05.10.14
Links 10/5/2014: Munich’s GNU/Linux Success Story Told, CoreOS Introduced
Contents
GNU/Linux
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Docker Open Source Virtualization Project Nears 1.0 Release
Docker, the open source container-based virtualization platform, is not officially ready for production use quite yet. But it’s very close, as the Docker team made clear this week by rolling out the release candidate for version 1.0 of the software, which adds new security features, networking updates and more.
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Docker Re-Imagines Server Virtualization [VIDEO]
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HOW MUNICH SWITCHED 15,000 PCS FROM WINDOWS TO LINUX
Munich city council has migrated 15,000 workers from Windows to Linux. It’s a great success story for Free Software, and it upset Microsoft enormously. We visited the city and talked to Peter Hofmann, the man behind the migration – so read on for all the juicy details about what went right, what went wrong, and what made Steve Ballmer sweat…
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CoreOS uses Docker to put Linux on a diet
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CoreOS Advances Linux Container Vision
The Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup delivers a beta release of a virtualization container optimized operating system platform.
The open-source CoreOS operating system project issued its first beta release today, providing users with a Linux operating system that is built specifically for Docker container delivery.Docker is an open-source container technology for application virtualization and currently runs on multiple Linux distributions, including Red Hat and Ubuntu. What CoreOS is aiming to provide is a purpose-built Linux operating system, optimized for Docker containers. CoreOS is backed by venture capitalist firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Alex Polvi, CEO of CoreOS, told eWEEK that so far he has raised a seed round of financing in an amount that has not yet been publicly disclosed. CoreOS has been in alpha since August 2013.
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Desktop
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Linux pros use tweak tools to customize their OS, and so can you
Where Windows has utilities, Linux has tweak tools. And whether you’re a Linux pro or a recent refugee from Windows XP, they can help you make Ubuntu 14.04 LTS “Trusty Tahr” (the latest and greatest offering from Linux distro pioneer Canonical) really start to feel like home.
Customizability has long been one of Linux’s most compelling features—particularly when compared with proprietary alternatives such as Windows and OS X—but the tweak tools out there today let you refine the OS even further. And if you’re making the migration to Linux on your workplace PCs, tweak tools can help ease the transition.
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Tweakin’ Tools, No Threat, and Toddler Terror
linuxToday in Linux news Katherine Noyes tells you how to use Linux tweak tools to customize your OS. In another camp, Matt Nicholson says Linux “never threatened Windows on the desktop.” Carla Schroder looks at Tails 1.0 and Steve Marinconz says, “If being a toddler was this terrifying, I’m glad I can’t remember it.”
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Kernel Space
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Graphics Stack
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AMD’s Open-Source Hawaii GPU Support Still Isn’t Working Right
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Mesa 10.1.3 Arrives with Important Performance Regression Fix
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Mesa 10.1.3 Brings A Couple Of Bug-Fixes
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Mesa 10.1.3
Mesa 10.1.3 has been released. Mesa 10.1.3 is a bug fix release which
fixes bugs fixed since the 10.1.2 release, (see below for a list of
changes).Note: Mesa 10.1.3 is being released sooner than originally scheduled to
make available a fix for a performance rgression that was inadvertently
introduced to Mesa 10.1.2. The performance regression is reported to
make vmware swapbuffers fall back to software.
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Benchmarks
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RadeonSI Starts Beating Catalyst In Some Linux Tests
While the AMD Hawaii open-source is broken, at least for older “GCN” era graphics cards supported by the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver the performance is starting to match — or even exceed — the proprietary Catalyst Linux graphics driver.
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Applications
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ssconvert: An awful lot of baggage
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ss: A quick dump of socket statistics
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5 Twitter clients for Linux
Although Linux systems can, of course, handle the same browser-based Twitter clients as other operating systems, some users may prefer desktop clients.
There are a number of reasons for this: Local clients integrate with your system to provide a better notification experience, it’s easier to access an application in the system tray compared to the one sandwiched between browser tabs and you have more control over your application environment.
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eBook Reader and Editing Software Calibre 1.36 Gets a Ton of New Features
eBook reader, editor, and library management software Calibre 1.36 is now available for download and sports an impressive number of new features and other various fixes.
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VidOn.me Publishes A New XBMC Source Tree
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A beginners guide to bittorrent and the KTorrent client software
One of the terms is bittorrent and the other is bitcoin mining. I am going to admit that I have read all there is to read about bitcoin mining and yet I am still confused.
Bittorrents on the other hand are fairly easy to understand when somebody explains it to you in simple terms.
In this guide I am going to explain what torrents are, the legality of using bittorrent clients and the places where you can find torrents. I am also going to give a brief overview of the KTorrent client.
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Proprietary
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Google Music with All Access natively on Linux
You might wonder why anyone would bother with setting this up to work natively on linux, the web client at http://music.google.com/ works well, the interface is great and it works from anywhere with no set up. However it currently uses flash, though there is a Labs option to enable html5 but this doesn’t seem to make a difference for resource usage. In my use case, it would regularly cause firefox to freeze up, and even my entire machine occasionally.
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Instructionals/Technical
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How to install Sifr icon set for LibreOffice 4.2 on Ubuntu
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OpenMandriva Lx 2014 and iBus, Success Still Eludes Me
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Installing Nginx With PHP5 (And PHP-FPM) And MySQL Support (LEMP) On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
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Take our sysadmin masterclass in Linux User & Developer 139
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Install Atom Text Editor In Ubuntu Via PPA
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20 things to do after installing Kali Linux
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How to Make a Fancy and Useful Bash Prompt in Linux
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How To Easily Restore The Classic Scroll Bar (Disable The Overlay Scroll Bar) On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr
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Defeating memory comparison timing oracles
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How To Build a Cloud (cluster) Hosting Without Investing a Lot of Money
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Games
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UT Confirmed, Anti-virus Pioneer Uses Linux, and Nerdiest Gadgets
Gamespot today covered the latest announcement from Epic Games saying that there will indeed be a new Unreal Tournament and it will work on Linux. A pioneer in Windows anti-virus software recently said it’s no use, switch to Linux! And Bryan Lunduke has a list of the top 10 “nerdiest Linux gadgets.
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New Unreal Tournament Game Will Be Available For Linux, Free
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New Unreal Tournament Announced, Linux Support Is A Go & Will Be Free
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The Bridge available for Mac and Linux starting May 16
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Unreal Tournament coming to Linux and it will be developed with the community
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Linux Video of the Week: Limit Theory Game Developer Switches to Linux
Game developer Josh Parnell has released the latest development update on his open-world space simulation and strategy game, Limit Theory. While the graphics are beautiful, this release is particularly notable because Parnell has switched to developing on the native Linux client version from Windows (which he called “just annoying.”)
Limit Theory is Kickstarter-funded as of December 2012 and has a planned release date for early 2014. When it’s finished, players will be able to explore space, prospect for and mine asteroids, command a fleet of star ships, and more.
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SteamOS Is Now Based on Debian 7.5 “Wheezy” and Features the Latest AMD 14.4 Drivers
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SteamOS Is Now Based On Debian 7.5 Wheezy
SteamOS Update 105 has been recently released, using Debian Wheezy 7.5 as a base kit for the packages, receiving updates for the base-files, debian-installer, lcms2, libquvi-scripts, libsoup2.4, libxml2, samba, and dpkg packages packages. Also, AMD Catalytat 14.4 has been made available by default, the Iceweasel browser has received some security updates a bunch of new software like unzip, git, cgdb, and rsync have been added to the SteamOS repositories, the Realtek r8168 driver has been added by default, and support for more Intel Wi-Fi cards has been added.
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The Bridge for Mac/Linux Coming Next Week
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Dota 2 Gets More Items and Important Fixes
Dota 2, Valve’s own take on the famous Dota mod for Warcraft 3, has just received a new update bringing various fixes and a few new features.
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Transport Tycoon Deluxe Remake OpenTTD 1.4.1 RC Arrives with More Fixes
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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Next-Gen Linux Desktop LXQt Makes First Public Release
The first public release of LXQt, the next generation of popular lightweight Linux desktop environment LXDE, has been made available to download.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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KDE Commit-Digest for 9th March 2014
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KDE Commit-Digest for 16th March 2014
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KDE Commit-Digest for 23rd March 2014
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KDE Commit-Digest for 30th March 2014
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Using Qt to make Native Android apps
Much of the new work planned covers porting existing Qt classes to interface with the Android provided APIs. If you need access to non-Qt provided functionality, you’ll probably need to dip into JNI and call the appropriate Android Java APIs. (That topic is too deep for a 60 minute webinar, but is something that BogDan will be talking about it in depth in the hands-on Coffee & Code sessions. There are still open spots for the North American tour, but space is limited and it’s free, so register and save your seat.)
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Digia Officially Releases Qt 5.3 RC1 with Feedback Fixes
Qt, a cross-platform application and UI framework with APIs for C++ programming, is now at version 5.3 RC1 and it gets a little bit closer to the final version.
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Qt 5.3 Release Candidate Available
We are now approaching the final steps towards Qt 5.3 release and I am happy to announce that the Qt 5.3 Release Candidate is now available!
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Qt 5.3 Is Near With Today’s Release Candidate
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Distributions
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GoboLinux 015 Linux OS Arrives with Different Logical File Structure
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MacOs-Linux 11.04 Officially Killed by Its Developer
MacOs-Linux 11.04 was a project that seemed to attract problems right from the start. It was a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) that imitated the desktop and a few functionality of the operating system made by Apple.
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Screenshots
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Slackware Family
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New multilib versions of glibc and gcc for slackware-current
There were a couple of nice updates in the Slackware-current ChangeLog today – new kernel (3.14.3), new binutils (2.24.51.0.3), new glibc (2.19) and a rebuilt gcc. Not to speak of two new packages: libnftnl and nftables, which bring a new packet filtering framework on Linux.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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Wayland to be in Fedora 21
Fedora 21 has got the go ahead to properly implement GNOME in Wayland, the successor to X11. It may also end up the default display server
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Debian Family
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Testing Ubuntu, Debian and LMDE on my new notebook
I recently picked up an Acer V5-131 at a good price here in Switzerland. In my previous two posts about it I have described configuring and upgrading Windows 8, and installing openSuSE, Fedora and Linux Mint on it. There is at least one obvious omission from that list of Linux distributions — Ubuntu. So this post will focus on installing that, plus Linux Mint Debian Edition (MATE) and the Debian testing distribution (jessie).
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Guy Installs A Bunch Of Distros, Including Debian GNU/Linux And Everything Works
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Tails 1.0: A bootable Linux distro that protects your privacy
Once you’ve got it going, you’ll find that Tails’ default desktop is the popular GNOME Linux desktop. If you (or your users) aren’t comfortable with GNOME, Tails can masquerade as the more familiar Windows XP.
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Elementary’s Pantheon Shell To Be Ported On Debian
As you may know, a lot of interesting projects are about to be demoed at the Google Summer of Code. While the GNOME team is presenting GNOME Books, part of GNOME 3.14, Sergey “Shnatsel” Davidoff, one of the Elementary OS developers plans to integrate the Pantheon Shell, GUI framework, applications and the GTK theme to Debian. The only thing that will not get ported is the Wingpanel, due to the fact that is dependent on the Ubuntu indicators.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32-bit vs. 64-bit Performance
Going back years we have run 32-bit vs. 64-bit Linux benchmarks. While the results seldom change, we keep running them as the question of choosing between a 32-bit and 64-bit Linux distribution image is still a popular question… These tests drive in a surprising amount of traffic and I continue to be flabbergasted by the number of people still asking this question when nearly all modern x86 Intel/AMD hardware fully supports x86_64 and it generally means much better performance. Usually the only caveat in not using a 64-bit Linux image is if running a system with less than 2GB of RAM.
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Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) with a 3D Desktop and Funky Dock Was the Future in 2006 – Video
Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) was a distribution launched back in 2006 that proved to be a real success for Canonical. It’s interesting to see what happened with the bleeding edge software that was running back then and how it failed to be adopted in the years that followed.
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Devices/Embedded
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Get Out The Best Of Your Raspberry Pi With Pidora 2014 (Pidora 20)
As you may know, Pidora is a Fedora spin for Raspberry Pi, the single-board ARM computer that has a 700 Mhz CPU, 512 MB of RAM, an SD card slot, and a bunch of ports.
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Pidora 2014 Is Now the Most Advanced Raspberry Pi Linux Distro
Raspberry Pi turned out to be a very successful project and already a number of Linux distributions have made their debut on the new platform, such as Raspbian (based on Debian Wheezy), Pidora (Fedora Remix), OpenELEC (an XBMC Media Centre), RaspBMC (also an XBMC Media Centre), RISC OS (not actually Linux, but based on their own kernel), and Arch Linux, which needs no explanation.
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Raspberry Pi stop motion animation
The Raspberry Pi camera module opens the door for your Pi projects to incorporate aspects of photography and movie making. We’re combining both here to create a fully featured stop-motion animation application, Pi-Mation, which makes it incredibly easy to create impressive HD animations.
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D-Link enters IoT space with a smart AC socket
D-Link has launched itself into IoT space, with a $50 Linux-based smart AC power socket for IP-based monitoring and control of lights and other appliances.
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Interview: AMD and Mentor Graphics Partner To Deliver Linux
AMD has signed a multi-year agreement with Mentor Graphics Corporation, to provide open-source embedded Linux development for heterogeneous and multi-core processors from AMD (Fig. 1). The agreement will provide embedded developers with more supported processor options, robust development tools and greater speed in open platform development.
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Phones
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You can buys ZTE’s Firefox phone for $99 on eBay
The ZTE Open C smartphone, which was first showed off at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) tradeshow in February, is being sold on eBay for a wallet-friendly $99.99. Running the latest version of Mozilla’s open source Firefox OS, the new phone is an upgraded version of the earlier ZTE Open which was sold for $80 in the US. The unlocked smartphone packs a 4-inch screen, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of memory, 3-megapixel camera, and 4GB of storage.
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Android
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ASUS launches Intel powerd Android tablet MeMO Pad 8
ASUS has launched the new MeMO Pad 8 version in Japan, which features the new Intel Atom Processor Z3580 (“Moorefield”). The MeMO Pad 8 is the first Moorefield-based device to be announced. ASUS is one of Intel’s biggest customers, when we talk about use of Atom Processor SoCs (System-On Chips) in Smartphones and tablets.
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Is Flounder the codename for upcoming Nexus device?
With Google I/O 2014 right round the corner, we have started hearing whispers about a new Nexus device. What could be called a real ‘proof’, the folks over at tech site MYCE spotted a potential hardware codename for an unreleased Google device that recently made an appearance through the Chromium issue tracker. Evidence of new hardware surfaced buried within Chrome Issue #371206.
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AMD to enter Android space with ARM based chip
AMD announced a roadmap of near- and mid-term computing solutions that harness the best characteristics of both the x86 and ARM ecosystems, called “ambidextrous computing.” The important point of this roadmap is the announcement of AMD’s 64-bit ARM architecture license for the development of custom high-performance cores for high-growth markets.
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Google Play Services 4.4 now rolling out
A new version of Google Play Services with several new features has been released and has begun rolling out. The added features and improvements in Google Play Services 4.4 can enhance your user experience while using Android apps.
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CyanogenMod finally hits HTC One M8
CyanogenMod is a free and open source alternative to Google‘s Android. The addition of HTC’s One M8 to CyanogenMod’s list of officially supported devices is a huge step for future custom roms. The number of community-driven custom roms is expected to increase quickly, as most of these are build from CyanogenMod’s sources.
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Do we really need more giant phablets?
Giant phablet phones seem to be all the rage these days. Everywhere you look you see people walking around with these huge suckers attached to the side of their heads. But are larger screen phones really better? And what about those of us who might…gasp!…actually prefer smaller screens? I can’t help but feel that perhaps the big screen phone trend has gotten completely out of control among phone manufacturers and their customers.
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Free Software/Open Source
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Arm Yourself with A Good Open Text Editor
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Unreal Tournament opens up, GitHub releases open source Atom editor, and more
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Web Browsers
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What are the alternatives to Google Chrome and Firefox on Linux?
Say what you want about web browsers on Linux, I just miss Internet Explorer. No let’s be serious. A great thing about Linux distributions is in general that they come packaged with a good browser. If that browser is not your favorite, you can easily install another one (and you don’t necessarily need a browser to download your favorite browser). For most users, however, this favorite browser will be Chrome or Firefox, and there are reasons for that: they are both good browsers. For more adventurous users, there is also Opera, which recently improved. But, there exist browsers out there which are a lot more exotic, with particular features and goals. I shall propose you eight examples: eight browsers which may not be as complete as Chrome or Firefox, but which are definitely worth checking out for their philosophies or design.
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Mozilla
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Firefox 29.0.1 Stable (With Australis) Has Been Released + Installation Instructions For The Most Popular Linux Systems
As you may know, Firefox 29 has been released a while ago, coming with the new Australis interface and the Firefox Sync feature. Unlike the old Firefox interface, Australis has a modern and simplistic look with monochrome icons, rounded tabs, bookmarks, download panel, all together providing a Chrome-like eye experience. (If you don’t like the new Australis interface and want to switch the the classic one, see the instructions in this article.)
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SaaS/Big Data
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Moving towards an open source cloud with OpenStack
Over the past years, I’ve played a leading role in helping to bring openness to the storage industry. At Nexenta, we inherited great technology from Sun Microsystems and went to market with an open core business model. This model, and a lot else, worked well and Nexenta has been called “the most disruptive storage company of the last 10 years” in part because of the impact we had on legacy, lock-in based proprietary vendors.
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OpenStack Congress Set to Define IT Policy
Martin Casado, Networking CTO at VMware, explains how the new OpenStack project will open up app, storage and networking policy.
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Big Data a Big Priority for Most Organizations
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Funding
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BSD
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OpenBSD Affirms That LibreSSL Will Be Portable
In the fallout from the OpenSSL heartbleed bug, OpenBSD developers forked OpenSSL into LibreSSL. Initially the only supported platform for LibreSSL was OpenBSD, but the BSD developers are pushing harder now for platform portability.
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LLVM 3.4.1 Release!
This release contains bug-fixes for the LLVM 3.4 release and is both API and ABI compatible with 3.4.
A few changes of note are:
- varargs fix for X86.
- Geometry shader support for R600.
- A few c++11 fixes.
- Various other fixes to the AArch64, ARM, PowerPC, R600, and X86 targets.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Coreboot Keeps Getting Better Bay Trail Support
Coreboot for Intel’s low-power Bay Trail platform is a basic DPTF framework. The DPTF framework for Bay Trail isn’t yet complete but is nearly working. DPTF is the Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework designed for “thin, quiet, and cool platform designs.” As explained at 01.org, “Intel DPTF provides mechanisms for platform components and devices to be exposed to individual technologies in a consistent and modular fashion thus enabling a coordinated control of the platform to achieve the power and thermal management goals.”
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Public Services/Government
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Hardware
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Programming
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Standards/Consortia
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Upcoming Maxwell GPUs Will Support H.265, But VP9 Is Uncertain
NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 750 graphics cards back in February as their first products based upon their new Maxwell architecture. Sadly those GPUs didn’t support any H.265 or VP9 acceleration, but at least it looks like the former will be supported by the next round of Maxwell GPUs.
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Leftovers
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One in 10 Americans think aliens abducted missing Malaysian plane
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Science
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New York City to turn phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is fielding proposals to transform the city’s largely forgotten phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots, an ambitious project that would create one of the largest public Wi-Fi networks in the country.
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Health/Nutrition
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Climate change making food crops less nutritious, research finds
Rising carbon dioxide emissions are set to make the world’s staple food crops less nutritious, according to new scientific research, worsening the serious ill health already suffered by billions of malnourished people.
The surprise consequence of fossil fuel burning is linked directly to the rise in CO2 levels which, unlike some of the predicted impacts of climate change, are undisputed. The field trials of wheat, rice, maize and soybeans showed that higher CO2 levels significantly reduced the levels of the essential nutrients iron and zinc, as well as cutting protein levels.
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Vermont gov signs law to require labels on GMO foods
Standing on the Statehouse steps before a legion of activists, Vermont’s governor signed a new law Thursday that could make the state the first to require labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms — and also could make it the first to be sued over the issue.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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The Wars to End All War
And the searchlight stops at Ukraine, full of neo-Nazis, corrupt oligarchs, nuclear reactors, an unelected government, a wrecked economy, a simmering civil war. God help us. Old animosities and ideological divisions come back to life. The United States and NATO stand off against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Thirty-one people — maybe more — die in a burning building in Odessa. This kind of thing could be the pretext for a world war. Sanity is up in flames.
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The Lawyer Behind the Drone Policy
When the White House nominated David Barron to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, based in Boston, it expected the usual Republican opposition. Mr. Barron, a Harvard law professor, is known as a liberal who was pointedly critical of President George W. Bush’s national security policy. What it didn’t expect — but should have — was that Democrats would have some problems with the nominee, too.
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Letter: Killing via drone is bad for America
Dr. Cornell West was the guest speaker at the Tucker Missionary Baptist Church in Syracuse on Sunday past. I was amongst the standing-room-only crowd of people who understand the importance of Dr. West’s heartfelt concern for the well-being of all mankind.
His speech titled “Connecting the Dots: Poverty, Racism, Drones” was a fiery condemnation of many of our government policies as well as the burgeoning hyper-rich who seem to have had their empathy gene extracted. Dr. West touched on many of our social ills and economic injustices that have wreaked havoc on the family unit and imbued too many young people with a value system that does not include altruism. He also condemned our onerous “criminal injustice” system.
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Activists gather to protest militant drones
An 8-foot-long metal replica of an MQ-9 Reaper drone towered above demonstrators as they read names of children killed in a CIA airstrike on Chenagai, Pakistan, in 2006.
Eighty civilians were killed in that strike, including 69 children at a religious school.
Members of the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition gathered Wednesday at the Monroe County Courthouse, with signs calling for an end to drones use by the United States military. They read names of victims killed by drones in the Middle East through a megaphone.
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Tell us more about drones
We have a right to know what our government is up to
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Air Force wants to buy deadly Reaper drones
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Revised law could turn animal activists into terrorists
When Amy Meyer saw a sick cow being pushed by a bulldozer outside a slaughterhouse, she did what any of us would in this age of iPhones and Instagram – she filmed it.
Ms Meyer, 25, knew it was not only cruel, it was a public safety risk.
Similar video footage had resulted in the largest meat recall in US history, when it was revealed that cows too sick to walk were being fed to schoolchildren as part of the national school lunch program.
Instead of being praised for exposing this, Ms Meyer was prosecuted.
Even though she stood on public property, she was charged with violating a new law in Utah that makes it illegal to photograph or videotape factory farms and slaughterhouses.
This was the first prosecution of its kind in the US, but if the agriculture industry has its way, it won’t be the last.
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Science fiction may become reality with ‘killer robots’
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Excerpt: Richard A. Clarke’s ‘Sting of the Drone’
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Obama, Putin, the Ukraine: A Symbolic Lynching
The murder of a 17-year old German exchange student, Diren Dede, in the act of committing a midnight prank in a garage whose door was left open, video camera and sensors at the ready, alerting the homeowner who rushed for his shotgun, fired four blasts in the dark, legally/constitutionally protected by the Montana “Castle” law, killing the youngster—a law, receiving bipartisan endorsement, which amended a 2009 law specifying the imminence of mortal danger as grounds, now, eliminating the provision to allow unconditional license to kill on one’s property, IS America in microcosm circa 2014.
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Imperialism and revolutionaries
New TV show encapsulates the dissonance between US nostalgia for revolution and its current counter-revolutionary stance
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Australians were killed by a US drone strike, and we deserve to know why
The news that the US had killed two Australian “militants” in a drone strike was announced in mid-April. Christopher Havard and “Muslim bin John,” who also held New Zealand citizenship, were allegedly killed by a CIA-led airstrike in eastern Yemen in November last year.
Readers were given little concrete information, apart from a “counter-terrorism source” who claimed that both men were foot soldiers for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, though they may also have been collateral damage (the real target being other terror heads).
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Drone strike kills seven militants in Nangarhar province
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US closes Yemen embassy amid fears of Qaeda revenge attacks
The US embassy was closed to the public on Thursday in Yemen after a spate of attacks against foreigners and fears that al-Qaeda will seek revenge for a deadly offensive in the south.
“The embassy is closed today. And this will remain in effect until further notice,” an employee at the US mission in a heavily-guarded neighbourhood in northeast Sanaa, told AFP.
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FBI agent arrested in Pakistan on weapons charge
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Detained FBI Agent in Pakistan Released on Bail
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FBI agent detained in Pakistan is out on bail
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CIA’s Afghan cutbacks worry U.S. military
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CIA, U.S. military at odds over Afghanistan pullback plan
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NATO has left a mess in Afghanistan
Today is “a day of honour” to mark our Afghan mission, courtesy of handouts by corporate Canada.
Stephen Harper wants the photo-op but does not want to pay for it, though he did for the state funeral for his former finance minister, an occasion he used, in breach of protocol, to canonize the Conservative management of the economy.
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The New Cold War: Libya, Syria, and the Ukraine
Syria’s not-so-civil war has been going strong for more than three years now and recently the news agency Reuters reported that “at least 150,000 people have been killed” in that time span.
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Pakistan FM: Fake Vaccination Program to Blame for Polio Outbreak
Dr. Afridi operated a phony vaccination program in early 2011 on behalf of the CIA, and with tacit support from the WHO. Instead of vaccinating children against polio, they were collecting the DNA of children to look for relatives of terrorists. The program led to the death of Osama bin Laden.
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CIA Front, USAID, “Spreading Democracy”, Gearing Up in Ukraine – Suharto II?
As the bodies of labor union reps and dissidents are piling up on the stairwells of Odessa and the streets of eastern Ukraine, today it is reported that USAID needs another couple million to support pro-Western “media outlets” in the run-up to the sham election to be held in the troubled state.
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Finance
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Around the World, Social Unrest Starts with Soaring Food Prices
From 2008 to 2014, insurrectionist activity has sequentially erupted across the globe, from Tunisia and Egypt to Syria and Yemen; from Greece, Spain, Turkey and Brazil to Thailand, Bosnia, Venezuela and the Ukraine.
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Robert Reich: 6 Principles Populists on the Right and Left Both Agree On
More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business and their enablers in Washington. We’re five years into a so-called recovery that’s been a bonanza for the rich but a bust for the middle class. “The game is rigged and the American people know that. They get it right down to their toes,” says Senator Elizabeth Warren.
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Ukraine gets its Mafia-type loan
It’s essential to identify the conditions attached to this Mafia-style “loan”.
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Police ‘have CCTV images’ of Monaco heiress attacker
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Workers of oppressed countries subjected to modern-day slavery
Labor trafficking stands out among the most brutal features of capitalist society. Millions around the world are held in forced servitude, and traded like property among the global elite.
An untold number of workers have been trafficked, obtained abroad or even within the United States, and held in compelled labor. According to the U.S. government, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into slavery in the United States every year, with foreign survivors more often found in labor than sex trafficking.
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Why Passengers Cheered a Vermont Bus Strike
An 18-day bus drivers’ strike in Burlington, Vermont, ended in a win April 3 when drivers ratified a new contract 53-6.
Strikes are rare these days, and fewer still result in victories—so why was this one different? What generated public support for the strike, despite management’s aggressive plan to blame drivers for the loss of bus service for nearly three weeks?
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Washington’s Pivot to Ignorance: Will the State Department Torpedo Its Last Great Program?
Take the current case of an unprecedented, unkind, under-the-radar cut in the State Department’s budget for the Fulbright Program, the venerable 68-year-old operation that annually arranges for thousands of educators, students, and researchers to be exchanged between the United States and at least 155 other countries. As Washington increasingly comes to rely on the “forward projection” of military force to maintain its global position, the Fulbright Program may be the last vestige of an earlier, more democratic, equitable, and generous America that enjoyed a certain moral and intellectual standing in the world. Yet, long advertised by the U.S. government as “the flagship international educational exchange program” of American cultural diplomacy, it is now in the path of the State Department’s torpedoes.
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The Fulbright Program is the flagship of American cultural diplomacy. So why are we cutting it?
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Charter Schools Fail: New Reports Call Their ‘Magic’ Into Question
When members of the U.S. House of Representatives consider, beginning today, a bill to incentivize the expansion of charter schools, you can expect there to be a lot of heat but not very much light in their discussion of the need for more of these institutions.
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CMD Reporting on Walker Dark Money Criminal Probe
In one of the first cases to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court’s McCutcheon decision, a federal judge just tried to open the door to new levels of corruption in Wisconsin elections — but the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals could still stop him. On May 6, federal Judge Rudolph Randa ordered a halt to Wisconsin’s long-running “John Doe” criminal probe into allegedly illegal coordination between political campaigns (including Governor Scott Walker’s 2012 recall campaign) and non-profit groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth that spent millions during the state’s recall elections.
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Privacy
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US accuses Israel of ‘alarming, even terrifying’ levels of spying
Friends do not spy on friends. That illusion about America’s attitude to its allies was conclusively debunked by Edward Snowden’s revelations about America’s National Security Agency and its British partner in global electronic eavesdropping, GCHQ. But by every account, the US is being repaid in kind by one of its closest international friends – Israel.
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Congress Will Vote on an NSA Reform Bill that Won’t Reform Much of Anything
What do you end up with when you take a strong NSA reform bill championed by just about every civil liberties group and combine it with a widely derided one that threatened to expand the NSA’s power? A watered-down piece of legislation that takes baby steps toward limiting surveillance but still leaves some gaping loopholes that lets the government maintain the status quo.
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Bill ending NSA bulk data collection moving quickly in U.S. House
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Can the NSA Keep U.S. Metadata Safe from Hackers and Spies?
It sounds like a system with gaping security flaws run by an agency that has shown itself incapable of guarding what it considers to be its most precious secrets. Say that no NSA employee ever abuses the detailed information it has about the private communications of Americans. Even with that guarantee, why should Americans trust the NSA to safeguard its data from foreign governments and hackers?
I’ve yet to see any persuasive answer from NSA defenders.
In fact, if you believe, like Edward Lucas of The Economist or John Schindler of the Naval War College, that Snowden is the unwitting dupe or witting agent of Vladimir Putin, then you’re effectively saying that a foreign government has already breached a trove of NSA information that could be used to manipulate elections, blackmail some unknown number of Americans, and do all manner of other mischief.
I don’t think Snowden is a spy. But his success inclines me to think that the privacy of Americans will be much better protected, even absent any abuses by the NSA, if the NSA erases what it’s gathered about us from its servers, rather than acting as if it can protect it all indefinitely. In the wrong hands, metadata on millions of innocents could do significant damage. Why trust the NSA and its contractors to keep it from the wrong hands?
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Net tech bods at IETF mull anti-NSA crypto-key swaps in future SSL
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NSA spying is causing Americans to self-censor their Internet activity
An MIT researcher claims he’s quantified some of the troubling self-censorship civil liberties advocates worried would result from public knowledge of mass spying.
The new study reports that Google users were slightly less likely (2.2 percent) to use search times that the National Security Agency flagged as potential national security threats.
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The NSA’s Corporate Collaborators
When a provider like Amazon is awarded a $600 million 10-year contract to provide the CIA with cloud services [18] do you suppose that Amazon is inclined to cater to government requests? Think of it this way: Roughly 70% of the intelligence budget goes to the private sector [19]. There are incentives for executives to go along.
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Why Shouldn’t Google Discuss Security With The NSA?
I’m no great apologist for Google, but this is hardly evidence that the company was all that tight with the NSA. Given that the email exchanges took place months before the revelation that Google’s communications were being tapped – which the company claims it didn’t know – there’s no earthly reason why it shouldn’t take part in a national security initiative.
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NSA’s mass surveillance programme in interest of US citizens, says ex-director
Speaking on the mass spying of US citizens, Alexaner just said the government agency was working in the best interest of the US citizen.
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NTT says NSA activity is changing data center buying habits
The survey quizzed 1,000 ICT decision-makers in France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and the US. It found that nearly nine in ten (88%) of ICT decision-makers are changing their buying behavior. About a third (38%) have amended their procurement conditions.
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The Snowden leaks; a meta-narrative
The only way out of this I can see is to abolish the secret police and build out a new secure internet before the inevitable processes of institutional change generate a new rationale for spying on us. Unfortunately I see no way (at present) to pursue this agenda.
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The Way the NSA Uses Section 702 is Deeply Troubling. Here’s Why.
Section 702 has been used by the NSA to justify mass collection of phone calls and emails by collecting huge quantities of data directly from the physical infrastructure of communications providers.
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10 things we’ve learned about the NSA over the past year
1. The appetite for domestic collection increased significantly after Sept. 11, both as a a cause of and a response to the Big Bang-like expansion of the national security state. The NSA expanded the reach and scope of its domestic collection activities as the the domestic threat exceeded. (I define domestic collection differently; it’s the set of programs and analytical policies that touch a large volume of American-to-American communications in some way without individual FISA orders having been obtained.)
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German NSA investigative panel to allow Snowden to testify
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is to testify before a German panel investigating the activities of the spy agency. However, the panel has not yet determined whether he may travel to Berlin for the hearing.
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German lawmakers want to interview Snowden
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German authorities want to interview Edward Snowden about NSA spying
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German Lawmakers Call On Snowden To Testify In NSA Investigation
The debate on whether or not to call on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to testify in a parliamentary inquiry on the mass surveillance of German citizens by the American government came to an end on Thursday when committee members unanimously voted yes.
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German lawmakers seek to interview Snowden over NSA spying
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Would You Hire Former NSA Boss Keith Alexander For Cybersecurity Consulting?
It is, of course, no surprise that former NSA boss Keith Alexander is now setting out a shingle for consulting work in the private sector.
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Can Larry Klayman make history with his NSA lawsuit?
Larry Klayman is back in his favorite place. The lawyer who launched hundreds of lawsuits against federal agencies, White House officials, Cabinet secretaries, judges, journalists, former colleagues, foreign governments, dictators, presidents, this newspaper and others who offended his hair-trigger sense of right and wrong, takes a seat at the long plaintiff attorney’s table in the august U.S. Courthouse two blocks from the Capitol.
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Congressman Jim Cooper on the NSA Internal Watchdog Act
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Ted Cruz: Thin Justice Argument to Dismiss Rand Paul NSA Suit
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The relationship between the White House, Silicon Valley and its money? It’s complicated
Among the major tech players, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been an especially high-profile figure. He launched an advocacy group that has been among the most active on the immigration issue.
And he has been a vocal critic of the NSA’s data collection, calling Obama to voice his alarm. Shortly after, Obama met with Zuckerberg and CEOs from Google, Netflix and other tech and Internet companies, pledging to safeguard privacy rights.
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NSA broadens funding for 4 universities to advance the science of cybersecurity
The National Security Agency is expanding funding for several universities to continue scientific research into cybersecurity.
The intelligence agency awarded contracts to North Carolina State University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Carnegie Mellon University in 2012 and recently announced that these three universities along with the University of Maryland would receive additional funding.
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Why There’s No Such Thing As A Private Facebook Chat
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You might want to pay for an e-mail service like the OpenBSD-running Neomailbox
I don’t look on the OpenBSD Misc mailing list very often, but today a message from that list introduced me to Neomailbox, which offers services that include secure, encrypted e-mail and anonymous web surfing for prices that are very reasonable.
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Privacy Tool: Encrypt What You Can
Encrypt the data you store. This protects your data from being read by people with access to your computer.
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Should Google Kill Google Plus?
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Help save Twitter – An appeal to all users.
If people don’t want Twitter turning into another Facebook with in your face adverts all over the place, you need to say no now.
If you block and dismiss any user who promotes their account/services, there will quickly be a message sent out that people are not interested in their marketing campaigns.
I had intended on making a name and shame list of all the companies who would pay to push their products onto you, however I’ve spent the last hour blocking so many that it will take too long to list.
So if you don’t want Twitter turning into Facebook, join me now. #nospamforme
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Civil Rights
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Death on the Job Report
Workplaces are much safer today than when the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act was passed in 1970, which promised workers in this country the right to a safe job. The job fatality rate has been cut by 81 percent; more than 492,000 workers lives have been saved. But too many workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death as workplace tragedies continue to remind us. These tragedies are all preventable.
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An American Retreat from Human Rights?
Who knows, if that change is voiced loudly enough by you to your representatives, we might restore the glory to America’s standing in the world, and America’s standing to its own citizens. Write, call, or email your representatives today (see www.contactingthecongress.org). Ask them to support HRAC’s call to demand greater support from the United States to respect international human rights norms. Ask them to push the conversation forward on joining the ICC. Ask them to support better protections for American soldiers during service and afterwards. We should be ashamed of the way we treat human rights standards right now and we should be ashamed at the way we treat our soldiers and veterans. We deserve better and we can do it with a united voice.
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The Boston Marathon Bombing Interrogation and the Legal Suspension of Law
According to a lawsuit filed by Tsarnaev’s lawyers Wednesday, following his arrest in April 2013 Tsarnaev was denied repeated requests for a lawyer as he was continuously interrogated by FBI agents while complaining of his worsening medical condition due to gunshot wounds sustained to the head, face, throat, and jaw. Unable to speak, Tsarnaev wrote answers on a note pad. Defense attorneys were turned away from the hospital and federal agents lied to the suspect, saying his dead brother was still alive. All this before Miranda rights were read.
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Is citizenship a right?
…British government has revoked the citizenship of 42 people, including 20 cases in 2013.
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CIA torture report won’t be made public for months
The release of the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques — widely denounced as torture — is certain to take much longer than the 30 days sought by Senate Democrats.
The panel’s chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at the beginning of April that she hoped the CIA would complete by now the process of excising from the report information deemed harmful to national security.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Sprint may start throttling its biggest data users
Sprint subscribers are facing new limits on their supposedly unlimited data plans, at least in congested areas.
The top 5 percent of data users may now get slower speeds during peak usage times, according to the legal and regulatory section of Sprint’s website. Speeds will return to normal when users leave a congested area or when demand subsides.
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Protesters set up camp at net neutrality rally outside FCC headquarters
Protesters set up camp outside the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) on Wednesday to fight plans they say will create a two-tier internet and hand control of the web to major corporations.
The rally – reminiscent of the Occupy-style rallies that started in 2011 – started outside the FCC’s Washington headquarters at noon with protesters from Fight For the Future, Popular Resistance and others unfurling banners reading “Save the Internet”.
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OPEN INTERNET BACKERS STAGE ‘OCCUPY FCC’
Internet libertarians calling for the equal treatment of all Internet data have camped out in front of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, D.C., saying they won’t quit their Occupy-style protest until the regulator stands up for Net neutrality.
About 15 people stood outside the FCC’s headquarters on Wednesday afternoon in a protest organized by the two groups, Fight for the Future and Popular Resistance. Five of the demonstrators said they were determined to set up camp overnight and stick around until May 15, when the commission is set to unveil proposed new Net neutrality rules — or perhaps longer, if the new rules don’t meet their expectations.
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Net Neutrality: FCC Boss Smacked by Tech Giants, Internal Dissent
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler faces mounting opposition to his proposed net neutrality rules as more than 100 Internet companies sent a letter expressing alarm over the direction laid out ahead of next week’s vote and imploring regulators to protect the web’s openness
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Will the Italian Presidency of the EU Council Support Net Neutrality?
The voice of the Italian presidency of the Council of the European Union could mark a real departure from the usual government talk chastising the vote on Net Neutrality adopted by the European Parliament! According to the information portal Euractiv, the Italian presidency could support the text voted by the Members of the European Parliament and be ready to defend it in front of the European governments and telecommunications industry. As the publication of the guidance report of the Council of the European Union about the Net Neutrality (scheduled for 5 or 6 of June) nears, La Quadrature du Net welcomes this encouraging position and asks European citizens to invite their governments to follow this example.
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DRM
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Senate approves ‘kill switches’ for cellphones sold in California
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California Senate approves smartphone ‘kill-switch’ bill
After failing in the state Senate two weeks ago, a bill requiring that device makers include antitheft software on phones sold in the state passes muster.
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Soon you will be able to lock, erase and locate your lost Chromebook
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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The Bizarro, Fact-free World Of Copyright Policymaking
If you’re a regular visitor to this website, you’re likely used to the never-ending parade of horribles detailing how copyright has been used to censor documents, stifle innovation and generally wreak all kinds of unintended havoc.
Even with this constant attention, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of exactly how world-champion strange copyright policy is. Only when it’s placed alongside other government policies does it become clear exactly how it has evolved into a bizarro-world version of rational policymaking.
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Pirate Bay Founder Launches Election Campaign For European Parliament
In two weeks time citizens of all European Union member states will vote on who should represent them in the European Parliament. In Finland the local Pirate Party has a true Internet star on the ballot with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, who kicks off his election campaign today with a little bit of romance.
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UK ISPs Agree to Send Out Music & Movie Piracy Warnings
The music and movie industries and several of the UK’s leading ISPs have reached terms on a deal to tackle Internet piracy. The arrangement will see the BPI and MPA monitoring people sharing files illegally and the ISPs sending them “escalating” warning letters.
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No, Every Person Does Not Owe The Movie & Music Industry $67 Million, But Copyright Is Still Broken
In a similar move, some folks at the Huffington Post have now estimated that every single man, woman and child on earth owes the combined music and movie industries on the order of $67 million. Each. Not cumulatively. Cumulatively, it would be $470,925,000,000,000,000,000 — which is also 6.63 times the GDP of the entire planet.
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