04.28.14
Links 28/4/2014: Debate About Improving GNU/Linux, Android Beyond Mobile
Contents
GNU/Linux
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Driving sustainable innovation in Governments with Open Source
“Whether you’re aware of it or not, Linux is practically everywhere. It’s invisible, yet ubiquitous.”
And unlike today’s big software companies, no organisation can claim ownership of Linux because its development is mainly driven by a huge following of open and like-minded developer communities.
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Polishing the Rare Gem That Is Linux
“My opinion is that Linux is ready, and has been ready for some time, for the average person’s desktop computer,” Stone explained. “The only thing that stands in the way is availability of some software and its image as a geek toy. If the software was there and it came installed like Windows currently does, Windows would be a thing of the past.
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How would you improve Linux?
Linux is an amazing operating system, and it has much to offer any desktop user. But it’s also not perfect and it has its share of problems and issues. If you were the King (or Queen) of open source, what would you do to improve Linux? Foss Force asked its readers a similar question recently and shared some of their responses.
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Desktop
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Web App Shortcuts To Get New Look in Chrome, Chrome OS
When creating an ‘application’ from a web page Chrome attempts to create an icon for it using the favicon — the small icon you see in the corner of a tab next to the page title, or if the site specifies one, the ‘apple touch icon’.
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Server
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[VIDEO] Big Switch CEO on the Evolution of SDN
One of the earliest commercial ventures to emerge in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) space was Big Switch Networks, founded in 2010 by SDN pioneer Guido Appenzeller and Kyle Forster. In late 2013, Douglas Murray joined the company as its new CEO and has been helping to set direction and accelerate commercial adoption ever since.
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Part of the direction involves an effort known as Open Network Linux, which is a component of Switch Light and has now been donated to the Open Compute Platform (OCP) and its open networking effort.
“Open Network Linux takes a piece of what’s inside Switch Light, anything that you would normally need to leverage to bring up a switch,” Murray said.
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IBM Spends $2.4 Billion to Aim New Open Source Power Chip at Intel
IBM positioned the move as a “sharp contrast [with] other chip and server manufacturers’ proprietary business models,” but with its hardware sales tumbling 23 percent in Q1 and its Power business falling 31 percent last year, the vendor badly needs a hearty seedling from which to build a stronger beanstalk.
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Kernel Space
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Stable kernels 3.14.2, 3.10.38, and 3.4.88
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Intel Begins Lining Up Their Graphics Changes For Linux 3.16
Daniel Vetter of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center sent in the first batch of drm-intel-next changes for landing into drm-next, David Airlie’s DRM tree as the subsystem maintainer for the work that will land in Linux 3.16. The changes already queued up for this next kernel cycle contain a lot of work on an Intel Gen7 command parser, continued Valley View / Bay Trail fixes, continued work on Intel Broadwell support, run-time power management support for Broadwell and Sandy Bridge, initial Cherryview support, and other code changes.
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Linux 3.15-rc3
Another week, another rc. So far, no big scares, and rc3 is appropriately smaller than rc2 was, so we’re following the right trajectory here.
The statistics look fairly normal too, with half drivers (input, usb, gpu, acpi, regulator..) and a third arch updates (much of it again arm dts files, but other arm and some um updates too). The rest is misc, but mainly concentrated in filesystem updates (btrfs and ext4).
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Linux 3.15-rc3 Kernel Is Now Available With Normal Changes
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The Geekiest Music Format? A Linux Kernel Module Ranks Up There
When a band releases their latest album in a Linux kernel module format, there should be little doubt that they’re probably a little geeky. But with netcat, the hints only begin there. Take for example their name: netcat is a popular Unix-based networking command-line tool. And then there’s the album name, Cycles Per Instruction. Oh – and their site is in plain text.
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Intel’s P-State Driver Is Getting Better Tuned For Performance
Stratos Karafotis posted a patch for the Intel P-State code today that changes the calculation method for the next pstate. Stratos wrote on the mailing list, “Currently the driver calculates the next pstate proportional to core_busy factor and reverse proportional to current pstate. Change the above method and calculate the next pstate independently of current pstate.”
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Graphics Stack
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The Current Performance Of GLAMOR Acceleration
For those interested in the performance of GLAMOR 2D acceleration that’s accelerated via OpenGL, Keith Packard has written a new blog post on the topic.
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What is the peak of your OpenCL device?
clpeak is a new tool in Fedora to measure the peak values of several OpenCL related aspects, i.e. IOPS, FLOPS, memory bandwidth and kernel latency.
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Clpeak: OpenCL Device Profiling On Linux
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xf86-video-modesetting Now Supports Server-Managed FDs
The generic xf86-video-modesetting DDX driver that’s designed to work universally across Linux KMS drivers now has support for sever-managed file-descriptors, which will help this driver work on non-root X Servers.
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Benchmark graphics card (GPU) performance on Linux with glmark
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Testing NVIDIA Optimus / DRI PRIME On Ubuntu 14.04
With Ubuntu 14.04 LTS there is improved support for multi-GPU laptops (commonly what’s branded as NVIDIA Optimus configurations) where there is a discrete NVIDIA GPU used for high performance workloads to complement the low-power Intel integrated graphics. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS features better support for these Optimus / DRI PRIME configurations on both the open and closed-source graphics drivers. Here’s the Ubuntu 14.04 multi-GPU experience along with some OpenGL benchmarks and power consumption numbers between the different configurations.
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Benchmarks
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Ubuntu 14.04 On Amazon EC2: Xen PV vs. HVM
A common benchmark request at Phoronix lately has been to compare the Xen PV (para-virtualization) performance to Xen HVM (Hardware-assisted virtualization). Well, now that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has been released, here’s some benchmarks from within Amazon’s EC2 compute cloud when comparing Ubuntu 14.04 Server PV and HVM instances.
Xen has long supported para-virtualization (PV) as its means of virtualization support for best performance and stability while minimizing overhead between Dom0 and the hypervisor by the two operating system software stacks working more closely together. The “newer” option for Xen virtualization users is to act as a hardware-assisted virtual machine (HVM) whereby the host and guest kernels don’t need to be patched, Windows can run as a HVM guest, and there’s complete hardware isolation.
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Applications
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Popular Music Player Audacious 3.5 Gets Major Update
One of the most used audio players on the Linux platform, Audacious, has just received a major update and a ton of features, most of them being requested by the community. Audacious may be a very popular audio player, but the developers are not upgrading it as often as they should. This means that when a new version is promoted, the release tends to be stuffed with new features and improvements.
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ski: Weird turn-based winter sports strategy
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sl: Yes, you knew this was coming
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CherryTree 0.33 Has Been Released!
CherryTree is a hierarchical note taking application that has many useful features such as syntax highlighting, password protection and image handling. This note taking app supports many languages; read the following list to find out the supported languages by CherryTree.
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Inkscape 0.91 Is Still Working Towards Its Major Feature Release
It’s been a long time since the last major release of the Inkscape open-source vector graphics editor software, but the 0.91 release (formerly known as Inkscape 0.49) is still brewing and will be a very exciting release with a ton of new functionality.
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slash’em: Nethack, with certain embellishments
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slimrat: A slim chance it still works
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Instructionals/Technical
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How to Build an Arduino Pest Repeller on Linux (Part 1)
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How To Install CherryTree 0.33.0 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Elementary OS, Via PPA
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How To Install Zbackup 1.2.1.2 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Elementary OS
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How To Install ScreenGen 1.7 On OpenSUSE 13.1, OpenSUSE 12.3 And OpenSUSE 12.2, Via The Packman Multimedia Repository
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How To Install Power Commands 1.6 On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, Via PPA
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How To Install Caffeine 2.6 On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr And Linux Mint 17 Qiana
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How To Install Kernel 3.12.18 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Their Derivative Systems
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How To Install Kernel. 3.10.38 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Derivative Systems
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How To Install Nemo 2.2 (And Use It As Default, As A Replacement for Nautilus/Files) On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr
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Color Your Folder Icons On Ubuntu And Linux Mint That Use Either Nautilus Or Nemo, Via Folder Color 0.0.8
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How To Install And Use The Gui Version Of ‘youtube-dl’ Video Downloader Tool
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Top Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.04/13.10/13.04/12.10/12.04
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LUKS: Linux Hard Disk Data Encryption with NTFS Support in Linux
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20 Command Line Tools to Monitor Linux Performance
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How To Install Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr
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Sailfish OS On Nexus 4 Got Support For Audio Call, Alarms, Timers And HTML5 Video And Audio Playback Within Browser
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Sailfish OS Has Been Demoed On The Google Nexus 5 Smartphone
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Jolla Is Officially Available In Estonia, Via Elisa
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How To Install Power Commands 1.6 On All The Supported Ubuntu Systems
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How To Properly Install Google Earth On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10 And Derivative Systems
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Customize Your Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr Notification’s Behaviour Via NotifyOSD Config
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How To Install qBittorrent 3.1.9 on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr And Linux Mint 17 Qiana
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Interesting Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr Respins: Ubuntu Mini Remix 14.04 And Cubuntu 14.04
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How To Install Elementary Tweaks On Elementary OS 0.2 Luna And Elementary OS 0.3 Isis
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How to fix “System program problem detected” error on Ubuntu
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Install the latest Nvidia drivers on Xubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr
If you have an Nvidia graphics card on your system, then its recommended to install the official drivers released by Nvidia. The proprietory drivers would utilise the hardware properly delivering full performance.
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How to install guake (dropdown terminal) on Xubuntu 14.04
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How to Manage Application Launchers in Enlightenment on Bodhi Linux
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Wine or Emulation
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Wine 1.7.17 released
The Wine development release 1.7.17 is now available.
What’s new in this release (see below for details):
- More implementations for the Task Scheduler.
- C runtime made more compatible by sharing source files.
- Fixes in the Mac OS X joystick support.
- Various bug fixes.
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Games
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Roccat Ryos MK Glow Review
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Habitat builds with space debris on PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One
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Quest Of Dungeons Dungeon Crawler Has A Linux Beta, Slots Open For Testers
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Unreal Engine 4.1 released with Linux, SteamOS support
If you remember from our previous post, Epic had disclosed plans to support Linux with their game engine, the Unreal Engine. That promise is now a reality with their latest iteration of the engine. The new version, Unreal Engine 4.1 now adds support, according to the release notes, Linux and SteamOS.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Re-sort KDE control modules
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Live from Barcelona: KDE Frameworks Sprint
This week we gathered around ten of the KDE Frameworks contributors for a sprint focusing on preparing the release. As usual I went the let’s have a board with sticky notes route. We dumped information from the wiki there and been working on tasks since then. By the look of that board this morning I would say we did a nice job.
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Subsurface 4.1 Beta released
Ah, it’s that time of the year again, that time when the summer is rising up, the temperatures are warming, you are getting your gear around and planning to go to the beach to do a swim and suddenly you discover that there is a dive software for linux and you wanna try it doing a scuba diving on your nearest beach resort.
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Help the Krita Team!
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GSoC 2014: Improving the Clang Integration in KDevelop
I’m happy to announce that I’ve been accepted as student for this year’s Google Summer of Code! This summer, I’ll have the chance to improve the Clang integration in KDevelop, something we (the KDevelop developers) have been working on for some months already.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Gnome 3.14 Will Be Released This September
Gnome developers are currently working on Gnome 3.13 development version, which soon will turn into a stable release. The Gnome 3.14 version will be released this September after alot of testing and hacking on the current development version.
There are many features being discussed at the moment for the release of Gnome 3.14 such as Colour Tinting in GNOME Shell,Zimbra integration in Gnome and the ability to browse DLNA media servers in GNOME Photos.
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GNOME Books could be great for Linux ebook junkies
I have to admit that I’m a bit of an ebook junkie, I’m always reading something and when I’m done with one book then it’s on to the next. So I was very happy to see a report today that Marta Milakovic has proposed an open source ebook reading application for GNOME. Given the soaring popularity of ebooks, I think this is a fantastic idea. I’d like to see something similar in all Linux desktop environments.
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GNOME 3.12.1 out: PDF accessibility progress
Welcome to a new “GNOME 3.12 is out blog post”, somewhat late because I wanted to focus on 3.12.1 instead of the usual 3.12.0, and because I was away for several days due to Easter holidays.
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Distributions
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PINGUY OS 14.04 MINI AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
Pinguy OS 14.04 Mini, an Ubuntu remaster that comes with a large number of tweaks by default, has been released today.
Pinguy OS Mini is a stripped down version of Pinguy OS which comes with all the tweaks and fixes available in the main Pinguy OS version, but without most of the applications installed in Pinguy OS. Like the main version, it uses GNOME Shell (3.10) as the default “shell”.
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Screenshots
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat: Certain To Grow With Rising Linux Acceptance
Over the years Linux users has been consistently growing due to un-parallel benefits like cost and critical load performance over its competitors like Microsoft Windows. Red Hat Software (RHT) is one such company that provides Linux operating system for desktop and web servers. Red Hat is a leading player in open-source Linux that crossed $1 billion in annual revenue, and it has a solid plan to keep growing its business in the years ahead. Red Hat partners with enterprise vendors like IBM, HP, Intel, Cisco, Dell, and SAP this also provides a deeper penetration in the global market.
The company recently declared quarterly results and was firing all cylinders, it set records for new bookings and billings with strong renewals. It reported a record number of 30 deals that crossed $1 million, with 7 deals that crossed $5 million and 2 were over $10 million. Revenue of $400.4 million was recorded, up by 15.1% year over year also beating the management’s guided range of $397.0 million to $400.0 million.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu 14.10 Is Now Open For Development
Now that Mark Shuttleworth has announced Ubuntu 14.10 as the Utopic Unicorn, the next version of Ubuntu Linux is officially under development.
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The Development Of Ubuntu 14.10 Has Already Started
According to the mailing lists, Canonical has officially start the development of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, scheduled for the 17th of October 2014.
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But if everything happens as announced at the previous UDS, Unity 8 (over X.org) will be implemented on Ubuntu 14.10, while Mir will be already usable by October 2014, despite the fact that it will get set by default on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, along with systemd, which will replace Canonical’s Upstart init system. A demo video of both Unity 8 (Mir) and Unity 7 (X11) running on Ubuntu 14.04 is available.
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Linux to the rescue! How Ubuntu can help a computer in distress
That’s because there’s no way to boot a full Windows system from a USB stick to troubleshoot your PC—well, not without an Enterprise version of Windows and Windows To Go—but anyone can make a free Ubuntu USB drive, CD, or DVD. A Ubuntu live drive can be used as a digital Swiss army knife to troubleshoot all sorts of problems with any PC, whether you need to recover files from a failing computer, diagnose hardware problems, perform a deep virus scan from outside Windows, or even reset a forgotten Windows password.
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Booting Ubuntu with systemd: Now in Utopic
Hot on the heels of my previous annoucement of my systemd PPA for trusty, I’m now happy to announce that the latest systemd 204-10ubuntu1 just landed in Utopic, after sorting out enough of the current uninstallability in -proposed. The other fixes (bluez, resolvconf, lightdm, etc.) already landed a few days ago. Compared to the PPA these have a lot of other fixes and cleanups, due to the excellent hackfest that we held last weekend.
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Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Can Now Boot With Systemd
Just days after Ubuntu 14.10 opened for development, a systemd package has landed within the “Utopic Unicorn” package archive that allows the Ubuntu desktop to be booted via systemd rather than Upstart.
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INDICATOR NETSPEED DISPLAYS NETWORK SPEED ON THE UNITY PANEL
The indicator displays the total current network traffic on the panel and from its menu, you can check out the current download or upload speed as individual values.
Indicator Netspeed doesn’t detect the currently used network interface and by default it selects wlan0. So the first time you run it, select the network interface you’re using from the indicator menu!
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Flavours and Variants
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Xubuntu 14.04 LTS
Xubuntu 14.04 LTS has been released in the wake of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS so it’s time for a full review. Xubuntu 14.04 is a long term support release, so the focus is really on stability and finesse, not on adding tons of new features. Xubuntu uses the Xfce desktop environment instead of Unity, so it works very well as a lightweight alternative to regular Ubuntu. Xubuntu can be particularly useful if you have an older or otherwise underpowered computer.
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Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 Beta Release
Its been two months since we had our alpha release and since then Ubuntu 14.04 has released as “stable”. That means the core for our upcoming Bodhi 3.0.0 release is finally stable enough for me to stamp a “beta” label onto it. For those that do not really care what I have to say and just want a download link, this beta release comes in the following three flavors:
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Devices/Embedded
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Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
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Voice of the Masses: Is it time for a new Raspberry Pi?
Without doubt, the Raspberry Pi has been a whopping success and introduced countless people to Linux. But the Model B hardware is looking a bit long in the tooth now, and faster alternatives with more RAM are starting to appear.
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Wolfson Audio Card for Raspberry Pi Review
The Raspberry Pi packs a lot of hardware into a sub-£30, credit-card sized package. From its ability to drive Full HD displays without a sweat to its on-board networking and GPIO capabilities, it’s a miniature marvel – but even its most ardent fans would admit that its audio subsystem leaves a little to be desired.
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Phones
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PiPhone – A Raspberry Pi based Smartphone
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VIDEO: Linux engineer builds Raspberry Pi ‘PiPhone’
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Man uses Raspberry Pi to build actual working cell phone for $158
Raspberry Pi-using tinkerer David Hunt—who previously built a bark-activated door opener for dogs—is at it again with a real, working cell phone powered by the tiny computer and a few other items.
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Sailfish On The Nexus 4 Now Works For Audio Phone Calls
The second update to Sailfish for the Nexus 4 was released in mid-April at version 1.0.5.16. This newest update fixes phone calls so audio now actually work, timers and alarms now work, HTMI5 video and audio work within the browser, and the update is based upon the latest Sailfish code. There is though still some known issues with securely powering off the device, phone call audio volume not changing with the volume buttons, and other bugs.
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Android
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Six clicks: Great tips and tricks for Android
Android is the mobile platform that lets you make what you want of it. It is customizable in almost every way and whatever you need to do there’s probably an app to make it so.
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HP is making a 14-inch Android laptop
HP is joining Lenovo in the strange world of Android laptops. The company hasn’t yet officially announced the SlateBook 14, but it briefly appeared on HP’s website — complete with a video outlining the device’s key features and specs. Most importantly, the SlateBook has full access to Google Play, so any apps you’ve already purchased and downloaded on a smartphone or tablet should work here. HP says the SlateBook 14 boosts Android’s productivity thanks to its 14-inch 1080p display and full-size keyboard. The laptop also includes Beats technology, which should help it pump out loud, powerful, and likely bass-heavy audio. HP has built in 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. But since this is Android and not a Chromebook, you may be left without the generous Google Drive cloud storage offers that come alongside many of those devices
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Lenovo Yoga 10 HD+ Android tablet promises 18 hours of battery life
Lenovo’s Yoga series of mobile devices pushes the envelope ever-so-slightly (see here and here, for instance) in a world of cookie-cutter units, with its latest tablet serving as a great example of the approach.
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Android home automation hub focuses on security
The Android-based “ALYT” home automation system supports numerous wireless protocols, and offers self-learning algorithms and advanced security functions.
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Free Software/Open Source
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Tools to Empower Librarians
Open source software is a popular choice for libraries and librarians, not simply because recent austerity measures in many developed countries have tightened available budgets. The ability to customise the software for a library’s particular needs, the potential for interoperation with other software, and the lack of license restrictions makes open source software attractive.
Modern libraries need robust, scalable and flexible software to make their collections and services attractive, especially as digital libraries are radically transforming how information is disseminated. There are very few barriers to any library adopting an open source library system.
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Out in the Open: Occupy Wall Street Reincarnated as Open Source Software
Those challenges could become more important as the software spreads to other uses. Unlike applicators like Democracy OS or Liquid Feedback, Loomio isn’t really designed for large scale political decision making. But it’s already been used for at least one government initiative. Last year, the Wellington City Council used Loomio to gather ideas and feedback from the public for new alcohol policies. The ideas floated included closing bars at midnight — which was shot down — and limiting the hours of operation of 24 hour liquor stores.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Mozilla Makes Andreas Gal, Who Helped Launch Firefox OS, Its New CTO
Providing yet more evidence of how committed it is to its Firefox OS mobile platform, Mozilla has named Andreas Gal, an engineer who spearheaded and helped launch Firefox OS, as its new CTO. Gal, of course, will take the CTO spot that was left by Mozilla’s Brendan Eich, who subsequently stepped down from a CEO spot due to controversy over his contributions to support California’s Proposition 8.
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Mozilla Aims to Improve Firefox Browser SSL Security
The open-source browser vendor offers a $10,000 bug bounty for flaws found in a new SSL certificate validation library.
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Firefox 29.0 For Linux Is Now Available For Download
While we’re still waiting on the official release announcement, Mozilla Firefox 29.0 is now available for download.
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SaaS/Big Data
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OpenStack fundamentals taught by Rackspace gurus
An OpenStack training workshop was held as part of the recent, 4th Open Source Festival at the State University of New York at Albany. The workshop brought together over 40 participants for three hours to learn some of the fundamentals of OpenStack.
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Databases
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Tesora, Database as a Service, and OpenStack Trove
The OpenStack Icehouse release includes Trove for supporting Database as a Service. Tesora is stepping forward with its database virtualization engine to make deploying database applications easy.
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CMS
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Dutch municipality tailors and shares Drupal site
The Dutch town of Vught is making available the source code for its website, a preconfigured version of Drupal, an open source content management system. The software is now being implemented by the municipality of Almelo, and, says Frank Schaap, ICT policy maker for the town of Vught, “there are three more that are seriously considering to do the same.”
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Education
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5 lessons open education resources can learn from FOSS
One of the distinctive elements of the open source software movement are open development projects. These are the projects where software is developed cooperatively (not collaboratively, necessarily) in public, often by people contributing from multiple organizations. All the processes that lead to the creation and release of software—design, development, testing, planning—happen using publicly visible tools. Projects also actively try to grow their contributor base.
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Healthcare
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NHS understaffing may have effect on baby mortality rate, says top doctor
‘Legitimate to ask’ whether number of staff is contributing to death of 300 babies a year, says Dr David Richmond
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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GNU Screen v.4.2.1
I’m announcing availability of GNU Screen v.4.2.1
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April 2014 GNU Toolchain Update
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Public Services/Government
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143 French politicians pledge to support free software
Of all the politicians newly elected in France’s municipal elections 143 have pledged their support for free software. The new councillors signed the Free Software Pact, a support campaign organised by April, an advocacy group. Signatories include the mayor of the city of Dijon, François Rebsamen, appointed Minister for Employment in France’s new government on 2 April.
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Openness/Sharing
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An open source approach to solving the farm to table problem in North Carolina
An OpenStack training workshop was held as part of the recent, 4th Open Source Festival at the State University of New York at Albany. The workshop brought together over 40 participants for three hours to learn some of the fundamentals of OpenStack.
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Open-Source Software for College Administrators Reaches ‘Tipping Point’ After 10 Years
Their open-source-software project—or community-source, as they refer to it—was a complex undertaking, requiring technical and financial collaboration among multiple institutions. And it openly challenged the for-profit vendors, like Oracle’s PeopleSoft, that dominate the multibillion-dollar market for administrative systems. Known as enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems, they help college officials carry out crucial business functions. Commercial versions can cost tens of millions of dollars to license and maintain.
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New System Of Open Source Smart House Building Blocks (VIDEO)
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Leftovers
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64-bit MenuetOS M64 0.99.57 Released
On the MenuetOS download page, the 0.99.57 release notes just list, “Updates and improvements (httpc, ehci, picview, memcheck, menu, wallpaper, ohci, uhci, maps/streetview, icons, dhcp, freeform window, smp threads, smp init).”
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Stop It With the Silicon Valley Buzzwords
The entire Silicon Valley tech scene is filled with ludicrous buzz phrases that are often decried by the media. Terms like “engagement,” “disrupt,” and “innovation” are commonly thrown around by those who want to be part of the Valley subculture.
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Science
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Giant Chinese 3D printer builds 10 houses in just 1 day (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
A private company located in eastern China has printed ten full-size houses using a huge 3D printer in the space of a day. The process utilizes quick-drying cement, but the creators are being careful not to reveal the secrets of the technology.
China’s WinSun company, used a system of four 10 meter wide by 6.6 meter high printers with multi-directional sprays to create the houses. Cement and construction waste was used to build the walls layer-by-layer, state news agency Xinhua reported.
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Security
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Active 0day attack hijacking IE users threatens a quarter of browser market
The zero-day code-execution hole in IE versions 6 through 11 represents a significant threat to the Internet security because there is currently no fix for the underlying bug, which affects an estimated 26 percent of the total browser market. It’s also the first significant vulnerability to target Windows XP users since Microsoft withdrew support for that aging OS earlier this month. Users who have the option of using an alternate browser should avoid all use of IE for the time being. Those who remain dependent on the Microsoft browser should immediately install EMET, Microsoft’s freely available toolkit that greatly extends the security of Windows systems.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Deal Welcoming US Military Into Philippines Slammed As ‘Betrayal’
The U.S. and Philippine governments have agreed on a 10-year pact to open this southeast Asian country to more U.S. troops, warships, and fighter planes, flouting the people’s movements that booted the U.S. military from its permanent Philippine bases over twenty years ago.
“We have lost too much because of the U.S. military presence in our country,” Bernadette Ellorin, Chairperson of BAYAN-USA—an alliance of Filipino organizations in the U.S, told Common Dreams. “The Philippines has long history of protests against militarization. The protests now are only going to grow.”
The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement was announced Sunday by the White House and confirmed by two anonymous Philippine officials speaking to the Associated Press.
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Ukraine: pro-Russian separatists hold European military observers captive
Pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine were holding a group of European military observers in the city of Slavyansk on Friday night, claiming they had been travelling with a spy for the Kiev government.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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China says more than half of its groundwater is polluted
Nearly 60% of China’s underground water is polluted, state media has reported, underscoring the severity of the country’s environmental woes.
The country’s land and resources ministry found that among 4,778 testing spots in 203 cities, 44% had “relatively poor” underground water quality; the groundwater in another 15.7% tested as “very poor”.
Water quality improved year-on-year at 647 spots, and worsened in 754 spots, the ministry said.
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Some Birds Thrive in Chernobyl’s Radioactive Glow
Nearly 28 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, several bird species are doing the seemingly impossible: flourishing inside the radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. Due to lingering radiation from the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, humans aren’t allowed to live there—but the region has become an accidental ecological testing ground for scientists interested in studying the effects of radiation on wild animals. Ionizing radiation damages living cells by producing free radicals, leading to genetic damage and, eventually, death. An animal’s only hope is to neutralize those free radicals by upping its production of antioxidants. And that’s exactly what most birds in Chernobyl seem to be doing—with even better results than scientists expected. A team of ecologists used nets to capture 152 birds from 16 species inside and around the 2600-square-kilometer exclusion zone. After assessing the birds’ antioxidant levels, amount of DNA damage, and body condition, the researchers were surprised to find that most of the birds, like the hawfinch pictured above, seemed to benefit from the chronic exposure to radiation. Birds found in areas with higher radiation levels had more antioxidants and better overall body condition, the team reports online this week in Functional Ecology. This is the first known example of wild animals adapting to chronic radiation exposure, the researchers say. The only two bird species negatively affected by the radiation—the great tit (Parus major) and barn swallow (Hirundo rustica)—both produce large amounts of pinkish pheomelanin pigment in their feathers. Because pheomelanin production requires lots of antioxidants, the researchers suspect these birds may not have enough left over to fight off the free radicals. In Chernobyl, it seems that fancy feathers come at a high price.
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Earth: Game Over?
We’re in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and this will be the first one—and possibly the last—we will witness as human beings.
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Top award for toxic dump campaigner
Mr D’Sa said he would not be prevented from standing up for the truth
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Report: US Unprepared for Arctic Oil Spill
A warming Arctic and the clamor for more unconventional energy resources bring increased interest by fossil fuel giants in exploiting the fragile region’s potential vast resources.
Yet a new report warns that the the United States is inadequately prepared to deal with an oil spill in the Arctic.
The nearly 200-page report issued Wednesday by the National Research Council follows years of warnings from environmental groups that there is no way to safely drill for oil in the Arctic.
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Finance
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Why do right-wing people support workfare?
One of the big mysteries in politics is why so many right-wing people support Iain Duncan Smith’s Stalinist Workfare schemes, which are designed to force people (under threat of absolute destitution) to give away their labour for free, often to highly profitable foreign corporations.
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The American Dream is now just that for its middle classes – a dream
For years, the US enjoyed unrivalled prosperity – and its middle classes were the envy of the world. No longer. Last week, a study of decades of economic data concluded that the US had fallen behind other nations, apart, that is, from the super-rich
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In Florida Tomato Fields, a Penny Buys Progress
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People Are Seriously Talking About A Plan To Ban Banks – And It’s Not As Crazy As It Sounds
Economists have begun seriously discussing the idea of banning banks. That seems ridiculous and far-fetched, but the idea might not be as crazy as it sounds.
But before we get to the idea, there’s something important that needs to be addressed, which is that people tend to have a gross misconception about what a bank does.
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Privacy
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Pretty soon, we could all be using the Dark Net
The term “Dark Net” is shorthand to describe the hidden and encrypted part of the internet beyond the reach of normal browsers, accessible only using the anonymous browser Tor. It’s protected by a clever traffic encryption system which makes it very difficult to locate the servers which host sites – called Tor Hidden Services – and the IP addresses of the people the visit them. Tor used to stand for The Onion Router, and so some call this world “Onionland”. Anonymity and freedom rule Onionland, not censorship.
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Reddit Scope Leaking User Queries
If you are currently using the Reddit Unity Scope on Ubuntu, you should consider disabling it. The reason for this is that a Reddit admin pointed out that Ubuntu user dash searches were ending up in Reddit’s server logs.
This is happening because the Reddit Unity Scope uses a URL that does not have SSL configured so instead redirects those queries to HTTP plain text. The good news is a fix is already under way on a bug I filed and Reddit’s API documentation explains how to properly use SSL when making queries.
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An Eerie New Project Shows How Much Facebook Really Knows About You
A new, eerie web project called Digital Shadow combs through your Facebook profile and pulls together enough of your information to create a dossier creepy enough to make you want to quit social networking altogether.
Once you login and grant the site access to your Facebook profile, the system simulates a hacker attack and creates a list of “pawns” (friends who can betray you), “obsessions” (people you creep on the most) and “scapegoats” (people you would be willing to sacrifice), as well as photos of your favorite places and an analysis of your posting habits.
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Civil Rights
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US Workers Were Once Massacred Fighting for the Protections Being Rolled Back Today
On April 20, 1914, the Colorado National Guard and a private militia employed by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I) opened fire on a tent camp of striking coal miners at Ludlow, Colo. At least 19 people died in the camp that day, mostly women and children.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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4 no-bull facts you need to know about the FCC’s Net neutrality proposal
If you’re wondering what’s all the controversy over the FCC’s recent Net neutrality rules proposal, here’s the short version
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Calm down: FCC’s position on Net neutrality hasn’t changed
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FCC buckles on net neutrality
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed new rules on Internet charging which will effectively mean the end of net neutrality.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Europe spooked by Transatlantic Partnership?
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Copyrights
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Danish Police “Threatens” Former Colleague of Pirate Bay Founder in Cambodia
As Gottfrid Svartholm languishes in a Danish prison cell, unusual things are happening on the other side of the world. Speaking with TorrentFreak, a former work colleague of the Pirate Bay founder says that after receiving threats from an anonymous Swedish policeman, Danish police and the Copenhagen Deputy District Attorney turned up in Cambodia to ask him “ridiculous” questions.
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One Month Before Elections, Swedish Oldmedia’s Pretend-Does-Not-Exist Attitude Toward Pirate Party Reaching Ridiculous Levels
In one month, on May 25 at 20:00, the voting stations close for the European Elections. You’re never entitled to complain when media doesn’t cover you, but for some reason, the fifth-largest party out of Sweden’s eight – the Pirate Party – is consistently omitted from listings, events, debates, and coverage ahead of European Elections. For a challenger, this would be acceptable, but not for a defender of title: the pretend-does-not-exist attitude is reaching ridiculous levels.
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