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04.01.15

Links 1/4/2015: $149 Chromebook, Cinnamon 2.4.7

Posted in News Roundup at 5:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 questions to determine if open source is a good fit for a software project

    A benefit of open source in general, and commercial open source in particular, is that you have the support of others as well as the ability to do the maintenance yourself.

  • Events

    • Registration for R/Finance 2015 is now open!

      The conference will take place on May 29 and 30, at UIC in Chicago. Building on the success of the previous conferences in 2009-2014, we expect more than 250 attendees from around the world. R users from industry, academia, and government will joining 30+ presenters covering all areas of finance with R.

    • Glimpse of FOSS ASIA
    • FUDCon Pune Planning Meeting – 31 Mar
    • Android/Mobile Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

      As with 2014 and several years prior, 2015 is the year of the Linux smartphone. There are a number of mobile/embedded environments based on the Linux kernel, the most prominent of course being Android. One consequence of this prominence is a variety of projects derived from Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which raises the question of how best to manage them, and additionally if it is possible to run a single binary image of the various software components across a variety of devices. In addition, although good progress has been made upstreaming various Android patches, there is more work to be done for ADF, KMS, and Sync, among others. Migrating from Binder to KDBus is still a challenge, as are a number of other candidates for removal from drivers/staging. There are also issues remaining with ION, cenalloc, and DMA API. Finally, power management is still in need of improvement, with per-process power management being a case in point.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 37.0

        Firefox 37.0 has been released. This release features improved protection against site impersonation via OneCRL centralized certificate revocation, Bing search now uses HTTPS for secure searching, opportunistic encrypting of HTTP traffic where the server supports HTTP/2 AltSvc, and more. See the release notes for details.

      • Mozilla Firefox 37.0 Officially Released with Native HTML5 YouTube Playback, Firefox 40 Pushed to Nightly Channel

        As expected, Mozilla had the pleasure of unveiling today, March 31, the Mozilla Firefox 37.0 web browser for all supported computer operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, while pushing Firefox 40 to the nightly (unstable channel), Firefox 39.0 to the Dev channel, and Firefox 38.0 to the Beta channel.

      • Firefox 37 Coming Today With Heartbeat, HTTPS Bing

        Mozilla is today releasing Firefox 37.0 and with this open-source web-browser update comes many changes.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Why DBaaS matters to OpenStack operators

      OpenStack Live attendees will have several opportunities to hear Amrith Kumar speak. Kumar, the founder and CTO of Tesora, will give three talks: Replication and Clustering with OpenStack Trove; Deploying, Configuring, and Operating OpenStack Trove; and An introduction to Database as a Service with an emphasis on OpenStack using Trove.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Development activity in LibreOffice and OpenOffice

      The LibreOffice project was announced with great fanfare in September 2010. Nearly one year later, the OpenOffice.org project (from which LibreOffice was forked) was cut loose from Oracle and found a new home as an Apache project. It is fair to say that the rivalry between the two projects in the time since then has been strong. Predictions that one project or the other would fail have not been borne out, but that does not mean that the two projects are equally successful. A look at the two projects’ development communities reveals some interesting differences.

  • BSD

  • FSF

    • LibrePlanet & the Sounds of Silence

      My sponsor for attending LibrePlanet was John Sullivan, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, and I was surprised that he took the time to get me shown around. I wanted to kiddingly say to John, “Hey, you got people to do this, right?” I didn’t because I was afraid the humor would not have translated well…and I’m not sure it did here either.

    • Have You Decided Yet?

      On March 21st of this year, the Free Software Foundation presented our organization Reglue with the Award for Projects of Social Benefit. We share that announcement link with Sébastien Jodogne for being given the Award for the Advancement of Free Software. We’re specifically thankful that people like Sean “NZ17″ Robinson spearheaded this nomination campaign and got us into the running.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Bringing open source to the NHS

      Malcolm Senior, director of informatics at the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, has been writing about the prospect of open source in the NHS.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • UK Ordnance Survey switches to Open Government Licence

        Ordnance Survey (OS), the British national mapping agency, has switched to version 3 of the Open Government Licence as the default for all of its open data products. This should make it easier for the open data community and other data publishers to re-use the OS mapping data, and for the data to be freely and easily mixed with other UK government sources.

      • Italy to implement its second OGP Action Plan

        Italy has published its second OGP Action Plan, covering the period 2014-2016. The central themes in the plan are participation, transparency, technological innovation, integrity, and accountability. Several online portals, including the Italian open data platform, will be extended with new functionality.

    • Open Hardware

      • Michigan Tech course to build your own 3D printer

        When engineering students start college, the high cost of proprietary tools can be a barrier to making their dreams become a reality. Recent advances in free and open source 3D printing have lowered rapid prototyping costs, making it accessible to everyone. The software industry already knows the force of open source, so now it’s time to start teaching free and open source hardware to all engineers.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Pac-Man Invades Ingress And Google Maps As Google Gets April Fools Started A Little Early

    You know what day it is. Yes, it’s March 31st, and that means the April Fools onslaught has commenced… because what’s better than one day when the internet becomes an annoying cacophony of fake news? Two of them, apparently. In fairness, Google’s pranks are usually less annoying than they are fun little games. Case in point, Pac-Man is invading Maps and Ingress.

  • OpenIndiana 2015.03 Updates Its Solaris/Illumos Environment

    The OpenIndiana crew responsible for this community-based OpenSolaris-derived operating system using the Illumos kernel is out with their first update in quite some time.

  • Hardware

    • Samsung, Google reportedly ink 3D NAND deal

      The Korea Times said Samsung had declined comment while Google was not available for its report. It noted that Samsung’s manufacturing plant in Xian, China, would grow its 3D NAND chips shipment to 960,000 wafers this year, up from 480,000 in 2014.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Honduras’ Unfolding Socioeconomic Nightmare

      A five-year neoliberal program in Honduras has contributed to the country’s far-reaching civic and economic deterioration. The increased privatization of Honduras’ economic activity and militarization of its police force has exacerbated the country’s rapid decline into inequality, violence, and lawlessness. The US has backed many of developments with $65 million in aid since 2008.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • After Snowden, The NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge

      After Snowden’s revelations, Swann’s thinking changed. The NSA’s tactics, which include retaining data from American citizens, raise too many questions in his mind: “I can’t see myself working there,” he says, “partially because of these moral reasons.”

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