      Although, from the Open Source philosophy, this problem has changed until that if the Free Software continues being collective property, sometimes is not being generated by the real interests of users and developers, it’s generated by the market interest, with especulative criteria and financial bumbles in a similar way than another market product.

      So, the Open Source philosophy, drop the ethical arguments about if is reasonable or don’t use Free Software, the only argument will be if technically is or don’t a good option, if is a good business and another similar arguments. But they don’t think if it’s good the good common, it’s out of the discourse. Many corporations has done good contributions creating Free Software products from this philosophy, but sometimes mixed with the philosopy of the propietary software: Ubuntu, Android, etc.

    • Denemo – News: Release 1.0.4 is imminent

  • Licensing

    • VP8 cross-license draft compatible with FOSS licensing

      Google and MPEG-LA recently disclosed a draft cross-license under which patents related to the VP8 video compression format would be licensed to the general public. SFLC reviewed these terms and considered some criticisms that have arisen in the free software community. Our opinion expressed here is ours alone, and does not necessarily reflect the position of any client of SFLC.1

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Open source, 3D printing and the race to re-engineer manufacturing

        While we’re all arguing about the future of Australian manufacturing in the wake of Ford announcing the closure of their Australian factories, the entire manufacturing industry is facing another wave of massive change as 3D printing and open source hardware change the economics of the sector.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Internet: Basket In Which We Put All Our Eggs

      Naturally, we’re filled with umbrage and are busy blaming the Chinese military for being dastardly. How dare they do what we would expect any country’s military to do? Also naturally, we’re not putting any blame on ourselves. No one is suggesting that such sensitive information, perhaps, shouldn’t be placed on a computer facing the Internet, no matter how secure. Nor is anyone suggesting that maybe the largest and most advanced military on the planet needs to have their own world wide web that’s not connected to the one used by the rest of us. No one is suggesting that this isn’t the way we won World War II.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Cablegate

    • Julian Assange: Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Guilty Plea Part of Crackdown on Journalism, Activism

      Jeremy Hammond of the hacktivist group Anonymous has pleaded guilty to hacking into the private intelligence firm Stratfor, the FBI and other institutions. Hammond says his goal was to shed light on how governments and corporations act behind closed doors. Some five million Stratfor emails ended up on the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, shedding light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. In a statement, Hammond said he accepted the plea deal in part to avoid an overzealous prosecution that could have resulted in at least 30 years in prison. He has already served 15 months, including weeks in solitary confinement. Joining us from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Hammond’s prosecution comes as part of a wider crackdown “on effective political activists and alleged journalistic sources.” Click here to watch our web-only extended interview with Assange.

    • Assange: U.S. Probe of WikiLeaks & “Show Trial” of Bradley Manning Aims to Scare Whistleblowers

      Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of disclosing a trove of government documents and cables to WikiLeaks, is set to go on trial next week. Manning has already pleaded guilty to misusing classified material he felt “should become public,” but has denied the top charge of aiding the enemy. Speaking from his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange calls Manning’s case “a show trial … to terrorize people from communicating with journalists and communicating with the public.” Assange also discusses his own legal status as he continues to evade extradition to Sweden. Assange fears that returning to Sweden would result in him being sent to the United States, where he fears a grand jury has secretly indicted him for publishing the diplomatic cables leaked by Manning. Click here to watch our web-only extended interview with Assange.

  • Finance

    • Good News, Everyone! (Except You Wage-Earners)

      When you look into the numbers, it looks more dubious still. The average U.S. household spends about 4 percent of its gross income on gasoline–so you’d need a pretty dramatic change in gas prices to have an appreciable impact on a typical family’s finances. In fact, they’re down roughly 15 percent from their peak earlier this year, but they’re still about 15 percent more than the low they hit around this time last year–and if you look at gas prices over the past couple of years, they’ve bounced up and down without really going anywhere.

    • Meet the New and Improved Goldman Sachs

      The bank announced plans to undergo a “rigorous self-examination” to avoid an Abacus repeat. Goldman certainly took its time, but the deep look into the mirror is complete. Meet the new and improved Goldman Sachs.

    • German Official Warns of Immediate ‘Revolution’ if EU Adopts US Model

      German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble urges adherence to Europe’s welfare model

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Civil Rights

    • The courage in Egypt is breathtaking, Europe should push for it in leadership too

      I’ve just returned from Egypt: impressed by the courage and ambition I found, worried by some of trends I saw, and pleased that the Minister was willing to commit the open internet.

      Deep inside one of the Pyramids in Giza (you can climb many stories into them! incredible experience), the guide turned and announced: “the problem with Egypt is that we talk too much about the things we DID, and nothing about the things we will DO.”

    • The Denial of Justice

      I don’t think any single person who has considered the matter seriously, has any real doubt that Jack Straw was complicit in torture in an active and involved way, and has lied about it continually. There are some who would argue he was ethically justified, but that is a different argument. It is not worth engaging in ethical argument with anybody who maintains that the facts which are the basis of the argument, should not be known.

    • Reporters Tell Attorney General Eric Holder They Won’t Agree To ‘Off The Record’ Meeting As Scale Of Journalist Spying Expands

      A few quick updates on the continuing saga of the DOJ’s highly questionable spying on the communications of reporters. First up, we find out that the AP is claiming that the DOJ’s scooping up of phone records wasn’t nearly as limited as some people have suggested, but rather contained records for “thousands and thousands” of phone calls. Remember, the DOJ’s own guidelines say that any such record retrieval must be very targeted rather than broad.

    • Holder’s Regrets and Repairs

  • DRM

    • EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

      Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a formal objection to the inclusion of digital rights management (DRM) in HTML5, arguing that a draft proposal from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) could stymie Web innovation and block access to content for people across the globe.

      The W3C’s HTML working group is creating a technical standard for HTML5, an upcoming revision to the computer language that creates webpages and otherwise displays content online. The working group has accepted a draft that includes discussion of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), which will hard-wire the requirements of DRM vendors into the HTML standard.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • EU Ombudsman: EFSA fails on conflict of interests

      European Food Safety Authority mishandled a major revolving doors case with biotechnology company Syngenta

    • WHO warns countries not to hoard secrets of coronavirus

      The World Health Organization (WHO) warned countries with possible cases of the SARS-like novel coronavirus on Thursday that they must share information and not allow commercial labs to profit from the virus, which has killed 22 people worldwide.

    • How Long Before A Patent Kills A Hundred Million People?

      Fortunately, the virus does not seem to have spread widely during that three-month delay, but next time we might not be so lucky. It seems bordering suicidal that concerns about patenting should over-ride health concerns, especially when a viral pandemic could potentially kill a hundred million people, as it did in 1918. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court recognizes this as yet another reason not to allow patents on genes, and that this becomes part of a broader move to share freely vital knowledge that can save lives and alleviate suffering around the world.

    • Copyrights

      • White House Makes It Impossible For The Blind To Sign Petition Supporting Copyright Treaty For The Blind

        Last week, we discussed a recent We The People petition at the White House, asking the administration to support the treaty for the blind, which would make it easier to access creative works for the blind by creating a few small “exceptions” to copyright law (i.e., returning rights to the public) for the sake of sharing formats that are accessible to the blind across borders. However, some blind advocacy groups have discovered that, if you happen to be blind/visually impaired, it’s basically impossible to sign the petition.

      • Blind advocates blast White House

        The National Federation of the Blind is fuming mad over the White House web site, complaining that its members have been unable to sign an important online petition.

      • TV Broadcasters Launch Aereokiller Lawsuit in Washington

        Is the battle over the digital distribution of broadcast television eventually headed to the U.S. Supreme Court?

      • Inside the GOP Labs – Internet Association at odds with RIAA over DMCA – Swire: Consensus doesn’t equal unanimous – New tech makes gov’s buying easier, cheaper
      • Internet Association Hits Back At RIAA’s Desire To Wipe Away DMCA Safe Harbors

        On Friday, we wrote about how the RIAA has already started pitching the terrible idea that we should do away with the important DMCA safe harbors, which make sure that liability for infringement is properly applied to those actually infringing, rather than tools and services. The RIAA, however, thinks that it should be everyone else’s responsibility to prop up their increasingly obsolete business model, so they want to do away with the safe harbors and make every internet service liable if anyone uses their service for infringement. Of course, what this would do is stifle innovation broadly, because companies would avoid any kind of user generated services, because the liability would be super high. Sure, some of the big players would stick around, because they’ve got enough money and lawyers, but new startups would be few and far between.

      • The Aftermath Of Napster: Letting Incumbents Veto Innovation Slows Down Innovation Drastically

        Last fall, law professor Michael Carrier came out with a really wonderful paper, called Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story. He interviewed dozens of people involved in the internet world and the music world, to look at what the impact was of the legal case against Napster, leading to the shutdown of the original service (the name and a few related assets were later sold off to another company). The stories (again, coming from a variety of different perspectives) helps fill in a key part of the story that many of us have heard, but which has never really been written about: what an astounding chill that episode cast over the innovation space when it came to music. Entrepreneurs and investors realized that they, too, were likely to get sued, and focused their efforts elsewhere. The record labels, on the other hand, got the wrong idea, and became totally convinced that a legal strategy was the way to stem the tide of innovation.

05.29.13

Links 29/5/2013: Humble Indie Bundle 8, Fedora 19 Previews

Posted in News Roundup at 3:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • A lesson from Tumblr: Who’s in control?

    It’s no surprise that many Tumblr users are less than pleased with Yahoo!’s recent acquisition of their favorite personal publishing platform. The news is a sobering reminder that creators who don’t control the tools of their trade are at the mercy of those who do.

  • Open source project management on the rise

    Frank Bergmann, founder of ]project-open[, talks with us about the open source project management solution and how the company strives for an open culture at the office. He says maintaining communication is essential, and it entails complete transparency and honesty.

  • Glyn Moody Trashes Latest BSA-Study

    After seeing MSCEs spend hours trying to update one of my computer labs I found I was able to convert most labs to the latest installation of Debian GNU/Linux in one hour and update all the software in a few minutes for routine updates and less than an hour for migration to a new release. The rest of my time was then freed for useful business, education. With that other OS, I was a slave giving very little economic benefit to my employer because that other OS was constantly giving us trouble.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Foxconn reportedly building a Firefox OS smartphone

        According to Focus Taiwan, Taiwan’s Hon Hai, which trades as Foxconn, and Mozilla will be holding a press conference on Monday 3 June to announced a partnership around the Firefox OS mobile device operating system. The event will take place in Taipei in the run up to the Computex trade show and will, says the news site, be the nineteenth wireless telecomms company to form a partnership with Mozilla.

      • Is Mozilla Aiming Firefox OS at Tablets and Phones?

        While Mozilla has not officially taken the wraps off a specific device, The Register, CNET and other media outlets have followed up on reports regarding the Mozilla Foundation saying that it is working with Apple hardware specialist Foxconn on a tablet device that will run the new Firefox OS mobile platform. Until now, there had only been phones discussed for the operating system, which Mozilla is putting massive resources behind. Not only is the news of a tablet of interest, but Foxconn is a world-class hardware partner for Mozilla to have.

      • Mozilla teams up with Foxconn for Firefox ‘fondleslab’

        Mozilla is working with Apple hardware-maker Foxconn to release a mobile device running Firefox OS, it told news outlets on Monday, and plans to unveil it at an event next week.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • What Will Follow OpenStack Havana?

      The current OpenStack open source cloud platform release is named Grizzly – due to the fact that OpenStack had a Summit in San Diego, which is in California, which has a Grizzly bear on its flag.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Business

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GnuCash 2.5.2 (Unstable) released

      The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.5.2, the third release in the 2.5.x series of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.6.0. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX.

  • Project Releases

    • Xine Now Supports VA-API, GL 2.0 Output, EAC3

      A new version of xine-lib was released today, which is the library that powers the Xine multimedia playback engine. The xine-lib 1.2.3 release brings numerous features including VA-API hardware video decoding and support for OpenGL 2.0 output.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Civic coding strengthens open source skills

      I’ve been thinking a bit too much lately about GitHub and Drupal.org. More broadly, I’ve had my mind on open source + community. Sometimes this is called social coding.

    • Slow progress on govt open source policy

      More than six years after Cabinet approved a policy for free and open source software (FOSS) in government, little has been achieved.

      This was conceded by chairman of the State IT Agency’s (SITA’s) board, Jerry Vilakazi, at the Government Information Technology Officers (GITO) Council Summit yesterday.

    • Schools In Basel Are Using The Open Source Groupware Kolab

      Following their overall Free Software and Open Standards strategy, the public schools in the Swiss city of Basel are providing the Open Source Kolab Groupware Solution to their teachers, students and administrative staff. This enables them to coordinate their work and collaborate as efficiently as possible. The students are learning early to make use of modern information and communication technologies. Markus Bäumler head of the responsible ICT Media department in Basel says “We are delighted to have a Free Software solution that we can deploy for this purpose which reliably meets our professional requirements.”

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Google defends its use of proprietary tech in Hangouts

      oogle is feeling the heat over its decision to build its new Hangouts IM and audio/video chat product with proprietary technology that doesn’t support server federation via the XMPP industry standard, but the company is defending its move.

      Specifically, Google maintains that XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) industry support is weak, which dilutes its purpose as a common protocol, and that its technology hasn’t kept up with the times.

Leftovers

  • Bob Schieffer Is Tired of Booking Bad Guests on His Show

    It’s more good than bad that a lot of mainstream reporters are speaking openly about the chilling effect of the Obama White House’s investigations into leaks of classified material. But this willingness to talk about how the White House operates can lead some journalists to make some rather strange arguments.

  • Yearbook prank leads to high school student’s arrest in Columbia, Mo.

    A Columbia high school student faces a possible felony charge after her arrest for changing a classmate’s name in the school yearbook to a sexually suggestive term.

    The 17-year-old Hickman High School junior was arrested May 14 after she allegedly changed a student’s last name from Mastain to “masturbate” in the 100th edition of the Hickman Cresset yearbook. She could be charged with first-degree property damage, a felony, and harassment.

  • Science

  • Security

    • DoS vulnerability in ModSecurity fixed – Update
    • PayPal vulnerable to cross-site scripting again

      17-year old German schoolboy Robert Kugler has posted information on a cross-site scripting vulnerability in payment processing service PayPal to the Full Disclosure mailing list. Kugler wanted to report the bug to PayPal as part of its official Bug Bounty Program, but the program only pays out to participants who are 18 or over. To vent his frustration, he has now gone public with the bug.

    • OpEDL: ‘Anonymous’ targets far-right English Defense League

      Individuals claiming to be part of international hacktivist group Anonymous have published phone numbers and addresses for supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) as part of what they said was the first phase of a campaign to destroy the far-right street protest movement.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Standing up to Golden Dawn in Greece

      The economic crisis in Greece has led to a rise in support for the far-right Golden Dawn and an increase in racist attacks. Jamal Osman talks to one man who is fighting back.

    • Toronto cops hospitalize hotel guest who recorded them arresting another guest

      A man staying at Toronto’s Sheraton Centre Hotel used his Blackberry to video-record police who were arresting another guest. The police objected and several of them piled onto him, beating him savagely while screaming “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” They broke two of his ribs. The whole thing was captured on the man’s phone and on hotel CCTV. He’s suing.

    • Did Senator McCain Violate NDAA by Hanging Out with Syrian Rebels?

      In case you missed it, Senator John McCain took the opportunity this Memorial Day to cross the Turkey-Syria border and hang out with Syrian rebels. These are the same rebels with ties to Al Qaeda. These are the same rebels cutting out and eating the hearts of dead soldiers. According to reports, Senator McCain wanted to go further into combat but was not allowed.

    • Stop NDAA in your State? Grassroots Activism Works

      Last week, the California Liberty Preservation Act, AB351, was passed unanimously by the Assembly Appropriations Committee and sent to the full State Assembly for a vote.

      The bill would play a big part in nullifying the “indefinite detention” provisions of both the NDAA and the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF).

    • Washington steps up hacking allegations against China

      On Monday the Washington Post published a classified list compiled by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board of military systems and technologies allegedly compromised by Chinese hacking. Though the previously undisclosed report does not present any evidence for these claims, it is being used to escalate charges against China that it is hacking US secrets.

    • Guantanamo: the Legal Mess Behind the Ethical Mess

      LAW profs deem force-feeding “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

    • Tyranny Got You Down?

      Our political strategy brings to mind the definition of insanity often attributed to Albert Einstein..

    • America’s Greatest Challenge

      I’ve been reading a few articles on the “alternative” media which really have me thinking. One, by Chris Hedges entitled “Rise Up or Die” made me think about just how bad things really are nowadays here in the USA. The other article by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, “You are The Hope” was also a particularly dark piece.

      It’s not that I don’t agree with what the two have said…I do; still, I don’t think they quite accurately reflect the growing dis-connects between what many Americans and the mainstream media, along with the Powers That Be would have us believe.

    • Woolwich Attack: Overreacting To Extremism ‘Could Bring Back Al Qaeda’ Ex CIA Officer Warns

      One of the world’s leading terrorism experts has branded the government’s proposals to muzzle Islamist hate preachers and crack down on violent extremism in the wake of the Woolwich attack as “a waste of time”.

      Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and former CIA operations officer who worked with the Afghan mujahedin in the late 1980s, says that “a good [counter-extremism] policy should be based on an understanding on what’s happening on the ground.

      “The notion that there is any serious process called ‘radicalisation’, or indoctrination, is really a mistake. What you have is some young people acquiring some extreme ideas – but it’s a similar process to acquiring any type of ideas. It often begins with discussions with a friend.”

    • Drone Strikes Mostly Transferred from CIA to DoD

      As promised in his speech this week, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is largely assuming control of the embattled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) combat operations in the Middle East. The program had been run over the past several years by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and was responsible for death strikes on four Americans, only one of which was an intended target for death.

    • CIA/MI6 helped spawn a Frankenstein’s monster

      In response to the hacking to death of Lee Rigby, a young off-duty British soldier killed on a London street in broad daylight, Britain’s Home Office plans measures to prevent the radicalization of Muslim youth which include censorship of jihadist Internet websites, a crackdown on extremist organizations and the cleansing of mosques and place of learning from preachers promoting “a poisonous narrative.” That’s all very well but unless the government acknowledges the root of the problem those steps will constitute a mere band-aid covering a suppurating sore.

    • Kern County Coroner Declares David Silva’s Death To Be ‘Accidental,’ Heart Disease-Related

      Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood held a press conference last Thursday to declare his department’s innocence in the death of David Silva. This claim is based on the coroner’s report prepared by the Kern County Coroner’s office, which reports to the Sheriff’s Office. David Silva’s death has been declared “accidental,” with the official cause of death listed as “cardiac hypertension.”

  • Cablegate

    • AGP slams Rahul Gandhi after WikiLeaks revelation

      Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters in Guwahati, AGP secretary Durga Das Boro said that the party was contemplating legal action against Rahul Gandhi for making such a comment on the Assam’s regional party, which formed the government in the state for three terms since 1986. Boro said that the WikiLeaks had recently revealed that “(Gandhi) had said that AGP leaders were insurgents and India allowed separatists to form the government in Assam and the United States should also allow Hamas.”

    • Julian Assange’s human rights are being violated by UK, says Ecuador
    • Ecuador accuses UK of ‘violating Assange’s human rights’

      Ecuador has accused the UK of violating Julian Assange’s human rights by refusing to allow the WikiLeaks founder to take shelter in South America, which granted him political asylum nearly a year ago.

    • Ecuador: Concern for Rights of WikiLeaks Founder
    • ‘Hactivist’ Faces 10 Years in Fed Prison for Stratfor Leaks

      Anonymous hacker Jeremy Hammond agrees to “non-cooperating plea agreement” as alternative to endless court battle and decades of prison time

    • LulzSec Hacker Jeremy Hammond Pleads Guilty To CFAA Charge; Faces 10 Years

      In yet another Computer Fraud and Abuse Act case, in which the DOJ piled on charge after charge after charge until the person they were pressuring accepted a plea bargain, Jeremy Hammond has officially accepted a plea deal for helping LulzSec/Anonymous hack Stratfor. He admits that he did it, and given that, it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that some punishment is warranted, but it still seems troubling the amount of pressure that the DOJ used to get him to take a plea bargain.

    • Setting an example: Why we must defend Manning and Assange

      WikiLeaks released an enormous treasure-trove of classified US government documents in 2010. It included US military logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 250,000 diplomatic cables, and Collateral Murder, a video depicting the killing of 12 civilians by a US helicopter gunship in Iraq.

      The source of the leaks, US Private Bradley Manning, acted on his conscience. He believed that people have a right to see the information he had been privy to as an army intelligence analyst. He was prepared to risk his life and liberty to reveal that information.

    • Bradley Manning’s Trial begins 3 June. Call-out for solidarity everywhere
    • ‘We Steal Secrets’ Documentary Focuses on Personalities of Assange, Manning Over Significance of WikiLeaks

      Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney held a special screening for his new documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, in Washington, DC, on May 21. Gibney also participated in a question and answer session after the film that was moderated by POLITICO‘s Josh Gerstein.

      First, the title reinforces widespread perceptions created by the United States government that the WikiLeaks organization is out to “steal” secrets. Gibney has claimed that the title is “ironic.” Actually, the US government steals secrets. Former NSA director Michael Hayden says this in the film, but this aspect of US government operations takes up only a few seconds of the film. He does not explore how US government agencies are actually the ones engaged in stealing so the “irony” does not come through at all.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Solar-Powered Hospital in Haiti Yields Sustainable Savings

      But in Haiti’s Central Plateau, the flow of energy is intermittent at best. Consider that in Mirebalais, located 30 miles north of Port-au-Prince, the power goes out for an average of three hours each day. This poses an enormous challenge to running any hospital; surgeries are jeopardized, neonatal ventilators stall, the cold chain is interrupted, and countless everyday tasks get derailed. As Partners In Health co-founder Paul Farmer noted during a recent lecture at the Harvard School of Public Health, “It’s not great if you’re a surgeon and you have to think about getting the generator going.”

    • South Korea’s faked safety certificates: just another nuclear scandal
    • Solar Power Notches A Victory In Minnesota

      By 2020, 1.5 percent of the energy that public utilities in Minnesota generate will have to come from solar. It’s estimated that this new requirement, signed into law last week by Gov. Mark Dayton, will result in a 32-fold increase in solar capacity in the state, up to 450 megawatts.

  • Finance

    • The Real Numbers: Half of America in Poverty — and It’s Creeping Upward

      Since the recession, the disparities have continued to grow. An OECD report states that “inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve,” with the U.S. experiencing one of the widest gaps among OECD countries. The 30-year decline in wages has worsened since the recession, as low-wage jobs have replaced formerly secure middle-income positions.

    • Digital currency biz Liberty Reserve shut down, founder arrested

      Digital currency Liberty Reserve has been shut down after U.S. and Costa Rican authorities arrested founder Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk in Spain.

    • Stressed Ecosystems Leaving Humanity High and Dry

      On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years, which distorts the natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia. Two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking due to pumping out groundwater, oil and gas. Some deltas are falling at a rate four times faster than global sea level is rising.

  • Censorship

    • Facebook gives way to campaign against hate speech on its pages

      Company agrees to update policies in response to protest by more than 100 advocacy groups

    • Now PETA Wants to Sue People Who Leave Anonymous Comments

      PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is incensed over an article in the Huffington Post that details that organization’s unsettling practice of euthanizing animals in a Virginia facility that many have assumed is a no kill shelter.

      According to the New York Post, PETA wants to sue some of the people who have left comments on the article. The problem is that, following the practice of many on the Internet, many of the comments are under assumed names or are anonymous. PETA is attempting to discover the true identities of their critics so that it can sue them for defamation.

    • Judge Deems Facebook-Posting Rapper Cameron D’Ambrosio A ‘Threat,’ Denies Bail

      Cameron D’Ambrosio, the Massachusetts teen arrested and charged with “communicating terroristic threats” (or “bomb threats,” depending on who’s doing the reporting) via a Facebook post (in the form of rap lyrics — CammyDee has aspirations), has been denied bail by the state’s Superior Court.

    • In Denmark, Online Tracking of Citizens is an Unwieldy Failure
    • Danish Police Admit That Data Retention Hasn’t Helped At All

      There’s been a big push around the globe to ramp up data retention rules, which require various online services to keep all sorts of data on their users for a long time, just in case it’s possible that law enforcement officials might need that data at some later date. That this only adds to the pile of data, and often makes it more difficult to find useful data, is never discussed. That this likely puts more people’s private data at risk of being hacked or accidentally revealed is never discussed. Also, almost never discussed: whether or not such data retention laws actually help solve crimes.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Hundreds of workers ‘illegally’ dismissed in Alexandria

      Around 350 workers have been dismissed from their jobs at a factory in Alexandria on Sunday morning, without adequate justification, according to the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR).

      Mohamed Adel, a lawyer at ECESR said that between 350 and 400 workers at the Hi Tech Textile factory in Alexandria were relieved of their duties because they demanded higher wages. According to Adel, the owner of the factory laid off the Egyptian workers in favour of foreign workers because their wage demands are lower than the Egyptian workers.

    • Teacher facing discipline for reminding students of Constitutional rights

      An Illinois community is rallying around a teacher who is reportedly up against disciplinary action for informing his students of their rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment before the high-schoolers answered a survey regarding their personal behavior.

    • Amnesty International defends refugees in Kenya
    • How Prosecutors Fought to Keep Rosen’s Warrant Secret

      The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret, arguing to a federal judge that the government might need to monitor the account for a lengthy period of time.

      The new details are revealed in a court filing detailing a back and forth between the Justice Department and the federal judges who oversaw the request to search a Gmail account belonging to Rosen, a reporter for Fox News. A 2009 article Rosen had written about North Korea sparked an investigation; Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department adviser who allegedly leaked classified information to Rosen, insisted that the reporter should not be notified of the search and seizure of his e-mails, even after a lengthy delay.

    • Two Judges Told DOJ It Had To Disclose Spying On Journalist; DOJ Found A Third Judge Instead

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Authoritarian Governments Still Trying To Seek More Control Over The Internet

      There was plenty of attention paid to the failed WCIT meeting last year, in which some countries effectively sought greater control over the internet, leading many countries to refuse to sign on. There has since been plenty of reasonable concern that the end result of this is a fragmented internet, with one internet for those who believe in internet freedom and openness… and one for those who don’t.

      And, of course, the whole ITU WCIT process was never going to be the end of such discussions. Eli Dourado, who has been following this stuff closely for a while, recently had a good report about how various authoritarian governments made a bit of a power play for more control over internet governance. The issue may seem bureaucratic and messy, but that’s also why it’s important to pay attention. Because mixed in with all that bureaucracy are some key decisions.

    • Jaron Lanier’s Ignorance Of History, Basic Economics And Efficiency Is Getting Ridiculous

      So… we’d already taken a stab at debunking Jaron Lanier’s “gobbledygook economics” a few weeks back when it started appearing, but since then there’s been more Lanier everywhere (obviously, in coordination with his book release), and each time it seems more ridiculous than the last. Each time, the focus is on the following economically ridiculous concepts: (1) there should be micropayments for anyone doing anything free online because someone benefits somewhere (2) modern efficiency via technology has destroyed the middle class. Both of these claims make no sense at all.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Fear Mongering Report Suggests ‘IP Theft From China’ One Of The Biggest Problems America Faces

      A bunch of folks have been sending in variations on a report that came out last week, grandly titled “The IP Commission Report” as if it were some sort of official body. In the subhead, we find out that it’s actually by the even more ridiculously named “The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.” Who put together this “commission”? Well, it’s the National Bureau of Asian Research, which also is not an official government organization as you might think, but a private think tank that more or less was spun out of the University of Washington, and was originally the National Bureau of Asian and Soviet Research, put together at the behest of Senator Henry Jackson, who believed strongly that America should intervene around the globe to promote American interests, often at the expense of those where we were intervening. He supported interning Japanese Americans during WWII. He strongly supported the Vietnam War. He’s considered the spiritual father of today’s neoconservatives. As you may have guessed, the “National Bureau of Asian Research” is not exactly about figuring out the best way to understand and improve relationships between the US and Asia. It’s about how US interests can dominate Asia.

    • US-EU Trade Deal In Trouble Before It Even Starts?

      For the last few months, Techdirt has been following the surprisingly rapid embrace on both sides of the Atlantic of the proposed transatlantic free trade agreement, known variously as TAFTA or TTIP. Coming out of nowhere, the agreement is being talked about as if its success and benefits are more or less guaranteed.

    • WHO calls Middle Eastern virus, MERS, ‘threat to the entire world’ as death toll rises

      …they patented the virus…

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