05.26.15
Posted in News Roundup at 5:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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The “battle” between Windows and Linux is more of a fictional one, and it has been raging on for the past couple of decades. It wasn’t really a battle, despite what each side was saying, but that will undoubtedly change when Linux clearly becomes a force to be reckoned with.
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The history i want to share with you is how that “marble Tux” happens. Yes, it was a production machine that you see in the picture and was running in every place in Brazil for at least 10 years.
So, a 25 years old boy, in this case me, the guy typing now, who was working in a ILOG graphical toolkit partner suddenly decide to look for Linux jobs, it was out of university for 1 year, but was already infected for the open source and Linux for more than 3 years, and thought it can be done.
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If you present someone to the Linux world as GNU/Linux, you spend the next fifteen minutes trying to explain GNU. It’s difficult to explain in just a few minutes, it’s difficult to pronounce and it confuses the new Linux user. However, I make it a practice to bookmark websites that explain what GNU is and why it’s critical to Linux, and I tell people why it’s important to read about the subject when they have time.
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Earlier this year CompuLab announced the Fitlet PC as a tiny, fanless, Linux-friendly PC. The Fitlets are finally starting to ship at scale and recently I received one of the AMD-powered Fitlets that’s preloaded with Linux Mint. Here’s a quick look at the Fitlet.
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Today at the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, we are pleased to announce that CoreOS Linux – the lightweight operating system that provides stable, reliable updates to all machines connected to the update service – is included in the OpenStack Community App Catalog.
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Desktop
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Google Chrome OS has been developed on the Chrome browser which has become hugely popular and successful. Google, which has also made the OS capable of running Android apps and games, recently launched three Chromebooks (laptops that run on the Chrome OS) made by three different manufacturers in India targeted at different segments of consumers with attractive price tags. Here’s a peek under the hood of Xolo Chromebook, priced at Rs. 12,999.
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Server
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Intel explains that its aim was NOT to make ‘yet another general-purpose Linux distribution’; and so, as such, while it has included ‘many’ software components from the OpenStack Foundation, but it chose (among other decisions to cull) not to include a GUI or printing support.
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Kernel Space
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Work/life balance is important. But important enough to slow development of a tool on which a fair slab of the world relies every day?
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While Linux 4.1-rc4 was late, the fifth release candidate to the Linux 4.1 kernel is back out to being on Torvalds’ usual Sunday release schedule.
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Right back on the Sunday schedule, the Linux kernel 4.1 Release Candidate 5 version has just been announced a few minutes ago by none other than its creator, Linus Torvalds.
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Willy Tarreau, the maintainer of the 2.6 kernel branch, announced a few minutes ago the immediate availability for download of the sixty-six maintenance release of Linux kernel 2.6.32 LTS.
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I’m back on my usual Sunday schedule, and rc5 is back to its usual size after a small bump in rc4.
Things continue to look pretty normal. We’ve got about two thirds driver updates (gpu, infiniband, sound, networking, scsi, thermal), and almost half of the remainder is networking updates. The rest is mostly arch updates and some filesystem fixes. But all of it is pretty small.
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As reported yesterday a serious bug is present in Linux Kernel 4.0.x which is related to filesystem corruption. Developer Neil Brown released a fix to solve this issue.
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The open source platform for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), OPNFV Project, has received major backing from EMC and VMware. EMC joins as a Platinum member, along with others such as AT&T, Brocade, China Mobile, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, NEC, Nokia Networks, DOCOMO, Red Hat, Telecom Italia, Vodafone and ZTE. VMware joins as a Silver member.
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Graphics Stack
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The latest Mesa 10.5 point release, Mesa 10.5.6, is now available.
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Emil Velikov has announced the immediate availability for download of a new maintenance release of the Mesa 3D graphics library used in numerous distributions of GNU/Linux.
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While Mesa still is only officially at OpenGL 3.3 compliance, a lot of OpenGL 4.x extensions continue to be worked on by open-source developers interested in advancing the free software graphics drivers.
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Benchmarks
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Ever since Raspberry Pi was introduced to the world, the consumer market for inexpensive, pocket-size mini computers has been growing rapidly. The huge popularity of these tiny computers in the mainstream stems from a variety of DIY projects powered by these affordable hardware, as well as many readily available open-source software packages.
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Applications
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Rygel, an open source and free media server solution distributed as part of the GNOME desktop environment, has reached version 0.27.1 on May 25, an unstable version that will be part of the GNOME 3.17.2 development release.
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Atom is an open-source, multi-platform text editor developed by GitHub, having a simple and intuitive graphical user interface and a bunch of interesting features for writing: CSS, HTML, JavaScript and other web programming languages. Among others, it has support for macros, auto-completion a split screen feature and it integrates with the file manager.
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Grive was an unofficial, open source command line Linux client for Google Drive. I say “was” because the tool no longer works due to Google changing it’s API recently and Grive not being maintained any more (there are no commits on its GitHub page since May, 2013).
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Shotcut is a new, free and open source video editor for the Linux platform, and it comes with a large number of features, some of which are Linux-only.
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After several years of hard work, the Scribus Team has recently been proud to announce the immediate availability for download of Scribus 1.5.0 for all supported operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
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Proprietary
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On May 25, the Google Chrome development team, through Anthony Laforge, announced the immediate availability for download (and update) of a new stable build for the popular Google Chrome web browser.
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Some of you may have already realized this, but Google has pushed out a refreshed Hangouts Chrome app for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The new app is actually quite great, so if you’re a Hangouts user, you should update.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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I was immediately interested in Convoy when I originally heard about it, but was sad when there was no Linux support. The good news is they now have a Linux test build available to the public.
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The Steam for Linux environment is a very different one now, more than two years after the official release of the client, and it seems that things are looking up. In fact, six out of the most played ten games on Steam also have Linux support.
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Humble Weekly Bundle: Adventures! 2 is a new selection from Humble Bundle that integrates a few Linux games, and it will be available for the next few days.
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Linux and Mac OS’s numbers dwindle even further in Steam’s latest hardware survey.
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A key factor that could change that, however, is Steam’s own Linux-based operating system, SteamOS, which is built off of the Debian 7 distribution.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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The xfce4-power-manager 1.5.0 update is a big release! Xfce4-power-manager 1.5.0 is ported over to using the GTK3 tool-kit rather than GTK2, has also been ported to using GDBUS, has dropped its LXDE panel plug-in with upstream focusing upon LXQt, and there’s also various other improvements with this new Xfce power manager release.
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Xfce4-power-manager version 1.5.0 was released today and I have updated that for rawhide and F22. Apart from bug fixes, there are one or two nice UI changes (shown in the screenshots).
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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I’ve known about Krita for a long time, I might have first heard about it around the time I started to complement my GIMP work with MyPaint for painting. Since I exclusively draw in Linux, the open-source painting world is something I try to keep in touch with.
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Today is officially the first day of coding for this year’s Google Summer of Code. For the next three months I will be working on bringing animation to Krita. There’s a lot of work ahead, but I have a solid plan to work with.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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After that Cesar Fabian started the code contribution part, because all of them were interested in GNOME developer technologies. We started with glib, based on the GLIB Website. He explained us that Glib is a GNOME library written in C. We did a couple of examples: Hello Word and Lists of Fruits, using glist. Glists are linked lists that use the type void *. It was also explained values and basic types like gboleean where ONE represents TRUE and the rest of values are FALSE .
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Debarshi Ray, a renown GNOME developer, announced the immediate availability for download and testing of a new development release of the GNOME Online Accounts component of the upcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment.
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The GNOME Project is hard at work these days preparing for the release of the second milestone of the upcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, due for release later this year on September 23.
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As reported the other day, the GNOME Project is hard at work to release the second milestone of the upcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, and that several components already started appearing on the main FTP servers.
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Eye of GNOME, the default image viewer software used in the acclaimed GNOME desktop environment, has recently been updated and distributed as part of the unstable GNOME 3.17.2 desktop environment.
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Out of the talks, the most interesting talk I have seen, I think, was the one from Iwan S. Tahari, the manager of a local shoe producer who also sponsored GNOME shoes!
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Between May 25 and August 24 students all over the world will partake in Google Summer of Code. GSoC sees work being done on new and existing open source projects.
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In the last year or so, I’ve noticed that rolling-release distributions are becoming more and more popular among Linux users, and even big names like Ubuntu are considering the switch to a rolling update development model, but I think all operating systems should use the rolling release model.
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New Releases
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On May 25, François Dupoux had the pleasure of informing us about the immediate availability for download of a new maintenance release of his SystemRescueCd 4.5 distro.
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The Waha Project has had the great pleasure of informing us about the immediate availability for download of the final version of their Waha Linux 8.0 distributions designed specifically for the Arab community.
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Arne Exton, the creator of numerous GNU/Linux distributions, had the pleasure of informing Softpedia the other day about the immediate availability for download of a new build for his SlackEX 14.1 Linux distribution based on Slackware 64-bit.
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Webconverger, a Linux distribution used for deployment in places like offices or Internet cafes, or any other setting that users might only need web apps, has been upgraded to version 30 and is now available for download.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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It has been recently brought to our attention that the text-mode and graphical installer used in the well-known Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Linux operating systems will be soon ported to the Python 3 programming language.
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The Fedy open source graphical utility that helps Fedora Linux users tweak their installations has recently been updated with a revamped user interface and support for the Fedora 22 distro.
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Debian Family
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Recently Plex Plex Home Theater was updated to 1.4.1 with fixes for some errors, in particular concerning the new music handling introduced in 1.4.0. As with 1.4.0, I have compiled PHT for both jessie and sid, both for amd64 and i386.
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I have uploaded a preliminary version of the texlive-bin based on the 2015 sources (plus the first fixes) to the Debian archive, targeting experimental. As there are four new packages built from the sources (libtexlua52, -dev, libtexluajit2, -dev) the packages have to go through the NEW queue, which at the moment is an impressive 500+ entries long (nearly top in total history). But ftp-masters are currently very active and I hope they continue for some time.
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Lunar rebased our custom dpkg on the new release, removing a now undeed patch identified by Guillem Jover. An extra sort in the buildinfo generator prevented a stable order and was quickly fixed once identified.
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Derivatives
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The Parsix Project has recently announced that their Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 (Nestor) distribution will reach the end of its life support in the coming weeks, urging users to upgrade to Parsix GNU/Linux 7.5 (Rinaldo) as soon as possible.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical is preparing a major new update for Ubuntu Touch, but it will take a while until it’s going to be ready. From the looks of it, the devs are preparing some interesting improvements and updates.
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Ubuntu can be used for almost any task you can imagine and that includes powering a Boss-modified Tesla Model S so that it can run autonomously.
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Dell is one of the biggest companies that sell PCs preinstalled with Ubuntu, and now they are also featuring a tutorial on how to install Ubuntu on your Dell machines.
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One of the apps still missing from Ubuntu Touch is one that provides GPS navigation. Well, if you are an Ubuntu user that really needs this functionality, then you will be glad to know that an app called GPS Navigation is currently being developed.
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A couple of Apport vulnerabilities have been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
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Since 2004, when Ubuntu was launched, Mark Shuttleworth, its founder, has been paying privately to keep Canonical (Ubuntu’s parent company) alive. While Canonical as a whole has been unprofitable, its OpenStack cloud division has become profitable. Based on this Shuttleworth has been contemplating whether Canonical should become publicly traded.
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Flavours and Variants
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This month has been quite busy for me with classes. Now that the semester is finally over, I have a little more time, and that means I have enough time to do a review. It has been a few years since I’ve reviewed Kubuntu, the officially-supported variant of Ubuntu that uses KDE. Moreover, Kubuntu now features KDE 5 (I know the KDE naming and numbering system has become a lot more complicated, so this is, as a physicist might say, an intentional abuse of notation) as stable for the first time, so I figured I should try this version. I tried it as a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it’s like. (It should become progressively clearer through this review why there are no pictures.)
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Kubuntu Kubuntu is an official Ubuntu community project which releases new versions in step with the rest of the Ubuntu community. Kubuntu ships with KDE’s Plasma desktop by default, offering users the latest technology to come out of the KDE project. Kubuntu’s most recent release, version 15.04, is the first to ship with Plasma 5 and this is also the first version of the distribution to ship with systemd as the default init technology. The distribution’s release announcement states, “Plasma 5, the next generation of KDE’s desktop, has been rewritten to make it smoother to use while retaining the familiar setup. The second set of updates to Plasma 5 are now stable enough for everyday use and is the default in this version of Kubuntu.”
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elementary OS “Freya” has been out for some time now, but developers are still adding features to it despite the fact that it has been dubbed stable. Now, users have the option to define custom keyboard shortcuts, which was a very sought after feature.
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Elementary OS 0.3 Freya has received a new option that permits the users to define their custom keyboard shortcuts, a feature which has been long awaited by the community.
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We will be using Kodibuntu, a Linux based operating system with sole purpose of giving you a modern HTPC features and interface. The goal of this tutorial is to help you in building a standalone, multi purpose media center which you can control from your smartphone, tablet or PC.
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After having introduced you to the Lemon Pi single computer board, today we are happy to present Tessel 2, a development platform created by Technical Machine and designed from the ground up to be embedded in a product.
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Newark Element14’s new ValentFX Logi-Pi and Logi-Bone FPGA add-on boards for the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black feature Arduino and PMOD hooks.
We first covered the Logi-Pi and Logi-Bone Logi-Boards back in Sept. 2013 when ValentFX showed off prototypes at the New York Maker Faire. The Logi-Boards, which integrate Xilinx SPARTAN-6 XC6SLX9 FPGAs, and plug into the Linux-based Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black hacker boards, respectively, have now reached market, thanks to a partnership with Newark Element14. ValentFX and Newark have also launched a $45.48 Logi-Edu educational board add-on that purports to teach everyday hackers the mysteries of FPGA.
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Phones
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Nokia’s own MeeGo OS (used in Nokia N9) was regularly rated better than iOS…
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Android
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Google has announced that Chrome for Android is now open source, the news was announced by Android software engineer Aurimas Liuyikas on Reddit.
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We’ve heard rumors since at least August 2014 that Google+’s image functions may be spun out into a standalone photo service. In March, Sundar Pichai, senior vice president for products at Google, said the company is going to put a renewed focus on photos. “Photos are a big use case,” Pichai said. “So we are going to say this is the stream now.”
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Android Police has peeked at a leaked copy of a reworked Photos app, and it’s clear that Google is using the service split as an incentive to shake things up. The highlight may be Assistant (below), an effective substitute for Auto Awesome that gives you more creative power — you can produce more content yourself (such as Stories) instead of waiting for it to show up.
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Researchers at Cambridge University discovered they were able to recover data on a vast array of Android powered devices that had undergone the factory data reset process.
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The update would improve performance and stability, and bring a Shield controller update that makes pairing easier. Among many other features, the LTE model includes improvement in camera, audio, and performance of the modem.
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Users of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini with the model number GT-I9190 can have the latest Lollipop experience on their smartphones with the help of a new custom ROM. The new CyanogenMod 12.1 (CM12.1) Nightly custom ROM is based on stock Android user interface with additional features and options.
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In the research report published on Friday, Merrill Lynch analysts gave their input on 2015 Google I/O developer conference that will take place on May 28- 29 in San Francisco, California. Since competition in the payments industry is on the horizon, the research firm expects Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) to launch an upgraded payment platform for the Android users.
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Google is expected to announce a bunch of new software initiatives later this week, one of them being Android M. Some leaks have already provided early information on what the upcoming operating system will have to offer, and a new report sheds light on what could be one of the most important new apps for Android M (and other Android versions) that Google is expected to announce at I/O 2015.
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If you’re a dedicated Android fan and not making full use of widgets, then you’re totally not using the full potential of Google’s platform. See, if we take away widgets out of the feature bag, we are easily stripping it from one of its defining features.
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Nanjing University boffins Jingyu Hua, Zhenyu Shen, and Sheng Zhong have tracked commuter train trips with 92 percent accuracy using stolen phone accelerometer data.
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Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has unveiled the successor to the Q509T, dubbed Q519T, a new affordable smartphone which is priced at 599 Yuan (approximately Rs 6,100) in China. There is no information provided as to when the device will be available in India.
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Android M is expected to be unveiled later this week at Google I/O, and it will bring several new features to Google’s mobile platform according to various reports, including a brand new device update guarantee for Nexus devices.
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A week has passed, which means we’re back with our usual roundup with some of the best new Android apps and games that have made their way into the Play Store. This time we’ve got a good collection of games, so if you were looking to add some new ones on your Android smartphone or tablet, now is the right time to do it. Also, do check out our previous roundup, as well as this week’s sister list with the newest and greatest iOS apps, as well.
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The Android 5.0 Lollipop update for Asus ZenFone 5 has been delayed by 3-4 months, reveals the Taiwanese company.
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After releasing its own branded 8-inch Android tablet a mere two weeks ago, AT&T is giving itself some fresh competition. The mobile carrier has announced that it’s bringing the LG G Pad F 8.0 to its customers starting on May 29.
What’s Hot on ZDNet
The new model should not be confused with the LG G Pad 8.3, which, while being an older tablet, offers a slightly larger, higher-resolution screen and a faster processor. Rather, it’s more of a bigger sibling to the LG G Pad 7.0 that was released late last year, coming with the same 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor (compared to the 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 inside the G Pad 8.3).
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ZTE, soon after launching the Nubia Z9 smartphone in China, has now unveiled yet another smartphone, the Q519T. Unveiled in China, the ZTE Q519T has been priced at equivalent of $95 (approximately Rs. 6,000).
The highlight of the ZTE Q519T smartphone is that it features a massive battery capacity of 4000mAh, which is claimed to deliver up to 35 days of standby time. The new ZTE Q519T smartphone will be available in Blue, Gold, and White colours.
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When I wear the LG Watch Urbane people almost never ask me about it. Why? Because it looks like a watch. Other smart watches, like the original Samsung Gear and the Sony Smartwatch 3 attracted more questions from people, perhaps because they’re more obviously not watches.
The shape helps, like the G Watch R, the Urbane is circular and has a prominent button on the side. If you have the right watch face installed it’s actually nearly impossible to tell it’s not a standard, but chunky, watch. That is surely a good thing from a design perspective, although watch elitists will still tell you the smartwatch thing is nonsense, and a fad. The truth is that even big names in traditional watchmaking are thinking about how they can offer smart features in their watches.
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Roman Nurik works for Google, but he also develops really cool (and free) Android apps from time to time. He’s the man behind Dash Clock, Muzei, and now the FORM Watch Face for Android Wear. You can grab it right now and enjoy it all on its own, or you can take advantage of the sweet Muzei functionality.
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If the name Roman Nurik doesn’t ring a bell, he’s a design advocate for Google, and every time he decides to publish an Android app it seems to turn out a winner. His two previous apps that created quite a stir in the Android community are DashClock Widget and Muzei Live Wallpaper. Both are awesome, so you shouldn’t expect the next to be less so. While not immediately useful to non-Android Wear users, Roman’s new FORM Watch Face demonstrates the power of Android as a mobile platform.
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“Your secure software is open source; doesn’t that make it less secure?”
This is a recurring question that we get at Benetech about Martus, our free, strongly encrypted tool for secure collection and management of sensitive information built and provided by the Benetech Human Rights Program. It’s an important question for us and for all of our peers developing secure software in today’s post-Snowden environment of fear and worry about surveillance. We strongly believe not only that open source is compatible with digital security, but that it’s also essential for it.
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Let’s say you want to identify something like a Kanban system for your software project management and you’ve looked at various commercial products but for one reason or another nothing quite fits your requirements. Perhaps they’re not organized in a way you’d like or they come with a load of other features at a price that doesn’t make sense for you or they can’t be integrated into your workflow so you’re going to bite the bullet. You’re going to look for an open source Kanban system and adapt it to meet your needs. But how do you find such a beast?
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Events
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Databases
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There are tech user conferences and then there are tech vendor conferences i.e. while the former seeks to code, the latter seeks to sell.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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One regular reader of this blog contacted me a few days ago to share a few suggestions and some concerns about the LibreOffice project. I did not agree with many of the points he was making, but a few of them made sense. I’d like to discuss the main one, because I think there is no clear cut answer about it even inside the LibreOffice project.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Data
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I recently attended a half-day workshop on Karma with Pedro Szekely, our instructor. He started by warning us that he knows very little about libraries, but a ton about data. The files we needed for the workshop were on GitHub, if you’re interested in checking it out. You can follow the tutorial steps on the Wiki, and, of course, you can find Karma itself on GitHub.
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Open Hardware
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Go to DEFCON and you’ll stand in line for five hours to get a fancy electronic badge you’ll be showing to your grandchildren some day. Yes, at DEFCON, you buy your hacker cred. LayerOne is not so kind to the technically inept. At LayerOne, you are given a PCB, bag of parts, and are told to earn your hacker cred by soldering tiny QFP and SOT-23 chips by hand. The Hardware Hacking Village at LayerOne was packed with people eagerly assembling their badge, or badges depending on how cool they are.
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Programming
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AMD is among the companies working on adding a reader/writer for SPIR-V within LLVM.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Macedonia has just neutralised an armed group whose sponsors had been under surveillance for at least eight months…
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Memorial Day commemorates soldiers killed in war. We are told that the war dead died for us and our freedom. US Marine General Smedley Butler challenged this view. He said that our soldiers died for the profits of the bankers, Wall Street, Standard Oil, and the United Fruit Company.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Growing 80 percent of the globe’s almonds in California doesn’t just require massive amounts of water. It also takes a whole bunch of honeybees for pollination—roughly two hives’ worth for every acre of almonds trees, around 1.7 million hives altogether. That’s at least 80 percent of all available commercial hives in the United States, Gene Brandi, a California beekeeper who serves as vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation, recently told NPR.
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Finance
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People need to stop blaming the rich for income inequality in America according to the third richest man in the world, Warren Buffett
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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With all this talk about epistemology and the messiness of history, it’s easy to forget that what Bush was being asked to do was not travel through time but to say whether or not he agreed with a decision, made by the last president from his party (who also happens to be his brother), that was based on lies and resulted in the deaths of half a million people. Would his brother have made that same choice? It’s an important question whose answer is obviously not obvious.
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Privacy
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Digital privacy has been a growing concern for businesses and general web users ever since Edward Snowden leaked PRISM documents to the press, and for good reason.
The documents revealed a digital surveillance operation that was larger and more efficient than even the most zealous tinfoil hat wearer could have imagined.
They detailed operations that collected vast streams of data from big name companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo, that had been approved in dark, back-room, secret courts away from the eyes of privacy advocates and digital watchdogs.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear this week that, while the Senate is rapidly approaching recess, the Senate “will stay in [session] until a deal is struck to extend” the Patriot Act. McConnell has also introduced legislation for both long-term and short-term reauthorization of the Patriot Act’s expiring provisions. It seems that McConnell is trying to bully the entire Senate into passing short-term reauthorization, giving him more time to further weaken reform efforts.
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Zimmermann and Snowden are 30 years apart in age, but their actions have framed the privacy debate. Zimmermann switched his focus from campaigning against nuclear weapons to pushing back on state snooping in 1991, when he released PGP for free over the internet in an act of political defiance. His protest helped prevent legislation which would have forced software companies to insert “backdoors” in their products, allowing the government to read encrypted messages.
The user manual for PGP, written by Zimmermann in 1991 and updated seven years later, is a startling prediction of the mass surveillance methods that were eventually adopted by the NSA after 9/11.
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Well, well. Here’s a quick (rare) Saturday post just to get folks up to speed on what happened late last night. After going back and forth for a while, the Senate voted on… and failed to approve both a version of the USA Freedom Act and a short “clean extension” of the clauses of the PATRIOT Act that were set to expire — mainly Section 215 which some (falsely) believe enables the NSA to collect bulk metadata from telcos (and potentially others). What this means is that it is much more likely that Section 215 expires entirely. The Senate has since left town, though it plans to come back next Sunday, May 31st to see if it can hammer out some sort of agreement. Though, beware of false compromises, such as those being pushed by Senate Intelligence Committee (and big time NSA supporter), Richard Burr. His “hastily introduced” bill pretends to try to “bridge the gap” but in actuality is much worse than basically anything else on the table.
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Lawfare — a blog primarily devoted defending the practices of spy agencies — has released a paper authored by Benjamin Wittes and Jodie Liu that theorizes that the public’s concern over privacy encroachments are — if not overblown — then failing to properly factor in the privacy “gains” they’ve obtained over the past several years.
The theory is solid, but the paper fails to differentiate between what sort of privacy losses people find acceptable and which ones they don’t — mainly by leaving privacy invasions by government entities almost completely undiscussed. It opens by quoting a scene from an old Woody Allen film in which the protagonist attempts to “hide” his purchase of porn at a magazine stand by purchasing several unrelated (and presumably uninteresting) magazines at the same time. This leads to the conclusion that people’s ability to enjoy porn in private has risen with the advent of the internet, while simultaneously opening them up to data harvesters and internet companies less interested in personal privacy than selling users to advertisers.
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Civil Rights
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal emails are in the news again, and members of the U.S. military and intelligence community sense that there’s a dangerous double standard developing regarding the handling of classified information.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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The Copyright Board of Canada delivered a devastating defeat to Access Copyright on Friday, releasing its decision on a tariff for copying by employees of provincial governments. Access Copyright had initially sought $15 per employee for the period from 2005 – 2009 and $24 per employee for the period from 2010 – 2014. It later reduced its demands to $5.56 and $8.45. The board conducted a detailed review of the copying within government and the applicability of the Access Copyright licence. Its final decision gives Access Copyright pennies rather than dollars: 11.56 cents for 2005-2009 and 49.71 cents for 2010-2014.
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The court order to transfer ownership of two Pirate Bay-related domains to the Swedish state will not be a straightforward process. Site co-founder Fredrik Neij, a party in the two-year long case, has just announced he will appeal the ruling. Neij isn’t interested in the domains though, he has much more serious things to consider.
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05.24.15
Posted in News Roundup at 6:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Desktop
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Server
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Since I’m such a big container fan (been using them on Linux since 2005) and I recently blogged about Docker, LXC, and OpenVZ… how could I pass up posting this? Some Canonical guys gave a presentation at the recent OpenStack Summit on “LXD vs. KVM”. What is LXD? It is basically a management service for LXC that supposedly adds a lot of the features LXC was missing… and is much easier to use. For a couple of years now Canonical has shown an interest in LXC and has supposedly be doing a lot of development work around them. I wonder what specifically? They almost seem like the only company who is interested in LXC.. or at least they are putting forth a publicly noticeable effort around them.
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LXD is usable with Ubuntu 15.04 albeit not many have yet fully experimented with this new technology from Canonical given its early state. The LXD Linux container hypervisor allows for rapid provisioning, very fast performance, a REST API, and other functionality. If you’re wishing to learn more about LXD, this week at the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver was a talk about LXD vs. KVM for Linux hypervisors.
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HP announced is second quarter fiscal 2015 earnings on May 21, with company executives enthusiastic about the company’s upcoming split, and continued prospects in the cloud.
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Kernel Space
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An EXT4 file-system corruption problem was uncovered with Linux 4.0 that turned out to be an MD RAID0 issue with the Linux kernel in the latest stable series. This RAID corruption issue has now been fixed in the latest kernel Git code.
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There’s numerous recent features to talk about this weekend for those interested in tracking Linux system performance, monitoring upstream projects for performance regressions, and carrying out other similar work using open-source software on Linux / BSD / OS X / Solaris.
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Graphics Stack
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Mesa 10.6 is up to a release candidate state and should be officially released in early June. If you’re not up to speed on this quarterly update to the open-source user-space graphics drivers, here’s an overview of the new features for Mesa 10.6.
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NVIDIA has been working out plans for their graphics driver to support Mir and Wayland. As part of that, besides their recent EGL support, they’ve been tackling kernel mode-setting.
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Applications
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Python is a high-level, general-purpose, structured, powerful, open source programming language that is used for a wide variety of programming tasks. It features a fully dynamic type system and automatic memory management, similar to that of Scheme, Ruby, Perl, and Tcl, avoiding many of the complexities and overheads of compiled languages. The language was created by Guido van Rossum in 1991, and continues to grow in popularity.
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Proprietary
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I am delighted to announce that CodeWeavers has just released CrossOver 14.1.3 for both Mac OS X and Linux. CrossOver 14.1.3 has important bug fixes for both Mac and Linux users.
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Vivaldi, a web browser based on Chromium built by Opera founder that’s aimed mostly at power users, has been updated one more and is now available for download.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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After half a year of work, Godot, the most advanced open source self-contained game development environment reached version 1.1. This game engine is a community developed effort to produce an open (and no strings attached) alternative to large commercial software such as Unity and Unreal. This release focuses on improvements to the 2D engine so all features used by modern 2D games are implemented.
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GOG have done it again folks, Prehistorik 1 & 2 which are both games from my childhood have been published on GOG and both support Linux.
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The Steam repository now contains the Steam client package plus the S3 texture compression library for Open Source drivers for CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
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The rise of Linux on the desktop is always just around the corner, right? Most recently it was Valve’s new focus on Steam-powered Linux gaming that was supposed to boost the open source OS to new heights. However, the most recent Steam Hardware & Software Survey shows a big drop for Linux. It’s now less than 1% of Steam systems.
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Interloper is a small scale real time strategy that recently released for Linux, and it managed to capture my interest for being a bit different.
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Seven years after the unofficial fan sequel to the 80s classic Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders was released in German for Windows, a director’s cut has been made available in English for Linux.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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LOVE the blending tools. I’m used to those of Paint Tool SAI, and finding a program whose brushes are far more customizable and can do more is digital art heaven. Especially an open source one!
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Evolution is a powerful concept and tool. When harnessed properly, humans have been able to tailor and adapt crops and domesticate animals. We’ve been able to grow the Dutch unnecessarily tall and create beautiful and consequence-free theme parks as shown in the Jurassic Park documentary series on the BBC. However, when not monitored closely or left to nature’s own devices, the result is the terrifying land based sharks that have caused such recent devastation across most of Australia.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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It’s been a while since my last post, I was busy with my university exams and didn’t get much time to work on my GSoC project. But during whatever time I got I tried to get myself familiar with GNOME Shell coding style and get a hang of the way it works, since GNOME Shell is the main module I will be working with in this project. But things weren’t as simple as I initially thought them to be. It has been a struggle trying to find out some structured documentation for GNOME Shell code-base mainly the JavaScript part.
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Reviews
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I have to say, Xubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet shattered my expectations. Obliterated them. Overall, I was expecting a distro that would be about as good as its parent. Instead, I got this fine piece of digital machinery, which purrs and meows and growls like a turbo-charged tiger, if this silly metaphor makes any sense. Or is it an analogy?
Now, one tiny software glitch, plus one big regression that affects the entire family. That’s the sum of my complains. On the plus side, Xubuntu fully supports the hardware, including the tricky UEFI stuff, it’s fast, robust, elegant, rich in software and features, simple and fun to use, and it works well with anything I’ve thrown at it. By far the best distro of this year. I don’t give out 10/10 lightly, but I’m inclined to do that right now, even though the few tiny problems we’ve had prevent me from doing that. However, the whole package reminds me of Fuduntu, really. Pure and simple and just good. 9.99999/10. Try it, you won’t be disappointed. We’re done here.
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Arch Family
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I don’t know why, but I always had this desire of installing new operating systems and discover by myself how they work, how software packages are installed, removed, updated, and how they differ from other OSes.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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Fedora 22 is shaping up quite well across the Fedora Workstation, Server, and Cloud offerings. Out of curiosity, this week I ran some initial comparison tests of Fedora Server 21 vs. Fedora Server 22.
Fedora Server 22 notably switches its default file-system over to XFS from EXT4 for new installations. Fedora Server 22 also has the other same updated packages to Fedora 22 like the Linux 4.0.2 kernel and GCC 5.1.1.
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A while back I bought a Nexus 9, mainly because it has a weird processor that emulates a 64 bit ARM (aarch64). Google seem to have abandoned this platform entirely, just 6 months after I got it, so fuck you too Google. Anyway …
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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SparkyLinux features customized lightweight desktops (like E19, LXDE and Openbox), multimedia plugins, selected sets of apps and own custom tools to ease different tasks.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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After only three days from the last kernel update for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), Canonical published today details about a recent security flaw that was patched in the Linux kernel packages of the distribution.
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Canonical’s endgame is to create a full desktop-mobile convergent system, to run the same code-base on Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Phone and Internet of Things devices. Also, the user interface is responsive, adjusting itself to fit best the screen.
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Canonical is preparing a major new update for Ubuntu Touch, but it will take a while until it’s going to be ready. From the looks of it, the devs are preparing some interesting improvements and updates.
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Details about a NTFS-3G vulnerability that has been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) have been published by Canonical in a security notice.
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Phones
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Android
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According to the latest research of the Cambridge University, selling your Android phone could put you at risk of losing your most personal information to any stranger.
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I’ve been living like a savage barbarian the past week and I don’t like it one bit. In fact, my life has been inconvenienced more times than not, it’s been filled with various frustrations, and from time to time certain tasks that were once simple have been much harder.
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Experts have argued that the recently released Android Lollipop is the best performing operating software that Google has ever produced. The software, which was first released in October 2014 and updated with Android 5.1 in February 2015, boasts a sleeker, faster and more beautiful display. Its kinder on the battery and is fit to be used not only on phones and tablets, but also on watches.
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We suspected it was going to be released this weekend and here it is, the Android 5.1.1 OTA is starting to roll out to some T-Mobile users. The update’s approval was confirmed by the operator’s product evangelist Des on Twitter and Google+ a few hours ago and it has appeared on T-Mobile’s product support pages.
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Twitch is now offering video-on-demand (VOD) service to users of their mobile apps. However, if you’re using the Android version, you actually need to do more than just receive an update from the Google Play store.
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In less than a week, San Francisco’s Moscone Center will host Google’s annual I/O developer conference – geeks from all around the world will gather to polish their coding skills and see Google’s latest technologies in action. Needless to say, we’ll be also keeping a close eye at the event as many of the announcements made there will be of great interest to us and our readers. To be more specific, Google is likely to preview a new version of its Android operating system. Major announcements regarding Android Wear, Android TV, and Android Auto, among other Google products and services, are being rumored as well.
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This phone has a 1.2 Ghz Dual core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of internal storage with option to add a microSD card, a 5 megapixels camera and a 4.3 inches 540p display running stock Android.
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This 11.6-inch tablet is now listed at Amazon.com for $399,- USD and comes with Remix OS pre-installed. This Remix OS is a heavily tweaked version of Android (version 4.4.2) optimized for desktop use.
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It’s been almost one year since Google officially unveiled its current version of Android, called Lollipop, which means it’s just about time to see what the next major update will bring.
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T-Mobile has begun rolling out its Android 5.1.1 update for the Nexus 6. The release was finally approved by Google just two days ago, and it brings Wi-Fi calling as well as plenty of bug fixes.
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Google will be unveiling the successor to Lollipop at Google I/O in just a few days, but we won’t get a real name. It will likely just be called Android M until it’s released, but Google has an internal code name just as it did for L and K. It’s called Macadamia Nut Cookie (MNC), a name which is already being referenced in AOSP.
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The Times goes on to point out, however, that besides the criminal label and the fines, nothing much has changed for the banks. In a memo to employees this week, the chief executive of Citi, Michael Corbat, called the criminal behavior “an embarrassment” — a euphemism for crime that wouldn’t pass muster if it were to be expressed by a person accused of benefit fraud, say.
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Rosendahl emphasized that Akanda was born as open-source software and will remain open-source. From a commercial perspective what Akanda provides to enterprises is support and professional services.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Last Monday, I bought the phone anyway. I must say that I am very pleased by its performance and very cheap price. One can swap the SIM card to use the phone with another carrier here, too.
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Mozilla’s chief executive announced major switch of strategy to boost Firefox OS market share. Unlike its previous program with focus on price, Firefox will finally deliver “quality.”
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SaaS/Big Data
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BSD
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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The latest GNU Compiler Collection code now has proper optimization targeting/tuning support for the IBM z13.
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Openness/Sharing
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Science
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Photography has been a medium of limitless possibilities since it was originally invented in the early 1800s. The use of cameras has allowed us to capture historical moments and reshape the way we see ourselves and the world around us. To celebrate the amazing history of photography and photographic science, we have assembled twenty photographic ‘firsts’ from over the past two centuries.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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These legends have some fundamental similarities. They are based on deliberate misrepresentations of the war and obfuscation with regard to the interests involved. In order to explain the deceptions behind the Vietnam Syndrome it is necessary to examine the “other war”. Contrary to much official history of US involvement in Indochina—the stuffing of almost all the films made—whether documentary or feature—the war began and ended as a CIA operation. The confusion as to war aims, strategy, tactical and operational effectiveness arise entirely from the fact that more than probably any other war fought with conventional forces—up to that time (except Korea but that war hasn’t ended yet)—the war in Vietnam was initiated, managed, funded, advertised and ultimately waged by the invisible army of US capitalism.
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Yet, Obama is known to be just another powerless US president serving war industrialized Wall Street and at present dutifully ordering lethal multi nation bombings.
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Despite the fact that the US plans on conducting airstrikes on Isis in Iraq and Syria for years, the Chicago Tribune reported on Monday that key members in the House and Senate have resigned themselves to the fact that there’s virtually no chance of Congress agreeing on any sort of bill to constrain or legalize the Obama administration’s bombing campaign in the Middle East.
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The US Defense Department’s watchdog knowingly turned a blind eye to financial irregularities, leading to the Pentagon signing off on an audit. This has led to questions regarding just how transparent the government auditing process actually is.
A special investigation by Reuters revealed that a senior member of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Inspector General team had colluded with an independent auditing company, Grant Thornton LLP, to falsely keep the US Marine Corps books clean.
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Is Anglo-America a failed state? In the realm of intelligence and national security, the special relationship is being tested.
As he spoke to a crowd of Americans, Britain’s defence minister, Michael Fallon, had a US-UK flag pin on his lapel.
“Just as together we broke the bonds of totalitarianism and tyranny in the Second World War,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in March, “so we faced down the threat of communism in the cold war”.
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There is no independent identification of the casualties or any explanation as to why they were targeted.
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It’s springtime, and Republicans are feeling hawkish again. See how Sen. Rand Paul’s views on foreign policy have shifted as he’s adopted a more aggressive stance. It wasn’t that long ago when the Kentucky Republican was staging a talking filibuster against the Obama administration’s drone policy, warning the American people that the president might deploy a drone against an American citizen on American soil without judicial process.
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At the Lincoln Day Dinner dinner in Des Moines Saturday night, Senator and probable 2016 candidate Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he would have no problem droning potential ISIS recruits, and was so excited to do so he reckoned he might could skip the whole due process part.
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Elites want more violence. They are unconcerned that innocent civilians are killed.
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The truth is that we can never be certain who is in the target zone of any drone strike. Even though drones spent a week watching this compound, it is obvious that drones cannot see everything in the area.
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Lethal drones are President Obama’s weapon of choice in striking at suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists in remote areas, but – as with any weapon of war – there must be a cost-benefit analysis, including whether drone strikes create more enemies than they kill, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
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Machinery of lethal strikes enjoys moral and legal impunity – as intended
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The Justice Department is acknowledging that the FBI, DEA and other federal law enforcement agencies are likely to make increasing use of unmanned aerial drones in the United States.
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MALE VOICEOVER (Good Kill, Voltage Pictures): The remotely-piloted aircraft is not the future of war. It is the here and now. Make no mistake about it: this ain’t PlayStation. We are killing people.
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President Obama’s announcement last month that earlier this year a “U.S. counterterrorism operation” had killed two hostages, including an American citizen, has become a fresh occasion for questioning the rationales for continuing attacks from unmanned aerial vehicles aimed at presumed, suspected, or even confirmed terrorists. This questioning is desirable, although not mainly for hostage-related reasons connected to this incident. Sometimes an incident has a sufficient element of controversy to stoke debate even though what most needs to be debated is not an issue specific to the incident itself. More fundamental issues about the entire drone program need more attention than they are getting.
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TONY JONES, PRESENTER: All this talk of killer drones raises some very profound questions. For instance, are nations more likely to go to war if there’s less risk of their civilians being killed? And what does it mean if you take human decision-making out of the loop? Can a machine tell the difference between a civilian and a combatant?
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The programs in question involved such activities as the CIA’s efforts to derail Iran’s nuclear program and the agency’s use of drones to kill militants inside Pakistan. Again, the cracks in Blair’s authority were revealed: The DNI, as determined by the 2004 legislation that created the position, was to be the focal point for intelligence support to the president and other senior government leaders, and was allowed some say in budgetary matters, but was not granted command over any covert missions abroad.
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Don’t expect any news you read or watch today or in the future to tell you that. The fact that President George W. Bush knowingly lied us into a disastrous war in Iraq cannot be told. Our media systems even now cannot report this story.
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These are the choices facing Washington, all stemming from the events of just one weekend. The path of this war has changed, leaving western powers with ever less room for manoeuvre.
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Remind me who, even among opponents and critics of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, ever imagined that the decision to take out Saddam Hussein’s regime and occupy the country would lead to a terror caliphate in significant parts of Iraq and Syria that would conquer social media and spread like wildfire. And yet, don’t think that the future is completely unpredictable either.
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On top of this evidence, known to the Bush White House but not the general public or Congress, was the public evidence from the international weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq. They found no WMD, yet the Bush administration insisted the weapons must be there and only by invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein could America be safe.
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In which we examine the shadowy death of democracy, where we’ve come from and where we may still go.
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So when Jeb Bush gave four answers in four days last week to the same question — “Knowing what we know now, would you have invaded Iraq?” — one would expect that his primary opponents realized that they were about to get asked the same question, and spent all of five minutes coming up with a better answer than “yes.”
If Marco Rubio’s appearance yesterday on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace is any indication, he did not take those five minutes.
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Yet plans call for guns-blazing war games on Pagan at least 16 weeks a year. Hundreds of Marines, potentially joined by troops from Japan, Australia and South Korea, would storm ashore in landing craft, firing mortars and small arms, backed by naval bombardments, swarms of helicopters, drones, fighter jets and perhaps B-52s dropping real bombs.
The plan has sparked an outpouring of resentment toward the U.S. military, fueled by strong sentiment that Pagan’s future should be determined by the people of the islands, not by Washington.
“We love our island. We don’t want to give it up,” said Jerome Aldan, the 40-year-old elected mayor of the Northern Mariana Islands. “This proposal is going to turn it into a wasteland.”
Aldan was 6 when the eruption of Mt. Pagan forced the island’s residents — about 100 families in all — to evacuate 200 miles south to Saipan, capital of the Northern Marianas, a U.S. commonwealth territory. The military, he fears, will turn Pagan into a war zone and kill the families’ decades-old dream of returning.
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Pentagon’s admitted partial responsibility in the death of two children was meant to divert attention from more widespread abuses, critics of the US government’s drone strikes claim.
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This designation, I suggest, was less a reflection of the seriousness of Gadahn’s actions and more an indication of how much they perplexed the state. Gadahn never killed anyone, never blew up a building; the closest he ever came to actual operational significance was when he petitioned bin Laden, offering his services as a media strategist. Ultimately, the real threat was not so much Gadahn as his image. With his undeniable American-ness and (renounced) Jewish heritage, Gadahn confounded prevailing understandings of who “terrorists” are, where they come from and what they look like.
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A German court is to hear a case against the government brought by relatives of victims of a US drone attack in Yemen in a groundbreaking action that has the potential to interrupt the American strikes.
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A court in Germany is set to take evidence from a Yemeni victim of the USA’s secret drone programme following revelations that military bases on German soil play a key role in the strikes.
Faisal bin Ali Jaber, an environmental engineer from Sana’a who lost two relatives to a 2012 drone strike, has won the right to have his evidence heard as part of a constitutional claim filed in Germany.
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KnowDrones.com Coordinator Nick Mottern claims that the US Army and Air Force program to use unmanned aerial systems in combat has had catastrophic results because the drones have killed large numbers of civilians, but have not had significant impact on the scale of terrorist activities.
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No miraculous leap of faith is necessary to believe that U.S. officials did not know that the hostages were at the target site. And, still, it raises the question of whether the CIA really knows who it is killing when it launches strikes.
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Warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition pounded Shiite rebels across three Yemeni cities today, as Riyadh reported the death of a Saudi child from cross-border fire.
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Cross border rocket attacks launched from inside Yemen have killed two people in southern Saudi Arabia over the last 24 hours, Saudi Arabia’s state news agency SPA reported on Friday.
SPA quoted a Civil Defence official in the southwestern province of Jizan as saying that a child was killed and three other children were wounded on Friday in the al-Tawal region.
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Whoopi Goldberg lit into Republican presidential candidates on The View on Tuesday for their attempts to sound tough on foreign policy.
“The Republican candidates are kind of sounding more like action heroes,” Goldberg said. “Chris Christie wants to pump up the military. Marco Rubio says he will find and kill terrorists like Liam Neeson in Taken. You’re too short to be Liam Neeson, find somebody else.”
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A US air strike on Syria last year probably killed two children, officials say – the first admission of civilian casualties in the campaign.
“We regret the unintentional loss of lives,” said Lieutenant General James Terry, head of the US-led campaign.
US Central Command said the strike on 5-6 November, near Harim City, targeted the al-Qaeda-linked Khorasan Group.
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While notable for admitting the possibility it killed two young children, admission called “too little, too late” by expert who says deathtoll of innocent people far exceeds Pentagon statement.
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The segregation is so pronounced that it can be traced on a map: Some 49% of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the U.S. are concentrated in just five states — California, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia.
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The capture and killing of the world’s most wanted man was always going to be an enthralling story, considering how he challenged and punctured the pride of the sole global superpower as well as evade arrest for a decade before being liquidated.
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Some might argue that knowing exactly how Osama bin Laden was killed really doesn’t matter. Some might even argue that he is still alive, which, if nothing else, would demonstrate the persistence of urban legends relating to conspiracies allegedly involving the U.S. government. JFK’s assassination has the grassy knoll and second gunman, plus Mafia, CIA, and Cuban connections as well as a possible Vietnamese angle. 9/11 had the mystery of the collapse of Building 7. More recently still, the Texas State Guard was mobilized to monitor a military training exercise because it was rumored to be a ploy to impose martial law. Demonizing Washington as one large conspiracy is good business all around.
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Gaza’s economy is on the “verge of collapse,” a new World Bank report warned Friday, saying the unemployment rate there is now the highest in the world and calling on Israel and international donors to remedy the situation.
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Pakistan has strongly condemned the US drone strike in North Waziristan on May 16, and has called for cessation of such strikes.
“Such strikes are a clear violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said.
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Germany, France and Italy have pledged cooperation to jointly develop a “Euro-drone” for intelligence-gathering and surveillance of the skies.
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Last week, just over two years since that note was written, a jury sentenced Tsarnaev to death for his role in the bombing. Speaking to the press outside the John J. Moakley courthouse in Boston, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said, “We are not intimidated by acts of terror, or radical ideals,” and described the marathon bombing as “a political crime, designed to intimidate and coerce the United States.”
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On May 12, 2015, Ananta Bijoy Das (32), a progressive writer, blogger, editor of science fiction magazine Jukti, and an organizer of Gonojagoron Mancha (People’s Resurgence Platform), was hacked to death, using machetes, by four assailants at Subidbazar Bankolapara residential area of Sylhet city, for writing against religious fundamentalism.
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In 1979, my father was arrested and tried as a CIA agent in Iran.
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It would be difficult to find a better example of tyranny than the U.S.-supported military dictatorship that has ruled Egypt for decades. In many ways, it mirrors the brutal U.S.-supported military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. No legislature. No independent judiciary. No due process of law. And lots of round-ups, kidnappings, torture, and execution of people who protest or who just hold the “wrong” beliefs.
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Drone use against terrorists causes collateral damage, but it remains “the most effective weapon” in the United States’ arsenal, former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morell told RT in a wide-ranging interview.
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In summary, the most likely—though not most lethal—terror threats to Americans come from individuals living within the United States who are partially motivated to undertake self-directed attacks based upon their perception that the United States and the West are at war with the Muslim world.
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Since 9/11, the United States’ “war on terror” has become the overarching news story of our time.
As the nation’s dominant news organization, The Times deserves, and gets, intensive scrutiny for how it has handled that story. The grades, clearly, are mixed. Its role in the run-up to the Iraq War has been rightly and harshly criticized. Its early reporting on surveillance, though delayed, was groundbreaking. Its national-security reporting has been excellent in many ways and, at times, is justifiably slammed for allowing too much cover for government officials who want to get their message out.
Nearly 14 years after 9/11, a reckoning finally is taking place. The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, has said repeatedly in recent months that he thinks it’s time to toughen up and raise the bar.
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In this web-only conversation with journalist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, we turn to Iraq. He recently wrote a piece for Rolling Stone titled “Forget What We Know Now: We Knew Then Iraq War Was a Joke.” Taibbi wrote the piece after Jeb Bush’s infamous interview on Fox News. Megyn Kelly asked Bush “knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?” Bush responded, “I would have.” Jeb Bush later reversed his stance.
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In a heated 10-minute exchange, MSNBC host Chris Matthews confronts CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell with the question of why, during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he let Vice President Dick Cheney get away with saying Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons.
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A former top CIA official and intelligence briefer to President George W. Bush before the Iraq War has acknowledged Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney falsely presented information to the public. In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Michael Morell was asked about Cheney’s claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons.
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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) could learn a lesson from his older brother on how to field questions about the Bush family political dynasty.
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Michael Morell, twice acting director of the CIA and a member of President Barack Obama’s five-member surveillance review panel, said he supports the latest version of the USA Freedom Act, which backers say would end the dragnet collection of domestic call records.
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Mystery bombs have fallen twice on China, from Myanmar. The first time, March 13, killed five Chinese and injured eight. On May 14th, another one was dropped, injuring five villagers.
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Goss registered through Dickstein Shapiro law firm which is his new employer. The company has long-lasting relations with the Turkish government in its turn.
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So it’s not just that Cheney is cartoonishly evil, it’s that he’s monstrously incompetent; in fact, his monstrous incompetence is a large part of why he’s so cartoonishly evil. He was overwhelmingly powerful, but with no understanding of reality, and so blundered around the world strewing destruction wherever he went.
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Transparency Reporting
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Since independent Senator Bernie Sanders announced his presidential candidacy in April, polls in Iowa show support there for him has increased to 15 percent among Democrats, up from five percent in February. This compares to about 60 percent backing for former secretary of state, senator and first lady Hillary Clinton. Sanders is the longest-serving independent member of Congress in U.S. history, yet he is going to run in the Democratic Party for the Democratic nomination. We discuss Sanders’ plans with former presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, author of the new book, “Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015.”
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Just two weeks after its launch, Transparency Toolkit’s ICWatch project, which documents more than 100,000 job profiles associated with the US “intelligence community” has been rehoused at WikiLeaks due to death threats and DDoS attacks on its infrastructure.
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As Independent Senator Bernie Sanders ramps up his campaign for the presidency, his focus has been on issues like economic inequality, the corrupting influence of money in politics, and stopping global climate change. Yet questions have remained about his views on the realm of policy most relevant to the commander in chief’s job: foreign affairs.
A televised CSPAN interview Sanders gave in 1989, when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, offers a look into his thinking about the world. At one point, the interviewer asked Sanders about the distinction between socialism in Latin American countries and the authoritarian government of the Soviet Union.
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Earlier this month, a federal judge sentenced Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA analyst convicted of leaking information about a secret anti-Iran plot, to three-and-half years in prison. It was a strikingly heavy sentence. If it were part of a serious crackdown on all government employees who violate their oaths, it might be justifiable. Instead, it is something quite different: further evidence of the wildly different ways leakers are treated, depending on who they are.
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Even worse, the feds claimed that Sterling, who is black, did it out of resentment over a failed racial discrimination lawsuit against the agency — in effect using Sterling’s willingness to stand up for his rights against him.
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There were no Blacks on the jury, and according to Mr. Solomon, “the evidence presented by the prosecution was circumstantial email and phone call metadata without content of any incriminating nature.”
Despite pledging to be the most transparent presidential administration, Pres. Obama has expanded Bush era surveillance techniques, and has used the Espionage Act more than all previous administrations combined.
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The mere fact that Hillary Clinton’s official emails were kept on her personal computer system is turning out to be one of the least important things about them. What matters most about this first batch of messages released by the State Department is that they reveal Clinton, as secretary of state, at the center of a tangled web of connections and conflicts of interest between public and private actors.
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The messages show the role played by Sidney Blumenthal, who was working for the Clinton family foundation and advising a group of entrepreneurs trying to win business from the Libyan transitional government. Blumenthal repeatedly wrote dispatches about the events in Libya to Clinton, who often forwarded them to her aides at the State Department.
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Britain acted deceitfully in Libya and David Cameron authorised an MI6 plan to “break up” the country, a close confidante of Hillary Clinton claimed in a series of secret reports sent to the then-secretary of state.
Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time friend of the Clintons, emailed Mrs Clinton on her personal account to warn her that Britain was “game playing” in Libya.
Mr Blumenthal had no formal role in the US State Department and his memos to Mrs Clinton were sourced to his own personal contacts in the Middle East and Europe.
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Unnamed US officials allegedly disclosed very sensitive information in a report on raid in Syria, published by New York Times.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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The two great ecological challenges of our times are biodiversity erosion and climate change. And both are interconnected, in their causes and their solutions.
Industrial agiculture is the biggest contributor to biodiversity erosion as well as to climate change. According to the United Nations, 93% of all plant variety has disappeared over the last 80 years.
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Bees flit from flower to flower dining on nectar. Sometimes that nectar may contain traces of widely used pesticides. Yet the bees are unlikely to know which nectar is tainted. Indeed, they can’t taste these pesticides, a new study finds. However, the pesticides are similar to nicotine. This can encourage the bees to come back for more. And especially troubing: A second new study suggests the pesticides can harm some wild bees.
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“We need that relationship with bees,” says author and beekeeper Crowder. “That’s how we need nature. We can’t live without nature and bees help us recognize that connection.”
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So gushes Mother Jones, adding the enticing word “exclusive” to the story. But – weirdly enough, for a confection of spying and science reporting, both of which are normally so reliable – this appears to be a bit garbled. Firstly, the “climate research programme” looks to be more like the CIA had allowed civilian scientists to access classified data—such as ocean temperature and tidal readings gathered by Navy submarines and topography data collected by spy satellites. So, not CIA research at all: just data sharing. And presumably not CIA data mostly; if this is stuff routinely gathered by Navy subs, its presumably Navy data; which the CIA had been given the job of giving out? Hard to be sure. National Journal seems to support my interpretation.
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For most of the past two decades, a handful of climate change scientists have had the CIA’s MEDEA (Measurement of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis) program as an ace in the hole: they could draw on classified info from spy satellites and subs to study global warming in extreme detail. However, they’ll now have to make do with alternatives. The agency has shut down MEDEA, saying that its projects to study the security implications of climate change “have been completed.” While the CIA says it’ll still “engage external experts” on the subject, it won’t be providing consistent access to its extremely accurate and rare data.
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The Central Intelligence Agency has announced that it’s closing down MADEA, a decades-old research program that shared classified information with scientists to study how climate change might exacerbate global security risks.
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Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, or Medea, which began in the 1990s, allowed civilian scientists access to classified satellite data. The program was scrapped under former President George W. Bush, but reconstituted in 2010 under president Obama.
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Britain is ramping up its military rhetoric, sending its biggest warship for NATO drills in the Baltic, right off the Russian coast, in this latest show of force. The drills kick off on June 5 and will last for two weeks.
The helicopter carrier HMS Ocean is expected to reach Russia’s city of Kaliningrad sometime this week, carrying aboard about 80 Royal Marines who are to join other NATO troops in Poland, the Sunday Times reports.
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Finance
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A senior official at the Bank of England “inadvertently” sent research assessing the economic dangers of the UK leaving the European Union to an editor at a national newspaper.
The Bank was left in an embarrassing situation on Friday after it accidentally emailed details – including how to fend off inquiries related to the report – directly to the Guardian newspaper.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The context was “Hearing Is Believing,” an event sponsored by NPR and member stations WNYC and WBEZ to pitch public radio (and its podcasts) as an advertising vehicle (American Community Radio, 5/12/15).
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Actually, Border Books did close in large part because the economic system is rigged against ordinary Americans. One of the main reasons Amazon has been able to grow as rapidly as it did is that Amazon has not been required to collect the same sales tax as its brick-and-mortar competitors in most states for most of its existence. The savings on sales tax almost certainly exceeded its cumulative profits since it was founded in 1994.
While there is no policy rationale to exempt businesses from the obligation to collect sales tax because they are internet-based, this exemption has allowed Amazon to become a huge company and made its founder, Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world.
Oh yeah—Jeff Bezos now owns the Washington Post.
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The most powerful component of the Fear and Disinformation Campaign (FDI) rests with the CIA, which, secretly subsidizes authors, journalists and media critics, through a web of private foundations and CIA sponsored front organizations. The CIA also influences the scope and direction of many Hollywood productions. Since 9/11, one third of Hollywood productions are war movies. “Hollywood stars and scriptwriters are rushing to bolster the new message of patriotism, conferring with the CIA and brainstorming with the military about possible real-life terrorist attacks.” “The Sum of All Fears” directed by Phil Alden Robinson, which depicts the scenario of a nuclear war, received the endorsement and support of both the Pentagon and the CIA.
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In particular, Allen frequently documents how intimately and seamlessly connected the members of the media aristocracy are with other members of Washington’s ruling elite, whether they come from the intelligence community, the super-wealthy, big banks, the lobbying community, or top levels of government.
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Here is the shocking story of how the niece of former CIA director Richard Helms became an intermediary for the Taliban in Afghanistan and relayed an offer by the Taliban to the US government for the surrender of Osama Bin Laden months before the 9/11 attacks. The offer was refused. This story, written by my friend and Cockburn’s old partner at the Village Voice, James Ridgeway, and Camelia Fard, was published in the Voice on June 12, 2001, and promptly vanished from the cultural memory after 9/11. In the wake of Seymour Hersh’s recent revelations, Ridgeway asked me to re-run the article on CounterPunch. I was very happy to oblige him. It’s an astounding read. –Jeffrey St. Clair
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Every nation must create a bogey man or a group to crucify and persecute, in order to unify the public behind their leaders, help them act out their collective aggression, and dodge the important domestic issues that plague the day.
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Censorship
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The founder of Russia’s most popular social network recently described to Mashable how he chose to flee his native Moscow after Kremlin loyalists wrested control of the company away from him.
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Russia’s media watchdog has written to Google, Twitter and Facebook warning them against violating Russian Internet laws and a spokesman said on Thursday they risk being blocked if they do not comply with the rules.
Roskomnadzor said it had sent letters this week to the three US-based Internet firms asking them to comply with Internet laws which critics of President Vladimir Putin have decried as censorship.
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Privacy
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You might not think that an academic computer science course could be classified as an export of military technology. But under the Defence Trade Controls Act – which passed into law in April, and will come into force next year – there is a real possibility that even seemingly innocuous educational and research activities could fall foul of Australian defence export control laws.
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Even as the Senate remains at an impasse over the future of US domestic surveillance powers, the National Security Agency will be legally unable to collect US phone records in bulk by the time Congress returns from its Memorial Day vacation.
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Dysfunction in Congress has gotten so bad it might end up actually doing some good: the NSA’s mass surveillance powers under the Patriot Act are now on the verge of expiring after a dramatic 1am vote in the Senate on Saturday morning.
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A last-minute bid to reform NSA spying before lawmakers break for a week-long recess failed early Saturday morning after hours of debate and filibuster overnight when Senate lawmakers voted 57-42 against the USA Freedom Act.
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The US Senate has blocked a bill that would have ended the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records by the National Security Agency (NSA).
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Bill fails for the second time after vote in the small hours of Saturday morning, but Rand Paul thwarts Republican leaders’ attempts to extend Patriot Act
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There was drama in the Senate last night, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell struggled to extend a Patriot Act provision that supporters say allows the government to conduct mass surveillance of Americans’ calling records. (Opponents think the program is illegal regardless, but the legislative provision has become a focal point for the fight over the larger issue.) But his fellow Kentucky Republican senator, Rand Paul, led the charge to stop him.
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The Senate struggled unsuccessfully to prevent an interruption in critical government surveillance programs early Saturday, blocking a House-passed bill and several short-term extensions of the USA Patriot Act.
The main stumbling block was a House-passed provision to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of domestic phone records. Instead, the records would remain with telephone companies subject to a case-by-case review.
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Former National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander and law professor Geoffrey Stone say it’s time for Congress to put politics aside and act quickly to reform surveillance laws in order to protect American privacy and maintain an intelligence edge.
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It took a federal appeals court 97 pages to explain why the post-9/11 Congress, in allowing the National Security Agency to seize business records “relevant” to a terrorism investigation, hadn’t authorized the agency to scoop up records of every telephone call made in the United States.
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Before explaining how “farming chickens is like hooking up with James Franco,” due to the increasingly bizarre demands of chicken companies, Oliver talked about the latest on the USA Freedom Act, designed to curtail aspects of the NSA’s surveillance. Oliver had dived into the subject during his recent interview with Edward Snowden, but now some of the reforms he had advocated for have passed in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been reluctant to take up the bill, saying he would prefer brief extensions of the current system, an idea Oliver compared to the excuses someone makes to try and stave off a breakup. Meanwhile, the fact that a federal appeals court ruled that the NSA had never had the legal authority for its phone data collection at all inspired a more tactile analogy from Oliver.
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A bitter ideological divide in Congress appeared destined Wednesday to at least temporarily end the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records as government officials warned they would have to begin shuttering the program after Friday if lawmakers do not act.
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Addressing an audience at Stanford University via video chat on Friday, Edward Snowden discussed the moral conundrums he faced as a whistleblower. He also revealed the fears he still harbors about government surveillance, and he made some recommendations on how authorities should address whistleblowers and surveillance.
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Whistleblower Edward Snowden says he has been working harder and doing more significant things while in exile in Russia than he did while being a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA).
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Paul says collecting the records is an assault on civil liberties.
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The Left’s favorite foil to an often-moderate Hillary Clinton has remained quiet on NSA reform.
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An Austrian newspaper has published what it claims is evidence that Deutsche Telekom spied on Vienna for German spooks for the miserly sum of just €6,500 a year.
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A third of Germans believe Chancellor Angela Merkel intentionally lied when she vowed to end US spying on Germany, in a bid to shield herself from criticism ahead of the 2013 general election, a poll has shown.
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An Austrian green party politician is claiming the American secret service NSA had a particular interest in the Netherlands and that it was top of a NSA priority list.
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Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr is working on a “backup” plan to extend the Patriot Act’s surveillance authorities before they expire at the end of the month, even as House leaders threaten to jam the Senate with their spying-reform bill.
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In an appearance on “The Campaign With Ernie Powell,” a radio show that deals with the question of how progressives can win political campaigns, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer says the NSA is engaged in the same invasive behavior “that sparked the American Revolution.”
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…NSA has had the ability to transcribe the contents of phone call conversations into written—and searchable—formats…
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As a reporter who covered the National Security Agency before before the Edward Snowden documents brought it to the mainstream, Patrick Radden Keefe of The New Yorker says it would be easy to feel jealous of the journalists breaking those stories now. “But I’ve sort of moved on,” Keefe says, “and I watch those stories with great interest.”
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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks exclusively to the Guardian about why he’s working harder now than ever before; how good it feels to be a ‘small part of something important’; and why he believes there is still so much more he wants to accomplish. In regards to people’s privacy, he argues that it is about more than just changing laws and systems, but actually people’s values
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The United States plotted to find Osama bin Laden by concealing tracking devices in medical supplies, possibly through Red Cross hospitals, according to a report citing documents leaked by former security contractor Edward Snowden.
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What an old softee he was, compared to the throat-cutting killers of the “Islamic State”. The black-bannered executioners are back at work in Ramadi and Palmyra and yet, back from the dead, old bin Laden returns once more, fished out of the Indian Ocean (if he was ever there) for one final re-appearance. He loves his wife, he wants his son to take over the whole al-Qaeda outfit, he studies – if he can read English – Noam Chomsky.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under increasing pressure to divulge a list of targets, including the IP addresses of individual computers, that German intelligence tracked on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Critics have accused Merkel’s staff of giving the BND foreign intelligence agency the green light to help the NSA spy on European firms and officials, triggering a scandal that has dented the chancellor’s popularity.
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Over the weekend, the British surveillance agency GCHQ — the most extremist and invasive in the West — bathed its futuristic headquarters with rainbow-colored lights “as a symbol of the intelligence agency’s commitment to diversity” and to express solidarity with “International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.” GCHQ’s public affairs office proudly distributed the above photograph to media outlets.
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At an 18th-century mansion in England’s countryside last week, current and former spy chiefs from seven countries faced off with representatives from tech giants Apple and Google to discuss government surveillance in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s leaks.
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Apple, Google and Vodafone reportedly attended highly confidential meetings with spy chiefs from seven countries last week to discuss the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s leaks.
As Digital Spy reports citing The Intercept, executives from the firms debated privacy and security with the likes of the CIA, GCHQ and other spy agency chiefs of past and present from Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Sweden.
The group attended the three-day conference organised by the Ditchley Foundation in an 18th-century mansion in Oxfordshire, where questions where raised about mass surveillance and intelligence operations, brought on by Snowden’s whistleblowing activities since the summer of 2013.
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The attendee list is impressive. Key speakers apparently included former acting CIA boss John McLaughlin; former White House deputy chief of staff Mona Sutphen, the current and former heads of the UK’s GCHQ; the current or former heads of intelligence agencies in Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and Germany; and the EU’s counter terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove.
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United States has conducted a series of dangerous surveillance missions over a series of islands that Beijing is using to expand its regional influence. On Wednesday, a U.S. surveillance plane was detected by the Chinese Navy and was warned eight times.
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When Hillary Clinton was running against Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Blumenthal was acting as a Hillary adviser and circulated a memorandum about Obama’s communist connections. The political left was shocked.
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Whenever Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea [...] worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 31 years, details in his succinct memoir the journey he has traveled as a politician, through Southeast and Northeast Asia, and the halls of power in Washington D.C. He spent ten years in the White House under George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
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Civil Rights
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Unfortunately, all is not what it seems. As Jesse Franzblau reminds us, some of the aid has gone to rights-violating security units and even fallen into the hands of the cartels.
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A Cleveland police officer who stood on the hood of a car and fired his gun 49 times through the windshield at two unarmed passengers has been found not guilty on two counts of voluntary manslaughter.
Michael Brelo was also found not guilty of felonious assault, and discharged.
On Saturday morning, Cuyahoga County judge John P O’Donnell said prosecutors failed to prove without a reasonable doubt that bullets fired by officer Brelo were the cause of death of Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell, or that Brelo had no fear for his own life during the volley of gunfire that ended a high-speed car chase on 29 November 2012.
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After African-American communities in Baltimore and Ferguson, MO came together to demonstrate against the deadly and racially disparate policies of law enforcement, Fox News branded the protests a “war on cops.” But when the story became a mostly white Texas biker gang plotting to kill police with grenades and car bombs, the network took a decidedly less sensationalist approach in its reporting.
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Chosen People –The term “Chosen People” typically refers to the Hebrew Bible and the ugly idea that God has given certain tribes a Promised Land (even though it is already occupied by other people). But in reality many sects endorse some version of this concept. The New Testament identifies Christians as the chosen ones. Calvinists talk about “God’s elect,” believing that they themselves are the special few who were chosen before the beginning of time. Jehovah’s witnesses believe that 144,000 souls will get a special place in the afterlife. In many cultures certain privileged and powerful bloodlines were thought to be descended directly from gods (in contrast to everyone else).
Religious sects are inherently tribal and divisive because they compete by making mutually exclusive truth claims and by promising blessings or afterlife rewards that no competing sect can offer. “Gang symbols” like special haircuts, attire, hand signals and jargon differentiate insiders from outsiders and subtly (or not so subtly) convey to both that insiders are inherently superior.
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U.S. COUNTERTERRORISM AGENCIES have long been preoccupied with the threat posed by the recruiting successes of the Somali terrorist group al Shabaab in Western countries. The group has managed to lure hundreds of foreign fighters — including some 40 Americans — to Somalia through online propaganda videos and word-of-mouth in disaffected immigrant communities.
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The American Civil Liberties Union found that the value of military equipment used by American police departments has risen from $1m in 1990 to nearly $450m in 2013. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams (ie, paramilitary police units) were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year, often to handle relatively modest crimes, like breaking up poker games. Incidents of police violence and related protests in the past year have helped bring these practices to light.
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American cities resemble war zones during times of protest. Now, Washington’s going to try to fix this problem by rolling back a 25-year-old program that supplied local police forces with free surplus military gear. It’s about damn time—but unfortunately, it’s not going to solve America’s police problems.
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Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces, after police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war, after SWAT team raids have swelled in number to more than 80,000 a year, after it has become second nature for local police to look and act like soldiers, after communities have become acclimated to the presence of militarized police patrolling their streets, after Americans have been taught compliance at the end of a police gun or taser, after lower income neighborhoods have been transformed into war zones, after hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Americans have lost their lives at the hands of police who shoot first and ask questions later, after a whole generation of young Americans has learned to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates—only now does President Obama lift a hand to limit the number of military weapons being passed along to local police departments.
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A key Pentagon adviser is warning Australia that its next submarine fleet purchase may be obsolete as a result of game-changing technology breakthroughs in drone warfare.
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Former Texas Governor Rick Perry today said, as president, it would be “inhumane” not to employ controversial “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding if a terror suspect might give up critical information that would save lives.
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Three leaders of the struggle discuss the lessons of the 60′s and what’s needed today.
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Last month, the Russian MoD announced that servicemen from a newly re-equipped S-400 regiment deployed in the Far East had conducted missile launches in the Kapustin Yar firing range. “The servicemen succeeded in destroying drones that emulated a modern means of aerial attack,” the MoD said. Several regiments deployed in the Far East are scheduled to take delivery of new S-400s, replacing S-300s.
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Western military intervention is not the way to solve the ISIS crisis. Thus far it has made few gains against the group and ISIS is still strong – despite the coalition being at war against them since the U.S. began carrying out airstrikes in August of last year. The coalition has gone on more than 3,700 bombing runs in Iraq and Syria but still ISIS holds important territories such as Mosul in Iraq and Deir Ezzor in Syria.
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You probably have, and it was called Zero Dark Thirty, the film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by Mark Boal and backed with gusto by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA provided Bigelow and Boal with privileged access to officials and operators behind the hunt for Osama bin Laden — and not coincidently, their movie portrayed the CIA’s torture program as essential to the effort to find and kill the leader of al Qaeda. It grossed more than $132 million worldwide.
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That’s because the CIA was in possession of something that was potentially more explosive than the detainee abuse photos: hundreds of hours of videotaped “enhanced interrogations” of two Al Qaeda suspects in CIA detention, that included the use of techniques widely described as torture.
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After I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program in 2007, the fallout for me was brutal. To make a long story short, I served nearly two years in federal prison and then endured a few more months of house arrest.
What happened to the torture program? Nothing.
Following years of waiting for the government to do something, I was heartened when I read in my prison cell—in a four-day-old copy of The New York Times—that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had finally released in December a heavily censored summary of its report on the CIA’s brutal “enhanced interrogation” techniques.
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A district court judge on Wednesday blocked an effort by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to force the CIA to turn over classified records about brutal interrogation programs the agency used to run.
While a 500-page declassified version of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “torture report” was released last December, the full, 6,900-page version remains classified. So does a controversial set of CIA documents created as part of an internal review started by former Director Leon Panetta.
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The CIA can keep secret a nearly 7,000-page Senate report on harsh interrogation methods, as well as an internal agency review, a federal judge has ruled.
The complete 6,963-page report compiled by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the related “Panetta review,” are exempt from the dictates of the Freedom of Information Act, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg concluded.
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A US District Court judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that sought the release of the full Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on torture by the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as an internal CIA report commonly referred to as the Panetta Review.
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A distraught APA spokesperson advised that such facts are extremely dangerous on the loose. She warned that no one should approach them until they have been captured, tranquilized, and defanged by the APA’s public affairs office. “We need to turn them into mere allegations as quickly as possible,” she was overheard telling an unidentified colleague. “Obviously, we can’t refute facts!”
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Speaking to Hoekstra on the side lines of this week’s Israel Bar Association conference in Eilat, it is clear that he stands firmly behind the US using enhanced interrogation or torture techniques (depending who you ask) to extract intelligence information from certain terrorist detainees.
He also strongly criticizes the US Senate’s December 2014 report that lambasted the techniques as illegal torture.
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While I worked for the FCO I saw really nice colleagues, decent men and women I worked with, go along with organising what they knew to be illegal war in Iraq, and with facilitating the torture and extraordinary rendition programmes. Because that was what paid their mortgage, looked after their children, and above all gave them social status as high British diplomats.
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While former U.S. officials continue to deny torturing “war on terror” detainees – and President Obama fails to enforce any meaningful accountability – countries from the old Soviet bloc are confronting their complicity in the CIA’s crimes, writes Nat Parry.
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It’s easy to understand why Szymany, a former military airstrip set amid dense forest in northeastern Poland, would have appealed to the CIA. According to reports by European investigators—never formally confirmed by the U.S. or Polish governments—the CIA from 2002 to 2005 used clandestine charter flights to bring “high-value” al-Qaeda suspects to Szymany, where they were interrogated and tortured at a nearby detention center.
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Prosecutors investigating the use of Scottish airports by the CIA for rendition flights have called for an unredacted copy of the US Senate’s CIA torture report, it has emerged.
The prosecutors have confirmed that investigations of airports in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Prestwick and Aberdeen are under way, British anti-torture charity Reprieve revealed on Sunday.
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CIA aircraft which were used to transfer prisoners to secret sites around the world in order for them to be subjected to torture are known to have stopped over at Scottish airports – including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Prestwick and Aberdeen.
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Prosecutors have confirmed that police investigating the use of Scottish airports by CIA ‘rendition’ flights have asked that the US provide them with an un-redacted version of the Senate’s report on the detention and interrogation programme.
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After months of partisan debate, the Senate finally confirmed Loretta Lynch as head of the U.S. Justice Department—but her delayed confirmation was just the beginning of the challenges she will face as attorney general. In addition to the turmoil in Baltimore, Lynch inherited a torture problem.
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Subsequently, various forms of sexual abuse and sexual humiliation have been a signature of post-September 11 interrogations by US forces.
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A 30-year-old Michigan man has been arraigned on child abuse charges after authorities say he restrained his girlfriend’s 5-year-old son with belts, leaned him back over a footstool and poured water down his underwear-covered face.
WEYI-TV (http://bit.ly/1HqkGJm ) says Michael Porter appeared in court Monday, and a judge set a $400,000 for Porter. It’ unknown if he has a lawyer.
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When Sen. John McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act was enacted in 2005, I was a junior enlisted Army interrogator getting Arabic language training in California. Two years later, McCain’s law directly impacted the way I conducted my interrogations.
The Detainee Treatment Act, also called the McCain Amendment, prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of any prisoner in the custody of the U.S. government and requires military interrogations to be performed in accordance with the U.S. Army Field Manual.
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Matthew DeHart, a veteran from a multi-generational military/intelligence family, ran a Tor hidden service server for his Wow guildies, members of his old army unit, and whistleblowers.
DeHart once discovered an unencrypted folder of damning documents on his server, which quickly disappeared and was replaced with an encrypted folder of the same size, with the same name. The unencrypted docs detailed an FBI investigation into some very dirty CIA tricks, possibly involving the still-unsolved slew of anthrax-laced letters sent to Congress in 2001. Not long after, DeHart was spooked by a visit from the FBI to one of his contacts, and he destroyed all potentially compromising storage associated with his server.
That’s when things got weird. DeHart’s house was raided and all his computers and storage were confiscated (his screenshots of the FBi/CIA docs were not caught up in the sweep – they were hidden on thumb-drives in his dad’s gun case). Eventually he was indicted on charges of inciting a minor to produce sexually explicit images, though the FBI found no evidence that he’d ever done this, or possessed the images in question.
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Matt DeHart, a former drone analyst, might have seen something the FBI didn’t want him to see, and it wasn’t kiddie porn.
[...]
DeHart’s apparently psychotic ramblings in that ER weren’t delusional. He was being interrogated by the FBI, and those harrowing interrogations continued for almost a week. He wasn’t allowed to make a phone call until August 12, six days after the FBI nabbed him. “He was basically babbling on the phone,” his father, Paul, testified later in court. “It was apparent to me that he had been drugged in some way or another.”
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Whatever the case, the worst Sterling can be accused of is exposing government failure and indiscretion. In that sense, he easily meets the legal definition of a whistle-blower. Whatever information he exposed, he did it in the public interest.
But the Obama administration has abused whistle-blowers. I know a little something about that myself — I was charged with three counts of espionage for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program several years ago.
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The driving force is institutional: government, the mainstream media, the military-industrial economy. These entities are converging in a lockstep, armed obsession over various enemies of the status quo in which they hold enormous power; and this obsession is devolving public consciousness into a permanent fight-or-flight mentality. Instead of dealing with real, complex social issues with compassion and intelligence, our major institutions seem to be fortifying themselves – with ever-increasing futility – against their imagined demons.
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…64 Guantanamo detainees who filed habeas petitions have seen their cases adjudicated.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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It is hard to overstate how much I love the British mobile provider Three and how I wish it would come to the United States.
My fellow Americans, let me (again) re-iterate how badly we’re all getting overcharged: Three offers a 30-day prepaid plan with unlimited data, unlimited texts, and 200 minutes of domestic calling, all for £20 ($31). That’s about one-third less than what I pay right now Stateside.
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Send this to a friend
05.23.15
Posted in News Roundup at 4:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Desktop
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Research house Gartner estimates that the 2015 calendar year will bring banner sales for the operating system as more schools and home users seek out Chromebooks. Should Chromebook reach the 7.3 million unit mark, the figure would represent a 27 per cent increase over last year.
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Kernel Space
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The long awaited Systemd v220 has been released. Systemd v220 has a lot new features, improvements and bug fixes.
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Graphics Stack
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Applications
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Modern (and some less modern) laptops and tablets have a lot of builtin sensors: accelerometer for screen positioning, ambient light sensors to adjust the screen brightness, compass for navigation, proximity sensors to turn off the screen when next to your ear, etc.
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The GNU inetutils team is proud to present version 1.9.3 of the GNU networking utilities. The GNU Networking Utilities are the common networking utilities, clients and servers of the GNU Operating System.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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A new collection called “Surprise Attack Ultra Mega Pack” has been released on the Humble Bundle website, and it includes 12 Linux games.
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Version 1.1 of the Godot Game Engine has been released. This open-source game engine update brings a new 2D engine and claims to be one of the most advanced 2D engines for cross-platform games.
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CodeWeavers has recently released a new version of their commercial CrossOver software that allows GNU/Linux and Mac OS X users to run Windows applications. It’s a front-end for Wine!
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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RandR 1.5 was firmed up a few days ago for X.Org Server 1.18. The lead features to RandR 1.5 are monitor objects and tile support.
X.Org developer at Red Hat, David Airlie, has added the RandR 1.5 monitor support to the GTK3 tool-kit’s X11 backend.
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The latest edition of Simplicity Linux, version 15.4, recently became available for download. Simplicity Linux delivers just what its name suggests: It is a simpler way to run a fully powered Linux desktop on any computer you touch.
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New Releases
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On May 22, Softpedia was informed by the developer of Q4OS, a small distribution of GNU/Linux that uses the old-school KDE3 desktop environment and was designed for low-end computers, that the distro reached version 1.2.2.
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The first release candidate to OpenWRT 15.05, the “Chaos Calmer”, is now available for testing.
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Arch Family
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The Arch Linux developers informed users today, May 22, about the immediate availability of a critical update for the kernel packages used in the distribution that promises to patch the well-known EXT4 RAID data corruption issue.
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Ballnux/SUSE
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A new set of improvements has landed in openSUSE Tumbleweed, the rolling release branch of the famous openSUSE Linux distribution.
The advantages of a rolling-release Linux distribution is that developers can add all kinds of cool and new packages without having to resort to major new releases. They do test all these upgrades before releasing them, but they eventually land. The same can be said about the latest updates which cover the Linux kernel and the GNOME stack.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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That’s right — the bits are heading out the door (and onto our mirror network)! Expect the official announcement around 10am US Eastern time Tuesday morning.
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There’s one certainty in life, that is: Fedora will never arrive on time. In a post to the Fedora devel-announce mailing list the results of the ‘Fedora 22 Final Go/No-Go’ meeting were announced, it was a No-Go. Thankfully there was another meeting later today (May 22) to determine whether the release can be signed off and that’s where it was decided to ‘Go’.
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While yesterday there was risk of Fedora 22 being delayed beyond next week, this next Fedora Linux release was cleared today for being released next Tuesday.
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At the Fedora release Go/No-Go meeting last night it was determined that three bugs were serious enough to violate the release readiness criteria. As a result, the Final was blocked and a second Go/No-Go was scheduled for today. The results of that meeting are in! Elsewhere, Jack Germain said, “Simplicity Linux is easy to use and runs fast” and Swapnil Bhartiya shared his secret to converting users to Linux.
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At the Fedora 22 Final Go/No-Go Meeting #2 that just occurred, it was agreed to Go with the Fedora 22 Final by Fedora QA, Release Engineering and Development.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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He has posted the script on GitHub for others to try. It’s in really early stage of development but it’s surprising and at the same time disappointing to see that Valve made no efforts whatsoever to bring steaming services like Netflix to their platform that they plan to dominate the living room.
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A developer has put together some tools (still under construction) that would allow users to use SteamOS to play Netflix. It’s in its early stages, but the developer has made something that Valve hasn’t even thought about until now.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical has recently announced that Kernel fixes for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 have been implemented.
Once released, an Ubuntu system does not get any new features implemented, but kernel updates that include security fixes become available very often.
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Canonical has published details about a FUSE vulnerability in its Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems. This is not a major issue, but that’s not a reason not to upgrade.
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Mark Shuttleworth is reportedly considering a move to make Canonical a public company.
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While the week started out with some of us waxing nostalgic about penguins on racing cars, it seems that the march of progress and onward-and-upward improvement continues, if news from the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is of any indication.
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Because it is a new platform, the main problem is that it does not have a lot of applications yet, despite the fact that it has a big and active community, the community-driven apps are not enough.
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In the future, we may all have our own operating system, as well as 15 minutes of fame. Even now, the lure of owning, or more likely these days, hosting, one’s own OS continues to tempt companies and nations alike. This week we heard some rumbles about new OSes coming from Google, Huawei, and even the government of Russia. Meanwhile, Canonical took another step with Ubuntu Touch by announcing that Meizu has launched the developer version of the Ubuntu MX4 phone in China.
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Phones
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Android
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We always try to keep up with assorted fan communities to get a sense of how they’re feeling about their favorite products. Reddit’s Android fan community is typically very smart and insightful, which is why we were interested to see what Android M features they’d most like to see Google unveil at its big Google I/O conference next week. Here are the six most popular responses as ranked by upvotes.
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Google has already unwillingly confirmed that it’s going to unveil Android M at its I/O 2015 conference next week, and a few reports now claim to have knowledge of one of the major features that are going to be available to Android M users in the near future.
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Google’s interest in software for low-spec devices might take it through the emerging market and straight to the Internet of Things.
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I didn’t see this coming. Samsung turned up at the Mobile World Congress with a 50% larger stage, 25% cheesier jokes aimed at Apple and a 10% more dramatic mic-drop when it unveiled the S6.
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Every year Google’s I/O Conference is the place where creators and developers unite to discuss some of the biggest ideas that enrich and change the way people interact with their devices.
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Last year, Android Auto was unleashed at Google’s big developer’s conference, but that was just a taste of its dashboard ambitions. At next week’s Google I/O, all signs point to the company giving us a glimpse into a new infotainment system designed from the ground-up to be powered by Android.
Currently, Google’s in-car play is limited to Android Auto, which does maps, music, texts, calls, and voice searches. But when Google shows off the latest version of its mobile OS – Android “M” – part of that announcement is reportedly a car-specific build designed that could control everything from the stereo to the climate control and more.
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Android 5.1.1 is working its way through Google’s lengthy list of Nexus devices. After coming to Wi-Fi tablets first, this week we saw it start to hit cellular devices like the Nexus 5, N4, and N9 LTE. As you may have noticed, Google’s latest smartphone didn’t make the list. With any luck, the Nexus 6 will get an over-the-air update sometime this weekend.
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Android is getting a TouchID-style system of its own with Android M, according to Buzzfeed’s sources. Apparently it’ll act a lot like the iOS tool too, bypassing passwords for associated apps in favor of reading your fingerprint. Given that I/O is practically right around the corner (next week!) it shouldn’t be long before this all gets confirmed — Google hasn’t responded to our request for comment just yet.
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The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is considered to be one of the best devices of 2014 and one of the most influential devices this year. TouchWiz and Android 5.0.2 Lollipop on the device work together properly and the S Pen features that Samsung has added to the user interface are highly appreciated by users. Although a pretty large phone, the Galaxy Note 4 keeps its slim body and light-weight construction within users’ preferences. The only thing missing right now is the Galaxy Note 4 Android 5.1 Lollipop update.
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Taking a look back at seven days of news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories including the low sales of the Samsung Galaxy S6 family, the early arrival of the Galaxy Note 5, early reviews of the Sony Xperia Z4 tablet, Microsoft Office preview for Android, the new OnePlus 2 handset is benchmarked, Android Wear updates, MixRadio arrives on the platform, and the release of AdBlock’s Android browser.
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If you were itching to build an open source browser for Android, you can now do it using a practically all the code from Chrome for Android.
As Venture Beat spotted, Google has uploaded the bulk of the remaining code into the open source Chromium repository.
The open-source browser shares a lot of the same code as Google Chrome and often serves as the proving ground for new and experimental services.
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Mitsubishi’s “FlexConnect.IVI” automotive system runs Android on a TI Jacinto 6 SoC, and drives IVI, HUD, and cluster displays simultaneously.
The trouble with most in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems is that they’re mounted in the center of the dashboard, and therefore not ideally located for the driver. Yet the display also needs to be accessible from the front seat passenger. Mitsubishi Electric’s FlexConnect.IVI system follows the trend of integrating IVI screens with a separate GUI instrument cluster, and also adds a third GUI heads-up display (HUD) display projected against the windshield for greater driver safety.
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Open source development is the future of software. It’s great for users like you and me because open source software is usually free (not always) and often safer to use because malicious code is less likely to be implemented.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Google developers have released a new development version of the Google Chrome browser, and the latest version is now at 44.0.2403.9. It’s not a big update, but it does bring some interesting changes.
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Launched in September 2008, Google’s Chrome browser is now dominant in its share of the desktop web browser market, with approximately 1 in 4 Internet users interfacing with the web using the browser. What many Chrome users probably don’t know, however, is that it’s actually based off the open source Chromium browser, also developed by Google. Up until today Chrome for Android differed from its desktop counterpart in that it’s codebase wasn’t open source – meaning, the code for the app wasn’t publicly available for other developers to view, modify, and build upon. That changed today.
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SaaS/Big Data
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As the OpenStack cloud computing scene evolves, an ecosystem of tools is growing along with it. Tesora, the leading contributor to the OpenStack Trove open source project, cam out a few months ago with what it billed as the first enterprise-ready, commercial implementation of OpenStack Trove database as a service (DBaaS). The company also announced that it had open sourced its Tesora Database Virtualization Engine.
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Concentrating on the hybrid clioud during a time when it is seriously reshaping its whole business around cloud computing, IBM has announced that it will make OpenStack the central platform for its portfolio of cloud services. Dubbed IBM Cloud OpenStack Services, the new program will deliver a collection of OpenStack-based services for hybrid cloud customers.
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Business
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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In 1983, when I started the free software movement, malware was so rare that each case was shocking and scandalous. Now it’s normal.
To be sure, I am not talking about viruses. Malware is the name for a program designed to mistreat its users. Viruses typically are malicious, but software products and software preinstalled in products can also be malicious – and often are, when not free/libre.
In 1983, the software field had become dominated by proprietary (ie nonfree) programs, and users were forbidden to change or redistribute them. I developed the GNU operating system, which is often called Linux, to escape and end that injustice. But proprietary developers in the 1980s still had some ethical standards: they sincerely tried to make programs serve their users, even while denying users control over how they would be served.
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This week the FSF added our signature to a coalition letter addressed to Barack Obama, calling on him to reject any proposal to systematically undermine the encryption used to secure digital devices and software made in the US.
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Openness/Sharing
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Software developers—and even consumers—are familiar with the open-source movement. Open-source projects, like the popular Firefox web browser, are generally developed in a public, cooperative effort. The copyright holder “opens” the consumer’s right to modify the “source” product and distribute it to others as long as the result is also “open” for others to do the same.
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We hear enough about how so many third world diseases are preventable, but people just lack the resources; preventable diseases can too easily become severely crippling, or even deadly, due to the condition of poverty. We also hear enough good stories about people who are using their medical and technical knowledge to change this fact.
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Open Data
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Politiken, the third-largest daily newspaper in Denmark, has put online a data visualisation application which presents the budgets of 98 Danish municipalities, using Open Data.
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Open Hardware
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We’ve seen the first version of the Tessel a few years ago, and it’s still an interesting board: an ARM Cortex-M3 running at 180MHz, WiFi, 32 Megs of both Flash and RAM, and something that can be programmed entirely in JavaScript or Node.js. Since then, the company behind Tessel, Technical Machines, has started work on the Tessel 2, a board that’s continuing in the long tradition of taking chips from WiFi routers and making a dev board out of them. The Tessel 2 features a MediaTek MT7620 running Linux built on OpenWRT, Ethernet, 802.11bgn WiFi, an Atmel SAMD21 serving as a real-time I/O coprocessor, two USB ports, and everything can still be controlled through JavaScript, Node, with support for Rust and other languages in the works.
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Programming
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Zapcc is the latest compiler I heard about this morning… Zapcc is based on LLVM’s Clang C/C++ compiler but claims to be much faster than it.
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As of this month, the mainline code for LLVM and Clang finally have complete OpenMP support (currently against the OMP 3.1 specification).
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Security
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Using secret questions to give people access to their passwords is a terrible idea, according to a new paper from Google.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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It started in April with a rash of deals between Argentina and Russia during President Cristina Kirchner’s visit to Moscow.
And it continues with a $53 billion investment bang as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visits Brazil during the first stop of yet another South American commercial offensive – complete with a sweet metaphor: Li riding on a made in China subway train that will ply a new metro line in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the 2016 Olympics.
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Transparency Reporting
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Today it was reported that McNeilly turned himself in to the police at Edinburgh airport and is currently in military custody.
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With the Obama administration having prosecuted more national security leakers than any other, anonymous sources are the only way Americans can find out how their government is waging its secret war on terror. That’s why journalist Seymour Hersh deserves congratulations rather than condemnation for his story on the killing of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.
There’s been criticism of Hersh, much of it centering on his use of anonymous sources. But if you read Hersh’s story closely and check what others have written, you’ll see that his account holds up. The report was published in the May 21 edition of the London Review of Books.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Censorship
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If Theresa May has a reputation as a safe pair of hands, one has to wonder what she would have to do to lose it. The home secretary invented a human right to a pet cat in a conference speech, and allowed “go home” immigration vans to be wheeled out in diverse communities, before conceding that the vans themselves had to go home to the garage. Now we learn, courtesy of a leaked letter from her cabinet colleague Sajid Javid, about a wild scheme to censor broadcasters.
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UK Home Secretary Theresa May has been accused of trying to introduce state censorship of TV broadcasters by a senior Conservative minister in a leaked letter.
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In a letter to David Cameron written before the general election, then Culture Secretary Sajid Javid attacked Ms May’s plan to use regulator Ofcom to vet programmes before they were broadcast in the strongest terms, saying it posed a threat to freedom of speech.
Mr Javid, now Business Secretary, also said Ofcom would be turned from a regulator into a state “censor” by the proposal and lead to comparisons with “regimes” with dubious human rights records, according to the letter which was leaked to The Guardian newspaper.
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Home Secretary Theresa May has been accused of attempting to introduce government censorship of British television programming by one of her Cabinet colleagues, a leaked letter has shown.
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The phenomenon of the Streisand Effect, where high-profile attempts to censor or prevent people from seeing something result in massively increased attention for the something, is a brilliant example of psychological reactance, the tendency of people to strongly object when a freedom is being taken from them [even though they weren’t using it] and do whatever they can to restore it [which will get them arrested if they’re not careful].
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Wikipedia is yet again being censored by China’s Great Firewall.
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Español
On Thursday, May 21, the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU) — an illegal opposition party created in 2011 — uploaded a YouTube video of activists in the southern city of Palma Soriano sharing DVDs filled with news and other hard-to-access information with the public.
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Uh oh… We’re not sure Taylor Swift said “eff you” on stage at the Billboard Music Awards, a Fox News anchor definitely didn’t talk about the prospect of free “cock” across the nation and we’re pretty sure a little boy didn’t beg his mother to get nasty with a homeless man.
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A New York benefit show for the National Coalition Against Censorship cancelled last week over allegedly offensive material will go on at a new venue — though without the Mohammed-themed play that first started the controversy.
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An anti-censorship benefit event at New York City’s Sheen Center was canceled recently over concerns about some of the scheduled speeches and Neil LaBute‘s play Muhammad Gets a Boner.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has proclaimed the Film and Publication Board’s (FPB) Draft Online Regulation Policy “Africa’s worst new Internet censorship law”.
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As a woman who writes articles about video games, I hear the word “censorship” a lot these days. To hear certain corners of the internet tell it, “censorship” supposedly means having discussions on the images we see in media, asking people to think about the language they use and the effect it achieves, doing any kind of media criticism, or moderating comments so that nobody can shit them up with frantic sealioning about how other people are being too sensitive to criticism.
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“Kanye West was grossly over-censored at the Billboard Music Awards,” the statement reads. “Non-profane lyrics such as ‘with my leather black jeans on’ were muted for over 30-second intervals. As a result, his voice and performance were seriously misrepresented.
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Kanye West was all ready and amped to close out the 2015 Billboard Music Awards with “All Day” and “Black Skinhead.” But home viewers weren’t able to fully enjoy Yeezy’s performance, as the broadcast heavily muted parts of the show, including words that don’t even anger the FCC or violate its regulations.
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Authorities in Iran are prosecuting another writer on national security charges for signing statements and writing posts that criticized state censorship on the Facebook page of the Iranian Writers’ Association.
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An administrative court in Egypt ordered the prime minster to take the necessary and immediate action to censor pornographic websites on Wednesday. While the court specifically calls for immediate action, the order can still be appealed at the Supreme Administrative Court.
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An Egyptian court has ordered Egypt’s Prime Minister take immediate action to ban pornography websites in Egypt, reported state media Al-Ahram.
The decision by Egypt’s Administrative Court on Wednesday contradicts the same court’s decision two years ago in which it decided not to ban pornography websites, stated Ahram Online.
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Country’s new gender equality minister among those blurred from photograph on grounds that pictures of women offend conservative religious mores
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When it was announced that Miri Regev was to be the culture and sports minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth government, some people made jibes about her suitability for the position, based on her reputation as a loud and inflammatory politician who sees the world in clear terms of good and pure (us) and evil and impure (the entire world, including groups in Israel that don’t think “as we do.”)
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Only once in a while does an Internet censorship law or regulation come along that is so audacious in its scope, so misguided in its premises, and so poorly thought out in its execution, that you have to check your calendar to make sure April 1 hasn’t come around again. The Draft Online Regulation Policy recently issued by the Film and Publication Board (FPB) of South Africa is such a regulation. It’s as if the fabled prude Mrs. Grundy had been brought forward from the 18th century, stumbled across hustler.com on her first excursion online, and promptly cobbled together a law to shut the Internet down. Yes, it’s that bad.
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Today, in an important First Amendment decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked an attempt by the NAACP to use trademark as a tool to censor unwanted online criticism—a result we had urged in an amicus brief filed with the court back in October. The Fourth Circuit overruled a federal district court in Virginia, which had previously ruled that the Radiance Foundation’s use of the moniker “NAACP” infringed on the organization’s trademark.
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Rockstar Games and parent company Take-Two Interactive have filed a lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) over the latter’s in-production TV drama film Game Changer (working title).
The BBC revealed the project last month, confirming earlier reports. The film traces the conflict between Rockstar Games lawyer Jack Thompson over Rockstar’s controversial Grand Theft Auto series, with Bill Paxton playing Thompson and Daniel Radcliffe starring as Rockstar Games co-founder Same Houser.
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Privacy
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In October 2014, the IPT hearings produced another unexpected admission from the UK government. As Privacy International reported: “Details of previously unknown internal policies, which GCHQ was forced to reveal during legal proceedings challenging their surveillance practices in the wake of the Snowden revelations, reveal that intelligence agencies can gain access to bulk data collected from US cables or through US corporate partnerships without having to obtain a warrant from the Secretary of State.” The safeguards on how this material can be used are minimal: “On the face of the descriptions provided to the claimants, the British intelligence agencies can trawl through foreign intelligence material without meaningful restrictions and can keep such material, which includes both communications content and metadata, for up to two years.”
In December 2014, the IPT ruled against the Privacy International group of human rights organisations, and “accepted the security services’ position that they may in principle carry out mass surveillance of all fibre optic cables entering or leaving the UK and that vast intelligence sharing with the NSA does not contravene the right to privacy because of the existence of secret policies.”
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In 2011 and 2012, the NSA and the communications intelligence agencies of its “Five Eyes” allies developed and tested a set of add-ons to their shared Internet surveillance capability that could identify and target communications between mobile devices and popular mobile app stores—including those of Google and Samsung. According to an NSA document published by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the targeting capability could have been used to launch “man-in-the-middle” attacks on mobile app downloads, allowing the NSA and other agencies to install code on targeted devices and gather intelligence on their users.
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Edward Snowden has hailed landmark shifts in Congress and the US courts on NSA surveillance but cautioned that much more needs to be done to restore the balance in favour of privacy.
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The conversations are, mainly, pretty mundane: one man at East Village restaurant Cafe Orlin, talks about publishing photographs. A woman at Crunch is talking to her personal trainer about how much she enjoys watching House of Cards. A guy in a cafe is telling a story about getting evicted from an apartment with “a bathtub the size of a racquetball court”.
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Over the past year, they’ve hidden dozens of mini tape recorders under tables and benches around New York City, secretly taping people’s conversations. This week, they launched a website where they’ve posted some of their recordings. They range from the mundane, like a woman at a gym talking about her plans for the evening, to the intimate, like a man at a restaurant talking about his lover’s fetishes.
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The head of the German Intelligence Agency (BND) told a special parliamentary committee on Thursday that his agency is ‘dependent on’ the American National Security Agency (NSA).
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More than 400,000 new keywords have been found in German spy agency BND’s computers, a German media report says. The findings would further undermine the organization, accused of helping the NSA with surveillance.
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The scheme is laid out in a top-secret NSA presentation dated June 2010 and titled “Medical Pattern of Life: Targeting High Value Individual #1,” which was among the files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
[...]
Once the compound was located, the U.S. government also wanted DNA evidence that bin Laden was inside. Not long after the raid, it was reported that the CIA had set up a hepatitis vaccine drive in Abbottabad as a front to obtain DNA samples. The doctor working for the CIA, Shakil Afridi, was arrested by Pakistani intelligence and eventually sentenced to decades in prison — not for allegedly working for the CIA, but on charges of aiding a militant group.
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Chinese kit-maker Huawei isn’t apportioning swelling sales outside the Middle Kingdom to NSA snooping fears, more that double digit growth in Europe is related to brand recognition a decade after it up shop there.
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The NSA and its surveillance state supporters in the Senate are making a last ditch effort to prevent Congress from taking away any of the spy agency’s authority to snoop on innocent Americans, despite the fact that there is now broad support for NSA reform in Congress.
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Two U.S. Senate Republicans predicted Friday that their chamber will have enough votes to pass a short extension of three U.S. spy programs until Congress and the White House can come up with a final plan.
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“You can’t enjoy your civil liberties if you’re in a coffin,” Christie — a likely presidential candidate — said earlier this week.
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As Congress ponders the fate of the PATRIOT Act — and the counterterrorism surveillance programs it authorizes — two potential Republican presidential candidates stuck up for those programs Friday at a conference of Republican activists.
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Kirk Wiebe says the Senate is not challenging the authority that allows bulk collection of phone records
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Russian companies are taking no drastic steps to replace US-made equipment.
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The creator of a searchable database of 27,000 National Security Agency (NSA) contractors says his team has received a death threat as well as legal threats.
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The news that the NSA is preparing to begin winding down their bulk surveillance program against Americans would be welcome to the general public, but it’s probably not true, and the claim is certainly not directed at us.
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After Congress passed the PATRIOT Act in the panic following the 9/11 and anthrax attacks, officials described it as a way of breaking down a wall that had kept the CIA and FBI from sharing information. They argued that international terrorism investigators needed the same powerful tools that a grand jury gives law enforcement agents to conduct broad criminal inquiries.
Section 215 was already law, but it was expanded by the PATRIOT Act to allow federal agents to obtain not only “business records,” but also “any tangible things.”
Librarians were among the first to sound the alarm, and they were ridiculed for it. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft accused them of spreading “hysteria” that FBI agents were tracking what people were reading and “how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel.”
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Internet anonymity has become difficult to procure as the NSA is doing everything in its power to keep tabs on Internet activity. One way that people have been protecting their anonymity is by using the anonymizing network, Tor. It was popularly used to access dark web sites like Silk Road, but it can also be used for good. For example, people in certain countries without free speech protections could be jailed or worse for disparaging online claims against the government; Tor provides a way to prevent those users’ web activity from being tracked. As it turns out, Tor isn’t as safe from the prying eyes of big government surveillance as we once thought.
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It has become very hard to keep internet anonymous, as the NSA is doing everything in its ability to keep a check on internet activity. The hackers which have the full force and backing of Beijing, London, and Washington, D.C. are anonymity’s toughest opponents. People have been using the anonymizing network, Tor to protect their anonymity. Tor was generally used to enter dark web sites like Silk Road, but it can also be used for good.
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This week, Paul tried to recapture that spirit, inveighing for 10.5 hours against the National Security Agency’s data collection program — an effort that also attempted to boost his presidential campaign.
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One in three Germans have said their trust in the government is shaken. Regardless of the media outrage over the allegations that German intelligence helped the NSA, Angela Merkel wasn’t rushing to offer an explanation.
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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is coming under increasing pressure to divulge a list of targets, including the IP addresses of individual computers, that German intelligence tracked on behalf of the US National Security Agency (NSA).
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Among the many arguments presented in opposition to allowing the federal government collecting mass amounts of data from people who aren’t even suspected of terrorism (besides the Fourth Amendment violations) is that: one, it hasn’t actually helped stop any terrorist plots; and two, we can’t trust a massive federal bureaucracy to subsequently dispose of information it gathers unrelated to any cases its working on.
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“The court” in Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial is a shadowy tribunal that tries (and executes) Josef K., the story’s protagonist, without informing him of the crime he’s charged with, the witnesses against him, or how he can defend himself. (Worth noting: The FISA court doesn’t “try” anyone. Also, it doesn’t kill people.)
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There’s a reason why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. According to whistleblower former NSA official William Binney, the NSA has too much data to sift through, that it hampers the agency’s effectiveness in detecting threats before they happen with potentially deadly results. Basically, the NSA is no longer as effective in preventing any attacks. What it’s good for now is forensic investigation to trace the perpetrators of any terrorist attack—after it happens. The Boston Marathon gets bombed, the government finds the Tsarnaevs quickly enough, (through a lot of security videos and much later their transmissions) but the agency still failed to prevent the bombing from happening. So all the data the NSA has collected is actually slowing the agency down. Imagine a cop so pumped up with donuts he can’t catch up to a purse snatcher on foot.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Such a plan would affect over 500 million citizens’ ability to use the Internet. Imagine using Twitter and not being able to link to a news article without paying a fee. It would shut down the spread of news. This is just one way copyright is being twisted to censor the Web – but it’s far from the only way. That’s why we are part of a huge network of individuals and organizations committed to stopping these censorship plans, wherever they emerge.
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It’s taken more than two years for Swedish authorities to seize two key Pirate Bay domains but over in the United States the process is dramatically quicker. A TV company has just achieved similar aims against 11 ‘pirate’ streaming domains after being granted a comprehensive ex parte restraining order by a Florida court.
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Send this to a friend
05.22.15
Posted in News Roundup at 10:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Clear Linux, Intel’s new container-based distribution, bristles with ideas for how to run containers and perform OS management
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It’s been more than six months since the OpenWrt developers announced the release of the OpenWrt “Barrier Breaker” 14.07 custom firmware for routers, but today they’ve just informed us of the immediate availability for download of the first Release Candidate version of the upcoming OpenWrt “Chaos Calmer” 15.05 update.
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Android smartphones are becoming very powerful devices, and many of them can easily handle the word-processing, photo editing and other desktop PC-type tasks. So why not make your Android smartphone double as a desktop PC? Here we show you how to install the Linux variant Debian on your Android device, on which you can then install popular programs like LibreOffice and GIMP. Best of all, you don’t need to root your device to do this.
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The AndEX Live DVD that we introduced to you a few weeks ago has been updated today with new features, such as the latest Linux 4.0 kernel.
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Issue 6 of Linux Voice is now nine months old, so we’re releasing it under the Creative Commons BY-SA license. You can share and modify all content from the magazine (apart from adverts), even for commercial purposes, providing you credit Linux Voice as the original source and retain the same license.
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Desktop
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Yesterday, Europe had an average of 2.29% page-views from GNU/Linux desktops according to StatCounter.
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This suggests the spiking systems are a single organization on a single schedule with a single system administrator… Sounds like schools to me but it could also be a large business or government or particular device sold in huge quantity without automatic updating. The 3 spikes on weekdays suggests to me it’s the schools.
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Yesterday, with nearly 2 billion citizens of the Internet, GNU/Linux desktops had 1.75%, ~35million. Chrome GNU/Linux had 0.46%, ~10million, with another 7million expected in 2015.
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Server
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Intel reckons that’s harder to do with Linux containers as “underlying kernel still can be attacked from within the container.” That’s bad because it means “all containers on the same host can be compromised, regardless of the intended isolation between them,” making multitennacy risky and therefore unlikely.
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The biggest example is CoreOS, a heavily venture-backed startup based in San Francisco that has already gained some early attention as a potential alternative to Docker. The company’s open source project dubbed Rocket has won backing from powerhouses like Google and Intel and others like Red Hat and VMware.
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Intel has become the latest vendor to throw its weight behind the push to solve the security woes of containers with the launch of a new technology that promises to address the risks currently standing in the way of widespread production use from the hardware level up. It’s the latest fruit of the internal Clear Linux Project.
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The downside is that it does not work well with Linux containers as underlying kernel still can be attacked from within the container and all containers on the same host can be compromised.
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Containers are a solution to the problem of how to get software to run reliably when moved from one computing environment to another. This could be from a developer’s laptop to a test environment, from a staging environment into production and perhaps from a physical machine in a data center to a virtual machine in a private or public cloud.
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Kernel Space
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Jiri Slaby, the maintainer of the 3.12 kernel series, announced earlier today that a new maintenance release is available for all users of this LTS (Long Term Support) Linux kernel.
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RAID bug can corrupt the filesystem, patches incoming, caution advised
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After yesterday’s announcement of Linux kernel 3.12.43 LTS, which got numerous changes, including a patch for the famous EXT4 data corruption issue that plagued almost all Linux kernel branches, today we can report that Linux kernel 3.18.14 LTS is out and it also includes a patch for the respective EXT4 bug.
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The lengthy list of changes to systemd 220 can be found via this mailing list post.
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Lennart Poettering had the great pleasure of announcing today, May 21, the immediate availability for download of a new release of his controversial systemd init system that is adopted by more and more Linux kernel-based operating systems.
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The Linux kernel continues advancing on many hardware fronts, among which is support for ACPI 6.0 and the kernel is making the new LIBND subsystem for non-volatile memory device support.
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Applications
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Weblate 2.3 has been released today. It comes with better features for project owners, better file formats support and more configuration options for users.
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Nowadays, Social platforms are making the biggest impact in both professional and personal life of all. We’re all virtually connected with each other using Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, G+, and Linkedin etc. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a business man, a student or whoever, the Social platform takes most part in your self or business promotion. Using social media, anyone can easily collaborate with anyone and spread their business promotions, ideas, features or whatever to the world. So, implementing your own social platform for your oraganization is a good practise to communicate globally. There are may collaboration tools out there. Today, In this tutorial, we are going to discuss such kind of collaboration tool called ‘eXo platform’.
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A year ago, I started working on a new storage library for low-level operations with various types of block devices — libblockdev. Today, I’m happy to announce that the library reached the 1.0 milestone which means that it covers all the functionality that has been stated in the initial goals and it’s going to keep the API stable.
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No new functionality was introduced so this is a good candidate for a stable release.
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Apparently, no one can stop the ever growing “Popcorn Time” community of movie pirates, as after an iOS Installer was released to allow users to install the Popcorn Time app on their iPhone or iPad devices from a Mac or Windows machine, there’s now a browser-based video streaming service too.
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As you may know, Enpass is a free, multi-platform password manager available for the main desktop and mobile platforms: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. It uses SQLCipher (open source extension to SQLite) for the 256-bit AES encryption of database files.
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Note that if you use multiple monitors, the tray will only show up on the primary monitor!
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Instructionals/Technical
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The first time I used vi was in a college programming course. It was the default editor on the computer lab’s UNIX systems we used to compile our assignments. I remember when our professor first introduced vi and explained that you used the hjkl keys to move your cursor around instead of the arrow keys. Before this point, I was a pico user (that dates me a bit now), and it seemed so backward to me that vi used hjkl instead.
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Games
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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is the huge Kickstarter from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night developer Koji Igarashi. I spoke to the developer to clarify about their Linux support.
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Gas Guzzlers Extreme was causing major excitement when it was planned for Linux, but sadly things didn’t turn out so well.
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Greedy Guns is a fast paced action platformer with exploration, ability upgrades and loads of bullets. It’s available in a free and open beta on Itch.io.
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As you probably noticed that SuperTuxKart 0.9 released ~ 1 month ago. I tried to build it in the same day, but build failed on ARM architecture.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Right from the start, we at KDAB have had lots of fun playing a leading role – and as the Qt experts, we look forward to continuing to contribute to the growing Qt community.
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We found out that the German Discworld covers were made with Krita, and had the privilege to ask the artist to talk about her work.
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The other day I introduced a new Rust code completion plugin for Kate, powered by Phil Dawes’ nifty Racer. Since then there’s been a whole bunch of additional developments!
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So what is exactly new in this build? Especially interesting are all the improvements to PSD import/export support. Yesterday we learned that Katarzyna uses PSD as her working format when working with Krita – we still don’t recommend that, but it’s easier now!
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Tarballs are due on 2015-05-25 before 23:59 UTC for the GNOME 3.17.2 unstable release, which will be delivered on Wednesday. Modules which were proposed for inclusion should try to follow the unstable schedule so everyone can test them. Please make sure that your tarballs will be uploaded before Monday 23:59 UTC: tarballs uploaded later than that will probably be too late to get in 3.17.2. If you are not able to make a tarball before this deadline or if you think you’ll be late, please send a mail to the release team and we’ll find someone to roll the tarball for you!
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While we are eagerly waiting for the final release of the Cinnamon 2.6 desktop environment to become available in the main software repositories of our favorite Linux distributions, Clement Lefebvre has announced that we can install it in a Beta form in Linux Mint.
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The GNOME developers are trying all kinds of interesting interactions with devices outside the desktop environment, and now they are working on a way to get the GPS locations of an Android phone.
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Foresight Linux is shutting down after not being able to generate enough participation to warrant its continued development.
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OpenVZ
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This OpenVZ template comes with slackpkg pre-configured, using the generic URL “mirrors.slackware.com” so that your packages will always be downloaded from a mirror near you. OpenVZ is a bit peculiar in the sense that it knows a little bit about how Linux distros are being configured. So the OpenVZ control panel is the place where you configure the hostname, IP address and root password of your VPS. In order to make the Slackware installation internet-aware out of the box, I added two Google DNS IP addresses to its “/etc/resolv.conf” file. The result? Once provisioned, the VPS starts fast and mere seconds after booting I was able to login as root to my new machine.
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Just wanted to share my answers to the, “What features are absent in OpenVZ from your point of view?” question.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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Today at Fedora 22 Final Go/No-Go meeting it was decided that Fedora 22 Final is No-Go. More details in meeting minutes [1].
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Mark Shuttleworth has been quoted as saying he’s considering taking Canonical public. He needs to talk to “his team,” but Shuttleworth thinks the time is just about right. Speaking of Canonical, Jack Wallen today said that poor little Canonical is just picked on by the Linux community and the Linux community is only hurting itself. On the other side of town, Fedora 22 is a No-Go tonight, but getting revisited tomorrow.
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Fedora 22 is scheduled to be released next week but for that to happen there’s still a number of blocker bugs that need to be addressed. The second release candidate of Fedora 22 Final is now available for those wishing to stress this major update of the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.
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At today’s Go/No-Go meeting it was decided that Fedora 22 Final is not ready for release. However, tomorrow that decision will be re-evaluated.
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During today’s Fedora 22 Final Go/No-Go meeting, the Fedora Linux developers did not approve the launch of the final version of the Fedora 22 Linux distribution, which already got a one week delay from the initial schedule.
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Debian Family
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I wanted to upgrade my server to Jessie, and didn’t want to keep the 3.2 kernel indefinitely, so I had to update to at least 3.14, and find something to make my life (and maybe some others) easier.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical and Ubuntu have been around for more than a decade, but not everyone knows that the company is privately owned and not publicly listed. It looks like Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical, might consider filing for an IPO, which means making the company public.
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Shuttleworth, who has funded the popular Linux company out of his own pocket since its founding in October 2004, said that while a final decision has not been made, “He’s seriously thinking about taking Canonical public.”
The decision won’t be entirely his. “I need to talk it over with my Canonical team.” He also said that the idea has been being seriously kicked around internally for the last several months.
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Because it is in its early development stages, Ubuntu Desktop Next 15.10 it does not bring too many changes to Ubuntu Desktop Next 15.04, but however, if you want to test it, I recommend you do this in a virtual environment.
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Ubuntu 15.10 has been dubbed “Wily Werewolf” and a release date has been set for it. You can expect Ubuntu 15.10 to be available on October 22, according to Softpedia.
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The UK government releases every year a security guidance that details various problems and security problems that are identified in systems used by the authorities. They also revealed some issues with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, although it’s not something major.
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Aaeon’s AIOT-X1000 SBC runs Wind River Linux on an Intel Quark chip, and offers dual Ethernet, dual mini-PCIe, and optional WiFi, BT, ZigBee, and 3G.
Last year, Taiwan based Aaeon debuted the AIOT-X1000 SBC as the guts of its AIOT-X1000 IoT Gateway. Now the 3.5-inch board is available on its own for a wide range of IoT applications. The name combines the prefix “Aaeon Internet of Things” with the board’s single-threaded Intel Quark X1000 system-on-chip, which here runs the Yocto-based Wind River Linux. The low power, Pentium ISA-compatible SoC can be clocked at up to 400MHz, and has no GPU.
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You should know that there’s an on-going Indiegogo campaign (with flexible funding) for a new computer board called Lemon Pi and developed by the EMBEDSTUDIO Chinese company.
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Phones
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Tizen
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The Top 20 most popular Samsung Z1 apps to be downloaded from the Tizen store during April 2015 have been released. Many favourites are still there this month like WhatsApp, Opera Mini, McAfee AV, Trucaller and LockApps. Notable new ones are the highly requested MX Player and Speed Truck which made it to #3 position.
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Android
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Google may be the next big company to take on the internet of things, giving it an entry into the world of connected everyday objects. According to The Information, Google has developed software that can run on low-power devices and give them the ability to communicate with other connected devices nearby. Internally, the software is reportedly being called “Brillo,” but it may debut under an Android name next week, at Google’s I/O conference. The Information reports that the software could be used on everything from major home appliances like refrigerators to smaller tech like garden monitors.
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The biggest updates for Android user is the version upgrade, and we’re already at v5.0! Google every year comes out with an update for the Android OS which helps them update the users’ Operating System of the phone.
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Google continues adding new “micro features” that continue to bridge the gap between desktop and mobile. Jack Wallen believes these features that have helped to crown Google the King of Mobility.
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You know you spend a lot of time on your smartphone, but what are you doing with it? It’s a question QualityTime (Android 4.0+) attempts to answer, monitoring activity on your handset and revealing the apps that you just can’t pull yourself away from. Here’s how to get the app up and running on your device.
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As per user reports, Sony has finally started rolling out the Android Lollipop update to its Xperia Z and Xperia ZR handsets, specifically Android 5.0.2. The Japanese tech giant also announced it was rolling out a firmware update for its Xperia Z1, Xperia Z1 Compact, and Xperia Z Ultra smartphones with several bug fixes.
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Sling TV, Dish Network’s Internet TV service designed for cord cutters, is now available on the Android TV platform, the company is announcing this morning, including Google’s Nexus Player. This addition expands the service’s already fairly extensive lineup of devices it supports, which today includes Roku and Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, Xbox One, as well as iOS and Android phones and tablets, and Mac and PC desktops.
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Google has begun rolling out the latest version of its Lollipop operating system to a few new Android devices this week, including the Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 9 tablet with LTE capabilities. If you own any of these devices, you should be able to download the 5.1.1 update over-the-air in the coming days, but we’ve included direct links below if you’d rather not wait.
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Setting a timer or alarm has been one of my favorite conveniences since I started using a Wear device regularly 6 months ago. Granted, they aren’t must-haves in my life, but they do come in handy occasionally, and I find myself using them on Wear more often than I would on my phone.
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Google I/O will be here in mere days, and that means it’s time for the 2015 edition of our Google Tracker. If you’re new to the series, Google Tracker is a running list of all the projects going on at Google HQ. We do bi-annual installments—one at the beginning of the year and one just before I/O—making this the fourth edition on Ars.
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If you recently sold your old Android phone, chances are your text messages, emails, pictures and Facebook key are still in there, even if you wiped its memory clean.
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We’ve gotten a few reports today of a new feature hitting the YouTube app, and it’s a big one. After an extended public outcry, Google appears to be adding support for 60fps video to Android. Videos shot in 60fps look much smoother and more realistic, but this doesn’t seem to be live for everyone yet.
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Asus has announced that the ZenFone 4, ZenFone 5, and ZenFone 6 smartphones’ scheduled Android 5.0 Lollipop update has been delayed.
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Google appears to be on the brink of revamping Chrome OS to broaden its appeal and give it a whole new kind of life. The evolution is happening on a few different fronts, many of which we’ve seen the beginnings of in bits and pieces already. Soon, though, the big picture should start to become clear.
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I’m likely on the hook for providing a version of my “WhyWeFOSS” as an example, so stay tuned for that post in the near-ish future.
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At the Vancouver OpenStack summit, software-defined storage company Nexenta announced the general availability of its NexentaEdge Block and Object Storage platform, as well as a strategic alliance agreement with Canonical and its Ubuntu OpenStack.
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The combination of open source and open standards ensures long-term preservation of electronic records and prevents IT vendor lock-in, says Luciano Ammenti, head of the IT department at the Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) in Vatican City.
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If your next software development project is going to be successful, be it a simple Java EE deployment or a full-scale role out of a private cloud initiative based on OpenStack, a tremendous amount of code has to be written. The sad state of affairs enterprise organizations need to reckon with is that there is no way all that code can be written by the internal development team.
So what’s an organization to do? According to Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, successful organizations reach out to the open source community. “There is too much software to be written for any one organization to write this software on its own,” Zemlin said. “Open source allows businesses to focus on only the most important aspects of their technology stacks; only the things that truly differentiate the organization.”
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Jim Whitehurst recently wrote about the performance management approach we use at Red Hat for the Harvard Business Review. In his article, Whitehurst details one aspect of the performance management process that differentiates Red Hat from other companies—its flexibility.
We have a system for tracking performance (called Compass), and we have expectations for when Compass reviews are performed (at least annually, preferably quarterly). But the details and structure of implementation are up to individual managers or teams. I lead a team of more than 100 people at Red Hat, and I’d like to share how I measure and manage performance the open source way.
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That crazy DrumPants wearable tech we first saw in ’07 — the same one that raised 75 grand on KickStarter and was featured on Shark Tank in 2014 — is back. Its creators have now turned to Indiegogo to fund the mass production of DrumPants version 2.0, which they claim is faster and stronger than its predecessor. Plus, it’s now open source. The wearable, for those who’ve only just heard of it, isn’t actually a pair of pants with drums (sorry to disappoint). It’s a set of accessories comprised of two elongated drum pads and two foot pedals you can use to play different kinds of instruments, along with a knob that lets you choose between samples and musical scales. You can wear them over your clothes, or under, like the jamming dude in the GIF above.
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Events
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We have been back from Libre Graphics Meeting 2015 in Toronto for 2 weeks now. It is time for a report! 
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I’ve started the day with the session called “Crack, Train, Fix, Release” by Chris Heilmann. While it was very interesting for some unknown reason I was expecting a talk more closely related to software testing. Unfortunately at the same time in the other room was a talk called “Integration Testing from the Trenches” by Nicolas Frankel which I missed.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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The code behind Google’s Chrome browser has always been open source—it’s known as the Chromium project. The Android port has thus far been more locked down, but that changes today with a big commit from the development team. Chrome for Android is now almost entirely open source, and that could mean some cool new browsers are on the way.
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Google has uploaded the majority of the remaining Chrome for Android code into the open-source Chromium repository. In other words, Chrome for Android now matches Chrome for desktop in terms of available open source code, letting anyone examine, modify, and compile the project.
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SaaS/Big Data
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There are not enough OpenStack experts to go around. At OpenStack Summit, there is literally not a single company here that is not looking for more programmers, architects, and engineers.
But, they’re coming. OpenStack is now backed by more than 200 vendors, including Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Oracle, RackSpace Red Hat, and VMware. Is there any enterprise out there which doesn’t have a working relationship with at least of one of these companies?
This is making OpenStack deployment easier. If your company doesn’t have the talent it needs to do it in-house, Canonical, Red Hat, and Mirantis, to name but three of the leading OpenStack deployment firms, are all ready to jump in and help you get up and running. In short, you can pay cash today and have a working OpenStack cloud tomorrow.
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CDW is out with its Cloud 401 report, based on interviews with more than 1,200 IT managers from many industries. The report finds that more than a third of all computing services today are delivered throughthe cloud. It also determined that organizations are actively pursuing new services: Thirty-five percent of respondents say they plan to shift new IT services to the cloud.
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In one recent survey, IT managers said that the most important project their teams are working on for 2015 is cloud computing. And IDC predicts that by 2018, the worldwide market for public cloud services will be worth more than $127 billion, accounting for “more than half of worldwide software, server and storage spending growth.”
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“The moment we stop listening to users and it’s just a vendor-to-vendor conversation, or it’s just a developer-to-developer conversation and the user doesn’t have a seat at the table, that would leave us with a vulnerability that could undo all the good work we’ve done,” Collier said. “We just have to keep listening to users and we’ll be ok.”
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Building a company from freely available software might not seem like the most logical idea, but it’s one that is working for many vendors in the OpenStack cloud ecosystem. In a panel session at the OpenStack Summit here, the founders of cloud storage vendor SwiftStack, cloud database vendor Tesora, cloud vendor Piston Cloud Computing and cloud service provider Blue Box Cloud as well as the CEO of DreamHost, Simon Anderson, detailed their experiences and challenges in building OpenStack-powered businesses.
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David Ward, Development CTO and Chief Architect at Cisco, has been thinking a lot about how networking works in the cloud era, and he shared some of those thoughts at the OpenStack Summit here.
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Just a year into their production use of OpenStack for powering their internal cloud, they are leveraging it for everything from video to networking to deploying web applications, all on an in-house OpenStack cloud spread across two data centers. And this rapid change is getting noticed inside the company.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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This is an in-progress scratch-pad of notes to build release notes from as and when we release. Please do not list features that are to be shipped already in the 4.4 release! Please do not add wish-list features that you hope will be implemented, but only what actually is implemented already.
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Following yesterday’s LibreOffice 5.0 branching in Git, the first beta for LibreOffice 5.0 is now available for testing.
The Document Foundation announced on their blog the availability of the first beta for LibreOffice 5.0, which will be officially released around the end of July or early August.
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Healthcare
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Everyone wants personalized healthcare. From the moment they enter their primary care clinic they have certain expectations that they want met in regards to their personalized medical care.
Most physicians are adopting a form of electronic healthcare, and patient records are being converted to a digital format. But electronic health records pose interesting problems related to sorting through vast amounts of patient data.
This is where open source programming languages come in, and they have the ability to radically change the medical landscape.
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Business
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This is the second article in a series all about open source business models, specifically around open source platforms.
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Licensing
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For months now Allwinner has been violating the GPL and have attempted to cover it up by obfuscating their code and playing around with their licenses while jerking around the open-source community. At least today they’ve made a positive change in open-sourcing more of their “CedarX” code.
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Openness/Sharing
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There was a time when a reporter was called a hack.
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Open Hardware
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The Pi-Top is an open source DIY laptop made using the latest in kitchen table manufacturing technology
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Last Monday marked the start of the RoboUniverse Conference and Expo at The Javits Center in New York City. Twelve companies vied for a single cash prize, as well as complimentary investment and legal services. Voxel8 was the winner of the competition, and while all the entrants gave fascinating rapid-fire pitches for their startups, there was one company that stood out for me and has seemingly slipped under the radar in the 3D printing space. The company I’m speaking about is Ragnar Robotics.
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The Luka EV is an all-electric, street legal vehicle designed and built as an open-source experiment. Currently, the vehicle is targeting a single-charge range of around 186 miles, with a top speed of about 81 mph. The Luka’s price should land in the area of $22,445 when all is said and done. The creators are aiming at a design and build time of less than a year, and are using a FRP body based on a Solidworks model of a video game car.
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Programming
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Remembering what the programming world was like in 1995 is no easy task. Object-oriented programming, for one, was an accepted but seldom practiced paradigm, with much of what passed as so-called object-oriented programs being little more than rebranded C code that used >> instead of printf and class instead of struct. The programs we wrote those days routinely dumped core due to pointer arithmetic errors or ran out of memory due to leaks. Source code could barely be ported between different versions of Unix. Running the same binary on different processors and operating systems was crazy talk.
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Security
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The University of London’s Computing Centre (ULCC) has recovered from a major cyberattack that cut dozens of UK institutions from the institution’s IT services for five hours this morning.
The incident appears to have started around 7am and by 9am ULCC said it was looking into a firewall issue. By 10am, engineers had reset its firewalls and core routers but had been unable to solve the issue.
By mid-day, the assessment had become clearer. “All our services are now up and running again! The networking issue was caused by a cyber attack,” read an update on the institution’s website.
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Dennis Fisher talks with security pioneer Marcus Ranum about writing an early Internet firewall at DEC, the security gold-rush era of the 1990s and early 2000s, why he never patented most of the ideas he has come up with and how he found peace of mind.
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Google analyzed hundreds of millions of password security questions and answers, revealing how startlingly easy it is for would-be hackers to get into someone else’s account.
[...]
With ten guesses, an attacker would have a near one in four chance of guessing the name of an Arabic speaker’s first teacher. Ten guesses gave cyber criminals a 21 percent chance of guessing the middle name of a Spanish speaker’s father.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor who predicted in 2003 that proponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq would be “vindicated” upon the discovery of weapons of mass destruction there, is holding fast to the idea that the deadly and expensive conflict was the right move. Kristol’s justifications for the war, however, have changed dramatically.
In a May 20 op-ed for USA Today, Kristol argued that U.S. intervention in Iraq was justified in 2003 “to remove Saddam Hussein, and to complete the job we should have finished in 1991.” Kristol added that “we were right to persevere” in Iraq, “even with the absence of caches of weapons of mass destruction.”
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Finance
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US trade officials pushed EU to shelve action on endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to cancer and male infertility to facilitate TTIP free trade deal
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Censorship
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One of Finland’s largest festivals, Helsinki’s World Village, is a celebration of multicultural tolerance and respect. The free annual two-day event, known as Maailma kylässä in Finnish, has attracted more than 80,000 visitors in recent years.
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Privacy
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Global intelligence agencies, including the US National Security Agency, planned to hijack millions of Android smartphones with spyware.
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The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals.
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Canada and its spying partners exploited weaknesses in one of the world’s most popular mobile browsers and planned to hack into smartphones via links to Google and Samsung app stores, a top secret document obtained by CBC News shows.
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As the Senate does its little song and dance today over surveillance reform, kudos to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board for producing what has to be one of the most ridiculous opinion pieces on this debate to date. It’s called The Anti-Surveillance Rush, and its main argument is that the Senate shouldn’t be “rushing” through this debate, and that it should instead simply do a clean extension of section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to allow for further debate. This is wrong and it’s clueless. The WSJ editorial board can be nutty at times, but the level of cluelenssness displayed here really takes it to another level. Let’s dig in.
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Reform Government Surveillance, an organization that represents large technology companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft, on Tuesday pressed the U.S. Senate not to delay reform of National Security Agency surveillance by extending expiring provisions of the Patriot Act.
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As the deadline ticked closer to the expiration of the NSA’s powers of mass phone record collection, the Senate locked itself into chaotic wrangling over two competing surveillance bills on Thursday.
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Social media. So popular. And so very, very incriminating. The less-than-illustrious history of many a criminal who felt obliged to generate inculpatory evidence via social media postings has been well-detailed here. But what if you want to hide your indiscretions and malfeasance? If you’ve posted something on any major social network, chances are it will be found and used against you.
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A report by the FBI’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on the agency’s use of Section 215 collections has just been released in what can only be termed as “fortuitous” (or “suspicious”) timing. Section 215 is dying. It was up for reauthorization on June 1st, but the Obama administration suddenly pushed that deadline up to the end of this week. Sen. Mitch McConnell took a stab at a clean reauth, but had his attempt scuttled by a court ruling finding the program unauthorized by existing law and the forward momentum of the revamped USA Freedom Act. And, as Section 215′s death clock ticked away, Rand Paul and Ron Wyden engaged in a filibuster to block any last-second attempts to ram a clean reauthorization through Congress.
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Civil Rights
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The Florida mailman indicted for flying his unregistered gyrocopter through restricted airspace and landing on the U.S. Capitol lawn last month pleaded not guilty to six charges on Thursday.
Doug Hughes appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., where he entered his plea. He faces nearly a decade in prison if convicted on the two felony counts and four misdemeanors.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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What began as some squabbling over the definition of net neutrality in India has evolved into a global public relations shit show for Facebook. As we’ve been discussing, India’s government has been trying to define net neutrality ahead of the creation of new neutrality rules. Consumers and content companies have been making it very clear they believe Facebook’s Internet.org initiative violates net neutrality because it offers free, walled-garden access to only some Facebook approved content partners, instead of giving developing nations access to the entire Internet.
Internet.org partners began dropping out of the initiative, arguing they don’t like any model where Facebook gets to decide which content is accessed for free — and which content remains stuck outside of Internet.org. Facebook so far has responded by trying to claim that if you oppose Internet.org you’re the one hurting the poor, because a walled garden is better than no Internet at all. Of course that’s a false choice; Facebook could simply provide subsidized access to the entire Internet, but that wouldn’t provide them with a coordinated leg-up in the developing nation ad markets of tomorrow.
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DRM
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Digital Right Managements (systems preventing you from copying a movie or a song you bought, print an ebook you paid… and sometimes even read these!) are a real nuisance and we should fight them. But we believe here that fighting only is not enough. We should also propose constructive alternatives, new ways to produce, share and enjoy media and arts.
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05.21.15
Posted in News Roundup at 3:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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One of the most crucial pieces of any UNIX-like operating system is the init dæmon process. In Linux, this process is started by the kernel, and it’s the first userspace process to spawn and the last one to die during shutdown.
During the history of UNIX and Linux, many init systems have gained popularity and then faded away. In this article, I focus on the history of the init system as it relates to Linux, and I talk about the role of init in a modern Linux system. I also relate some of the history of the System V Init (SysV) scheme, which was the de facto standard for many Linux distributions for a long time. Then I cover a couple more modern approaches to system initialization, such as Upstart and systemd. Finally, I pay some attention to how things work in systemd, as this seems to be the popular choice at the moment for several of the largest distributions.
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A reddit discussion that focused on things about Linux that most users don’t know has gotten tons of responses, and some of them are quite interesting and informative.
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When TrackingPoint first showcased its Linux-powered scopes with tracking assistance that substantially improved rifle accuracy, even in the hands of untrained hunters, it kicked off a controversy over what level of technology was appropriate for hunting or home defense, and whether the company encouraged irresponsible behavior. Now, it seems that debate is coming to an end thanks to imminent financial failure. While the company’s website remains online for now, there’s a new header that notes: “Due to financial difficulty, TrackingPoint will no longer be accepting orders. Thank you to our customers and loyal followers for sharing our vision.”
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The parent company behind the Linux rifle, TrackingPoint, is having financial difficulties and is no longer accepting orders. Elsewhere, Tony Mobily said the time for Desktop Linux passed without it ever becoming a success while Bruce Byfield discusses how the design philosophy of desktop projects influences their end product. Qt and KDE celebrated 20 years of Qt development goodness and Linux.com wants to know your favorite single-board computer.
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Master Linux quickly and efficiently with the next great courseware offer from TNW Deals. The Linux Learner Bundle puts you in command of the basics with 6 elite courses and 50+ hours of interactive learning content.
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Desktop
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What they heck? Run KVM VMs inside of Docker containers? Why would anyone want to do that? Well, so you can embed KVM VM disk images inside of Docker images… and easily deploy a KVM VM (almost) as easily as a Docker container. That kind of makes my head hurt just thinking about running a Windows 7 Desktop inside of a Docker container… but someone out there is doing that. Yikes!
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Dell is one of the most important providers of Ubuntu-powered hardware, and the company has just released a new laptop called Inspiron 15 3000 Series Laptop Ubuntu Edition.
Companies like Dell or IBM have helped to make Ubuntu much more popular because they sell a lot of hardware, and they are shipping that hardware with Ubuntu preinstalled. It might not seem like a big deal. After all, you can always install something else, but many customers don’t switch to a different OS and Ubuntu remains installed.
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Buyers, especially tech enthusiasts are crazy about the latest tablets and phones that roll out, thus the sales for PCs are pretty low. In the near future, individuals may start using these devices as desktop PCs instead. A major blow for the computer companies might be on the verge of happening, thus a new design concerning the software may also be implemented. So, we can say goodbye to operation systems and apps with one sole UI. It would be awesome though to see how the apps we use change their format depending on how they are being used. This whole process was called convergence and was inspired by those who creating Ubuntu OS when they rolled out a mobile device that also worked as a computer back in 2013. And even though the campaign for this phone didn’t go as planned, those at Canonical were dedicated to implement big changes and make their Ubuntu operating system, into this versatile UI. And right behind them is the Microsoft Company, a strong competitor that also wishes to do the same thing with Windows 10. So it seems that the “convergence” battle is on and the question is: which one will stir the biggest wave?
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Applications
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The Argentinian devs who created Popcorn Time took down its website and GitHub repository in July 2014 in response to a takedown request from the Motion Picture Association of America.
A couple of teams later forked the original Popcorn Time source code. One fork is PopcornTime.io, and the other is Popcorn-time.se .
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A new release 0.2.13 of RInside is now on CRAN. RInside provides a set of convenience classes which facilitate embedding of R inside of C++ applications and programs, using the classes and functions provided by Rcpp.
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OpenMS is free software available under the three clause BSD license and runs under Windows, MacOSX and Linux.
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Adblock Plus today launched Adblock Browser for Android. Currently in beta, the company’s first browser was created by taking the open-source Firefox for Android and including Adblock Plus out-of-the-box.
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The first Beta for LibreOffice 5.0 has been released by The Document Foundation and the bug hunting season has been declared officially opened.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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We have another four classic games that have gained Linux support thanks to GOG.com, our collection seems to be growing nicely with them!
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We already knew that the Linux port of Van Helsing was put on hold, but now it seems the developers aren’t going to port any of them to Linux.
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Endless Legend was originally going to come to Linux, and then the developers decided it wasn’t worth it. The Linux client had even been started and was looking good, but was dropped after the Windows and Mac OS clients were deemed too buggy. Now SteamOS has appeared in their voting system for what to work on, it needs votes.
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The new Humble Paradox Bundle is now available for purchase, even if it’s not exactly the most Linux-friendly collection of titles released so far under the Humble Bundle umbrella.
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The famous Cossacks RTS series is returning after a decade, and it will be released as a Linux title as well. It’s being developed by the same studio that made the original games, GSC Game World.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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Linux desktop users have two main sets of utilities: KDE’s and GNOME’s. The GNOME utilities are found in GNOME, MATE, Cinnamon and Unity. Neither KDE nor GNOME has any objective advantage over the other, but the user experiences are so different that they could almost be two different operating systems.
Both utility sets have the same basic features, but each starts with its own concept of what users want. As I have said before, GNOME’s utilities are exercises in minimalism, generally designed only for the most common use cases. By contrast, KDE’s utilities are completist, typically cramming every possibly related feature into their windows, as well as every possible opportunity for customization.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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New Releases
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On May 20, Steven Shiau announced the immediate availability for download and testing of a new development version of his popular Clonezilla Live CD that helps users with disk cloning operations.
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Arne Exton, the creator of several distributions of GNU/Linux and Android-x86 Live CDs, has updated his LFA (Linux For ALL) distribution recently with a new, custom kernel package and various under-the-hood improvements.
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Slackware Family
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Building on my experiences with chromium-dev (the development channel of the Chromium browser which is currently at version 44), I have made similar changes to my latest package for the chromium browser and its widevine and pepperflash plugins.
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Red Hat Family
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When high-value analytics can be brought to every worker’s fingers, the old-style organizational structure becomes inefficient, Whitehurst writes. You want only employees who are mission-oriented, dedicated to what the company is all about, and you want to empower them to fulfill that mission, weeding out those who aren’t so dedicated.
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A recent Red Hat survey on mobile trends revealed that 70 percent of organizations plan to embrace the Internet of Things in the next 5 years. So where is Red Hat on the IoT stage?
To further understand Red Hat’s IoT strategy, I reached out to the company’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, Mark Coggin.
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Fedora
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Fedora 22 is scheduled to be released next week but for that to happen there’s still a number of blocker bugs that need to be addressed. The second release candidate of Fedora 22 Final is now available for those wishing to stress this major update of the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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It’s been four years and two weeks since Mark Shuttleworth expressed his goal of “200 million users of Ubuntu in 4 years.” While Ubuntu’s presence has continued to increase over the past four years, it doesn’t look like that goal has been realized yet or will be by the end of the calendar year.
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Canonical shows off its Orange Match Box appliance that runs Ubuntu’s Snappy Linux at the OpenStack Summit.
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Canonical published recently the first daily build Live ISO images of the upcoming Ubuntu Desktop Next 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system were made available for download.
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On May 20, Canonical published a new Ubuntu security notice where they’ve informed users about the immediate availability of a new kernel update for its Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system.
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On May 20, Canonical published a new Ubuntu security notice where they’ve informed users about the immediate availability of a new kernel update for its Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system.
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On May 20, Canonical had the pleasure of showcasing its latest products at the OpenStack Summit event that takes place these days between May 18-22, 2015 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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The release schedule for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) has been finalized, and we now have all the intermediary steps and the launch date for the next operating system from Canonical.
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Details about a number of Oxide vulnerabilities which have been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, have been detailed in a security notification.
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Canonical and Ubuntu continue to suffer the slings and arrows of the Linux community. Jack Wallen believes the infighting carries a hefty cost.
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Mark Shuttleworth, founder of open-source supplier Canonical, continues to strive towards the vision of a converged handheld device, despite his failed attempt to raise $32m through crowdfunding for Ubuntu Edge, the smartphone that doubles as a desktop PC.
Recalling the crowdfunding initiative that fell short by $13m, he says: “I’m really proud how people stepped up and said it was a good idea. We concentrated all our efforts on the software and now we’re shipping phones.”
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The 2015 Linux hacker board survey has arrived. In its second year, this collaboration between Linux.com and LinuxGizmos.com has collected 53 open-spec, community backed SBCs that run Linux and/or Android. Please take a few minutes to fill out our short SurveyMonkey SBC Survey, and select your favorite SBCs, then enter a drawing to become one of 20 randomly chosen participants who receive a free Linux SBC. Farther below, we offer brief summaries of the 53 boards, with links to product pages.
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Rate your favorite hacker SBCs, and you might win one of 20 SBCs including the BeagleBone Black, Creator CI20, DragonBoard 410c, and Edison Kit for Arduino.
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The Lemon Pi single board computer tries to copy the success of the very popular Raspberry Pi, even the 40-pins feature port of the Raspberry Pi is copied(!)
The Lemon Pi features a powerful ARM Quad-core cortex A9 and Imagination PowerVR SGX544 GPU. Connectivity is handled by Multi-USBs, I2C, SPI, UART, I2S, PCM, SPDIF, MIPI DSI / CSI, HDMI, and Ethernet ports.
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Phones
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Linux—or a form of it, at least—and other open source programs soon could be playing a bigger role in the mobile and tablet market in Russia. And it has concerns over spying by the NSA to thank.
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Android
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Google’s finally confirmed the Nexus 4 Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update and the new firmware should start rolling out in the near future. Here’s what owners of the former flagship need to know about the company’s brand new Nexus 4 Android 5.1.1 Lollipop release.
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Google isn’t just going to sit back and let Apple take all the glory when it comes to smartwatches. The search giant has just begun rolling out the first major update for its Android Wear platform, adding a plethora of new features to the smartwatch mix.
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We can be pretty confident that Google will be launching Android M at Google I/O next week, after it was accidentally mentioned in an Android for Work event schedule. As Android continues to mature with each new version it’s getting harder to predict what’s up next. We don’t expect a major overhaul this time around, but there’s definitely still work to be done.
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Is the Android security risk overstated?
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Developers are said to be reluctant to modify iPhone and Android apps for Windows Phone over doubts over app quality and how easy the process will be
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Instagram’s Layout app, which landed on iOS in March, is coming to Android today.
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Google has introduced a new limited run of Android device accessories called ‘Edition’ cases. These cases, which come in sizes compatible with Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Samsung Galaxy S5, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4, also come with a live wallpaper to match which displays satellite-captured images of Earth by night and constellation pics from the night sky of your current location by night.
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What we’re seeing on the right is a Motorola Droid Turbo that runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, despite the fact that an official Lollipop update has yet to be rolled out to the handset. The explanation for this is that the device pictured here belongs to Jose Arturo, one of Verizon’s device test engineers, who says that the 5.1 update should reach end users starting mid June.
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Researchers said there’s an urgent need to mitigate runtime-information-gathering (RIG) attacks on Android mobile and Android-controlled Internet of Things devices. They demonstrated RIG attacks against IoT devices and developed an app to stop such attacks.
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For many Nexus owners, the wait for Android 5.1.1 is finally over. Today, OTAs began rolling out for several Nexus devices which had thus far been stuck on Android 5.1. If waiting on an OTA update isn’t your thing, you can now head on over to Google’s Nexus developer page to get the latest factory images.
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A couple months ago, Facebook’s photo social network Instagram released a popular collage app called Layout for iOS. Now Layout is available for Android. The Layout app lets you create a collage of your photos and it can be shared on social networks like Facebook or Instagram. The photo collage also saves to your Android device so that you can message it to your friends and family.
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Even though they get plenty of attention from the press, the newest Android flagships aren’t necessary the best choices for many smartphone buyers, especially for Android fans looking for affordable high-end devices. The Asus ZenFone 2 is one alternative, a cheap Android phone that packs 4GB of RAM and costs just $299 in the U.S. However, there are plenty of other premium Android phones overseas that meet the same criteria: They’re powerful and significantly cheaper than the Galaxy S6, Nexus 6, HTC One M9 or LG G4. Unfortunately, many of them are also out of your reach, including the following two devices.
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Last month the Nvidia Shield Android TV 500GB “Pro edition” showed up on Nvidia’s website with a price tag listed at $300, but shortly after this Nvidia pulled down the listing, claiming that this was a developer SKU and had been put up by mistake. As it turns out, that’s not exactly the whole story.
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Here at BGR, most of our smartphone coverage focuses on brand new smartphonesthat are cutting-edge and high-end. After all, a huge portion of our readership consists of savvy tech fans who always need to have the latest and greatest gear. But not all of our readers are quite so enthusiastic, and some would rather save money and buy a more affordable smartphone — after all, $650, $750 or even $800+ is a whole lot of cash to spend on a phone.
If you’re looking to buy a new smartphone and want to get some serious bang for your buck, here are two options that you can pick up at shockingly low prices.
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The Information is back with more Google news before I/O. The outlet claims that Google is developing another operating system, this time for low-power “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices. The OS is codenamed “Brillo,” and the publication claims Google “is likely to release the software under the Android brand, as the group developing the software is linked to the company’s Android unit.” We’re going to take that to mean “it’s based on Android.”
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So as technology leaders — as the drivers of innovation — we must always be on the lookout for new ways to ready our organizations for agility. One means to that end is open source. Open source is the ultimate platform for flexibility, right? A platform that affords us the agility we need to quickly adapt as technology evolves, business demands expand and markets mature. A platform that allows us to innovate how we want, when we want — rather than innovating on the path and at the pace of our vendors.
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Cultural heritage management tends to suffer from limited funding and resources, which can make a crisis — whether natural disaster, pipeline construction, or war — that much more catastrophic for assessing what’s in need of protection. An open-source system called Arches is the first online tool designed specifically to inventory heritage sites. It was created through a partnership between the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), and its third version launched earlier this month.
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Events
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Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at Protocols Plugfest Europe 2015. It was really good to get out of the bubble of free software desktops where the community love makes it tempting to think we’re the most important thing in the world and experience the wider industry where of course we are only a small player.
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I was in Depok, Indonesia last week to speak at GNOME Asia 2015. It was a great experience — the organisers did a fantastic job and as a bonus, the venue was incredibly pretty!
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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This is based on the proprietary former addon pocket, which is now no longer supported since it is being integrated.
It’s only the beta channel, but this has all the hallmarks of a half-baked revenue stream for Mozilla that ultimately sells out user privacy – and what’s worse, is opt-out, rather than opt-in.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Ever since NASA and Rackspace first got together in 2010 to create OpenStack, there has been the concept of an integrated OpenStack release. However, at the OpenStack Summit here this week, developers declared the integrated release model to be dead, being replaced with a new “Big Tent” model that redefines what OpenStack includes as a platform.
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But backers of the project insist it’s as strong as ever. This week OpenStack is in the midst of its 11th semi-annual Summit in Vancouver. From all accounts it’s got the feel of a real tech show with an estimated 6,000 attendees and more than 500 companies supporting the project.
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Alan Clark, chairman of the board at the OpenStack Foundation, discusses new efforts under way to improve diversity and grow the open-source cloud platform.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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LibreOffice is a great OpenSource project. They have a Design Group and help you a lot if you’d like to do something for LibreOffice. Now LibreOffice prepare the new release LibreOffice 5.0 and for this release I’d like to be finished the LibreOffice Breeze icon set. Uri and I work since last November on the icon set so you also have a package available in your repository. Now I’d like to post that we are nearly finished. 98 % (2.700 icons) of the icon set is done, so it is ready for your review. As the monochrome LibreOffice icon set Sifr is less finished than Breeze, I though the fallback icon set for Sifr is Breeze.
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CMS
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Open source is increasingly changing the software industry. We can see open source products gaining market share in almost every category today, and this development is continuing at a fast pace.
Although a lot of business people still intuitively think of Linux when it comes to open source software, content management systems played a pivotal role in changing the mindset within corporations. Why? Because the CMS industry was one of the first to largely adopt open source products. Nowadays, the most corporations use open source content management systems for their web platforms. Some of them may not even realize it.
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Openness/Sharing
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The action plan that France must submit as part of its membership of the Open government partnership (OGP) is mainly build on reforms already announced.
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France will chair the Open Government Partnership from October 2016 to October 2017, after the OGP Steering Committee accepted France’s application at a meeting in Mexico on April 24.
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Eastern Central Europe has to reinvent itself and digital tools are the way to succeed. This is one of the conclusions drawn during the Personal Democracy Forum Poland-Central Eastern. This conference, which took place in Warsaw in mid-April, was organised by the ePaństwo Foundation (Fundacja ePaństwo) – a Polish NGO aiming at developing democracy and transparency.
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Open Hardware
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Last week, VA’s Center for Innovation launched its three-month Innovation Creation Series for Prosthetics and Assistive Technologies. The aim of the series is to build a suite of special prosthetics and other state-of-the-art technologies to support wounded veterans in their day-to-day lives.
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Programming
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Although Java was developed at Sun Microsystems, Oracle has served as the platform’s steward since acquiring Sun in early 2010. During that time, Oracle has released Java 7 and Java 8, with version 9 due up next year. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill recently spoke to Oracle’s Georges Saab, vice president of software development for the Java Platform Group, about the occasion of Java’s 20th anniversary.
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Security
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Following a report on Sunday, where Human Rights Watch said video and photographic evidence showed that Saudi Arabia used cluster bombs near villages in Yemen’s Saada Province at least two separate times, the US State Department said it is “looking into” the allegations but, as Foreign Policy reports, said the notoriously imprecise weapon — banned by much of the world — could still have an appropriate role to play in Riyadh’s U.S.-backed offensive (as long as it was used carefully).
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The US is trying to win “hearts and minds” in Africa. It’s not going well.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Fox personalities criticized President Obama for calling climate change “an immediate risk to our national security” during his U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement address. But security experts agree with the president that global climate change does threaten U.S. national security.
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Finance
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The Nobel laureate writes, “There is much confusion about ISDS, but plain and simple: ISDS is about rewriting the rules of how our economy works, tipping the balance of power in favor of big businesses at the expense of workers and the public here and in partner countries.”
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There is “no ducking the fact” that spending on the police has to face further cuts but it “is perfectly possible” to do it without affecting the quality of neighbourhood policing, the home secretary, Theresa May, has told officers.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Silence From Network After Christian Minister Arrested For Threatening To Kill Muslims
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During a bizarre appearance on The Alex Jones Show, Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested the Obama administration is engaging in “Nazi stuff” by using ethnic politics, and wants to confiscate all the country’s firearms and put people “in jail for even having them.”
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Privacy
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For an international fugitive hiding out in Russia from American espionage charges, Edward J. Snowden gets around.
May has been another month of virtual globe-hopping for Mr. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, with video appearances so far at Princeton and in a “distinguished speakers” series at Stanford and at conferences in Norway and Australia. Before the month is out, he is scheduled to speak by video to audiences in Italy, and also in Ecuador, where there will be a screening of “Citizenfour,” the Oscar-winning documentary about him.
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Communications massively collected for further behavioural analysis and profiling (PRISM) and sabotage of any commercial product dedicated to protect our data and communications (BULLRUN) are just examples of how everyday technology, now part of ourselves, has been systematically perverted and turned against us.
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Back in January, David Cameron made what sounded like a threat to ban, or at least undermine, encryption in the UK. “The question is,” Cameron said, “are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read. My answer to that question is: no, we must not.” On its own that might be dismissed as a politician talking tough to please his supporters, but it’s part of a much wider attack on strong encryption from the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.
In October last year, FBI Director James Comey spoke of his agency’s fears about things “going dark” because of encryption, while NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said encryption “does a terrible disservice to the public.” A month later, NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker offered the view that the reason Blackberry had failed was because it used “too much encryption.” More recently, Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, said encryption is “the biggest problem for the police and the security service authorities in dealing with the threats from terrorism,” while the UK’s National Policing Lead for Counter-Terrorism, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, called products that offer strong encryption “friendly to terrorists.”
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Civil Rights
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Cooke knew the CBP agents needed something in the way of reasonable suspicion to continue to detain her. But they had nothing. The only thing offered in the way of explanation as they ordered her to return to her detained vehicle was that she appeared “nervous” during her prior interaction with the female CBP agent. This threadbare assertion of “reasonable suspicion” is law enforcement’s blank check — one it writes itself and cashes with impunity.
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After presenting her driver’s license, Cooke, who surely learned in college that police (and even CBP agents!) need “reasonable suspicion” to detain someone, asks why she was pulled over. “You guys have no reason to be holding me,” she says. A male agent who identifies himself as a supervisor has no explanation for the detention, but he says Cooke will have to wait for a drug-sniffing dog to inspect her car. “Well, they’d better be here soon, because if not, I’m calling 911, and this can all be figured out,” Cooke says. “You guys are holding me here against my will.” Eventually the female agent who first interacted with Cooke says she seemed nervous—an all-purpose excuse for detaining someone, since people tend to be nervous when confronted by armed government officials.
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A Florida man who piloted a gyrocopter through miles of America’s most restricted airspace before landing at the U.S. Capitol is now facing charges that carry up to 9½ years in prison.
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The Florida postal worker who flew his gyrocopter under the radar into Washington and onto the West Lawn of the Capitol earlier this year faces nearly 10 years in prison after being indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday.
Doug Hughes, 61, was indicted in U.S. District Court in D.C. on two felony counts of flying without a pilot’s certificate and lacking registration for his small aircraft, each carrying up to three years in prison.
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Send this to a friend
05.20.15
Posted in News Roundup at 3:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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To be fair, the number 77 car was not a favorite to win the race. In fact, Moreno started from the eleventh row — the last row — after just barely qualifying. But most of that was irrelevant: Linux was out there. Tux 500 was highlighted prominently in eleven major newspapers, dozens of minor ones, two major non-tech magazines, and dozens of non-Linux/tech publications on paper and across the web.
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About 6 years ago, I wrote an article about why I felt that installing software in GNU/Linux was broken. It pains me to say that the situation is, sadly, exactly the same:GNU/Linux never made it to personal computers, really, and at this point it looks like it never will.
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I have converted many users, including my wife, to Linux in the past 10 years and and I am still going strong. If you do it right, Linux will do a better job for your users than Mac OS X or Windows … if you do it right.
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Desktop
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Chromebooks have become extremely popular, with numerous models appearing on Amazon’s list of bestselling laptops. Customers are so interested in Chromebooks that Amazon has added a helpful Chromebook Buying Guide to steer them toward the model that might be right for them.
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Linux containers have been around for several years, but have come back into vogue recently with the growing popularity of Docker containers.
Docker containers launched with the aim of making it easy for developers to test and distribute applications and have taken off with a bang: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Joyent have all announced ways to integrate and manage multiple Docker containers into their offerings.
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Server
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When Google announced that it would support AppC, a vendor neutral container format, and the first container based on it, CoreOS’s Rocket (RKT), some people took this as Google supporting AppC over Docker. That is not true.
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IBM hasn’t been shy about its ambitions to transform into a cloud company, building up a broad portfolio of infrastructure, platform and software services. Part of that strategy has been to be intimately involved with OpenStack, the open source cloud platform. This week at the project’s biannual conference in Vancouver, IBM announced it was expanding its OpenStack offerings.
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OpenStack’s catalog provides apps in multiple formats, including Murano packages, Glance images and Heat templates. Now firms can find apps in one place.
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OpenStack’s Nova compute project originally began as the Nebula project at NASA. At the OpenStack conference here, Jonathan Chiang, IT Chief Engineer at NASA JPL detailed how the space agency is now using OpenStack in its effort to land humans on Mars.
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Kernel Space
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It appears that the current Linux 4.0.x kernel is plagued by an EXT4 file-system corruption issue. If there’s any positive note out of the situation, it seems to mostly affect EXT4 Linux RAID users.
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Some time ago, I figured out that there are more than a billion instances of the Linux kernel in use, and this in turn led to the realization that a million-year RCU bug is happening about three times a day across the installed base. This realization has caused me to focus more heavily on RCU validation, which has uncovered a number of interesting bugs. I have also dabbled a bit in formal verification, which has not yet found a bug. However, formal verification might be getting there, and might some day be a useful addition to RCU’s regression testing. I was therefore quite happy to be invited to this Dagstuhl Seminar. In what follows, I summarize a few of the presentation. See here for the rest of the presentations.
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Graphics Stack
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Among other OpenGL 4.x extensions, one of the more recent additions to OpenGL being tackled by open-source developers is ARB_shader_storage_buffer_object.
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Besides Intel DRM updates landing today in DRM-Next for eventual merging into the Linux 4.2 kernel, AMD landed some changes to their HSA kernel driver named AMDKFD.
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Applications
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LiVES, a video editor and VJ tool that permits users to combine real time and rendered effects, streams, and multiple video/audio files, is now at version 2.4.0 and is ready for download.
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The extremely active development team of the open-source and cross-platform MPV movie player software based on the popular MPlayer multimedia playback application reached version 0.9.2 on May 19.
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Following this morning’s branching of Mesa 10.6 and pushing Git master to Mesa 10.7, the Mesa 10.6 Release Candidate 1 is now available.
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Proprietary
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Google was proud to announce today, May 18, the immediate availability for download of the Google Chrome 43 web browser for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
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WPS Office (also known as Kingsoft Office) is a freeware office suite having the same features as Microsoft Office (more of a Microsoft Office clone), installed by default on Ubuntu Kylin, the Ubuntu flavor developer for its Chinese users.
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Debian, Ubuntu (as well as other Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions like Linux Mint, elementary OS, etc.) users can install Enpass for both 32bit and 64bit by using its new official repository.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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It will launch on May 26th for Steam gamers, and it looks like a visual feast that’s for sure.
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The Steam for Linux top selling list is always changing, but that’s not really surprising now that there are lots of titles on the open source platform. We now take a closer look at what the gamers prefer to play this week.
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The NeocoreGames studio confirmed the fact that it’s no longer trying to port its games on the Linux platform, even if they were already working on the Beta version for The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing.
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Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is the last game in the Borderlands universe and one of the first triple A titles to get Linux support. Now a new update has been released, and the Linux version got it as well.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Today we celebrate 20 years since the first release of Qt was uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu and announced, six days later, at comp.os.linux.announce. Over these years, Qt evolved from a two person Norwegian project to a full-fledged, social-technical world-wide organism that underpins free software projects, profitable companies, universities, government-related organizations, and more. It’s been an exciting journey. From the early days of Trolltech in 1999, through an evolution of licensing (from the original FreeQt, to QPL, to GPL, to LGPL today), corporate cooperation from Nokia and Digia, Open Governance, and leading edge technology refinements, Qt has supported the spirit of free software, thriving communities, and high quality products.
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Everything is ready for the 3rd edition of LaKademy – The KDE Latin America Summit…
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family
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On May 19, the ROSA company was proud to announce the immediate availability of the ROSA Enterprise Desktop X2 Linux kernel-based operating system for enterprise users, which can request an ISO image from the ROSA sales department.
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Russian ROSA Company today announced the release of ROSA Enterprise Desktop X2, the newest version of their business-class operating system. Elsewhere, kernel version 4.0.2 may have introduced an ext4 corruption bug resulting in data loss affecting at least Arch, Debian and Fedora.
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Debian Family
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FileZilla, one of the best open-source and cross-platform FTP clients available on the market, reached version 3.11.0 on May 19 bringing assorted new features and bug fixes.
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Last month we heard libdvdcss and ZFS should soon appear in Debian GNU/Linux, but now it doesn’t appear that easy… It could end up taking a while longer for the ZFS file-system and the libdvdcss support for DVD playback on Debian to appear within the official repositories.
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Derivatives
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Tails first achieved notoriety as the Linux distribution that National Security Agency whistleblower Ed Snowden used. Tails, an acronym for The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is focused on enabling user privacy while online. On April 29, 2014, the Tails 1.0 debuted, and it has been steadily updated ever since. Tails 1.4 launched May 12 of this year with a number of new capabilities, including several important security updates. Among the big changes in Tails 1.4 is a new privacy-focused search tool called Disconnect. Tails 1.4 also enables users to print a paper copy of their privacy keys using the Paperkey tool. A core part of every Tails release is the included Tor browser, which benefits from an update in Tails 1.4 that fixes a number of recently disclosed security vulnerabilities. There are times when the Tor browser isn’t enough, and users need a regular browser to get access to a service, which is why Tails 1.4 also includes an Unsafe Browser, as well. In this slide show, eWEEK examines key features of the Tails 1.4 release.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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On May 19, the Ubuntu Kernel Team had a meeting in order to plan the steps that are to be taken by them prior to the migration to the latest upstream Linux kernel packages for the upcoming Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system.
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Canonical has published details about a few vulnerabilities that were found and corrected in the Linux kernel packages, affecting the kernel for Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicon) operating system.
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For now, Ubuntu 15.10 still uses Kernel 3.19 (the same kernel as Ubuntu 15.04), but the next daily builds should bring Kernel 4.0.4, which is the latest stable version available released so far. But if Linus Torvalds manages to get Kernel 4.1 out in time, Canonical may implement it as default, on Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf.
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Recently, Canonical has split the Ubuntu RTM branch into two branches, one channel being for the BQ phoneand ther other one for the Meizu one. This is a good thing for the developers that create optimizations for one Ubuntu phone only (e.g. tweaks for Meizu that are not needed on Bq, or vice versa).
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Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak has confirmed that the next Ubuntu Touch Update (OTA 4) will be released by the end of the month and will change the code base of the system to Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet.
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Ubuntu Touch is already stable, and it’s available on two different phones right now, Bq Aquaris and Meizu MX4. It’s different from your regular OS experience, but that’s a good thing. The only real problem is the lack of apps, although a Blackberry approach to the problem might be a good thing for Canonical.
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A smartphone that can work as a desktop may be a long shot but the pursuit of mobile technology has brought many benefits to Ubuntu, according to Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth.
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We’ve been hearing about Meizu’s forthcoming Ubuntu-powered smartphone since early 2014—more than a year ago. Well, all those words just became tangible, and they’ve coalesced into the first compelling-looking Ubuntu phone.
The Ubuntu MX4 is now out and can be purchased from Meizu’s website in China. Meizu’s Ubuntu phone follows in the footsteps of the Bq Aquaris, which is now on sale across Europe. The second Ubuntu smartphone will also be on sale in Europe soon.
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Phones
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Android
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Screen sizes on smartphones have been on an upward spiral since the time Apple launched the original iPhone several years back with a tiny 3.5-inch screen. The first of Google’s Nexus devices, the Nexus One came with a small 3.7-inch screen as well, but since then, every subsequent smartphone generation has seen a significant increase in screen sizes and today, what is seen to be an acceptable screen size is significantly larger than what would have been considered mainstream even a couple of years back. One doesn’t have to go too far back to remember a time when Samsung’s original Galaxy Note from 2011 was joked about as a “slice of toast” on various internet forums because of its 5.3-inch screen size – something that’s actually smaller than most mainstream devices of today, which come with larger 5.5-inch screens. Circa 2015, handsets with larger screens, being significantly better at multimedia consumption, have given rise to the phablet phenomenon, and smaller handsets have gone out of fashion, especially at the higher end of the spectrum.
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Yep, Maps for Android Wear, it’s happening! A few of you have already spotted the icon in your Wear launchers if you’re running the new Maps 9.9 APK and Android Wear 5.1+, you should be able to get Maps for Android Wear fully up and running… mostly.
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Layout, an app for making photo collages that Instagram introduced on iOS in March, is now available for Android. The app, which can be downloaded here, arrays your photos in a variety of grids. It’s meant to capitalize on the fact that about one in five Instagram users regularly post collages to their accounts, according to the company.
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Micromax Informatics Ltd., India’s second-largest smartphone seller, is going where Google Inc.’s Android One failed to go, bringing a real local-language experience onto the Android platform for the subcontinent. This could help the company go after first-time smartphone users as the market expands into small towns and rural states.
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Six months after Lollipop’s release, how have the major Android manufacturers done at delivering upgrades to their devices?
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Eurecom researchers recently developed an Android application that can monitor the network traffic of other apps to alert users of suspicious or malicious network activity.
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In a post in its product forums today, Google said that the rollout of the Android 5.1.1 update for Android Wear smartwatches is imminent. And just so, Android Police is reporting that some owners of the LG G Watch and LG G Watch R have already received it. The update adds some great new features, including support for getting notifications on any Wi-Fi network, wrist gestures, and the ability to draw emoji. We laid it all out in our LG Watch Urbane review, which ships with the update already pre-installed.
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Fox News host Bill O’Reilly interviewed a former biker gang leader about a recent biker shootout in Waco, Texas that left nine people dead. O’Reilly’s interview with his white guest was a sharp contrast to interviews the host regularly has with African-American guests, where he lectures them about black violence, culture, and family structure.
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Per usual, the media would retell the narrative based entirely on Pentagon and White House action movie prose. Just as with the bin Laden raid narrative—that later turned out to be mostly false—this tale involved some unbelievably compelling details: “rescuing a Yazidi slave,” “hand-to-hand combat,” “women and children as human shields,” “precise fire” (that, of course, avoided these women and children), and a body count, “40 extremists,” that would make Jack Bauer blush.
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Being an early adopter of anything and everything Linux, I was quick to order the LG Watch Urbane the moment it was made available on Google Store. It was the most expensive watch around, there were no detailed reviews, but I was impressed by the design.
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I’m Lee Schlesinger, currently managing editor for the Spiceworks Community. Spiceworks provides a free downloadable help desk and network inventory application, and hosts a community for IT pros to discuss both work and off-topic issues. Though we have a pretty popular Linux group in the community, many of the community members, who we call SpiceHeads, work in Microsoft-centric shops.
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Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is preparing to launch an operating system for the internet of things that’s just 10 kilobytes in size. The company says that its “LiteOS” is the “lightest” software of its kind and can be used to power a range of smart devices — from wearables to cars. Huawei predicts that by 2025 there will be roughly 100 billion internet-connected devices in the world, with 2 million new sensors deployed every hour. The company also said that the OS would be “opened to all developers” to allow them to quickly create their own smart products — although it’s unclear whether this means that LiteOS will be fully open-source. Huawei says LiteOS also supports “zero configuration, auto-discovery, and auto-networking.”
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In Sweden there is a service called BankID, it’s an electronic identity service. Banks issue the electronic ID which can be used by companies, banks and government agencies to authenticate and conclude agreements with individuals over the internet. A few months ago however it was decided that BankID software on Linux would no longer be supported. Finding an alternative can be difficult for Linux users.
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Events
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SaaS/Big Data
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OpenStack is ready for enterprise deployment, but there are rough spots that is likely to relegate it to new workloads and self-service developer use, according to Forrester Research.
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At OpenStack Summit, Red Hat announced it was releasing a technology preview of Red Hat Gluster Storage with integration into OpenStack’s new Manila shared file system project.
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A foundation can do a lot to unite a community–just look at the example set by The Linux Foundation. This week, the OpenStack Foundation has rolled out a community application catalog built to facilitate collaboration and sharing on the OpenStack scene, where many IT administrators are wrestling with deploying the open cloud platform. The concept is to encourage administrators and others to leverage the work that has already been produced in OpenStack deployments.
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Researchers at Gartner have been in the news for throwing some shade on Hadoop with the results of a new study that found that Hadoop is, well, hard. There are just not enough skilled professionals that can claim mastery of the platform, among other issues. Gartner, Inc.’s 2015 Hadoop Adoption Study, involving 284 Gartner Research Circle members, found that only 125 respondents who completed the whole survey had already invested in Hadoop or had plans to do so within the next two years.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Branching LibreOffice 5.0 now puts it under a hard feature freeze while the beta one release is to follow quite soon followed by a second LO 5.0 beta in early June. Four release candidates for LibreOffice 5.0 will come during June and July while the official release of LibreOffice 5 is still slated for the end of July or early August.
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CMS
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dotCMS has claimed a desirable chunk of the enterprise market by landing and working alongside large clients such as Standard & Poor’s, Wiley Publishing, Thomson Reuters Foundation and Hospital Corporation of America. As such, it’s reputation as an enterprise solution is growing fast.
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Healthcare
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I’ve known Fred for about 15 years or so, first as a contributor to OpenEMR and later we accidentally met in person at the University of Texas. It’s pretty cool to come face-to-face with folks you’ve only know online and, mostly, from working with their contributed code! Over the years, Fred has hosted a couple of open source healthcare IT conferences and done some great work in the field for ClearHealth/MirrorMed with Dave Ulhman and now focusing on open data.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Hardware
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Working directly with hardware is hard. Each project brings with it mundane questions of which compiler to use, what communications protocols to work with, and how to load code. Developers also need to figure out how to debug the live system without affecting the program being executed.
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Programming
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The merger was put to a vote on GitHub by io.js developer Mikeal Rogers, who initially proposed the merger in February, and the io.js technical committee voted to approve the merger yesterday. According to Rogers, the team will continue releasing io.js versions while the convergence takes place, but after the merger is complete, the io.js working groups and technical committee will join the Node.js Foundation under renamed titles.
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The goals of the program are to provide high-quality computer science instruction at the high school level and to identify potentially talented computer students who are in demographics underserved by the IT industry, such as women and ethnic minorities.
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Good news for stressed out IT professionals—a TEKsystems survey of more than 1,000 IT workers indicates a vast positive change in the stability of IT staffing environments as compared to a year ago.
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Security
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Dan Berrange, creator of libvirt, sums it up nicely on the Fedora Devel list:
“While you might be able to crash the QEMU process associated with your own guest, you should not be able to escalate from there to take over the host, nor be able to compromise other guests on the same host. The attacker would need to find a second independent security flaw to let them escape SELinux in some manner, or some way to trick libvirt via its QEMU monitor connection. Nothing is guaranteed 100% foolproof, but in absence of other known bugs, sVirt provides good anti-venom for this flaw IMHO.”
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At the start of 2014, attackers’ favorite distributed denial of service attack strategy was to send messages to misconfigured servers with a spoofed return address – the servers would keep trying to reply to those messages, allowing the attackers to magnify the impact of their traffic.
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Another HTTPS vulnerability has started to make its rounds earlier this morning. Dubbed Logjam by its researchers, the vulnerability stems from the US’s encryption export mandate back in the 1990s. This particular vulnerability, in the transport-layer security layer protocol, breaks the Diffie-Hellman perfect forward-secrecy. Susceptibility to the vulnerability is depended on servers and clients supporting the DHE_EXPORT encryption scheme, or using a key less-than-or-equal to 1024 bits.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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But here’s the truth Jeb Bush and the others are hiding or eliding: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, & Co. were not misled by lousy intelligence; they used lousy intelligence to mislead the public.
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The latest example of the sort of crime story that would be huge news if the perpetrator were Muslim–rather than, in this instance, someone who hates Muslims–is the case of Robert Rankin Doggart, a former congressional candidate from Signal Mountain, Tennessee, who was caught on tape and on social media talking about wiping out a Muslim community in upstate New York.
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Finance
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Europe faces the risk of a second revolt by Left-wing forces in the South after Portugal’s Socialist Party vowed to defy austerity demands from the country’s creditors and block any further sackings of public officials.
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But the measure will not only hurt those who need such programs most, it may also increase costs to the state in the long run. As Liz Schott, a welfare policy analyst, explained to the AP: “Long-term welfare recipients are often the most vulnerable, suffering from mental and physical disabilities, poor job histories and little education … But without welfare, they’ll likely show up in other ways that will cost taxpayers, from emergency rooms to shelters to the criminal justice system.”
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Earlier in this special report series, CMD revealed how states that do not hold their charter schools and authorizers accountable have the upper hand when the U.S. Department of Education (ED) evaluates applications to the quarter-billion-dollar-a-year charter schools program. But if the review process is deeply flawed, the oversight of the $3.3 billion disbursed within the charter schools program is not much better.
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Austerity is about shifting the burden of an economic crisis from one part of the population to another.
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Privacy
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Email. Online banking. Facebook. Your doctor’s office. These are all places where we rely on encryption to keep the private details of our lives safe. Without encryption, none of these services would be remotely safe to use, and even with encryption breaches are too common. We all want the digital world to be safer, not less secure
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Tech giants including Apple, Google, and others believe government would be putting American citizens at risk if it required tech companies to build a back door for law enforcement, and now they’ve issued a letter to President Obama, urging him to prevent such a move by Congress.
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Facebook’s founder owns four properties surrounding his California home, and a huge, sparse estate in Hawaii. Why do so many tech billionaires crave isolation?
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Civil Rights
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We’ve had a bunch of stories lately about the increase in militarized police and what a ridiculous and dangerous idea it is. As we’ve discussed in the past, much of this came from the Defense Department and its 1033 program, which takes decommissioned military equipment and gives it to police. This results in bizarre situations like the LA School District police having a bunch of grenade launchers. The program is somewhat infamous for its lack of rules, transparency and oversight.
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Sister Megan Rice, the 85-year-old activist nun who two years ago humiliated government officials by penetrating and vandalizing a supposedly ultra-high-security uranium storage facility, has finally been released from prison. A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the 2013 sabotage convictions of Rice and two fellow anti-nuclear activists, Michael Walli, 66, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 59, ruling that that their actions—breaking into Tennessee’s Y-12 National Security Complex and spreading blood on a uranium storage bunker—did not harm national security.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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For more than two years hard negotiations have been conducted within European institutions regarding the regulation proposal on telecommunications, which now contains two main chapters, one on roaming and the other on Net Neutrality. In 2014, a lot of work was done by citizen organisations to ensure that the European Parliament would protect Net Neutrality and uphold the rights of citizens to access a non-discriminatory, guaranteed access to a neutral and transparent Internet networks.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Popcorn Time has been called the Netflix for pirated movies, but it requires the installation of a desktop application. Not anymore. Now thanks to a site called Popcorn Time In Your Browser you’re just a couple of clicks away from watching a pirated movie stream.
The in-browser app works much like the desktop version, remotely streaming torrent files from YTS through Coinado. Users do not need to install anything, and from what I can tell, the torrent files are never stored locally on the user’s machine. Just click on a title, wait a few seconds and bam, a pirated movie starts playing.
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Last we had checked in on the ongoing legal wrangling between Google and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, a court had ruled pretty strongly against Hood, accusing him of acting in “bad faith,” for “the purpose of harassing” Google in violation of its First Amendment rights. Checking back in on the case to see what’s been going on, it appears that things have continued to get more and more heated. A little while after that ruling slamming Hood, Wingate ordered Hood to provide a bunch of information to Google as part of the discovery process for the case — including, bizarrely, responses to Techdirt’s FOIA request, which we had declined to continue after Hood’s office demanded over $2,000 and made it clear that they still likely wouldn’t give us anything.
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Send this to a friend
05.19.15
Posted in News Roundup at 4:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Desktop
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Server
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Modern IT infrastructure needs to be highly flexible as the strain on servers, sites and databases grows and shrinks throughout the day. Cloud infrastructure is meant to make scaling simple by effectively outsourcing and commoditising your computing capacity so that, in theory, you can turn it on and off like a tap. However, most approaches to provisioning cloud servers are still based around the idea that you have fixed-size server “instances”, offering you infrastructure in large blocks that must each be provisioned and then configured to work together. This means your infrastructure scaling is less like having a handy tap and more like working out how many bottles of water you’ll need.
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In the continuing IT balancing act between development and operations teams, new technologies are constantly emerging and proceeding through a gauntlet that runs between the two groups. The sides generally line up like this:
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When is less really more? When it’s a Linux operating system designed to run containers, such as Red Hat Atomic Host, Ubuntu Snappy, or CoreOS. As developers increasingly embrace containers for building and running apps, these small footprint systems could change the operating system’s long-standing role as a catch-all for historic but less-important functions, like fax servers.
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Rarely does the juxtaposition between the push of innovation and the pull of caution become so evident than in the adoption of new technologies. Time after time, technological innovators introduce new software and hardware into the market that are eagerly consumed by early adopters and retail consumers. And yet it is businesses that tend to hold back, weighing their options before deciding how and if they will join the ranks of users for such new technologies.
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As a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Eric Brewer devised the CAP theorem — a governing concept in the design of distributed systems — and co-founded web-search pioneer Inktomi. In this interview, Brewer, now vice president of infrastructure at Google, explains why the work he’s doing on application containers could be at least as big as cloud computing and how the CAP theorem is holding up nearly two decades after its inception.
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Brian “Redbeard” Harrington, principal architect at CoreOS, discusses the intersection of containers and the cloud.
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Kernel Space
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Linus Torvalds released the Linux 4.1-rc4 kernel a short time ago, which is coming a day later than Torvalds’ usual tradition of releasing new kernel versions on Sunday afternoons.
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The RC4 release of Linux kernel 4.1 is getting us closer and closer to the final version, which should arrive sometime in Summer 2015. According to Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel 4.1 RC4 is a little bit bigger that previous Release Candidate versions.
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On May 17, we announced that Linux kernel 4.0.4 and Linux kernel 3.10.79 LTS were available for download, but another important kernel was published on the same day – Linux kernel 3.14.43 LTS, which is currently used in various GNU/Linux distributions.
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Linus Torvalds himself has announced the availability of Kernel 4.1 RC 4, which has been released with one day delay. The kernel patch brings updates for the ARM, ARM64, and MIPS architectures, enhancements for the BTRFS and NFS filesystems and fixes for some regressions.
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Graphics Stack
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Nvidia has just published a new Linux Beta driver that brings a lot of new changes and improvements, not to mention support for a new mysterious GPU that hasn’t been named.
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As planned, Mesa 10.6 has been branched and due to lacking OpenGL 4.0 / OpenGL ES 3.1 support, the version will not be bumped to Mesa 11.0. This also now makes Mesa 10.7 officially under development.
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Benchmarks
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With the Linux 4.1 kernel coming together nicely I’ve begun my testing (separate from all the fully-automated Git testing done each day via the LinuxBenchmarking.com systems) of this new kernel under a variety of different workloads, stressing different systems, and focusing on the changes in the major subsystems. One of the systems this week has been running some fresh Btrfs RAID Linux file-system benchmarks. From an eight-disk server I’ve started this Btrfs RAID testing as some fresh numbers since my Btrfs RAID tests from a few months back on an older server.
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Applications
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Rygel, a home media solution (UPnP AV MediaServer) that allows users to easily share audio, video, and pictures to other devices, such as TVs or tablets, has been updated to version 0.24.4.
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A new version of the popular and cross-platform Plex Media Server has arrived today with several new features, as well as bug fixes that improve the overall stability and performance of the application.
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Oracle has just announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the fourth Beta release of the upcoming VirtualBox 5.0 virtualization software for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.
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Everpad is an open-source Evernote client that syncs with all your Evernote-enabled devices. The client can access all the features of Evernote and integrates very well with the Unity desktop, permitting the users to use the Unity search engine to search in the Evernote notes along with local Linux files.
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WeeChat is an open-source, multi-platform lightweight and extensible chat client, having a text user interface only. Having support for scripts and plugins that can be loaded either at startup or dynamically, the app has support for IRC.
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Cutegram is an open-source Telegram application, similar to Sigram. It is developed in Qt5 and QML and uses the libqtelegram and the libappindicator libraries.
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As version numbers go this sub version 1.0 milestone is underwhelming, but – and it’s a big ”but” – it is the result of four plus years hard work that’s paid of by delivering a major leap forward for the would-be Adobe Illustrator competitor.
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Syncthing is a cross-platform peer-to-peer file synchronization client/server application written in Go. The tool is similar to BitTorrent Sync (but it’s open source as opposed to BT Sync), and it’s used to synchronize files between computers.
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FFmpeg, a complete solution to record, convert, and stream audio and video, has been upgraded to version 2.6.3 and is now available for download and testing.
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Proprietary
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The Chrome 43 stable web-browser update delivers Web MIDI and Permissions API support. There’s also various security and bug fixes with this latest Chrome browser update.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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GOG have now made Blood: One Unit Whole Blood Linux compatible on their store using DOSBox. It’s an old sadistic FPS, and I took a quick look.
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Looks like Linux may get a newer Star Wars game with Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
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You will have to forgive me on this one, as I never played a Cossacks game, but it is from the developers of STALKER. Cossacks 3 has been announced, and apparently Linux support too.
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Civilization: Beyond Earth is the latest game in the Civilization series developed by Firaxis and its makers have announced that a new expansion pack called Rising Tide is in the works. Even better, Aspyr Media will release it for Linux in autumn for the Linux platform.
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Good news everyone! Civilization: Beyond Earth has announced an expansion called ‘Rising Tide’, and it will launch on Linux alongside Windows.
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Prison Architect, a prison management simulator developed and published by the famous Introversion Software studio, is now available for purchase on Steam for Linux with a huge 80% discount.
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DreadOut, a third person supernatural horror game developed and published by Digital Happiness on Steam, also received a Linux version.
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‘Rising Tide’ is set for a fall release on PC at a price of $29.99, with Aspyr again in charge of Mac and Linux versions, which are also expected this fall.
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In its recent publication of the “recommended requirements” Facebook Inc.’s (FB) head mounted display (HMD) subsidiary Oculus VR raised a couple eyebrows in putting a requirement pertaining to Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) “Windows 7 SP1 or newer” — and then making no mention of Apple, Inc.’s (AAPL) OS X or popular (sort of an oxymoron, granted) PC Linux distributions. Early on Oculus VR had promised cross platform support for Windows — but also OS X and Linux. Had something changed?
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Gaming hardware maker Razer, which leads the Open Source Virtual Reality standard drive, said this morning that Valve’s OpenVR initiative is the latest to sign up with the standard. The move brings together two heavyweights in the open-source battle for VR. And a $5.2 billion prize is at stake: That’s the amount the VR industry is expected to be worth by 2018, according to U.K. analyst KZero.
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Machineers by developer Lohika Games is a construction puzzle game set in a world of robots. Previously only available on tablets, the two first of five planned episodes made their PC début last week.
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Vendetta Online is a space MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) developed and published by Guild Software Inc. that is also available for the Linux platform. A new update has been released and is now ready for download.
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Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power, the third game in the Trine series, is now in Steam Early Access, but only for the Windows platform. The developers have said that the Linux version will be made available, but only at a later date.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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KDE’s first update of its 15.04 series of Applications and Frameworks 5.10.0 are now available in Chakra. With this release kde-workspace has also been updated to version 4.11.19 and kdelibs and kdepim to 4.14.8. Have in mind that the applications that have been ported to Frameworks 5 will not be updated in the stable repositories but remain at their previous versions. The new versions of these packages are pushed into the [kde-next] repository which provides Plasma 5.
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Over the weekend Jos Poortvliet announced that openSUSE Tumbleweed received “massive amount of changes” bringing Plasma 5.3 as the default desktop. Newly released Netrunner 16 also brought Plasma 5.3 as well as an interesting codename. Clement Lefebvre announced Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 upgrade path and said Cinnamon 2.6 and MATE 1.10 packages were right around the corner.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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I’ve commented in my hands-on review of GNOME 3.16 that in GNOME, the “three lines” icon replaces the gear menu for the drop-down menu. This “three lines” menu icon is more common in other applications, including those on Mac OS X and Windows, so the new menu icon should be easier to find. I still believe that the “hamburger” is a good choice. Visually, the “three lines” icon represents a menu.
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The development team behind the featureful and open-source GNOME Builder IDE (Integrated Development Environment) designed for developers who want to build apps for the GNOME desktop environment has released version 3.16.3.
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Reviews
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Software installation is much easier in Makulu Linux. A variety of installed Personal Package Archives are configured to make finding and installing more software much more convenient than it often is with other distros. Steam and PlayonLinux are both included as well. Want more? How about Netflix and Popcorn Time? Both applications are fully supported.
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NethServer is a Linux distribution based on the CentOS operating system. NethServer offers system administrators a “powerful web interface that simplifies common administration tasks, very easy/fast installation and a lot of pre-configured modules installable with a single click.” The NethServer project provides service modules and web-based management tools for working with these modules. NethServer is available for the 64-bit x86 architecture exclusively and the ISO image for this distribution is 455MB in size.
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New Releases
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Screenshots/Screencasts
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Ballnux/SUSE
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Red Hat Family
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A recent post by Gil Tene raises the importance of an important, little known patch to Linux kernels that should be reviewed by all users and administrators of Linux systems, especially those who utilize Haswell processors. Tene reports that in particular users of Red Hat-based distributions (including CentOS 6.6 and Scientific Linux 6.6) should apply the patch as soon as possible. Even if your instance of Linux is running in a VM, that VM is most likely hosted on a Haswell machine if is on the popular cloud providers (Azure / Amazon /etc) and would benefit from the patch.
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I never thought I’d have to write this article in 2015. By now, I thought it would be self-evident how to derive revenue from open source software platforms. But alas, no. Despite the fact that the success of open source software is unparalleled and dominates the global software industry, there are still far too many startups repeating the same mistakes from a thousand startups past. And there are still far too many larger companies that simply don’t understand what it means to participate in, much less lead, an open source community.
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Fedora
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We had a major change earlier this week, with the new fudcon.in website going live. This was a major task I was involved in over the last couple of weeks, and also one of the major reasons why we did not have a lot of visible action on the website. Hopefully you’ll see more action in the coming weeks as we come closer to the big day with just over a month to go.
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More than a year ago it was a change. A change in Fedora 22: The introduction of OpenCL. The idea was to get OpenCL somewhat usable out of the boxin Fedora, to enable people to use it, to further get more people testing it, to finally find more bugs and raise the demand. With a lot of help from others, especially Björn, the change made it into Fedora 21.
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After having proposed a Fedora Cinnamon Spin for the upcoming Fedora 23 Linux operating system, Jan Kurik, Program Manager at Red Hat, published details of the proposal of a very interesting edition of Fedora, the Fedora Netizen Spin.
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Debian Family
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As shipped, Debian Jessie (8.0) did not include kernel support for the USB controller on APM X-Gene based machines like the Mustang. In fact, at the time of writing this that support has not yet gone upstream into the mainline Linux kernel either but patches have been posted by Mark Langsdorf from Red Hat.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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The end of support for Windows XP runs a real crossroad for hundreds of educational institutions and their computer systems. Ubuntu is the change that cutting edge education needs.
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The consequence, the real payoff, is that schools that use GNU/Linux end up doing more with computers in education, not less, and they have the resources and flexibility to do a much better job of educating students and preparing them for a society where IT is everywhere. Face it.
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Canonical may still be mostly known for its Ubuntu Linux distribution, but the company now also offers a number of (paid) services for enterprises, often with a focus on the OpenStack platform. At the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, Canada, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth today introduced his company’s latest offering: Ubuntu Advantage Storage.
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In an email sent to the Ubuntu Touch mailinglist on May 18, Łukasz Zemczak from Canonical’s Foundations Team announced some more details regarding the next major update of the Ubuntu for phones mobile operating system.
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Canonical has been publishing Ubuntu Touch images and the developers used different channels to make their work known. That’s about to change as the Ubuntu devs prepare to make some modifications to the current system.
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Chinese phone maker Meizu is now selling a version of its MX4 smartphone with Ubuntu Linux-based software instead of Android. The Meizu Ubuntu MX4 is now available to developers in China. It should be available to the general public in China and Europe later this year.
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At OpenStack Summit, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu’s founder, announced that benchmarks proved that Ubuntu’s LXD container hypervisor “crushed” Linux’s own built-in virtual machine (VM) hypervisor KVM.
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Some seemingly harmless comments on the state of the open source community were met with debate.
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Convergence used to mean a different thing a couple of years back. We used to think that it’s about turning your phone into a working PC, and that was a great idea, but that concept has been refined mostly by the need of the real world. Sure enough, Canonical could have put forth a working prototype for a phone that doubled down like a PC, but they would limit themselves.
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Flavours and Variants
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As with every major change to Ubuntu, I have Bodhi users asking if we will continue using Ubuntu as a base. As always, my answer is: Wait and see! I like waiting to actually see what a new technology has to offer instead of casting judgment beforehand.
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The Linux Mint crew has tagged the release of the Cinnamon 2.6 desktop environment.
The Cinnamon 2.6 update is quite significant with support for systemd, panel support for multiple monitors, support for client-side decorations, and much more.
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Pi Supply has achieved Kickstarter funding for a “Papirus” display HAT that supports E-paper displays up to 2.7 inches on the Raspberry Pi and other SBCs.
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A new mini-computer is on the way, and it looks like it may be the Raspberry Pi killer we’ve all been waiting for (sorry Pi). C.H.I.P. is its name, and it looks set to wipe the floor with its established competitor on several counts:
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The kernel supplied on NAND flash is recent enough that it supports CONFIG_FHANDLE which is needed for the upgrade to Jessie.
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I spend a lot of time at conferences and events like Maker Faires, and having co-authored a book on the Raspberry Pi, I spend a lot of time talking to people about things like small electronics and open hardware. Probably the most frequent question I hear is, “Should I get a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino?”
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Phones
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Russia’s Ministry of Communications recently held a meeting about developing a home-grown mobile OS. Foreign mobile OSs currently account for 95% of the market, but Russia hope to cut this to 50% by 2025.
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Tizen
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Tizen is a great platform to develop apps for if you are someone who comes from a web development background. The ability to write apps for wearable devices and smartphones using nothing more than HTML/CSS and JavaScript makes building simple applications a breeze. Tizen extends the functionality of these languages by giving them access to all of the sensors found in many wearable devices and smartphones, which allows developers to build unique apps using simple languages.
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Android
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Google Nexus 5 and Nexus 4 have not received the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop OS update yet and its release is reportedly delayed.
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If you’re one of the lucky ones with Android Wear 5.1.1, then there’s a nice little update waiting for you in the Google Play Music app.
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Google’s new Nexus Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update comes with a number of big time bug fixes for Lollipop problems. It’s an exciting update and it’s one that some of you might want to install the second it comes out. Today, we take a look at a few reasons why you might want to install the Nexus Android 5.1.1 Lollipop when it arrives.
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There is no question that news readers make up a category of apps that is completely flooded. On one hand, this is great because it gives people plenty of choices that offer all sorts of different functionality. But it also means that you might never find the perfect news app for you because there’s just so much clutter to dig through.
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The Nvidia Shield Console looked pretty impressive when we checked it out at CES, but the 16GB of storage seemed problematic given how much space premium games can eat up.
Nvidia may have cooked up a solution, with a 500GB hard drive option appearing briefly on Amazon before it made like a Snapchat and disappeared.
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With Android 5.1.1 finally rolling out to a wider range of Android Wear devices, Google is reportedly moving its focus to an even larger update. According to Artem Russakovskii, who has proved to be a well-connected source in the past, Google is working to bring some futuristic features to Android Wear dependent on new wearable hardware. Could that be a hint of an exciting new smartwatch to come?
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Not too long ago, the Sony Xperia Z3 received the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, but it looks like it won’t take long before the device gets another upgrade. Just recently, the handset was spotted running the newest build of the operating system, the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
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It has only been a few weeks since the Android 5.0 Lollipop was rolled out to a number of devices but users are already looking forward to the release of the next Android M or Android 6.0.
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It’s always fun to read what happens when fans of one mobile platform switch to another for a certain length of time, and web designer and Android fan Joe Casabona recently decided to try the iPhone 6 for a couple of weeks to see if it did anything better than his preferred operating system. While Casabona found a lot to like on the iPhone 6, there still wasn’t enough to convince him to make the switch and he’s decided to stick with Android for now.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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Remix OS is a tweaked Android version, with a desktop interface and Chinese tablet maker Cube plans to release a tablet with this tweaked Android version.
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When Linux first became a serious challenger for enterprise-class infrastructure, traditional IT vendors had to contend and to rationalize just what exactly this open source thing was. The initial response from many vendors was to attempt to stop it, but it only grew.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Firefox 38, released a few days ago, includes support for the Adobe CDM on Windows platforms. Currently this still a work-in-progress for OS X and Linux builds. On the bright side, Netflix has started to experiment with Adobe-CDM enabled streaming, thus removing the need for Silverlight.
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Mozilla released version 38 of the Firefox web browser last week, and the updated version is available now in the Fedora repositories for Fedora 21, and for users running Fedora 22 pre-release versions. As has been the case since Firefox starting rapidly releasing new versions every 6 weeks or so, there are a handful of new shiny features, and many, many bugfixes.
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The Fedora Project has just published details about the inclusion of the recently released Mozilla Firefox 38.0 web browser in the main software repositories of the Fedora 21 operating system.
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Details about a number of Thunderbird vulnerabilities in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems have been published by Canonical.
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Mozilla has announced that Thunderbird 31.7 has been released and that it comes with a small number of vulnerability fixes, some more important than others.
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The Open Web Device Compliance Review Board (CRB), in conjunction with its members ALCATEL ONE TOUCH, Deutsche Telekom, Mozilla, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Telefónica, has announced the first handsets to be certified by the CRB. The CRB is an independently operated organization designed to promote the success of the open Web device ecosystem by encouraging API compliance as well as ensuring competitive performance.
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SaaS/Big Data
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The company’s new offering provides packaged engineered hardware to enable an organization to deploy and manage an OpenStack cloud, taking on VCE’s vBlock.
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In terms of OpenStack, Singh said that Walmart did a bunch of proof of concepts and came across OpenStack. Among the reasons why Walmart chose OpenStack is its flexibility and the ability to meet all of Walmart’s needs. Perhaps even more important, though, for Walmart was the community surrounding OpenStack.
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In August 2014, Walmart moved its entire ecommerce stack to OpenStack running on Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux.
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This myth ties back to several of the previously mentioned misconceptions about open-source cloud computing. A perceived lack of security, support and maturity and the idea that open source is in the hands of too many entities gives IT and business executives the sense that open-source cloud can not yet be trusted to support the most vital processes in the enterprise.
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Red Hat’s repackaging and integration effort aims to ease app delivery across all platforms: bare metal, VMs, and containers
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Leading line up of companies including F5, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks, and Red Hat collaborate with Nuage Networks on Reference Architecture
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To help plug the OpenStack skills gap, the OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation have been in talks about the creation of professional certification for those working with the open-source cloud project’s technologies.
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The OpenStack Foundation is rolling out its first round of interoperability testing that defines a common core for all OpenStack-powered platforms.
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Today Bright Computing announced Bright OpenStack, a fully integrated software stack for deployment, management, and maintenance of private clouds.
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When most people look to a cloud service provider to get a job done, they are thinking big, but some cloud tasks are smaller than others. Thats the thinking behind the Google Compute Engine Preemptible Virtual Machine.
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The company said that it will roll out a series of OpenStack services designed to help enterprise customers use the cloud framework for hybrid, private and public cloud deployments.
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Business
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Funding
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UC Santa Cruz alumnus Sage Weil, who developed his computer science Ph.D. thesis project into a highly successful open-source software product (the data storage system Ceph), has made major gifts to UC Santa Cruz providing a total of $3 million to support research in open-source software.
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BSD
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While not a Linux distribution, PC-BSD is a noteworthy open-source computer operating system that offers a modern and unique desktop environment based on FreeBSD.
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Public Services/Government
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Instead we had way more IT than most schools because we got hardware from the recycling bins of businesses and Free Software from Debian. We did exactly the same sorts of things governments need to do: store, find, create, modify and present documents, run databases and servers.
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You no longer have to be a rocket scientist to access more than 1,000 cutting-edge program tools from NASA.
This week, NASA published its second annual Software Catalog, which makes much of the coding its top scientists use on a daily basis available for public consumption at no cost.
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Openness/Sharing
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The OpenStack Infrastructure team manages all the services that developers in the OpenStack project interface with on a day-to-day basis, including the code review and continuous integration system, Wiki, IRC bots, and mailing lists.
We are also an open source project in our own right. All of the code and configurations used in our infrastructure is available in a series of public code repositories and all of our documentation is publicly available. This is in contrast to many other open source projects that either rely upon proprietary resources provided by a code hosting service, such as SourceForge or GitHub, or have a company with an IT staff that manages an infrastructure, like the Ubuntu project.
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Open Hardware
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Those that have dreamt of the possibility of a stylish open-source electric vehicle, listen up! The Luka electric vehicle (EV) is just such a project — an open-source project currently under development over in Europe that, if I may say so, is quite stylish.
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When you look at the current methods of scanning 2D and 3D objects available today, you’re basically looking at an imaging process. Either you take a picture of a 2D object, or you grab a blob of point clouds with a 3D scanner and make a 3D object that way. It wasn’t always like this – real, hardware 3D digitizers were used all the way back in the 70s, and touch probes are standard equipment on high-end CNC machines.
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We are from IntoRobot which is an experienced maker team of more than 20 faculty members and engineers from Switzerland, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. In the near future, we are going to release our open-source project, the Atom, by-far the world’s smallest open-source dual-CPU core for IoTs and robotics. The Atom, small but powerful, consists of DUAL high performance processers, the STM32 MCU and the Linux-embedded CPU. The Atom helps people who do not have too much knowledge of hardware, software or programming to make their own complex IoT devices and robots. Furthermore, Atom’s hardware and software are open-source, and people are welcome to develop their new hardware and software based on it.
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Programming
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What began as an experiment in consumer electronics in the early 1990s celebrates its 20th anniversary as a staple of enterprise computing this week. Java has become a dominant platform, able to run wherever the Java Virtual Machine is supported, forging ahead despite the rise of rival languages and recent tribulations with security.
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And Julia is a big deal — it’s a free alternative to proprietary tools for doing data science, like MathWorks’ MATLAB and Wolfram’s Mathematica, and it’s more contemporary than open-source languages R and Python. More companies are hiring data scientists to make more data-driven decisions, and open-source tools often come in handy.
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Security
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Frankly, the big objects are the easy part of security. But the tiny, insidious, and completely unforeseen vectors always seem to get us — like a tiny bit of code that was overlooked for years in OpenSSL or Bash, or to take the latest example, Venom (CVE-2015-3456), which is the hyped name given to the latest threat to virtualized infrastructures.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Over the weekend, the US government announced that special forces soldiers entered Syria to conduct a raid that killed an alleged leader of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf. In the process, anonymous US officials leaked classified information to the New York Times that’s much more sensitive than anything Edward Snowden ever revealed, and it serves as a prime example of the government’s hypocrisy when it comes to disclosures of secret information.
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Saudi Arabia is advertising for eight new executioners, in a recruitment drive which leading human rights charity Amnesty International has warned is symptomatic of an “unprecedented spike” of judicial killings in the country.
An advert for the position, posted on the country’s civil service jobs website, states that no specific qualifications are required for the brutal role which involves “executing a judgement of death” and performing amputations on those convicted of less serious crimes.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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The billionaire CEO of Continental Resources told a dean at the University of Oklahoma that he wanted earthquake researchers dismissed
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‘Shocking’ revelation finds $5.3tn subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments
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Finance
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday vowed to pass fast-track trade legislation before the Memorial Day recess, brushing aside calls for a prolonged floor debate on amendments.
“I want to be very clear … the Senate will finish its work on trade this week, and we will remain in session as long as it takes to do so,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Why do establishment media watchers bristle at Hersh’s using anonymity for its intended purpose–protecting whistleblowers from retaliation–while expressing no problem with the routine use of unnamed sources to allow official spokespeople to make statements on behalf of their institutions with no accountability?
When the nameless are speaking on behalf of power, they’re in line with the official narrative: They’re on the rails. When an anonymous source is challenging power, they call that narrative into question–and go off the rails.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, the purveyors of Iraqi WMDs, the eternal predictors of imminent Iranian nukes, the drone apologists who insist every “military-aged male” is a militant are accorded a presumption of credibility. Whereas calling into question the official story provokes not just skepticism but hostility: It’s an affront, after all, to those journalists who have the restraint, decency and good taste to stay on the rails.
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Privacy
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Counter-extremism powers that will allow the police to vet the online conversations of those considered extremists are to be fast-tracked into effect, David Cameron said.
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While the European parliament continues to wrestle with the privacy repercussions of a proposal on collecting passenger data, Denmark plans to move ahead with its own domestic plan.
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Civil Rights
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The European Commission published on 6 May its strategy for 2020 and the setting up of the Digital Single Market. Several important digital issues are concerned by this agenda: from copyright to crime, from telecommunications to VAT harmonisation. While La Quadrature du Net welcomes the Commission’s engagement with these issues, it does this only with caution as previous attempts were harmful to the protection of fundamental rights.
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President Obama has banned the sale of some kinds of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, following widespread criticism of a paramilitary-like response to riots in a St. Louis suburb last August.
In doing so, Obama put his stamp on the recommendations of a multi-agency federal working group that endorsed a ban on sales of some military equipment and providing more training, supervision and oversight of others.
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Two of world’s most wanted hackers had committed suicide and no one still knows why. Aaron Swartz and Jonathan James, both hackers by profession and most wanted by the FBI have committed suicide in face of the federal investigation against their hacking crimes.
Interested thing is both hackers were not connected to each other in any way but were being tried for hacking by the same department and the case was being overseen by the same Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann. Could this have any hand in their suicides.
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As I write, the UK’s electioneering is in full swing and politicians of all shades are making opportunistic statements that may turn out to be signals of future policy. Notable among them was a statement by Culture Secretary Sajid Javid, who revealed that the Conservative Party would ensure under-18s were prevented from seeing adult content on the internet. He did not elaborate exactly how that would be done.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Online pornography is a multibillion-dollar industry — 35 percent of all internet downloads are pornographic, and more than $3,000 is spent on internet porn every second. Every second! In the time it took you to read that sentence, $9,000 has been blown watching people get blown.
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Former Facebook Europe chief and Tech City guru to join the Government benches in the House of Lords
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Facebook’s Internet.org project, which offers people from developing countries free mobile access to selected websites, has been pitched as a philanthropic initiative to connect two thirds of the world who don’t yet have Internet access. We completely agree that the global digital divide should be closed. However, we question whether this is the right way to do it. As we and others have noted, there’s a real risk that the few websites that Facebook and its partners select for Internet.org (including, of course, Facebook itself) could end up becoming a ghetto for poor users instead of a stepping stone to the larger Internet.
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On Monday, 65 advocacy organizations in 31 countries released an open letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg protesting Internet.org—an effort to bring free internet service to the developing world—saying the project “violates the principles of net neutrality, threatening freedom of expression, equality of opportunity, security, privacy, and innovation.”
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The fake Internet will also restrict access to local service providers struggling to get a foothold online.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Google
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So things just keep getting stranger and stranger online. A bunch of mobile operators are apparently planning to start automatically blocking all mobile ads. Now, for those of you who hate ads online, this might seem like a good thing, but it is not. If you want to disable ads on your own, that should be your call. In fact, as we’ve noted before, we think people on the web have every right to install their own ad blockers, and we find it ridiculous when people argue that ad blocking is some form of “theft.”
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Nestlé is rebranding KitKats as “YouTube Break” for a limited run of 600,000 bars in the UK.
The Google-branded chocolate bars are the first of a series of 100 million differently-branded biscuits that will be produced as part of a new Nestlé campaign.
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Copyrights
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In a victory for free speech advocates, appellate judges have ruled that YouTube should not have forced to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violence in the Middle East and death threats to actors.
The 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal sided with Google, which owns YouTube, in its ruling Monday saying the previous decision by a three-member panel of the same court gave “short shrift” to the First Amendment and constituted prior restraint — a prohibition on free speech before it takes place.
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According to a government agency responsible for promoting Sweden overseas, the country has several major brands to thank when it comes to being recognized on the world stage. In addition to car makers Volvo and furniture store IKEA, interest in Sweden has been boosted thanks to the notorious Pirate Bay. But the file-sharing fun doesn’t end there.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
05.18.15
Posted in News Roundup at 1:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Greenpeace should be pushing GNU/Linux on ARMed PCs, not attacking efficient operations.
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How do you know if you are a potential candidate to become a Linux user? It’s this simple: What’s the first app you fire up after booting into your system? If you said ‘browser’, then you are a potential Linux user.
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Open source fans have long had a rocky relationship with Microsoft. Everyone knows that. But, in many ways, the tension between Apple and supporters of free or open source software is even starker—even if it receives much less attention in the press.
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Desktop
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I’m a Linux noob. A newcomer. A beginner. Call it what you like, the fact is I’m new to Linux.
And, three years ago I was new to open source, too. It’s not uncommon for my generation—my peers—to have PCs and Macs, use Windows exclusively, and not really understand why someone would choose not to own an iPhone. But these days, the people I compare myself to and strive to be more like are most often my work collegues. And they have Thinkpads and run Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and have a notable number of open source-related stickers on their laptops. They have Android phones, the newest version. Some could even be caught with a 3D printed figurine or two in their backpacks.
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The world of Linux is ready to welcome you, with a shower of free open-source software you can use on any PC: hundreds of active Linux distributions, and dozens of different desktop environments you could run on them. It’s a far cry from the one-size-fits-all, this-is-just-what-comes-with-your-PC vision of Windows.
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Open source is becoming a powerful alternative to proprietary software and proof of that is that many municipalities, governments, and companies are now adopting open source solutions, but that is happening in schools and universities as well. The Augustinian College of León in Spain is just such a place.
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Most people believe that moving from Windows to Linux isn’t possible because it lacks critical software and tools they need. Perhaps in some limited instances they’re right, but I believe the bigger challenge is making sure critical workflows remain intact.
In this article I’ll examine two application workflows that are often not considered until the need for these tools arise.
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So, this is GNU/Linux’s year. The year when positive feedback is kicking in. The year when M$ burned it’s bridges to consumers and OEMs with ill-conceived nonsense. The year the world realized it had a choice of operating systems for PCs. Amen.
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Kernel Space
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I’m announcing the release of the 4.0.4 kernel.
All users of the 4.0 kernel series must upgrade.
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Only four days after the announcement of Linux kernel 4.0.3 as the latest and most advanced kernel version, Greg Kroah-Hartman has just published today, May 17, news about the fourth maintenance release of Linux kernel 4.0.
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Immediately after announcing Linux kernel 4.0.4, Greg Kroah-Hartman published details about Linux kernel 3.10.79, an LTS (Long Term Support) release that will be updated for a few more years.
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Graphics Stack
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For users of the Freedreno Gallium3D driver for having unofficial open-source Qualcomm graphics support, the Adreno 306 is the latest graphics processor now supported.
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Nearly one month ago AMD published the open-source code to their new “AMDGPU” kernel driver and the necessary user-space driver changes too. That code is continuing to mature for the Linux 4.2 kernel and for supporting the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver that code is continuing to be polished.
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The RandR components are updated for version 1.5.0 to take advantage of new functionality in the X.Org Server.
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Applications
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BitTorrent is a great way to transfer and share large files, but it’s only as convenient and efficient as the application you use to seed and download them. This week, we’re looking at five of the best BitTorrent clients, based on your nominations.
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The applet, developed by Lester Carballo Pérez (lestcape) is based on the GNOME Shell AppIndicator extension and it makes use of unity-gtk-module (so it requires unity-gtk2-module and unity-gtk3-module to be installed). Thanks to this, the new Cinnamon global menu works with GTK2, GTK3 and Qt applications (requires appmenu-qt) as well as LibreOffice.
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A new release of our random package for truly (hardware-based) random numbers as provided by random.org is now on CRAN.
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Gedit, the default GUI text editor in Fedora Workstation has a neat new minimap feature in the works. This feature provides a shrunk-down version of the document you are editing on the right of the screen to make it easier to jump between different parts of larger documents.
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When designing a product/service, it is hard to agree on what a user is, specially in engineering environments. In marketing/product environments, in general is in the DNA of those involved in product design to differentiate buyers from consumers (users). Market segmentation is understood by default. In my experience, this is not always the case in engineering environments.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Ubuntu is an open source software platform that runs from the smartphone, the tablet and the PC to the server and the cloud. If you’re looking for a free, friendly and powerful operating system, Ubuntu is an excellent Linux distribution. The latest release of Ubuntu, codenamed the “Vivid Vervet”, offers some fundamental changes under the bonnet. One of the most controversial changes is the switch to systemd, a suite of system management daemons, libraries, and utilities designed as a central management and configuration platform. systemd has seen buckets of complaints because there’s a feeling the project is taking over too much of the Linux system, thereby flying in the face of the Unix philosophy: ‘do one thing and do it well’. Ubuntu 15.04 also brings new desktop, cloud, server and Internet of things (IoT) capabilities.
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Wine or Emulation
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Wine 1.7.43 was released on Friday and following it this weekend was the latest Wine-Staging update that re-bases atop the latest upstream Wine while carrying extra, experimental features like DXVA2, CUDA 7, and various other features.
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Games
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Cyberia 2: Resurrection is another classic game added to our collections thanks to GOG and DOSBox. I’ve tested it, and it’s interesting.
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Hero of the Kingdom is a nice looking casual RPG, and the Linux release is almost upon us. The developers took to their Steam forum to keep everyone informed.
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The rather atmospheric game Dark Echo was released last week. With its minimalist graphics and simple gameplay, it stands out from other recent releases. After giving it a spin, I had a few thoughts to share on the game.
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MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and darling of fanatical retro arcade gamers, is going open source for the first time in its 18-year history. MAMEdev.org, the non-profit group behind the emulator’s continuing development, announced the move in a surprise tweet Thursday.
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MAME is beloved of retro-gamers, who delight in its ability to run the ROMs of vintage cabinet and console games on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
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Popular arcade emulator, MAME, is becoming open-source in the hopes of becoming a learning tool for developers. Although the emulator’s source code has been available for some time, it has been under a modified BSD license which prohibited commercial use of the code.
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Guns of Icarus Online, a multiplayer airship combat title developed and published on Steam by Muse Games for multiple platforms, is now available for purchase with a 75% discount.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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A few days ago the Rust community announced v1.0 of their new systems programming language, Rust. Having followed the project for some time and finally having used the language for a number of small projects this year, I’ve come to feel that using Rust is interesting, fun and productive. I’d like to highly encourage everyone to give it a look now that it’s finally considered ready for prime time.
To aid the effort I’ve put some Sunday hacking time into a basic Rust code completion plugin for Kate today. It’s built around Phil Dawes’ very nifty Racer, freeing it up to concern itself only with exposing some configuration and getting data provided by Racer into Kate. Not difficult at all.
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I am going to be adding ‘Constellation Art’ unto the sky map in KStars. This project is precisely what I have been looking for, a perfect blend of astronomy and coding – the best of both worlds!
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I think it was when I started using Linux about 3-4 years ago. Or when I found out about the artist David Revoy and read about Krita on his website.
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The work on unified graphics for GCompris was completed in the time allocated by the fundraiser. Here is a video to show the result.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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GNOME 3.18 is under heavy development and already thus far this cycle we’ve seen GTK+ do away with Windows XP support and integrate other toolkit improvements along with other work like in-progress file manager improvements. Here’s more of the GNOME 3.18 work items to get excited about.
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GNOME 3.18 is expected to arrive in September, but until then developers plan to work to improve it as much as possible. Two components that will get some special attention are File (former Nautilus file manager) and Calendar.
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A gaming distro, by definition, is host not only to a large variety of games, or software that allows one to play games, but it also has drivers and support for essential devices such as graphics cards and controllers.
Unlike most other genres of Linux distributions, gaming distros aren’t a thriving bunch. But this isn’t because Linux users dislike games, instead it’s due to the fact that this niche category is almost redundant thanks to most modern desktop distros. Almost all desktop distros are equipped nowadays with drivers for most modern graphics cards, which means that just about any distro can be turned into a gaming station.
Despite this, some distros continue to churn out special gaming editions which provide hundreds of games right out of the gate, and the means to install even more with additional software such as Play on Linux, Wine and Steam.
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New Releases
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Ikey Doherty from the Solus OS development team has had the great pleasure of informing us today about the immediate availability for download and testing of the second Beta release of Solus (formerly Evolve OS) Linux.
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MakuluLinux Aero, a Linux distribution based on the Debian testing branch that uses Cinnamon and some customization that make it look like a Windows OS, has been released.
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MakuluLinux Aero Edition Now available for download.
Read the release notes in the Aero Section and Grab the ISO from the download section above.
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One of the wonderful things about Linux distributions is the various desktop environments available. Unlike Windows and OS X, if you do not like the user interface, you can simply change it. I am a big fan of GNOME 3, but I know that many people dislike it. That’s OK — different strokes for different folks as they say.
Another desktop environment I like, and recommend to many, is KDE Plasma. The latest version, Plasma 5, is wonderful, and former Windows users will feel comfortable with it. Today, the best KDE distribution, Netrunner, reaches version 16. Dubbed “Ozymandias”, it embraces KDE Plama 5.
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The Tiny Core developers were happy to announce the availability of the first Release Candidate version of the upcoming Tiny Core Linux 6.3 computer operating system. Tiny Core Linux is being known as one of the tiniest distributions in the world.
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Zbigniew Konojacki, the developer of the 4MLinux distributions, had the pleasure of informing Softpedia about the immediate availability for download and testing of the Beta versions of 4MLinux 13.0, 4MLinux Core 13.0, and 4MLinux 13.0 Allinone Edition.
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Arch Family
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Shortly after having announced the ninth update of Manjaro Linux 0.8.12, the Manjaro Linux development team informed its dedicated users about the immediate availability for download and testing of Manjaro Linux 0.8.13 RC1.
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Ballnux/SUSE
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As of this weekend, openSUSE Tumbleweed is now defaulting to the KDE Plasma 5.3 experience alongside the KDE Applications 15.04.1 packages.
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The openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling release version of the famous operating system has moved to KDE Plasma 5.3, and it looks like it’s a smooth transition, although any help from the community is always welcomed.
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Red Hat Family
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Enterprise IT organizations are moving, or planning to move to OpenStack for their cloud infrastructure, a new survey from Red Hat finds. The OpenStack enterprise adoption survey of more than 310 IT decision makers and professionals from around the world, commissioned by Red Hat through TechValidate, found that the majority of respondents (75 percent) are planning to use OpenStack for cloud initiatives. The survey found respondents in varying stages of deployment, ranging from learning and evaluation (40 percent) and proof of concept/pilots (40 percent) to preparing for deployment (18 percent) and in production (16 percent).
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Fedora
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Anaconda is the OS installer used by Fedora and RHEL GNU/Linux distributions and all their derivatives.
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Fedora’s default desktop environment is GNOME, but MATE, KDE, XFCE, Sugar and LXDE spins are also available for those who prefer them. And starting with Fedora 23, scheduled for release in October/November this year, Cinnamon joins the Fedora family.
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Debian Family
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I got an email last year pointing out a cosmetic issue with changelogs.debian.net. I think at the time of the email, the only problem was some bitrot in PHP’s built-in server variables making some text appear incorrectly.
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Neil McGovern, Debian’s new leader has recently announced that the future Debian systems will receive support for PPAs, the deb packages being technically compatible with both Ubuntu and Debian systems.
But it looks like Neil did not refer to the existing PPAs designed for Ubuntu, but some Debian-specific PPAs. The PPAs are needed so that the Debian developers and users easily maintain and provide updates for community-driven software.
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Derivatives
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Parsix GNU/Linux is a live and installation DVD based on Debian. Our goal is to provide a ready to use and easy to install desktop and laptop optimized operating system based on Debian’s testing branch and the latest stable release of GNOME desktop environment. Users can easily install extra software packages from Parsix APT repositories. Our annual release cycle consists of two major and four minor versions. We have our own software repositories and build servers to build and provide all the necessary updates and missing features in Debian stable branch.
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Alan Baghumian was proud to inform us earlier today about the immediate availability for download of the final release of Parsix GNU/Linux 7.5r0, a computer operating system derived from Debian 7 Wheezy.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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After using Ubuntu (13.10) for like almost one year I decided to move back to Fedora (Fedora 21). This is going to be a short post on my experience on mounting the same /home I used in Ubuntu for Fedora.
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It wasn’t a far-fetched prediction when I stated that 2015 may be the year of Ubuntu. After Bq now Meizu is bringing their Ubuntu phone to the market; this will be the second Ubuntu phone to go on sale in 2015.
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So far the Ubuntu operating system is little-known, but it looks as though there will soon be a further push to give this platform a higher profile, as a Meizu MX4 Ubuntu version launch date is being tipped. This will be only the second smartphone to release running Ubuntu, after the lower-end BQ Aquaris E4.5 that arrived earlier this year.
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Meizu has finally announced Ubuntu MX4, the first phone from this company with Canonical’s operating system. It’s aimed at developers from China, but it should land in Europe soon as well.
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Meizu is now teasing the community suggesting that something will be happening on May 18 (tomorrow) and many Chinese blogs suggest that their Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition will get released tomorrow.
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Ubuntu enthusiasts in Europe have been able to buy the first Ubuntu phone for some time now, the BQ Aquaris, while starting now Chinese developers are able to buy the second official Ubuntu phone: the Meizu Ubuntu MX4.
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Flavours and Variants
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Both of the Linux Mint Debian flavors, Cinnamon and MATE, were released a month ago, but until now users of the previous version could not upgrade from one release to another. The upgrade path for the upgrade has been opened, and it’s now possible to switch from LMDE 1 to LMDE 2.
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For as long as I can remember people have been creating Linux distributions with a view to emulating the look and feel of other operating systems such as Windows and OSX.
For instance there used to be an Linux distribution called Lindows which obviously attempted to emulate Windows and more recently Zorin OS has produced a desktop that looks and feels like Windows 2000, Windows 7 and OSX.
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The Xubuntu project recent unveiled a stripped-down build of its Xfce-based Ubuntu: Xubuntu core. Core offers a very basic version of the Xfce desktop, along with the basic look and feel of Xubuntu, but any extras like an office suite, media player, Xfce add-ons or even a web browser will have to be installed separately.
The “core” name is a little confusing since Ubuntu proper recently began shipping Ubuntu Core, a lightweight version of Ubuntu optimized for container-based environments like Docker. Xubuntu core is unrelated and derived from Xubuntu, not Ubuntu Core.
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Phones
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Based on Finland’s Sailfish operating system, the plan is the latest way Russia is fighting for independence from US technology
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In an effort to boost its independence from Western technology, Russia has announced that it will be creating its own mobile operating system, the Russian-language news site RBC reports (English language summary). Russia’s Ministry of Communications is working with the Finnish company Jolla, which already offers a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices called Sailfish.
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Android
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An Android 5.1 Lollipop update for the Sony Xperia and HTC One series devices have yet to materialize. Oddly, the unlocked Google Play Edition for the HTC One M7 is receiving the Android 5.1 Lollipop over-the-air. This is the only HTC One device to be getting the update. We will examine the current Android update situation for the Sony Xperia Z3, Z2; HTC One M7, M8.
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It’s been a little while since we’ve heard from Motorola about its progress bringing Android Lollipop updates to its lower-tiered devices, but now there’s some big news. The Android 5.1 Lollipop OTA update release date for the second generation Moto E (2015) is… now.
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Android 5.0 Lollipop is now in use on smartphones and tablets but we’re future thinking and here’s what we want to see in Android M, whatever version number and name it will be (Milkshake? M&Ms? Marshmallow?). Read: How to get Android L now. and Android M UK release date and new features.
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While Sony is busy testing the Android Lollipop upgrade for the Xperia Z series device, a leaked video has been spotted, suggesting the Android 5.1.1 for the Xperia Z3 smartphone.
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If you’ve got the latest version of Android Wear — that is, Android 5.1.1 — and use Google Play Music, you now have a new option for controlling tunes on your watch.
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More recently, however, developers are moving more to Android as money follows eyeballs. Last year, mobile research firm Digi-Capital reported that Android reported more app revenue than Apple for the year, if you count its Android-forked Chinese revenue. Even so, counting App store revenues is still missing the big picture in regards to Google’s big opportunity.
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Motorola has released its Droid Turbo on October 28 last year with Android 4.4 KitKat on it. It could be recalled that Google released its latest mobile operating system, the Android 5.0 Lollipop, in November 12, 2014 or barely two weeks after the release of the Motorola Droid Turbo.
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Android (rooted with Xposed): Some Android apps, like Gmail, may show that you have multiple unread notifications—but they won’t tell you how many. Notification Count is an Xposed module for rooted phones that adds a number badge to all your notifications.
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Almost two weeks ago, mobile software developer community Resurrection Remix rolled out a new customs ROM to Samsung Galaxy S3 that is based on Android 5.1 Lollipop that practically delighted sentimental users of Samsung’s 2012 flagship smartphone almost to no end.
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One of the best things about Android is that apps have a lot more freedom compared to those found on iPhones.
Some of the most interesting Android apps are exclusive to Android because they do something Apple wouldn’t allow.
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What’s one of the easiest ways to breathe in new life in your phone’s interface is by giving it an icon overhaul. There are already a great lot of totally awesome and beautiful icon packs for Android.
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Welcome to this week’s roundup of the latest, greatest Android apps and games, covering smartphones and tablets.
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Motorola India has started rolling out the Android 5.1 Lollipop update to the Moto E (Gen 1) in India. The Lenovo-owned company last week rolled out the Lollipop update for the second-generation Moto E.
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Samsung Denmark’s website is now revealing that the Samsung Galaxy S5 mini (SM-G800) will be receiving an update to Android 5.0.1. The handset is currently running Android 4.4.2. The update actually takes the less-spec’d mini version of Samsung’s last generation flagship phone, to a slightly higher build than the Android 5.0 version received by the Samsung Galaxy S5 (SM-G900). That update took place in February.
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Xposed is a fantastic tool for modders whose phones aren’t as popular as mainstream models and don’t get as much ROM support, or if they simply want a few Android tweaks without flashing completely custom firmware. Unfortunately, both the Xposed Framework and the module you’re using need to be updated with each major release of Android for the functionality to reliably work. That’s now true for GravityBox, a popular collection of tweaks and mods bundled into a single module, and Lollipop 5.1.
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After over seven years of publishing, this is the last column on the Open Enterprise blog. You can access all 1400 posts from the complete listing in reverse chronological order; if you want to start at the beginning you can use this page.) For my last post, I thought it might be interesting to pick out some of the key events that have taken place in open source and its related fields during that time. It’s pretty astonishing how much has happened, and how much has been achieved. As I said in one of my recent posts, free software has definitely won, but it’s certainly not finished. Thanks for sharing that amazing journey.
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Events
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I’ve got three words: It Was Amazing! Congratulations to the organizers and the volunteers who put it all together. I’m so happy that I was once again part of it.
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As the OpenStack Summit is set to start May 17 in Vancouver, B.C., here’s a look at the trends and issues that will dominate the five-day conference.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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A couple of years ago, Google declared war on extensions for the Chrome browser not hosted on the Chrome Web Store. As the Chromium blog made clear: “Many services bundle useful companion extensions, which causes Chrome to ask whether you want to install them (or not). However, bad actors have abused this mechanism, bypassing the prompt to silently install malicious extensions that override browser settings and alter the user experience in undesired ways, such as replacing the New Tab Page without approval.”
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Mozilla
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First up, Rust has reached version 1.0, though this is an announcement that was hardly unexpected. It has a lot to live up to given the Rust web site goes for such unloaded language as “blazingly fast, prevents nearly all segfaults, and guarantees thread safety”. The real test for Rust, at least for me, is how well Servo, Mozilla’s browser written in Rust and the application Rust was created with in mind. It seems this is the best possible test case, so…
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Recently, Firefox 38.0.5 Beta has been released, bringing a bunch of new features. While the first Beta version of Firefox 39 was expected, Mozilla has released a new Beta version for Firefox 38, which is unexpected and does not happen too often.
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Funding
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On 27th April, 2015 with the announcement of selected students for GSoC 2015, my upcoming adventurous summer was set to begin.
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BSD
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For DragonFlyBSD users out there, the swap device with the latest Git kernel can now be encrypted.
It’s trivial with the newest DragonFlyBSD code as of this weekend to support an encrypted swap. The commit by DragonFlyBSD founder Matthew Dillon explains, “Implement crypting of the swap device. When enabled in this manner /dev/urandom is used to generate a 256-bit random key and the base device is automatically cryptsetup and mapped, making crypted swap trivial. Implement the ‘crypt’ fstab option, so swapon -a and swapoff -a work as expected for crypted swap. Again, the base device (e.g. /dev/da0s1b) should be specified. The option will automatically map it with cryptsetup and swap on the mapping.”
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An interview with George Neville-Neil about the recently published 2nd edition of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System.
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PC-BSD 10.1.2 was released today as the latest quarterly update to the FreeBSD-derived operating system.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Maintenance and minor feature enhancements.
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Public Services/Government
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Using open source in school greatly reduces the time needed to troubleshoot PCs, shows the case of the Colegio Agustinos de León (Augustinian College of León, Spain). In 2013, the school switched to using Ubuntu Linux for its desktop PCs in class rooms and offices. For teachers and staff, the amount of technical issues decreased by 63 per cent and in the school’s computer labs by 90 per cent, says Fernando Lanero, computer science teacher and head of the school’s IT department.
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Openness/Sharing
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While the mechanical and green part of the build is exactly what you would expect from something designed from hardware store parts, the electronics are rather interesting. All the plants in either a hydroponic or dirt-based setup will have their moisture level and PH monitored by a a set of electronics that push data up to the cloud.
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Open Data
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The Montenegrin Centre for Democratic Transition (CDT) is to develop a mobile app that citizens can use to ask government agencies for data of public interest. The Centre is one of four winners of the Technology for Citizen Engagement competition, organised by the Cyprus office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Mahallae, a “digital neighbourhood for civic engagement developed by Cypriot civil society and innovators from the Euro-Mediterranean region”.
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Open Hardware
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As I worked on the concept, I decided I needed some printed circuits (PCB). The main motivation here was to be able to run some workshops at the local Java User Group, where people would solder the board and then program it.
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Programming
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As a Solution-level member of the Eclipse Foundation, Azul will be actively participating in the Eclipse Foundation’s IoT working group. Azul’s latest open source offering, Zulu Embedded, provides developers and manufacturers in the embedded, mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) markets with a robust, flexible open source alternative to traditional embedded Java implementations. Zulu Embedded is particularly relevant to organisations that require customisable, multiplatform, reduced-footprint, and standards compliant Java SE runtimes and development solutions. Launched in March 2015, Zulu Embedded is already installed in over 2 million devices worldwide.
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House-hunters scouting north London’s most rarefied streets once had a simple wish list for their perfect home: a south-facing garden, parking space for a 4×4, room to expand into the loft. Throw in a good school and a walk to Hampstead Heath.
But residents in Dartmouth Park now have an extra demand: pitch blackness outside their bedroom walls when the sun goes down. In fact, conservation groups have become so worried about the “quality of darkness” in their area at night that they have asked for town planners to consider how it can be protected when new home improvement applications are sent to Camden Council.
The Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Advisory Committee, a group of local residents and conservationists who examine all homeowner planning applications for work, insists that its neighbourhood is “semi-rural”, regardless of its inner London postcode, and that the night-sky darkness must be protected.
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Science
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It is a question that keeps some parents awake at night. Should children be allowed to take mobile phones to school? Now economists claim to have an answer. For parents who want to boost their children’s academic prospects, it is no.
The effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week’s schooling over a pupil’s academic year, according to research by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy, published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.
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Security
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Did Chris Roberts hack a plane? Possibly. Did he hack a plane such that he could gain access to critical flight systems from the comfort of his seat, and possibly even alter the plane’s movement during the flight itself? Possibly.
The entire affair came into the public eye when Roberts sent a now-famous tweet from a United Airlines flight on April 15: “Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? “PASS OXYGEN ON” Anyone ? :)”
The first response to that tweet—”…aaaaaand you’re in jail. :)”—didn’t quite happen, as Roberts has yet to be charged with a crime for his alleged security probing. According to Roberts, he never connected his laptop to any Seat Electronic Box (SEB) on that specific flight, the means by which he could probe the plane’s networks and, possibly, its control systems. FBI agents, noticing that the SEBs under the seats where Roberts had been sitting showed signs of tampering, didn’t seem to believe him.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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The police and Royal Navy are hunting for a whistleblower who is on the run after publishing a dossier of alleged security failings on board Trident nuclear submarines.
Able Seaman William McNeilly, 25, a newly qualified engineer, claimed that Britain’s nuclear deterrent was a “disaster waiting to happen” in a report detailing 30 alleged safety and security breaches.
He wrote that a chronic manpower shortage meant that “it’s just a matter of time before we’re infiltrated by a psychopath or a terrorist; with this amount of people getting pushed through”.
The Ministry of Defence has launched an investigation into the claims, published in a 19-page report titled The Secret Nuclear Threat, which it said contained a “number of subjective and unsubstantiated personal views … with which the Naval Service completely disagrees”.
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A security official said that the drone fired two missiles at a ‘hideout’.
“Six militants were killed and two injured in the attack,” he said.
The death toll is feared to rise as those injured in drone attacks seldom survive.
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Three of the five were reported to be ethnic Uzbeks, and Pakistani officials dubbed the house destroyed in the strike a “suspected Taliban compound.”
[...]
The US claims to have a secret “understanding” with Pakistan on such drone strikes, something that was reached back during the Musharraf junta, but the Sharif government has denied any such deals.
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The family of an American captive killed in a drone strike said Wednesday it would welcome the creation of a hostage czar to coordinate government efforts to free those held.
Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., introduced legislation last week to set up a “czar,” soon after President Barack Obama apologized for a drone strike in January that accidentally killed Warren Weinstein of Maryland and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian citizen. The strike targeted an al-Qaida compound along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
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Rep John Delaney has introduced legislation that he hopes would enable the government to better coordinate its efforts to rescue Americans captured overseas.
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The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and several other human rights groups are asking President Obama to begin investigating all civilian deaths and injuries resulting from U.S. counterterrorism drone strikes and to make the results of those investigations public.
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Following President Obama’s acknowledgement that a US drone strike killed an Italian and US citizen held in Pakistan, and his announcement of an independent investigation into the strike, a group of human rights organisations have urged the President to do the same for other US drone strikes in which civilians were killed.
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In January, a barrage of American missiles struck a suspected Al Qaeda hideout in Pakistan. Unbeknownst to intelligence officials, however, American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, both kidnapped aid workers, were held hostage inside and died in the attack. Then three weeks ago, after a preliminary investigation, President Obama did something wholly unprecedented in his global war of “targeted killings”: he stepped up to a podium in the White House and apologized to Weinstein and Lo Porto’s families.
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There were reports of continued ground fighting in some areas, with security officials and witnesses saying fierce combat broke out about a half hour after the cease-fire began when rebels tried to storm the southern city of Dhale, firing tank shells, rockets and mortars. But no airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition battling the rebels were reported.
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At least 17 suspected Taliban members died in a US drone strike in eastern Afghanistan, sources from the police and NATO told Efe news agency on Tuesday.
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Unknown drone has crashed in a remote area in South-Western Somalia as cause of the crash is still unclear, Horseed Media reports.
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Locals in Somalia’s Burhakaba city told Anadolu Agency that the drone crashed in the nearby Bashir town earlier on Sunday.
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The Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab on Sunday said it has captured a drone which fell down in the Bay region of Somalia.
The militants said they were in possession of the drone which they claimed belonged to the United States after it came down near El Bashir village.
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But does his death put an end to terrorism? No. In fact, ever since America’s drone campaign reached Yemen, al-Qaeda’s presence in the Arabian Peninsula has intensified, which has sparked debate concerning the counter productivity of drone warfare. The Washington Post reported a doubling of AQAP core insurgents in Yemen since the first strike in 2009. Theorists argue the reason for the amplification of terrorism in drone-affected regions stems from exacerbated anti-Americanism, which each drone strike ultimately spurs on.
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In a May 11 letter to U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the bishops said leaders should consider the “full cost” of drone warfare.
“Drones provoke anxiety among populations where there are targets, inflicting psychological damage on innocent civilians who live in constant fear they may be hurt or killed and listed as ‘collateral damage.’ This fear and civilian casualties feed into increasing hostility towards the United States so that many say the use of armed drones in these targeted killings is counterproductive to establishing and sustaining longer-term security relationships with countries where drones are used,” they said.
Armed drone technology has the potential for “much harm,” the bishops continued. More countries are acquiring drones and government spending on the technology is rapidly increasing.
Armed drones may be used excessively due to their low initial costs, the bishops warned. This risks expanding conflict zones and increasing the likelihood for war. The use of surveillance drones by China, Japan and the Philippines have worsened tensions over disputed territories.
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The decision by India’s National Disaster Response Force to use drones to help Nepal map the scale of devastation caused by last month’s earthquake indicates how India has enthusiastically taken to these pilot-less aircraft — the so-called eyes in the sky.
With 22.5 per cent the world’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imports, between 1985 and 2014, India ranks first among drone-importing nations, followed by United Kingdom and France. UAVs, or drones as they are commonly known, are pilotless aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence gathering and aerial combat missions.
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With 22.5 percent the world’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imports, between 1985 and 2014, India ranks first among drone-importing nations, followed by United Kingdom and France. UAVs, or drones as they are commonly known, are pilotless aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence gathering and aerial combat missions.
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Rather than make vague and contradictory statements about the success of drone strikes in eliminating the jihadi threat, journalists should concentrate on the concrete damage drones are doing to both US security and rule of law. It is necessary and natural that a nation that opposes tyranny and advocates for the rule of law would examine the danger inherent in giving the president the power to determine life and death based on questionable intelligence. But the Post confirms without a hint of indignation that signature strikes “do not require a finding that the targets pose an imminent threat to the United States, though they must still involve a judgment of ‘near certainty’ that no civilians will be killed.” In the least US citizens should demand what “near certainty” means and to whom the term “civilian” applies. The slope becomes very slippery when the president labels those targeted and all military age males collaterally killed as terrorists. A 2014 analysis conducted by The Guardian found that 41 targeted drone assassinations had led to 1,147 deaths. Contrary to limiting the terrorist problem, these numbers would indicate that terrorist ranks might be filled with those seeking revenge against arbitrary US assault.
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Though U.S. media didn’t make much of it, Malala made a point of emphasizing that drone strikes fuel terrorism.
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Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain says the panel will include language that would shift America’s armed drone program to the Pentagon, rather than leave the matter to the full chamber.
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“I think it should be conducted [with] oversight and administered by the Department of Defense. I don’t believe the drone program ought to be run out by the CIA,” McCain said, adding it “should be operated exclusively out of the Pentagon.”
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Britain’s Royal Air Force carried out 301 Reaper drone missions over Iraq between the start of UK operations against Isis last September and the end of March, firing a total of 102 Hellfire missiles on 87 separate occasions, according to new Ministry of Defence figures.
The numbers were obtained by the Drone Wars UK organisation, which also reveals today that RAF Tornados carried out 115 strikes in Iraq during the same period.
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How could this be? How could the loss of capable and charismatic leaders not degrade their group? The answer may lie in a little-known study carried out in Iraq in 2007 by a small semisecret unit, the Combat Operations Intelligence Center. Targeting “high value individuals” was the principal U.S. strategy in Iraq, and the COIC analysts were interested to see whether it worked. They took the list of 200 “IED cell leaders” eliminated between June and October 2007 and looked at the results.
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At least 10 people were killed in overnight battles between Houthis and militiamen in the Yemeni city of Taiz, residents and medical sources said on Sunday.
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The United Nations envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, called on a Saudi-led military coalition and the country’s warring parties to extend by five more days a ceasefire set to expire on Sunday evening.
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HONOLULU (AP) – Smoke and fire rushed from a crash site in Hawaii after a U.S. Marine Osprey went down in a “hard landing,” killing one Marine and injuring 21 other people, some critically.
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Macedonia said on Sunday its police had wiped out a group of ethnic Albanian veterans of insurgencies in ex-Yugoslavia in a day-long gun battle that left at least 22 dead and deepened fears of instability following months of political crisis.
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The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) is an enigma: most of what we know about it comes from the brutal media apparatus of the IS itself. It lets everyone see executions and war the terrorists are waging – but still, how does life go under jihadist rule? One man decided to find out for himself, spending 10 days in the ‘capital city’ of the IS and coming back alive. Today, investigative journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer tells his story to Sophie Shevardnadze.
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Army says it shot down a reconnaissance aircraft after residents report hearing explosions near military site
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Arab media has cited the Sudanese army as saying it shot down an Israeli drone in the Valley of the Prophet whilst Israel claimed it had no knowledge of such an incident.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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THE worst recorded drought in California’s history has forced state regulators to restrict people’s water use by a quarter. In the long-run, though, climate change and limited supply mean the state must radically change the way it manages water, particularly below ground.
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Finance
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Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that the Senate would pass legislation aimed at facilitating pending trade agreements being sought by the Obama administration.
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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that an effort to give President Obama the ability to fast-track trade deals his administration is currently negotiating is moving along.
“We will have the votes. We’re doing very well. We’re gaining a lot of steam and momentum,” Ryan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
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The U.S. Senate advanced the Fast Track bill today in a rushed vote following a slew of concessions made to swing Democrats who had voted to block it earlier this week. The setback on Tuesday could have forced proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and other secretive, anti-user trade agreements to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new bill. Unfortunately, Senate leaders were able to get around this impasse within 48 hours by agreeing to let Democrats vote on some other trade-enforcement measures first before holding the vote on Fast Track.
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CEO Obama rules Plutocracy through fear, intimidation and secrecy.
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Privacy
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When I was working with the Guardian on the Snowden documents, the one top-secret program the NSA desperately did not want us to expose was QUANTUM. This is the NSA’s program for what is called packet injection–basically, a technology that allows the agency to hack into computers.
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From TVs that listen in on us to a doll that records your child’s questions, data collection has become both dangerously intrusive and highly profitable. Is it time for governments to act to curb online surveillance?
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A Belgian watchdog has urged all Internet users to download privacy software specifically to shield themselves from Facebook’s grasp.
The social network has been under fire for the ways in which it tracks user and non-user behaviour online, without consent, most recently becoming the target of a Europe-wide lawsuit headed up by activist Max Schrems.
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The UK government has quietly passed new legislation that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones.
While major or controversial legislative changes usually go through normal parliamentary process (i.e. democratic debate) before being passed into law, in this case an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act was snuck in under the radar as secondary legislation. According to Privacy International, “It appears no regulators, commissioners responsible for overseeing the intelligence agencies, the Information Commissioner’s Office, industry, NGOs or the public were notified or consulted about the proposed legislative changes… There was no public debate.”
Privacy International also suggests that the change to the law was in direct response to a complaint that it filed last year. In May 2014, Privacy International and seven communications providers filed a complaint with the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), asserting that GCHQ’s hacking activities were unlawful under the Computer Misuse Act.
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Civil Rights
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Students could bring a small toy gun to school, point their finger like a gun or — yes — even brandish “a partially consumed pastry or other food item to simulate a firearm” under a bill that has two steps to go before becoming law in Nevada.
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An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced former President Mohammed Morsi and 120 others to death for a mass prison break in 2011 that saw Hosni Mubarak, who was president at that time, being ousted from power. Most of the others accused in the case were tried in absentia. The next hearing of the case was set for June 2, with Judge Shaaban el-Shami’s decision being referred to the country’s Grand Mufti for a non-binding opinion. Morsi, the first democratically elected President of the country, was removed from power by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in July 2013.
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The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that an annual march to celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem, scheduled for May 17, can proceed as planned despite fears of anti-Arab violence. At the same time, the justices said the police must arrest and indict anyone who shouts racist slogans. Two dovish Israeli organizations had petitioned the court, asking them to change the route of the march, which celebrates Israel’s “reunification” and annexation of east Jerusalem in 1967. In past years there has been nationalistic violence and most Palestinians are forced to close their shops and stay inside their homes. Last year, clashes broke out when masked Palestinian youths attacked police officers with stones and then barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa mosque. Israel says that east Jerusalem is part of its united capital, while Palestinians say that east Jerusalem must be the future capital of a Palestinian state.
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By the end of July during last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip, more than 3,000 Palestinians crowded into a United Nations-run elementary school in Jabaliya, a northern Gaza town. They had moved there for temporary shelter after the Israeli military warned them to leave their homes.
An hour before dawn on July 30, explosions shook the classrooms and the courtyard, all packed with people.
Mahmoud Jaser was camped outside with his sons.
“We were sleeping when the attack started. As we woke up, it got worse,” he said.
Shrapnel hit Jaser in the back. Three of his sons were also hurt. About 100 people were injured overall. Almost 20 were killed.
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The United States acknowledged before the UN Monday that it has not done enough to uphold civil rights laws, following a string of recent killings of unarmed black men by police.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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China and Russia have made little attempt to hide their geopolitical ambitions. Militarily, each has asserted a right to terrain not recognized as theirs. Economically, the two have designs on gaining a greater foothold in the world marketplace, Western roadblocks be damned.
And while an unprecedented pact not to deploy network hackers against each other may prove largely symbolic, it’s yet another glaring sign of the two countries’ shared desire to shake up a world order largely dominated by the U.S. since the end of World War II.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Developers considering adding a torrent search engine to their portfolio should proceed with caution, especially if they value their income streams. Following a complaint from the MPAA one developer is now facing a six month wait for PayPal to unfreeze thousands in funds, the vast majority related to other projects.
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The RIAA continues to reduce its workforce, which has been slashed in half in just five years. According to the organization’s latest tax return the RIAA now employs 55 people. The group’s top three executives account for a quarter of all salaries paid, including several sizable bonuses.
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