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05.04.15

Links 4/5/2015: Many New Releases, Ubuntu Drone

Posted in News Roundup at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Updated OSs of April 2015: Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS and Ubuntu

    Gnome 3.16 user interface packages are being rolled out to Linux in the month of April. Usually, it takes at least three weeks for the packages to reach everyone, but it is expected to be much quicker this time. The maintenance releases are out already and they fix a wide range of bugs found in the Linux platform. Compared to Windows or Mac, Linux is always stable and is a reliable solution for users. It is being upgraded in terms of visuals so as to make it more user friendly. Gnome also supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system.

  • Accessibility in Linux is good (but could be much better)

    Gnu/Linux distributions provide great advantages over proprietary alternatives for people with disabilities. In this article, I’ll discuss some of the advantages, as well as areas that need improvement. Because I use Fedora, my article is written based on my experience with that Linux distribution.

  • Desktop

    • ​Linux is an operating system for all ages

      Consider James Anderson. He’s an 84 year-old volunteer at Free Geek, a Portland, Oregon non-profit organization, which rebuilds old computers for users who need them. As shown in a Linux Foundation video, he works there every Friday to rebuild laptops using Linux that can be sent to Africa.

      Anderson has been playing with electrical equipment since he blew out his grandmother’s fuses and has been using computers since the “luggables” of the 80s. He’s never worked in IT, though, until he came to Free Geek. He had spend 13-weeks in Zimbabwe and saw how students there needed computers.

    • Linux vs Windows: What do people want from their next computer?

      The Gnome desktop version can also be made to look stunning too, so users shouldn’t think that choosing Linux will make things ugly or clunky, as this is not the case.

      In conclusion, Windows adding a Start button, which the company axed two years ago, and multiple desktops (a long established Linux feature) will not make the transition and subsequent day-to-day usage much less frustrating than the Windows 8 experience.

      However, one of the main downsides about the Linux operating system is that by being free, this means that there is no huge marketing budget to get the message out.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.1-rc2

      So the -rc2′s have lately been pretty small – looking more like late -rc’s than early ones. It *used* to be that I couldn’t even post the shortlog, because it was just too big. That’s not been the case for the last few releases.

    • Linux 4.1-RC2 Kernel Released

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • The Return of Korora MATE

          The Korora Project is very pleased to announce that the final release of the MATE edition of version 21 (codename “Darla”) is now available for download in both 32- and 64bit, (we strongly recommend using BitTorrent).

        • Mono 4 Is Planned For Fedora 23

          Aside from the other features proposed thus far for Fedora 23, the update of the popular Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution due out in late 2015, you can add Mono 4.0 to the list.

    • Debian Family

      • Reproducible builds: first week in Stretch

        Debian Jessie has been released on April 25th, 2015. This has opened the Stretch development cycle. Reactions to the idea of making Debian build reproducibly have been pretty enthusiastic. As the pace is now likely to be even faster, let’s see if we can keep everyone up-to-date on the developments.

      • @Zigo: Why I don’t package Hadoop myself

        I filed a few bugs, and I even uploaded my fixes to Github. Some of that went unnoticed, because Sean Owen of Cloudera decided to remove all Debian packaging from Spark. But in the end, even with these fixes, the resulting packages do not live up to Debian quality standards (not to say, they would outright violate policy).

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu laptops available for pre-order with Ebuyer.com

            Electronic Commerce Retailer Ebuyer has launched a series of AMD-based HP laptops preloaded with Ubuntu. These devices are perfect for business and home users and are now available for pre-order on Ebuyer.com; fully available at the end of May 2015.

          • Ubuntu 15.10′s “W” Codename Being Revealed Soon

            Mark Shuttleworth is hosting his virtual keynote today for Ubuntu 15.10 with the Ubuntu Online Summit happening this week.

            Shuttleworth posted to his blog that he’s holding off on revealing the “W” codename for Ubuntu 15.10 until this keynote. The keynote is taking place at 14.00 UTC.

          • The loudest lesson from Ubuntu Vivid Vervet: If it’s not broken …

            Those who are partial to Ubuntu know that every six months the good people at Canonical, the people behind Ubuntu, release a new version to its popular Operating System. Well if you somehow missed the big event, the latest iteration of Ubuntu and all its cousins like Kubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome, were released on the 24th of April.

            As usual, you get to decide which flavor you prefer depending on your hardware some of the flavors like Lubuntu are to be recommended over the default Unity based installation especially if your hardware is dated.

          • World’s first Ubuntu powered Drone launched

            It seems world is slowly and steadily moving towards Linux powered devices. After Linux was used to power destroyers for US Navy, now Erle Robotics has used Ubuntu to power a drone.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Five more operating systems for the Raspberry Pi 2

      The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B launched earlier this year, offering a more powerful machine capable of running a wider variety of software.

      The new $35 Linux board has double the memory of first generation Pis, a quad-core 900MHz processor and the ARMv7 architecture used by many mid-range smartphones.

      In the months since the Pi 2 launched developers have ported an increasing number of operating systems to the board.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Nexus 9 Android 5.1.1 Release Rumored

          This week the latest Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update has finally arrived for the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, and even a few lucky Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge owners are getting the absolute latest version of Android with loads of bug fixes from Google. However, the Nexus 9 hasn’t seen an update since November, and is the only device still on Android 5.0.1 Lollipop.

        • Android Wear vs. Apple Watch: Which one will “wow” your wrist?

          Wearable tech is fast becoming the next big thing. We’ve seen fitness trackers gain popularity, smart jewellery take off, and even luxury brands start to sit up and take notice. However, it’s smartwatches which are one of the most popular choices amongst early adopters of wearable tech. The affordable Pebble works regardless of what phone you use, while big names such as Samsung, Motorola, Sony, and LG all have Android-based products on sale. Now, Apple is taking them all on with the Apple Watch.

        • Videostream for Android Streams Movies from Your PC to Your Chromecast

          Videostream for Chrome already makes it easy to play any video on your computer or network through your Chromecast, but the new Videostream app for Android gives you a remote control to stream movies on your PC, monitor downloads, and control playback without installing a special media server.

        • Meerkat’s Android app is live on Google Play

          Good news for Android users who want to get involved in the livestreaming craze that’s sweeping Twitter: Meerkat has officially made it to the Google Play Store with a beta app. Its main rival, the Twitter-owned Periscope, remains iOS-only for the time being.

        • HTC One (M8) Android 5.1 Lollipop Update: How to Install CyanogenMod [Official] CM12.1 Custom ROM

          Earlier in the week, HTC announced that their 2014 flagship smartphone One (M8) would get the new Android 5.1 Lollipop firmware in August, which means device owners would have to wait for more than two months to savour the new update.

        • Android 5.1 rollout to Moto X devices starting next week

          Motorola has announced that the Moto X 2014 will receive the long awaited Android 5.1 update next week, as reported in this article at Load the Game. The software update will first be made available to users in Brazil, and a United States rollout is expected in the week thereafter. An exact release date for European users has yet to be announced but is expected to be released around the middle of May.

        • 7 best Android apps for screen recording and other ways too!

          One of our more frequent requests from readers is to tell them how to record your screen on Android. The functionality has been around for quite some time but usually requires some tinkering and adjustment to get it. In Android Lollipop, they have a screen recording method building into the OS and that’s how most people do it these days. Let’s take a look at a few Android apps and some other methods to get you screen recording.

        • Fanboy Fight: How One Apple/Android Argument Ended In A Stabbing

          Every one of us has already had this fight at some point: Apple or Android? The two dominant players in the mobile space carry with them very loyal fanbases who, for some reason, like to spar off with one another over whose tech-daddy could beat up the other. The companies compete with the same level of petty at times, which doesn’t help. Apple screws around with text messages from Android users, Android pokes back at Apple over the controlling hand it has in its app store, and the two companies spend a great deal of time in legal battles because of course they do. C’mon, guys, can’t we all just spend our time pointing and laughing at Windows Mobile?

          [..]

          Yeah, no kidding. I have my brand loyalty, too, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t feel so offended at a roommate’s opinion of my phone that I felt I had to avenge the inanimate object by getting all stabby. Both men ended up getting arrested and were sent to the hospital to have their wounds treated. In a perfect world, they would be laid up next to each other, Instagram-selfying from their beds with comments about how awesome the pictures from their respective phones looked.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome passes 25% market share, IE and Firefox slip

        In April 2015, we saw the naming of Microsoft Edge, the release of Chrome 42, and the first full month of Firefox 37 availability. Now we’re learning that Google’s browser has finally passed the 25 percent market share mark.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • CMS

    • The current state of Drupal security

      Greg Knaddison has worked for big consulting firms, boutique software firms, startups, professional service firms, and former Drupal Security Team leader. He is currently the director of Engineering at CARD.com and a Drupal Association advisory board member.

    • Get ready for Wagtail, the best Django CMS yet

      Now that the Wagtail CMS is gearing up for its 1.0 release, I wanted to take some time to introduce you to the all around best and most flexible Django CMS currently available. Wagtail has been around for a while, but doesn’t seem to get the attention I believe it deserves.

      At Revolution Systems, we’ve used Wagtail recently on a number of projects, and the overall experience has been great. It strikes the right balance of making the easy things easy, and the hard things not only possible, but relatively easy as well.

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD 5.7 “Source Fish” Officially Released

      OpenBSD a free, multi-platform BSD-based UNIX-like operating system that aims to have a few important features such as portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptograph has been upgraded to version 5.7 and is now available for download.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Announcing the Birth of Hurd

      After a 25 year gestation, Hurd has finally been born. It was a difficult birth and it’s now being kept in an incubator under the care of Debian.

      For many years GNU’s always almost ready to be born operating system microkernel, Hurd, has been the butt of many jokes and Facebook memes, so it came as something of a surprise to read in Larry Cafiero’s Friday column that it’s now ready enough for Debian, which is offering a somewhat experimental and unstable release of Debian/GNU Hurd. An earlier attempt at a Hurd based distro, by Arch, seems to have died on the vine back in 2011, although a 2013 posting promises that development is still underway, with no news since.

    • Debian GNU/Hurd 2015 released!

      It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2015.

    • GnuTLS 3.4.1

Leftovers

  • Graffiti artists’ move to national parks shocks nature community

    Andre Saraiva is an internationally known graffiti artist. He owns nightclubs in Paris and New York, works as a top editor of the men’s fashion magazine L’Officiel Hommes and has appeared in countless glossy magazines as a tastemaker and bon vivant.

  • Nationalist Terror

    The Mainstream Media are anxious to invoke the “violent nationalists” meme at every opportunity. Today Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard ran away in Glasgow because evil nationalists shouted back when he was haranguing them. That’s what they did – shouted back. Nobody punched anyone. Nobody shoved anyone. Nobody threw anything. But people had the gall not to listen in hushed silence to Murphy.

  • Voted SNP in Edinburgh South

    …likely the deciding vote for approval of government business will be from the SNP.

  • The Fox News Candidates Enter The Presidential Race

    Mike Huckabee And Ben Carson Used Fox News As A Political Springboard

  • Security

    • CBI Gets Specialised Lab to Decrypt Apple, Android Devices

      CBI on Friday got a new specialised forensic lab to access and recover data from Apple and Android devices seized from suspects during investigation of cases.

      The new lab, inaugurated at the CBI academy in Ghaziabad, will be fully equipped with latest workstations and software to decrypt the data stored in Apple and Android devices, CBI sources said.

  • Finance

    • I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

      Earlier that week, I had moved into my office. Secretly. I rented out my Venice Beach apartment for the month, packed a few duffels with my clothes and prized belongings, and started taking up residence behind my desk, carefully using each square inch of out-of-sight real estate to store my stuff. Not everyone aspires to have their co-workers catching them at their desk in their tighty-whities—at 6 in the morning. Believing the absolute best-case-scenario reaction to my being there would be supreme awkwardness, I kept the whole thing to myself. Every morning I’d neatly pack away my personal belongings, turning the lights back on and lowering the air conditioning to its too-chilly-for-me 72 degrees—the way they always left it overnight. I’d leave for a morning workout and shower, simultaneously keeping clean and in shape while ensuring I wasn’t always the first to arrive. Occasionally I’d even make myself late to work, blaming the awful L.A. traffic. Just to fit in.

    • They turned college into McDonald’s: Adjunct professors, fast-food wages and how colleges screw more than just students

      The fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 has already had an enormous impact on American politics. It hasn’t been reflected in national legislation, of course. With Congress in the hands of flat-earthers, the federal minimum wage is still stuck at less than half that—$7.25, the level it reached in 2009, as a result of legislation passed in 2007.

      But what first registered as a surprising anomaly—a one-day strike in New York City involving just over 100 workers on Black Friday, Nov. 29, 2012—has come to serve as a focal point for articulating demands for a dignified living wage, not just for fast-food workers, but for everyone who works for a living. What began as a movement of those holding “McJobs” is now brimming over with new participants making the point that virtually all jobs nowadays are, or at least can be, McJobs—even the latest to join in with demonstrations held on April 15: adjunct college professors.

    • The IRS seized $107,000 from this business owner for making too many small cash deposits

      If you deposit more than $10,000 in cash, your bank is required to file a form with the authorities reporting the transaction. But the law also makes it illegal to “structure” deposits — depositing cash in amounts under $10,000 to avoid triggering the reporting requirement.

      But aggressive enforcement of these laws can ensnare small business owners whose only crime is dealing in cash. This video tells the story of Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural North Carolina who had $107,702 seized by the IRS. The agency hasn’t charged McLellan with any crime, but under controversial civil asset forfeiture rules the burden of proof is on him to prove he didn’t violate the “structuring” laws. The video was made by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that is representing McLellan.

  • Privacy

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Green around the gills? Political party seeks to roll copyright back by three centuries

        …the Green Party appears to be almost alone in its desire to alter the current framework for copyright protection (though the Pirate Party would reduce the term still further, to 10 years). It will be interesting to see whether the views expressed by authors and writers have any bearing on the Green Party’s position on reforming copyright in the UK.

      • Anti-Piracy Measures Putting Internet Users at Risk

        While entertainment companies and authorities believe they are necessary to stem the tide of online infringement, many current anti-piracy strategies are putting Internet users at risk. Domain suspensions, seizures, plus search engine down-rankings are all playing a part in creating a less-safe online environment.

      • MPAA Funds Pro-Copyright Scholars to Influence Politics

        This week the MPAA opened applications for a new round of research grants, hoping the result will be “pro-copyright” academic papers. In an email leaked in the Sony hack the movie industry group further says it’s looking for pro-copyright scholars who they can cultivate for further public advocacy.

      • Fair Use At Risk When Private Companies Get To Make The Decision For Us

        We talk a lot about how fair use is under attack these days, and I’ve discussed in the past my concerns about freedom of expression when we always have a company (or a few companies) standing in the middle of our decisions on whether or not we can speak. NiemanLabs has a great example of where this becomes problematic in a story about how SoundCloud will not even consider fair use in making decisions about whether or not to take down content, and how that’s harming journalism…

      • Why ISPs Should Stop Forwarding Piracy Settlement Demands

        Every day thousand of Internet subscribers receive a piracy warning from their Internet provider. Increasingly, these notifications also include a settlement request ranging from $20 to hundreds of dollars. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ISPs should protect their customers from these invasive tactics.

05.03.15

Links 3/5/2015: Black Lab 6.5 RC2

Posted in News Roundup at 11:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

05.02.15

Links 2/5/2015: Robolinux 7.9.1, LibreOffice Numbering

Posted in News Roundup at 7:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • HashiCorp Debuts Open-Source Vault Project for Crypto Key Management

    HashiCorp, the vendor behind popular Vagrant developer tool, makes a big jump into security with the open-source Vault project.

    Open-source software vendor HashiCorp is getting into the security business with the initial release of the Vault project. HashiCorp is best known for its DevOps tools, particularly its widely used open-source Vagrant application that enables developers to reproduce developer environments easily.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Now available from GNU Press, the NeuG True Random Number Generator

      This week I had a chance to add a NeuG, a True Random Number Generator, to the Free Software Foundation network. The NeuG exclusively uses free software and was developed in Japan by NIIBE Yutaka. A random number generator (RNG) is a device used to generate random numbers for computers. Without getting into a philosophical argument, we humans tend to take the concept of entropy (randomness) for granted. If we wish to produce random data, we simply do so. Computers, on the other hand, do as we tell them to do. They follow a set of instructions provided by a programmer and follow each instruction precisely. So there is no way to ask a computer to give us a random number because we would have to tell the computer in advance what the number is. There are some ways around this. For example, we could use a system’s current timestamp as a seed, or starting point, for producing random-seeming numbers by using an algorithm. This approach will create the illusion of entropy, but if someone else knows both the timestamp used for the seed and the algorithm used to generate the random numbers, the sequence of the random number generator can be calculated and predicted.

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Standards/Consortia

    • W3C India – A Road Ahead

      On 22nd of April 2015, I got an opportunity to attend W3C India Community Meet-up held in the CDAC office based in Mumbai. People from all over India and of different domains came Mumbai to participate in the event. Organised by W3C India, the event was of interactive in nature. The whole day event was divided in two parts – the first one was concentrated on ‘Digital Publishing in India – Next Steps’. ‘Web Payments landscape in India’ was the topic for second session. In the CDAC’s Juhu based beautiful office, the event was very much engaging and interactive.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • MIT paints grim picture for future of U.S. tech research

      In addition to the well-known challenge in supercomputing — China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer has won top ranking for three years running — MIT researchers looked at 15 different fields and highlighted the potential benefits of increased federal support for research in each area. “Investing in basic research has always paid off over time,” Kastner said. “And even if the future payoffs are not as large, there is no doubt that we will suffer if we do not keep up with those nations that are now making bigger investments than we are.”

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ‘Endangered Okinawa dugong’s habitat to be bulldozed for the sake of US military base’

      If the US military base in Okinawa is relocated to Henoko, the habitat of the endangered Okinawa dugong sea mammal, will be wiped off the map, said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological diversity. The species is already down to a few dozen, he added.

    • AP: Americans Strongly Support Different, Imaginary Drone Program

      The headline on the Associated Press story is unambiguous: “AP Poll: Americans approve of drone strikes on terrorists.” And that’s true! According to the AP’s poll, 60 percent of Americans support the use of drones to “target and kill people belonging to terrorist groups like al-Qaida.”

      The problem is the U.S. drone program does much more than kill members of al-Qaida: it also kills a significant number of civilians, and drone operators often don’t even know exactly whom they’re targeting. So the AP’s own poll doesn’t show, as the story claims, “broad support among the U.S. public for a targeted killing program begun under President George W. Bush and expanded dramatically under Obama.” What it does show is broad support for a drone program that doesn’t exist.

    • The Drawbacks of Drones

      The shroud of government secrecy prevents meaningful congressional oversight over the executive branch and military. In addition, the secrecy associated with drones also prevents public discussion. Because of the lack of “boots on the ground,” the American public isn’t invested in drone strikes; the average American doesn’t know that the United States kills people everywhere from Pakistan to Yemen. Few Americans mention the “Pakistani War” — although the implications of American violence is just as important in Pakistan as it was in Iraq and Afghanistan. Drones let the United States kill people without the American public caring.

    • Warren Weinstein’s death by drone is a wake-up call for America

      That makes eight American citizens who have been killed by drone strike during the Obama presidency. Weinstein isn’t even the first innocent killed by mistake — that was the 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, son of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American al Qaeda propagandist and the only one of the eight who was killed deliberately. Obama did not even address Abdulrahman’s extrajudicial killing, though former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested he “should have had a more responsible father.”

    • Who are the 8 Americans Killed by Drone Strikes?

      Since drones have been employed to kill terror suspects overseas, at least eight Americans have died in such attacks, seven during the Obama administration. Only one was specifically targeted, according to the U.S. government.

    • Double Standards and Drones

      American politicians and pundits genuflect to the theory of exceptionalism, which holds that the U.S. can do pretty much whatever it wants, but this lawlessness – best exemplified by drones raining down death on “terrorists” and civilians alike – makes more enemies than it kills, writes Marjorie Cohn.

    • Debating drones

      If Americans were still under the impression that drone warfare doesn’t pose risks to our national security, new revelations about the accidental killing of U.S. citizen and aid worker Warren Weinstein in a January drone strike over Pakistan should quickly end those delusions.

      President Obama properly has said that he accepts full responsibility for the death of Mr. Weinstein — a hostage of al-Qaeda — and that Americans deserve to know why he was mistakenly killed. But taking responsibility should mean more than apologizing for civilian deaths, American and foreign, after the fact.

    • Pakistanis accuse Obama of double standards on civilians killed by drones

      People in Pakistan who live under the threat of U.S. drone strikes see a double standard at work in Washington.

      Last week, President Barack Obama took the unusual step of acknowledging and apologizing for a highly secret US drone strike that accidentally killed an American and an Italian aid worker held captive by al Qaeda in Pakistan. The US government said their families would be compensated.

    • Letter: Oppose drones programmed to kill

      When Hamas sends a rocket into an Israeli city, it’s labeled terrorism and deplored by all. A terrorist bomber in Boston receives a huge press following when he goes to trial for killing people during the Boston Marathon. That’s terrorism. When President Obama orders “Team CIA” to take out a target, it’s also terrorism. Historically, there has never been a drone strike where innocents were not killed. Maybe the administration feels that some lives are of little importance since they live in the Third World.

    • Obama’s Drone War: Indiscriminate Killing And Selective Apology

      Last week President Obama publicly apologized for the deaths of two Western hostages – one American and one Italian – killed accidentally by a U.S. drone attack on an al Qaeda camp in mid-January, somewhere in Pakistan. The widely publicized apology was heartening and disappointing at the same time. While American drones have so far killed thousands of innocent civilians and a handful of terrorists since 2004, the apology was disappointingly selective.

    • A Drone Killed My Friend, Warren Weinstein

      Instead of using drones to combat men who kidnap aid workers, let’s support local movements that seek to prevent the men from taking such actions in the first place.

    • CIA’s torture experts and the secret drones programme

      The controversy over the CIA’s secret drone programme went from bad to worse last week. We now know that many of those running it are the same people who headed the CIA’s torture programme, the spy agency can bomb people unilaterally without the US president’s explicit approval and that the government is keeping the entire programme classified explicitly to prevent a federal court from ruling it illegal. And worst of all, Congress is perfectly fine with it .

    • CIA’s torture experts now use their skills in secret drones program
    • ‘My grandmother wasn’t a militant’

      Last week, US President Barack Obama acknowledged and apologised for a highly secretive drone strike that accidentally killed an American and Italian aid worker held captive by al Qaeda in Pakistan.

    • Here’s why one former Taliban captive is calling for a halt to US ‘signature’ drone strikes

      Earlier this year, American drones equipped with heat sensors spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing a house in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas. But despite the technology and time, the unmanned aircraft could only “see” so much before one finally attacked the house in January.

      “They thought there were four militants in the house, and the heat sensors only showed four militants,” says Reuters investigative reporter David Rohde. “After the strike occurred, they watched the house, and I guess the CIA operators were stunned to see them pull out six bodies.”

      The two unexpected bodies were those of American aid worker Warren Weinstein and his fellow captive, Italian Giovanni Lo Porto. Both were being held by al-Qaeda, and analysts now think the two captives might have been hidden in a basement or some sort of underground tunnel.

    • Your View: Brian Glyn Williams — CIA “Signature drone strikes” and the accidental killing of an American hostage

      The recent announcement by President Obama that the Central Intelligence Agency accidentally killed two hostages, an American and an Italian, in a drone strike carried out in mid-January on a Taliban compound in Pakistan’s remote tribal region where they were being held captive has caused a firestorm of controversy vis a vis the CIA’s murky drone campaign. Critics have cited the fact that the CIA fired on the compound where the hostages were being held, seemingly without knowing exactly who was inside it, as evidence that the program is indiscriminate and creates widespread “collateral damage” among civilian bystanders. Lost in the furor is an objective analysis of who is actually being killed in the covert drone campaign and what sort of intelligence and tactics/weapons are being deployed by the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command in drone operations. Instead, anti-drone voices seem to dominate the debate with wild claims that the majority of those who are killed by the drones are innocent civilian bystanders.

    • Guest Opinion: The illegality of high tech war

      Why has a Pakistani judge recently filed criminal charges against a former top CIA lawyer who oversaw its drone program and a former station chief in Islamabad over a 2009 strike that killed two people? The Islamabad High Court ruled CIA officials must face charges including murder, conspiracy, waging war against Pakistan and terrorism.

    • Smaller, Deadlier Drones Being Launched Despite Killing Innocents

      Despite admitting to killing three American citizens, at least one of whom was absolutely innocent and the victim of a drone strike, President Obama has no intention of dialing back on the deadly attacks that are the prime tactic in the “War on Terror.”

    • Death From Above

      There’s a reason for the recent dearth of news about drone strikes: There are far fewer of them now.

    • Other views: Drone policy must be scrutinized

      America is waging a war. And, for the most part, Americans are in the dark about it. We hear about it only on rare occasions, usually when the government chooses to let us know of a spectacular victory or when a tragic error forces authorities to break their silence.

      That happened when President Obama expressed regrets for the killings of two aid workers, one an American and the other an Italian. They were killed in Pakistan in January when a missile from a CIA drone came crashing through the roof. Warren Weinstein, the American, and Giovanni Lo Port, the Italian, were al Qaeda hostages. The CIA did not know they were in the building. President Obama told reporters, “I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government I offer our deepest apologies to their families.”

    • The case against predator drones

      The program is secret, lawless, and unaccountable to Congress, the Supreme Court, and the American people.

    • Dangerous conditions at Djibouti base threatens US military pilots – Washington Post

      Conditions at an African base used by U.S. military pilots flying missions over Yemen and Somalia have become chronically dangerous, with fliers relying on local air-traffic controllers who sleep on the job and commit frequent errors, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

    • Report: Djibouti Skies Dangerous for US Planes, Drones

      A published report says aircraft at the U.S. military base in Djibouti are often placed in danger because of hostile or lax civilian air traffic controllers who oversee the camp’s runways.

    • Could German court halt White House’s ‘illegal’ drone war? An exclusive extract from Chris Woods’ new book Sudden Justice

      The debate over America’s use of drones to kill its own citizens has never been as intense. Last week in an unprecedented announcement, President Barack Obama admitted that CIA drones had killed three Americans in Pakistan in January, including al Qaeda hostage and aid worker Warren Weinstein.

      It is not just Americans who have been killed. As new research by the Bureau shows, Weinstein is one of at least 38 Westerners to have been killed in the US’s covert drone war on terror. Citizens of some of America’s closest allies – the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada among them – are among the dead.

    • Drones, Cops, and the Unaccountable Machinery of Death

      From signature strikes in Pakistan to police violence in Baltimore, the state is seemingly uninterested in even counting how many people it kills.

    • The Judge: Death Of Freddie Gray Was The Tipping Point For Baltimore

      They then moved on to the drone strikes and how Judge Napolitano thinks all Presidents of the United States should be charged with war crimes if an American is killed by a drone strike.

    • Andrew Napolitano Speaks On Unjustifiable Killings Of Americans In Baltimore And Overseas – OpEd
    • Due Process Shot Down by Drones

      Thomas Cromwell was the principal behind-the-scenes fixer for much of the reign of King Henry VIII. He engineered the interrogations, convictions, and executions of many whom Henry needed out of the way, including his two predecessors as fixer and even the king’s second wife, Queen Anne.

    • Drone Operators, Not American Snipers, Rack Up the Biggest Body Count

      For all the macho posturing of the late Chris Kyle, gunned down at a shooting range by a PTSD-afflicted veteran, his prolific killing has nothing on the death and destruction rained from above by those who carry out US drone strikes in the Middle East. For all intents and purposes, former drone operator Brandon Bryant has Kyle beat by a long shot. According to Bryant, over 1,600 deaths were dealt by him through the technological terror that patrolled the skies of the Middle East for the past decade. Unlike Kyle, though, Bryant isn’t flaunting his skill as a State-sanctioned murderer: he regrets it. For six years, he flew the missions on orders from on high. Now he’s retired from it and is speaking out. Bryant was diagnosed with PTSD shortly after leaving the program, odd only because normal diagnoses involve situations of prolonged mortal terror. Air Force psychologists have referred to conditions similar to Bryant’s as “existential conflict”, or “moral injury”.

    • Drones’ Use and Misuse

      Militarily, killing people in foreign nations without Congress’ declaration of war or authorization of force violates the Constitution and Law of Nations. Using drones makes matters worse for diplomacy considering the secretive and distant approach to such unlawful intrusions. Controlling this, however, is difficult because the people have virtually no power in these matters. Perhaps Congress can – not a promising thought.

    • Reality check: Drones aren’t precision weapons [pro-drones]

      Every weapons system, from the bow and arrow to the intercontinental ballistic missile, sometimes kills the wrong people. So why has the revelation that a U.S. drone strike accidentally killed two al-Qaida hostages — a U.S. citizen and an Italian aid worker — created such a storm of drone “rethinking”?

      Part of the answer is that liberal critics of drone strikes, who’ve questioned their legality, are using the opportunity to repeat and reframe their criticisms. I’ve joined in some of that criticism in the past and stand by it.

    • Why We Need Persistent Questioning About Civilian Deaths by Drones

      According to a 2013 study, while most Americans approve drone strikes targeting high-level terrorist targets, they disapprove that recourse when there is the possibility of civilian deaths. In short, most Americans would disapprove the current use of drones if it were ever properly aired.

    • What the United States Owes Warren Weinstein

      The American hostage died in a “signature” drone strike. Those strikes should end.

    • Eugene Robinson: Strikes against morality

      Drone strikes, by their nature, are bound to kill innocent civilians. It is all too easy to ignore this ugly fact – and the dubious morality of the whole enterprise – until the unfortunate victims happen to be Westerners.

    • Critics blast Obama as new drone strike accidentally kills hostages

      The hostages were aid workers who had been kidnapped several years ago, one of them a 72-year-old man from Maryland who was working as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development and had been captured in 2011, and the other being a 39-year-old Italian man who was captured in 2012, according to a McClatchy report.

      [...]

      The paper pointed out that of nine Americans that have been killed by drone strikes since 2002, only one was actually a target. Although no hostages have ever been killed by a drone strike until now, unintended victims are not a new phenomenon, the paper wrote.

    • Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications

      In 2013 David Rohde of Reuters reported that “Drone strikes do kill senior militants at times, but using them excessively and keeping them secret sows anti-Americanism that jihadists use as a recruiting tool.” As discussion continued over “How Drones Create More Terrorists,” Hassan Abbas remarked that in targeted areas, “Public outrage against drone strikes circuitously empowers terrorists.”

    • Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders, Corporate Control of the White House & the U.S. Drone War

      As independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont announces his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, we continue our conversation with former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, author of the new book, “Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015.”

    • America is at War With Its Conscience

      In these early stages of the 2016 presidential election cycle in the United States, the race to proclaim America’s place at the zenith of “exceptionalism” among the nations of the world has only just begun.

    • Did drone strikes lose Yemen?

      At this point, the U.S. continues to refuse to recognize the impact of its drone program on civilian populations. But, at the very least, it should not export to other countries the secretive and possibly illegal model of drone warfare that it is using in Yemen.

    • ‘Decapitation strikes’ on terrorist groups may bolster attacks against civilians: study

      But what if the basic premise behind so-called “decapitation programs” (attacks that target the leaders of an organization) is wrong? What if drone attacks or other forms of targeted assassination using special operations hit teams leads to more terror attacks on civilians?

    • Autonomy Whether You Like It or Not

      Whether opponents realize it or not, weapon autonomy — to include the choice to kill — will win, and in some cases has already won, the drone debate. The false wall in the public’s understanding between “drones” and existing weapons is publicly cracking. Before long, military necessity will take over. In fact, it already has.

    • Why the US Should Support Damascus

      Before 2001 the U.S. had long pursued policies that supported a range of unpopular Middle East dictatorships.The spectrum ran from the Saudi Monarchy with its fanatical fundamentalist worldview to more secular dictatorships such as the one in Egypt. This practice identified us in the popular mind with bad people and bad governments and made us the enemy of those seeking liberty and democracy. In addition, we supported the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and that made us unpopular with, among others, almost every Muslim on the planet. None of this was in the America’s genuine national interest but it certainly was in the interest of special interests such as Zionists, oil companies and arms manufacturers.

    • Challenging American Exceptionalism

      American exceptionalism reflects the belief that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. This view reared its head after the 2013 leak of a Department of Justice White Paper that describes circumstances under which the President can order the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. There had been little public concern in this country about drone strikes that killed people in other countries. But when it was revealed that U.S. citizens could be targeted, Americans were outraged. This motivated Senator Rand Paul to launch his 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.

    • Our anger at executions should extend to deeper outrages

      The question is not why people are outraged by the killing of Chan and Sukumaran, but why aren’t people outraged more often about other injustices and unjustified killings?

    • The Bali Nine, Indonesia and state-sanctioned violence

      Many Australians are understandably appalled by the brutal and pointless executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. The death penalty looks anachronistic and ineffective at the best of times, but to kill two people who had clearly made the most of their long periods of incarceration to transform themselves and make amends for their actions looks gratuitous and cruel.

    • The Bali Nine, Indonesia and state-sanctioned violence
    • Kenya’s sorrow: the U.S. connection
    • Tom Hayden on 40th Anniv. of Fall of Saigon: We Are Meeting the Pentagon on Battlefield of Memory

      It was 40 years ago today, April 30, 1975, that the Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon, today known as Ho Chi Minh City. North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the gates of the presidential palace in the South Vietnamese capital, and Communist soldiers hoisted their flag atop the building. Meanwhile, March marked the 50th anniversary of the first teach-in against the Vietnam War called “End the War Against the Planet.” The 1965 event brought together professors and activists at the University of Michigan to discuss what they called the truths and mistruths of the U.S. government’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Our guest, Tom Hayden, was there and brought with him a long history of antiwar activism. He was one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society, and in 1962 he was the principal author of the Port Huron Statement, considered a seminal document of the New Left. As many of this year’s events marking the end of the Vietnam War are being organized by the Pentagon, this Friday and Saturday Hayden other longtime antiwar activists will join youth organizers for a conference in Washington, D.C., called “Vietnam: The Power of Protest. Telling the Truth. Learning the Lessons.”

    • 40 Years After End of Vietnam War, Let’s Not Forget Who Helped Stop It and the Vietnamese Who Still Suffer

      After decades of struggle against French and U.S. intervention, Vietnam was finally independent and at peace.

    • The Kingpin Strategy

      As the war on terror nears its 14th anniversary — a war we seem to be losing, given jihadist advances in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen — the U.S. sticks stolidly to its strategy of “high-value targeting,” our preferred euphemism for assassination. Secretary of State John Kerry has proudly cited the elimination of “fifty percent” of the Islamic State’s “top commanders” as a recent indication of progress. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself, “Caliph” of the Islamic State, was reportedly seriously wounded in a March airstrike and thereby removed from day-to-day control of the organization. In January, as the White House belatedly admitted, a strike targeting al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan also managed to kill an American, Warren Weinstein, and his fellow hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto.

    • How Assassination Sold Drugs and Promoted Terrorism

      No one can claim that plotting assassination is new to Washington or that, in the past, American leaders and the CIA didn’t aim high: the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo. The difference was that, in those days, the idea of assassinating a foreign leader, or anyone abroad, had a certain element of the taboo attached to it. Whatever they knew, presidents preferred not to be officially involved. The phrase of the era was “plausible deniability.” Top officials, including presidents, might approve assassination plots, but they didn’t brag about them.

    • Proof the U.S. is rotten to the core

      Story 2: David Petraeus, former hotshot media-darling general of the Bush and early Obama years, received a slap on the wrist — probation plus a $100,000 fine — for improperly passing on classified military documents to unauthorized people and lying about it to federal agents when they questioned him about it.

      Here we go again: more proof that, in the American justice system some people fly first-class while the rest of us go coach.

    • Hot Docs 2015 Interview: DRONE, Tonje Hessen Schei Talks Gamers And Geopolitics
    • Drone [Hot Docs 2015]

      The simply named Norwegian documentary Drone takes a serious and unflinching look at one of the things that truly changed the face of warfare: unmanned aerial devices, or, as they’re more commonly known, drones. It should go without saying that director Tonje Hessen Schei isn’t a fan. Ask the average person about drones, and you’ll probably get some mixed feelings on their use and the morality of using machines to rain fire on people by pilots who are safely ensconced in bunkers several thousand miles away. Schei wants to make the case that not only is drone warfare immoral, but it’s another example of how we’re letting technology outpace the legal and ethical framework to govern their use.

    • Weekly War Protest Enters Year 10

      When the U.S. invaded Iraq, a group of concerned Chelsea residents gathered at the corner of Eighth Ave. and W. 24th St. to protest the military action. Ten years later, Chelsea Neighbors United to End the War continues their weekly protest. Known as Chelsea Stands Up Against the War, it takes place every Tues. from 6–7 p.m. as the group holds banners, hands out newsletters and tells passers-by why war is ruining our country.

      “After the invasion of Iraq, a few of us said, ‘This is awful, we need to do something to speak out,’ ” recalled longtime member Bob Martin. “We got together for coffee at Paradise, and that’s when the idea of our weekly ‘stand-up’ started.”

    • Drone warfare

      The botched drone strike resulting in the death of two foreign hostages has once again brought the controversial nature of this tactic to the forefront. It is very sad that the death of two US men in a drone attack made headlines but other civilian deaths were swept under the carpet by describing them as collateral damage. The US does not realize the cost of these drone strikes and the resultant civilian causalities. These drone attacks are fueling the fire of radicalism in the Muslim world. Washington on and off expresses concern over the growing anti-America sentiments in the Muslim world but fails to identify the factors that lead to such a situation.

    • Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Launches Campaign to Stop Killer Robots After Winning Ban on Landmines

      In 1997 Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 2013 she helped launch the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. “Who is accountable? Is it the man who programmed it? Is it Lockheed Martin, who built it?” Williams asks in an interview at The Hague, where she has joined 1,000 female peace activists gathered to mark the founding of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Williams notes how some “spider-like” robots that spray tear gas are now used for crowd control, but could be stopped before they become widespread. She recalls how she was previously able to “force the governments of the world to come together and discuss [landmines]. They thought they would fly under the radar … A small group of people can and do change the world.”

    • The C.I.A. Does Not Want Us to Know How Many Civilians Our Drones Kill

      When President Barack Obama issued a public apology Thursday to the families of Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto after a U.S drone strike accidentally killed the two al-Qaeda hostages in January, it provided a rare opportunity for the American public to see the faces of civilians who are killed in such incidents.

    • CIA’s efforts stem scrutiny of strikes
    • Friends of Italian hostage killed by US drone strike plead for return of his body

      Friends of Giovanni Lo Porto, the Italian hostage killed in a US drone strike in January that targeted an al-Qaida compound, are pleading for his remains to be returned to Italy and demanding information about his death.

    • Our View: The upcoming U.S. policy review of hostage situations will be timely

      The recently revealed deaths of two al-Qaida-held hostages killed by an American drone strike were a terrible tragedy. The hearts of Americans go out to the victims’ families.

    • Obama’s drone war: too many mistakes, too little contrition

      An American citizen was among the victims of a US drone strike abroad. President Barack Obama did not take to the podium, did not give a laudatory obituary for the dead American, did not express his regret. In fact, the Obama administration took almost two years to even acknowledge its role in the death, but without any explanation other than to suggest, in anonymous comments to the press, that the American was collateral damage in a legitimate attack.

    • When CIA Drone Strikes Kill Innocent Westerners

      Obama, McCain, Feinstein, and Boehner all know that U.S. drone strikes have killed many hundreds of innocent people, often in circumstances far less defensible than this.

    • FBI Helped Facilitate Ransom for U.S. Hostage Killed in Drone Strike

      The FBI’s previously undisclosed role reveals a contradiction in the U.S.’s longstanding position against paying ransoms for hostages. While the White House sharply criticizes the practice in public and private, new details about the Weinstein case show how the FBI provides some families with guidance towards that end.

    • Dem proposes new ‘hostage czar’ after U.S. drone killed an American held by Al Qaeda

      Sen. John Delaney (D-Md.) is planning to introduce legislation that would create a new “hostage czar” position in the federal government, in an effort to try harder to locate and recover American hostages.

    • Maryland congressman proposes ‘hostage czar’
    • Democrat Calls For ‘Hostage Czar’ After Drone Strike Kills Aid Worker

      On Thursday, Barack Obama announced that a U.S. drone strike accidentally killed two hostages, prompting a congressional democrat to call for a “hostage czar,” a single point person who can coordinate with various agencies on hostage issues. Obama’s press secretary wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

    • $250,000 Ransom Paid To Al Qaeda For Warren Weinstein, Hostage Killed In Drone Strike
    • Family of US hostage gave Al Qaeda $250G before deadly drone strike, report says
    • Sen. Burr deflects questions about calling for drone killing

      Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined on Wednesday to discuss whether during a closed-door hearing he called for a suspected terrorist to be killed.

    • Humanitarian Groups Say It Is Time For Obama to Acknowledge More Civilian Deaths in Drone Strikes

      Mamana Bibi was picking produce from her garden in North Waziristan, a remote, tribal corner of Pakistan, when her family says they watched a drone strike kill their 68 year-old grandmother.

    • Are All Innocents Killed by Drones Equal?

      While all death is tragic, one of the greatest tragedies is the killing of people who are completely innocent, so it was with much soul searching and question that we ponder the deaths of two innocent Americans killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan. The President has said he assumes all responsibility, but families have been shattered, lives have ended, and questions are being raised, as well they should. News stories indicate no individual was targeted in this strike; it was the specific building that drew the interest of the drone strike. This means we have no idea of who, or how many individuals were in the building, nor was it important; it is the building that was targeted and apparently everything else was irrelevant. Recently it was also disclosed that cell phones are frequently targeted by drones. Certain cell phones are targeted and we have no idea who is using the phone at the time of death. If an innocent somehow is using the targeted phone, he or she, is simply vaporized and blown to tiny bits. Every time an innocent person dies there should be in inquiry, investigation, and someone should be held accountable and punished. Mr Obama took full responsibility for the two dead Americans, so how can he not be responsible for the thousands of dead innocents that occur from drone strikes he ordered? The latest drone strike that killed two Americans demonstrates the complete hypocrisy of the American people and the President, for their total lack of empathy for any lost lives of innocents, be they children or women, except Americans.

    • Obama’s Drone Warfare: Assassination Made Routine

      But there was no challenge to the basic premise of the drone missile program: that the CIA and Pentagon have the right to kill any individual, in any country, on the mere say-so of the president. Drone murder by the US government has become routine and is accepted as normal and legitimate by the official shapers of public opinion.

    • Obama rallies intelligence staff after botched drone strike which killed hostages

      A day after revealing that the United States killed two Western hostages in a botched operation against al Qaeda, a mournful President Barack Obama assembled intelligence staff to pay tribute to their work and patriotism.

      “There may be those outside who question or challenge what we do,” a resolute Obama told officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as he addressed the deaths of 73-year-old American Warren Weinstein and 39-year-old Italian Giovanni Lo Porto.

    • Do Drones Degrade al Qa’ida?

      In fact, drones may have led to an expansion of terrorism activity domestically and abroad.

    • View from the courtroom: Killing of US national brings drone strikes in the spotlight

      The killing of an American aid worker Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, who were held hostage by Al Qaeda in Pakistani tribal area, in an American drone strike in January this year has again brought to limelight the issues related to such attacks. It has given birth to several questions regarding the legality of drone strikes in tribal areas as well as the intelligence gathering involved in it. An Al Qaeda leader, Ahmad Farouq, was also killed in that strike on Jan 15.

    • Obama-Authorized Murder by Drones

      Obama-authorized drone killings are cold-blooded murder by any standard – mostly affecting noncombatant civilians, innocent men, women and children in harm’s way.

      Former Obama White House press secretary Jay Carney lied calling drone strikes “precise, lawful and effective.”

    • When drone strikes go wrong, not all civilian lives are equal

      The unusual announcement by President Barack Obama last week that a U.S. strike on an al-Qaida compound in Pakistan inadvertently had killed two hostages — one a U.S. citizen, the other Italian — came with an apology and the speedy pledge of monetary compensation for the families.

    • When US strikes go wrong, not all civilian lives are equal
    • When drone warfare is accepted as normal

      But there was no challenge to the basic premise of the drone missile program: that the CIA and Pentagon have the right to kill any individual, in any country, on the mere say-so of the president. Drone murder by the US government has become routine and is accepted as normal and legitimate by the official shapers of public opinion.

    • Blurry Covert Lines Limit Chances Of Drone Program Changes

      Covert actions, by definition, are not allowed to violate U.S. law or the Constitution, though the agency’s post-9/11 torture program — which functioned under secret legal memos justifying techniques that were later qualified as torture — illustrated the delicate legal tap dances that can skirt those requirements.

    • Life and Death of an Al Qaeda Spokesman
    • Obama gave CIA more flexibility to strike drones in Pakistan: US Officials

      President Barack Obama tightened rules for the U.S. drone program in 2013, but he secretly approved a waiver giving the Central Intelligence Agency more flexibility in Pakistan than anywhere else to strike suspected militants, according to current and former U.S. officials.

      The rules were designed to reduce the risk of civilian casualties. Mr. Obama also required that proposed targets pose an imminent threat to the U.S.—but the waiver exempted the CIA from this standard in Pakistan.

    • Anti-Flag Post New Lyric Video Addressing Drone Strikes, Comment on Unrest in Baltimore

      Anti-Flag have just released a lyric video for their song “Sky Is Falling” off their upcoming album American Spring, out May 26 on Spinefarm Records. The leftist Pittsburgh punk quartet posted the video to express its concerns over the killing of civilians by drone strikes ordered by the Obama administration.

    • Australia Needs to Be Transparent on Drones

      The Australian government should come clean on its role in the U.S. drone program, before buying its own.

    • Did Obama pledge to stop using ‘signature strikes’?

      But the continued use of signature strikes goes against what President Barack Obama said he was going to do, said ABC News security consultant Richard Clarke, who spent 30 years working in government, including 10 years in the White House, before leaving in 2003.

    • Israel used Gaza as arms testing factory

      Sales figures in November 2014 showed that Britain approved an arms sales trade with Israel worth £7 million in the six months before its offensive on Gaza last summer, including drone parts, combat aircraft and helicopters.

    • Israel’s Gaza Onslaught Targeted Children And UN Shelters

      As Israel faces mounting criticism over its killings of at least 44 Palestinians in six UN shelters and 547 children overall last summer, 100,000 in Gaza remain displaced as “not a single destroyed home has been rebuilt.”

    • Carter: Obama’s Orwellian language on drone strikes

      There is an eerie Orwellian cost to the Obama administration’s refusal to use the term “War on Terror” to describe its … war on terror. In his briefing after the White House’s admission that two hostages — one American, one Italian — were killed in a U.S. “operation,” press secretary Josh Earnest struggled mightily to avoid the word “war” to describe exactly what the U.S.is up to. Finally he gave in and stated that under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, the nation is “at war” with al- Qaida.

    • A top fundraiser for Obama turns from Wall Street to drones

      In one camp are those who argue that drones are much more cost-effective than putting boots on the ground and are in general accurate and effective. The opposite camp maintains that the whole counterterrorism program needs to be revamped in favor of a “root causes of terrorism” method. Instead of spending billions of dollars on fighting terrorism, this camp argues that fighting the root causes of radicalization would be much more effective and cost-efficient.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Azerbaijan-Armenia violence escalates, putting pipelines at risk

      Hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia are mounting 21 years after a cease-fire froze a conflict that flared in the dying days of the Soviet Union. During the relative calm, companies including BP poured billions of dollars into producing oil and gas in Azerbaijan and building pipelines to link the country with Turkey, Italy and the rest of Europe.

  • Censorship

    • CPJ report says self-censorship a new way to stifle Turkish media

      According to the CPJ’s report published in December of 2014, seven journalists remain behind bars. Since then, STV network executive Hidayet Karaca and Taraf journalist Mehmet Baransu have been locked up for critical reporting, drawing international condemnation.

    • Self-censorship a new way to stifle Turkish media, CPJ says

      In its annual assessment of the media freedom worldwide, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has argued that Turkish authorities now consider declaring critical journalists as “unwanted” is a more efficient, cunning method of stifling the free press, rather than jailing them for their reporting, as daily Today’s Zaman reports. “Erdogan seems to have realized that he no longer needs to resort to jailing journalists,” the report entitled “Attacks on the Press” said, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the CPJ’s latest report, there are seven journalists remain behind the bars. The Turkey section of the CPJ report, said the Turkish media has fallen into “full compliance with the structures of power,” most notably those of Erdogan in the past five years.

    • CPJ underlines growing fear and self-censorship in Turkey’s media
    • 2015 Jefferson Muzzles released, take aim at censorship

      The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Monday released its annual rogue’s gallery of those who sought to snuff speech over the past year. The center said many violent attempts to still speech happened on the global stage, including the bloody attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and violent threats against the opening of the movie parody “The Interview.”

    • CPJ Says Censorship In Azerbaijan, Iran Among World’s Worst

      Eritrea and North Korea were named as the first and second most censored countries.

    • Cuba among 10 Countries with Most Censorship, CPJ Says

      Cuba, Iran and China are among the 10 countries with the greatest censorship, according to a list prepared by the Committee to Protect Journalists, where Eritrea, North Korea and Saudi Arabia occupy the three top spots.

      The study was prepared by the New York-headquartered organization based on research into tactics that range from imprisonment and repressive laws governing reporting to harassment of journalists and restrictions on Internet access.

    • Growing opposition to censorship of SEP (Australia) anti-war meeting

      Workers, students, academics, and young people from across Australia and internationally have sent letters of protest to Sydney University and Burwood Council, opposing the attempts by both institutions to block an anti-war meeting called by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP).

    • Australian Copyright Censorship Bill Could Block VPNs and Circumvention Information

      The steamroller that is the copyright enforcement machine continues to trundle along around the world, flattening obstacles such as fair use, privacy and freedom of expression in its path. One of its latest stops has been in Australia, where that country’s copyright site-blocking laws, first seriously mooted last year, were introduced into the Australian Federal Parliament last month. A public comment period on the legislation, the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015, closed two weeks ago, and EFF was amongst 49 experts, organizations and government departments who submitted comments.

    • This Chart Explains Everything You Need to Know About Chinese Internet Censorship

      What goes through a Chinese web user’s head the moment before he or she hits the “publish” button? Pundits, scholars, and everyday netizens have spent years trying to parse the (ever-shifting) rules of the Chinese Internet. Although Chinese authorities have been putting ever more Internet rules and regulations on the books — one famously creates criminal liability for a “harmful” rumor shared more than 500 times — the line between what’s allowed and what isn’t, and the consequences that flow from the latter, remains strategically fuzzy. And that’s just how Chinese authorities like it.

    • Scaling the firewall: Ways around government censorship online

      As countries such as Turkey, China, Ethiopia, and Bahrain block online content, people are discovering ways to get around Internet censors. Their methods depend on the kind of censorship they face and what they are doing online.

    • Censorship at Britain’s Southampton University

      Here is the situation: the threat of aggressive public protests against those assembling to critically discuss the behaviour of Israel has become an excuse to shut down such gatherings. The latest example of this tactic, which is really a form of blackmail to impose censorship, took place last week at the University of Southampton in the UK.

      An international conference entitled “International law and the state of Israel: Legitimacy, responsibility and exceptionalism” was scheduled for 17-19 April 2015 at the University of Southampton. It was to bring together lawyers and scholars to examine the legal basis for the establishment of the state of Israel and the rationales (or lack thereof) for its historical treatment of the Palestinian people. The standard by which these issues were to be judged was international law. The conference would also have examined the issue of exceptionalism when it came to the inadequate legal and diplomatic response to Israeli policies and behaviour. Conference participants were to include both those critical of Israel and those who would present a defence of Israeli practices.

    • BBC denies censorship claims over Andrew Turner footage

      CLAIMS of censorship, levelled against the BBC after it asked for footage of Tory election candidate Andrew Turner to be taken off YouTube, have been rejected by the broadcaster.

    • The Facebook Bug that Many Feared Was Censorship

      The whole thing began very quickly to look and feel like censorship, and people said as much. But was it actually limited to stories about Baltimore, or are stories about Baltimore just what many of us are sharing on Facebook right now? Some others soon chimed in with reports of being unable to post pictures of their kids, wedding photographs, and “completely unrelated science articles.” Social media company SocialFlow tweeted: “Facebook confirmed API issue starting at 5:15 EST. Looks like it’s now resolved and publishing is going back to normal. We are monitoring.” So, it wasn’t censorship after all — just Facebook being extremely glitchy. And lo and behold, by the time I finished writing this, my post with #BaltimoreUprising had been restored to my page.

    • Censorship has got worse: Patwardhan

      The session Free the Word, that began at 10.30am, saw filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and writers/journalists Manu Joseph, CP Surendran and Naresh Fernandes discuss the changing dynamics of the published word, freedom of expression and the increasing prevalence of censorship.

    • Censorship means book is a ‘waste of effort’

      A “wonderful” book for teenagers is going to waste due to censorship, a former teacher says.

      Betty Robb, 76, borrowed Into the River by Ted Dawes from Glenfield Library in Auckland and was told by staff it was restricted to readers aged over 14.

      Betty says the librarian then added insult to injury by telling her she was not allowed to lend it to anyone under 14.

      “It is probably easier to steal a car and go for a joy ride than borrow a restricted book.”

      Into the River is a coming-of-age novel that sees a 14-year-old Maori boy struggling to find his own way while battling with his cultural identity.

      He moves from small-town rural New Zealand to a prestigious boarding school in Auckland after winning a scholarship.

    • New film censorship board planned

      A new Cayman Islands film censorship board, with responsibility for rating movies to be shown in the territory, is being set up.

      The board will principally be responsible for censoring independent unrated movies, but also has the power to ban films and to reclassify mainstream movies already rated by international censors.

    • Canadian Pro-Lifers Tell Ontario: Stop Censoring Pro-Life People on Abortion
    • Pro-lifers launch Charter challenge against ‘anti-democratic’ Ontario law withholding abortion data
    • World Press Freedom Day: Tracking Censorship in Canada
    • Twitter begins heavy-handed censorship — will force users to delete tweets

      Luckily, one such social media site, Twitter, has been putting a strong focus on curtailing bullying and offensive tweets. Today, the company is stepping up its efforts, but it seems to be going too far. What can only be described as heavy-handed censorship, Twitter will be deciding what is offensive and even forcing users to delete tweets. In other words, the company is attempting to unring a bell, by making users erase language that has already been communicated.

    • Twitter’s new anti-abuse filter hides harassing tweets from your mentions

      The move comes after leaked internal memos from CEO Dick Costolo back in February showed the social network thought it should be doing more to reduce trolling on the service.

    • Would Malaysia really censor the Internet?

      Malaysia’s elder statesman, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, used a speech at a social media conference to advocate outright censorship of the Internet, a call that may worry investors as the country’s economy falters.

    • Now Dr M backs internet censorship to combat pornography, subversive elements

      Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today called for internet censorship in the country, claiming that the freedom that was granted has not been used to create “beautiful things”.

      The former prime minister, who made a pledge to never censor the internet during his 22-year tenure, said there are too many avenues where internet freedom can be abused to access “filth” such as pornography or learn how to build bombs and the like.

    • How PBS Censorship of Ben Affleck’s Slave-Owning Ancestors Could Damage the Network

      The publicly-funded PBS network is suffering harsh criticism over the revelation that it censored Ben Affleck‘s past in a show about ancestral roots.

    • Ben Affleck Reveals Slave-Owning Ancestor As PBS Investigates Possible Censorship
    • Portuguese media uproar over ‘censorship’ law proposal

      It comes at an awkward time as Saturday marks the 41st anniversary of the country’s revolution, which overthrew a regime that regularly censored the press.

    • Exhibit B ‘human zoo’ sparks art and censorship controversy

      According to the artist, “Exhibit B” is meant as a nod to the so-called “Human Zoos” which are an actual artifact of colonial history. But in the present day, “Exhibit B” has drawn a huge amount of protest. When a London institution, the Barbican, planned to show it last year, it ended up canceling because of protests.

    • University reconsidering decision to cancel Charlie Hebdo conference

      Queen’s University Belfast issues statement suggesting possibility of conference going ahead, after accusations of curbing academic freedom

    • Je Suis Charlie? Self-Censorship Symposium Censors Itself Over Security Concerns

      Queen’s University in Belfast has cancelled a symposium on Charlie Hebdo and free speech because of the security risk and concern for the university’s reputation.

      One of the main topics of discussion, which was titled “Understanding Charlie: New perspectives on contemporary citizenship after Charlie Hebdo”, was to be self-censorship after the attacks on the French magazine in January.

    • Censorship: the real Islamophobia on campus

      After coming under intense scrutiny, Queen’s University Belfast has reneged on its decision to cancel an upcoming conference entitled ‘Understanding Charlie: New Perspectives on Contemporary Citizenship After Charlie Hebdo’. The university called off the conference last week, citing security concerns. The original decision to cancel the conference was met with widespread condemnation, with philosopher Brian Klug, one of the prospective delegates, saying he was ‘baffled’ and ‘dismayed’ by the decision.

    • Queen’s Charlie Hebdo conference ‘approved’

      The university cancelled the event stating a risk assessment of the symposium had not been completed to allow it to proceed.

    • Charlie Hebdo event WILL go ahead at Queen’s University after risk assessment carried out

      A conference on the Charlie Hebdo massacre will take place in Belfast after a U-turn by Queen’s University.

      The university cancelled the symposium last month stating a risk assessment had not been completed to allow it to proceed.

      The move sparked widespread criticism.

  • Privacy

    • Govt ‘lied’ to parliament about NSA spying

      The government has been accused of lying to the Bundestag (German parliament) after it emerged last week that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office knew German spies were conducting economic espionage on behalf of the Americans.

    • Airbus to sue NSA, German spies accused of swiping tech secrets

      European aerospace giant Airbus is promising legal action over claims its top blueprints were stolen by German spies and given to America’s intelligence agencies.

      “We are aware that as a large company in the sector, we are a target and subject of espionage,” the company said in a statement to the AFP newswire.

      “However, in this case we are alarmed because there is concrete suspicion of industrial espionage. We will now file a criminal complaint against persons unknown on suspicion of industrial espionage.”

    • Coverup claims over revelation that Germany spied on EU partners for US

      Germany has been spying and eavesdropping on its closest partners in the EU and passing the information to the US for more than a decade, a parliamentary inquiry in Berlin has found, triggering allegations of lying and coverups reaching to the very top of Angela Merkel’s administration.

    • German Government Is Accused of Spying on European Allies for NSA

      Accusations that Germany’s intelligence service helped the U.S. spy on European allies have rekindled German outrage over American snooping and ensnared Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in an espionage scandal.

    • Airbus to press charges on NSA/BND spying claims

      Airbus is not taking the latest NSA allegations lightly. The European aviation giant has requested information from the German government and plans to press industrial espionage charges against unknown persons.

    • German govt accused of lying to parliament about NSA spying

      Angela Merkel’s government has been accused of lying to the country’s parliament after it was alleged that it knew German spies were conducting economic espionage for the NSA. Revelations show that some spooks were even spying on German companies.

    • The NSA’s greatest hiring strength is students, but resistance is growing

      For years the NSA has used the incentive of paid tuition to lure talented teens into employment with the agency. But in light of the Snowden leaks, students are organizing against what they see as just another invasion of their privacy rights

    • A Top-Secret NSA Site Draws Swipes, Shrugs

      The government built the giant facility known simply as the “Utah Data Center” on property controlled and secured by the Utah National Guard, which means the public has no access.

      [...]

      The city’s mayor, Derk Timothy, who helped negotiate a contract last year to sell the Utah Data Center 56 million gallons of water for $300,000, has spent more than a year defending the agency’s presence with locals, saying the NSA has brought in jobs and helped develop the rural area’s infrastructure. He said he has no idea what goes on there, but he thinks that is for a reason.

    • NSA-restraining US law edges closer to reality, leaves just 6.81 billion under mass surveillance

      A law bill to mildly curb the NSA’s blanket surveillance of innocent Americans has taken an important step toward being passed.

      On Thursday, the US House of Representatives’ justice committee voted 25 to two in favor of a revised version of the USA Freedom Act – the original was killed last year in the Senate.

    • ACLU: NSA phone dragnet should be killed not amended

      The U.S. Congress should kill the section of the Patriot Act that has allowed the National Security Agency to collect millions of phone records from the nation’s residents, instead of trying to amend it, a civil liberties advocate said Friday.

      Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the NSA to collect phone records, business records and any other “tangible things” related to an anti-terrorism investigation, expires in June, and lawmakers should let it die, said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

    • NSA snooping program on last legs after anti-Patriot Act vote

      The House Judiciary Committee put the NSA’s phone-snooping program on the path to being scrapped Thursday when a bipartisan majority voted for major reforms to the Patriot Act.

    • Bill reforming NSA collection of phone data advances in US House

      After falling two votes shy of earning a floor vote in the US Senate last year, lawmakers are once again trying to pass a bill that reforms the way the National Security Agency gathers the phone records of American citizens.

    • NSA reform bill imperilled as it competes with alternative effort in the Senate

      Final push in the House for USA Freedom Act is welcomed by White House but opponents push to retain sweeping surveillance powers of pre-Snowden era

      [...]

      More directly related to the Section 215 debate, the USA Freedom Act will extend the Patriot Act powers until 2019.

    • Germany’s BND ‘helped’ NSA to snoop on European firms and politicians

      Germany’s intelligence arm, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), allegedly helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) in spying on hundreds of European companies, regional entities and politicians.

    • Germany’s BND ‘helped’ NSA to snoop on European firms and politicians
    • Why the N.S.A. Isn’t Howling Over Restrictions

      For years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, even as the National Security Agency fiercely defended its secret efforts to sweep up domestic telephone data, there were doubters inside the agency who considered the program wildly expensive with few successes to show for it.

      So as Congress moves to take the government out of the business of indiscriminate bulk collection of domestic calling data, the agency is hardly resisting. Former intelligence officials, in fact, said Friday that the idea to store the data with telecommunications companies rather than the government was suggested to President Obama in 2013 by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, then the N.S.A. director, who saw the change as a way for the president to respond to criticism without losing programs the N.S.A. deemed more vital.

    • Secret law is a ‘direct threat’ to Americans’ privacy, says NSA whistleblower

      It’s not often you walk out after having lunch with a polite and intelligent retiree and know that you’re probably now on a government watchlist.

      On Wednesday, I spoke with William Binney, a former National Security Agency official turned whistleblower, at a lunch event hosted by Contrast Security founder Jeff Williams.

      Binney, who spent more than three decades at the shadowy intelligence agency, left a month after the September 11 attacks in 2001 when he saw that the foreign intelligence gathering program he helped develop was being turned domestically. After blowing the whistle to Congress, his house was raided by the FBI, though he was never charged with a crime. Binney remains one of the foremost thinkers in the agency’s modern history. Edward Snowden said he was inspired in part by previous leakers and whistleblowers, a list that includes Binney.

    • NSA is so overwhelmed with data, it’s no longer effective, says whistleblower

      A former National Security Agency official turned whistleblower has spent almost a decade and a half in civilian life. And he says he’s still “pissed” by what he’s seen leak in the past two years.

      [...]

      That, he said, can — and has — led to terrorist attacks succeeding.

    • US states take aim at NSA over warrantless surveillance

      The particular target of his ire is the Texas Cryptologic Center, an NSA facility located near San Antonio. He has proposed a state law cutting off the building’s access to public utilities – water and electricity – until the agency ceases what he says is unconstitutional warrantless data collection.

    • RSA: Panel calls NSA access to encryption keys a bad idea

      Some of the world’s best known cryptographers – veterans of the crypto wars of the 1990s – say government access to encryption keys is still a bad idea, but is an issue that will never go away because it’s something intelligence agencies crave.

    • NSA Surveillance on U.S. Citizens Just as Bad If Not Worse Since Snowden, Survey Says

      The RSA Conference is one of the largest cybersecurity business events in the world. The conference just wrapped up on Friday in San Francisco, where it brought together a collage of industry experts, programmers, industry developers, hackers and investors, in one spot to discuss the current and future atmosphere of 21st century security. Washington, D.C.-based cybersecurity startup Thycotic was one of those companies in attendance — and they came away with a host of new answers. According to a survey conducted by Thycotic at RSA 2015, 94 percent of participants believed that citizen-targeted NSA surveillance had increased or at least remained the same since the Snowden revelations of June 2013.

    • RSA 2015 survey: 48 percent believe NSA surveillance has increased

      At RSA Conference 2015, a group of more than 200 attendees were surveyed regarding their thoughts about government surveillance in the wake of Edward Snowden leaks. Among the participants, nearly half, just over 48 percent, believed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had increased its surveillance of U.S. citizens, while around 45 percent felt NSA’s surveillance efforts remained the same since June 2013, when the whistleblower Snowden began leaking classified information.

    • SEC Boss Can’t Keep Her Story Straight On Whether Or Not SEC Snoops Through Your Emails Without A Warrant

      For many years now, we’ve been writing about the need for ECPA reform. ECPA is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, written in the mid-1980s, which has some frankly bizarre definitions and rules concerning the privacy of electronic information. There are a lot of weird ones but the one we talk about most is that ECPA defines electronic communications that have been on a server for 180 days or more as “abandoned,” allowing them to be examined without a warrant and without probable cause as required under the 4th Amendment. That may have made sense in the 1980s when electronic communications tended to be downloaded to local machines (and deleted), but make little sense in an era of cloud computing when the majority of people store their email forever on servers. For the past few years, Congress has proposed reforming ECPA to require an actual warrant for such emails, and there’s tremendous Congressional support for this.

    • Congress, Crypto and Craziness

      Crazy is never in short supply in Washington. Through lean times and boom times, regardless of who is in the White House or which party controls the Congress, the one resource that’s reliably renewable is nuttery.

      This is never more true than when that venerable and voluble body takes up a topic with some technical nuance to it. The appearance of words such as “Internet”, “computers” or “technology” in the title of a committee hearing strike fear into the hearts of all who use such things. This is the legislative body, after all, that counted among its members the late Sen. Ted Stevens, who so eloquently described the Internet as a “series of tubes.”

    • What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?

      This is the cost of buying the storage. Maintenance need to be taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise for the reader. But it is obvious to me from those numbers that recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be stopped because it is too expensive. I wonder if someone already is collecting the data?

    • 2 members of Supreme Court ‘targeted by U.S. spies’

      U.S. intelligence agencies have “harvested” the personal and private data of “hundreds of federal officials and judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg,” charges a legal brief filed by Larry Klayman, the attorney who has come to be known as “the NSA slayer” for his successful legal battles against the National Security Agency.

    • Missouri House Committee Holds Hearing on Bill to Ban Resources to Mass NSA Spying

      Last week, a Missouri House committee held a public hearing on a bill that would ban “material support or resources” from the state to warrantless federal spy programs.

      Rep. Keith Frederick (R-Rolla) sponsors House Bill 264 (HB264). The Missouri Fourth Amendment Protection Act would ban the state and its political subdivisions from assisting, participating with, or providing material support or resources “to enable or facilitate a federal agency in the collection or use of a person’s electronic data or metadata without such person’s informed consent, or without a warrant, based upon probable cause that particularly describes the person, place, or thing to be searched or seized, or without acting in accordance with a legally-recognized exception to the warrant requirements.”

    • Former NSA director, whistle-blower to keynote ITWeb’s Security Summit in Johannesburg
    • ITWeb Security Summit features former NSA director, turned whistle-blower

      Bill Binney, a former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and whistle-blower, will be the opening keynote speaker at the ITWeb Security Summit 2015, taking place at Vodacom World from 26 to 28 May 2015.

    • President Bernie Sanders Would Dismantle NSA Spying

      Bernie Sanders is running for president for many reasons, and you’re going to hear about a lot of them on the campaign trail.

      Income inequality. Campaign finance reform. Universal health care and climate change.

      But quietly—at least relative to his wonk-laden sermons on economic populism—Sanders has for years also been one of the Senate’s fiercest critics of the National Security Agency’s secretive surveillance operations. And, unlike Hillary Clinton, he’s been remarkably clear about where he stands.

    • Declassified report points to flaws in post-9/11 NSA wiretapping

      Stellar Wind not so stellar? Say it ain’t so! Good heavens, are you saying that infringing on people’s constitutional rights may not only be unconstitutional but also ineffective???

    • Report shows U.S. officials struggled to assess usefulness of post-9/11 warrantless surveillance
    • NSA’s Stellar Wind Program Was Almost Completely Useless, Hidden From FISA Court By NSA And FBI

      A huge report (747 pages) on the NSA’s Stellar Wind program has been turned over to Charlie Savage of the New York Times after a successful FOIA lawsuit. Stellar Wind has its basis in an order issued by George W. Bush shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Not an executive order, per se, but Bush basically telling the NSA that it was OK to start collecting email and phone metadata, as well as warrantlessly tap international calls into and out of the United States.

    • Secrecy, Legal Questions Hurt NSA’s Stellar Wind Spy Program: US Watchdogs

      Top U.S. intelligence officials struggled to determine whether one of the National Security Agency’s most treasured surveillance programs actually stopped any terrorist attacks, according to a newly unsealed report prepared by five of the highest-ranking inspectors general in the government half a dozen years ago. The officials were divided over the legality and usefulness of the program, dubbed Stellar Wind, in part because it was shrouded in secrecy.

    • The NSA, Surveillance, And What CIOs Need To Know

      As Opsahl puts it, “After 9/11, President Bush unleashed the full powers of the dark side.” A mix of existing laws to monitor foreign communications and new powers given under the Patriot Act allowed for a vast expansion of the power for the NSA to collect and store communications data.

    • US Freedom Act to Reform ‘Secret’ NSA Oversight Court -Digital Rights Group

      The new version of the US Freedom Act will reform the process by which a secret court authorizes the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying activities, a digital rights watchdog organization said in a press release on Thursday.

    • U.S. Avoids Trial On Ex-Qwest CEO’s NSA Claims With $18 Million Tax Refund Deal

      Significantly, with its stipulation, the government has avoided a trial in which the 65-year-old former executive planned to air what he says was his refusal, in 2001, to allow Qwest to participate in a National Security Agency program he believed was illegal. That trial might have attracted some media attention, given revelations over the past two years about the NSA’s illegal collection of metadata on U.S. phone calls and its other once secret programs—disclosures based on documents taken by NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden, now living in Russia. Nacchio contends he was prosecuted only because he refused to go along with the NSA and that his criminal trial was unfairly influenced by his inability to introduce certain classified information. As the combative, Brooklyn born ex-con put it in a CNBC special on white collar criminals that aired this week: “My crime was a political crime. It dealt with saying `no’ to an intelligence agency doing illegal surveillance.”

    • NSA, NGA lead in clearance rejection

      The National Security Agency rejected the largest number of initial applications for security clearances, while the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency led the Intelligence Community in revoking already-issued clearances, according to a new report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

    • Whistleblowers Back “Surveillance State Repeal Act”

      There is no sign of an end to the erosion of Constitutional liberties that began under George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks and continues under Barack Obama, a group of seven national security whistleblowers said Monday.

      “The government chose in great secrecy to unchain itself,” said Thomas Drake, who was working at the National Security Agency in 2001 and said he saw lawlessness spread under the name of “exigent conditions” during the Bush presidency.

    • A Call to End War on Whistleblowers

      Seven prominent national security whistleblowers on Monday called for a number of wide-ranging reforms — including passage of the “Surveillance State Repeal Act,” which would repeal the USA Patriot Act — in an effort to restore the Constitutionally guaranteed Fourth Amendment right to be free from government spying.

    • Why the N.S.A. Isn’t Howling Over Restrictions

      “If this bill passes, the N.S.A. will continue unaddressed surveillance programs and will secretly torture the English language to devise novel justifications for spying on Americans,” said David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, a group that has fought for more civil liberties. “We won’t even know the details until a new whistle-blower comes forward a decade or two from now.”

    • Paranoid about the NSA? The case for dumping cloud’s Big 3

      Internet Service Providers (ISPs) may be the most important public cloud providers of the next decade. Hosting your data with an ISP has a number of advantages over choosing the dominant American cloud providers: advantages that run the gamut from technical to political.

      ISPs have been in the co-location business practically since the internet began. Many have offered hosted services (typically e-mail and web server space) for at least as long as the World Wide Web (and the browsers required to interpret it) have been around.

    • The big boys made us do it: US used German spooks to snoop on EU defence industry

      Germany’s BND spy agency spied on European politicians and enterprises at the behest of the NSA for over a decade.

    • Germany spied on France for US’s NSA, reports

      Germany’s BND secret services spied on French and other European companies and officials for the US’s National Security Agency (NSA), German newspapers have reported, sparking a scandal in Berlin but no official reaction in Paris.

    • The NSA made a coloring book for kids

      Last week we met Dunk, the NSA’s captivatingly weird Earth Day mascot, and now it looks like he’s not the only anthropomorphic creature in the NSA family. Dan Raile at Pando Daily went to the RSA security conference last week, and returned with a prize: an NSA-themed coloring book.

    • Spying is cool? CryptoKids appeal to children in NSA coloring book
    • NSA Gadget Transfer Program Turning Local Cops into Spies

      With the media spotlight shining on police militarization, most Americans know something about the federal 1033 transfer program that enables police departments to get military equipment like armored vehicles, high power weapons, grenade launchers, and even bayonets. But most Americans don’t realize that local law enforcement agencies can also acquire spy gear from the feds.

      The NSA transfers electronic gadgets to a variety of agencies including local law enforcement, and it is as simple as catalog shopping.

      This is yet another example of the tangled web of cooperation between state and local law enforcement, and the feds – a phenomenon quickly devolving America into one massive interconnected surveillance state.

      These transfer programs have largely gone unnoticed. However, the most recent NSA tech catalog was recently released and sheds some light on the program.

    • Allow full debate on NSA spying bill

      Back in January, when this Congress was brand new and Mitch McConnell was taking the reins as majority leader of the Senate, he pledged “to get committees working again.”

      It’s surprising, then, that, in late April, McConnell moved to bypass the committee process to fast-track a five-year extension of the government’s authority to conduct mass surveillance of U.S. citizens’ phone calls.

      McConnell’s move, which seems to violate his pledge to pass bills through committee, also is a blow to a bipartisan effort in both chambers to enact some curbs on the collection of phone records.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom Avoids U.S. Clutches For Three More Months

        Kim Dotcom’s upcoming extradition hearing has been delayed by three months. The procedure was set to go ahead in just four weeks but the High Court says that would give the entrepreneur insufficient time to prepare his case. It will now take place no earlier than September 1, 2015.

      • Torrents Are Good for a Quarter of All Encrypted Traffic

        Encrypted Internet traffic is surging according to data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine. A new report reveals that 25 percent of the encrypted downstream traffic in North America is consumed by BitTorrent transfers, second only to YouTube.

05.01.15

Links 1/5/2015: HP Ubuntu Laptops, Arch Linux 2015.05.01

Posted in News Roundup at 7:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • May 2015 Issue of Linux Journal: Cool Projects
  • 6 Ways to Futureproof Your Linux Infrastructure

    Future-proofing isn’t just about investing in the latest hardware and buying into the latest technology to keep your IT team happy. There are sound business reasons to do it and sensible, cost effective strategies.

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • 5 must-watch Docker videos

      When you’re interested in learning a new technology, sometimes the best way is to watch it in action—or at the very least, to have someone explain it one-on-one. Unfortunately, we don’t all have a personal technology coach for every new thing out there, so we turn to the next best thing: a great video.

    • Univention Corporate Server for everyone

      This week saw the official launch of the new Core Edition of Univention Corporate Server. With this move, we are now making it possible to employ our successful Open Source system for server and IT management free of charge in companies too.

    • Using ARM chips and Linux, Barcelona center dreams of being ‘Airbus of supercomputing’

      In the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), big data isn’t a new or revolutionary concept. The center, located on the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, has been managing huge volumes of data for companies from fields as diverse as energy and pharmaceuticals since 2005, helping them cut costs and boost returns.

  • Kernel Space

    • Btrfs RAID Testing Begins With Linux 4.0

      This time around I’m doing the Btrfs RAID benchmarks on four traditional HDDs (though separately also been working on Linux RAID tests on a 6 SAS drive server). For this testing I picked up for WD Green 1TB 3.5-inch, SATA 6Gb/s, 64MB Cache WD10EZRX drives. At Amazon they cost only $52 USD a piece and should be interesting to test in a four-disk RAID array.

    • Lucid Sleep Support Is Being Worked On For The Upstream Linux Kernel

      Chrome OS supports “Lucid Sleep”, which is a mode of allowing the system to carry out various tasks while the system is in a low-power mode or even suspended, and similar to Microsoft InstantGo. This feature, which allows for tasks like checking of new emails or instant messages while the system is suspended, is being worked on for (hopeful) eventual upstreaming into the mainline Linux kernel.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Is Xfce Still a Lightweight Distribution?

      In February 2015, Xfce 4.12 was released. The first Xfce release in nearly three years, it was greeted with enthusiasm. Yet at the same time, a few users questioned whether the new version was as light on memory as earlier releases.

      It’s a good question — and by that comment, I mean, as people usually do, that it has no clear answer. Some indicators suggest that Xfce remains as efficient as ever, while others suggest Xfce is not much different from other popular desktop environments, such as KDE.

      [...]

      KDE Plasma 4.14 has only 1 megabyte unallocated, which means that, until recently, Xfce really did use less RAM. Nor has that greatly changed, since Plasma 5.2 has 8 unallocated megabytes. Despite KDE’s recent efforts to reduce memory requirements, it trails the new release of Xfce. Running free – m with watch confirms that, as applications are opened and closed, Xfce 4.12 consistently uses less memory.

      However, these results tell only part of the story. The fact that KDE Plasma 5.2 opens with 371 megabytes of buffered and cache memory compared to Xfce’s 4.12 suggests that Plasma should open applications faster than Xfce — and that does seem to be the case. For instance, while Xfce 4.12 takes six seconds apiece to open Firefox and LibreOffice, Plasma 5.2 takes just over four seconds apiece. Apparently, what matters is not just the amount of free memory, but how the allocated memory is used.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • digiKam Recipes 4.7.1 Released

        A new release of digiKam Recipes is ready for your reading pleasure. This version features completely rewritten material on using digiKam to emulate various photographic effects (including the new recipe on how to create a faded vintage look). The book features two new recipes: Geotag Photos with Geofix and Update the LensFun Database. As always, the new release includes minor updates, fixes and tweaks.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Exton|OS 64 bit with Mate and kernel 3.19.0-14-exton :: build 150428

        Exton|OS build 150428 is based on Ubuntu 15.04 64 bit (released April 23, 2015) and Debian Jessie (Debian 8). Exton|OS’s ISO file is a ISO-hybrid, which means that it can very easily be transferred (copied) to a USB pen drive. You can then even run Exton|OS from the USB stick and save all your system changes on the stick. I.e. you will enjoy persistence! I’ve found two scripts which make the installation to USB very simple. The scripts are quite ingenious. My tests show that they work flawlessly on USB installations of all normal Ubuntu systems. Read my INSTRUCTION how to use the scripts.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • PHP version 5.5.25RC1 and 5.6.9RC1

        RPM of PHP version 5.6.9RC1 as SCL are available in remi-test repository for Fedora 19-22 and Enterprise Linux 6-7.

        RPM of PHP version 5.5.25RC1 as SCL are available in remi-test repository for Fedora 21-22 and Enterprise Linux 6-7.

      • Red Hat Director Sells $5,370,579.20 in Stock (RHT)

      • Fedora

        • Fedora Store, University initiative, GSoC, and Fedora conferences

          Clearly an item which deserves top billing! The first batch of Fedora t-shirts sold out quickly in most sizes, and there was a little bit of trouble reordering — but now they’re back in stock in unisex and also in women’s cut. Also, since the actual store provider’s URL isn’t very memorable, we’ve created the shortcut http://store.fedoraproject.org/ — just click that and you’ll go straight to the Fedora swag.

    • Debian Family

      • New Debian leader wants to improve communications

        Back in 2013, Lucas Nussbaum was hardly a month old in the job when Wheezy was released. And this month, Neil McGovern took over on 17 April and saw version 8.0, otherwise known as Jessie, released eight days later.

      • Debian GNU/Hurd 2015 released!
      • When Official Debian Support Ends, Who Will Save You?

        With a new version of Debian recently released, it’s an exciting time for users who long for newer applications and cutting-edge features. But for some users, the new release is a cause for concern. A new release means their current installation is reaching the end of its lifecycle, and for one reason or another, they can’t make the switch. And, this leaves them at risk from a variety of security risks and crippling bugs, but there is hope in the shape of an independent project.

      • Debian 8: Linux’s most reliable distro makes its biggest change since 1993

        Debian 8—nicknamed “Jessie” after the cowgirl character in Toy Story 2 and 3—debuted last week, but it feels overdue. The release was in development within the Testing channel for quite a while, and, if you recall, Debian Linux consists of three major development branches: Stable, Testing, and Unstable. In order for a new iteration of Debian to officially go public, work must progress through each stage (starting in Unstable, ending in Stable). But it wasn’t until the official feature freeze for this release in November 2014 that the contents of Testing really became what you’ll actually find in Debian 8 today.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) Reached End of Life on April 30, 2015

            On April 30, Canonical, through Adam Conrad, sent an email to all Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) users notifying them that the operating system is no longer supported starting with May 1, 2015.

          • New Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Patched in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

            Canonical announced today, April 30, that new kernel updates are available for its Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating systems.

          • Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet Review

            By the time we had a chance to review Ubuntu 15.04, the final release date had passed and it had already shipped. But it’s important to point out that our final review is based on a Beta release. However, the tasks that we threw at the latest iteration of Ubuntu, were easily completed without any major issues.

            The boot process of Ubuntu 15.04 was great. Even when running the operating system in Live mode, it is so responsive that you could be forgiven for thinking that it was physically installed on real metal. Read below, for a bit more of an in-depth glance at what we think of Ubuntu 15.04.

          • Canonical unveils AMD-based HP Ubuntu laptops for XP laggards

            Canonical has partnered with AMD, HP and Ebuyer.com to launch three Ubuntu laptops designed for business buyers.

            The £200 HP Probook 255, £250 Probook 355 and £300 ProBook 455 will be made available for pre-order on Ebuyer.com at the end of May.

          • HP has another go at low-cost Linux laptops

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linksys WRT1200AC: A fast, full-featured, open-source-friendly router

      Sometimes, less is truly more. When it comes to the Linksys WRT1200AC, the little brother to the WRT1900AC router introduced last year, it might be best to say less is just enough.

      The 1200AC is a slimmed-down version of the 1900AC, with two fewer antennas and around $100 knocked off the list price. Despite these reductions, it’s no less versatile or powerful. All of the good aspects of the 1900AC — the expandable hardware, the feature-packed firmware, the convenient setup process — are still here.

    • Linux-ready i.MX6 SBC is loaded with wireless options

      Forlinx launched an SBC that runs Linux or Android on a quad-core i.MX6, and offers extras like WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3G, and an image sensor interface.

      China-based Forlinx Embedded Technology first appeared on LinuxGizmos last October when it released an OK335xS-II SBC with a TI Sitara AM3354 SoC. Like the OK335xS-II, the new i.MX6-based, sandwich-style SBC embeds a soldered COM, which appears to be available separately. The COM is slightly larger than the previous model, at 60mm square, and the baseboard is a sizable 190 x 130mm.

    • ARM widens the appeal of its IoT OS with mbed client that runs on Linux

      The race for the hearts and minds of IoT developers is in full swing and ARM has been positioning itself as the defacto standard for IoT devices. Based on its hardware alone that isn’t an unreasonable proposition, but to sweeten the deal ARM has been working hard on its software offering.

    • Pico-ITX SBC runs Linux on Bay Trail, expands modularly

      Advantech has launched a Pico-ITX SBC that runs Linux on an Atom E3825 or Celeron J1900, and offers modular expansion and optional -40 to 85°C operation.

      Like Advantech’s MIO-2262, which offered the old Atom N2000 “Cedarview” processors, the new MIO-2263 uses the company’s MI/O-Ultra modular expansion format, which it also refers to as MIOe. The MIOe expansion interface expands upon the coastline and onboard interfaces with additional I/O including PCIe and DisplayPort.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Samsung’s Tizen app aspirations go global as it expands to 182 countries

          Depending on the country you live in, you may not have seen or heard about Samsung’s Tizen app store. That’s about to change. The company — which just regained the smartphone sales crown from Apple — is expanding the Tizen store from two to 182 countries around the world.

        • Understanding Tizen Programming

          Tizen have been in development for several years now and we are proud to have products in the market place in the form of Smart watches, a Smart Phone, Smart TV and Smart Cameras. This is a great opportunity for application and game developers to explore a new ecosystem.

      • Android

        • Sony’s Xperia Z3 returns to T-Mobile, but Android Lollipop update could be ‘months’ away

          The peculiar case of the Sony Xperia Z3 in the United States continues with a fresh twist: T-Mobile has gotten fresh stock of the handset and is resuming sales online and, by the end of this week, in stores. It was roughly a month ago that the Z3 made an unannounced disappearance from T-Mobile’s retail outlets, seemingly having been discontinued due to lack of consumer interest. At the time, T-Mobile tweeted in response to a disappointed customer with the simple statement that “the Z3 is no longer available.”

        • Asus ZenFone 5 LTE Starts Receiving Android 5.0 Lollipop Update
        • Google Posts Android 5.1.1 Factory Images for Nexus 7 WiFi (2012 & 2013) and Nexus 10

          More Android 5.1.1 factory images are being released by Google, this time for the Nexus 7 WiFi (2012 and 2013), plus the Nexus 10. Each are receiving build LMY47V, which is the latest available.

          Android 5.1.1, at least from what we have researched, is mostly bug fixes for Android 5.1. Users should not expect to see anything too crazy once updated.

        • You Can Now Use Shazam, Instacart, And Other Android Apps With “Okay Google” Commands

          You’ve been able to use your voice (“Ok Google”) to do all sorts of stuff on Android for a while now. But said stuff has almost entirely been built-in by Google itself; third-party developers haven’t really been able to tap into that functionality.

        • ["OK, Google, Listen To NPR"] Custom Voice Actions Launch On Android, Allow You To Control Selected 3rd Party Apps

          Over on the Android Developer’s Google+ page an awesome new feature for Google’s voice search was just announced. A small selection of applications will now open directly when using certain voice commands. For example, you can now say “Ok Google, find houses near me on Zillow” and Google will automatically start the Zillow app, showing a map of properties near your current location (this also works with the applications for Trulia and Realtor.com). Previously a query like this would have directed you to Zillow’s mobile site and given you a link to download Zillow’s app.

        • Verizon Releases Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 Lollipop Update, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular Next

          The Android 5.0 Lollipop update has been officially released to owners of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Users on the Verizon network are now receiving the update, leaving Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular to follow.

        • How to Watch the 2015 NFL Draft Live on Android or iPhone

          The smokescreens are starting to settle and all 32 teams are making the final preparations for the 2015 NFL Draft, which is just a few hours away, and here we’ll explain how to watch the draft live from Android, iPhone, or online. Will the Titans use that second round pick, or trade it away? We’ll have to wait and see, and here’s how you can catch all the action live from any device.

        • Seek Thermal – Android Infrared Camera Review

          The costs associated with thermal imaging systems have restricted their usage and kept it out of reach of the average consumer / impulse-buy territory. However, there have been some recent advancements in this field that have made the prices of such system more palatable to the non-professional users. Thanks to the advent of smart mobile devices, the costs associated with the storage, control and user-interface for these systems could be taken out for most markets. One of the first forays into this space was the $250 FLIR ONE personal thermal imager from FLIR Systems. Unfortunately, by restricting the hardware design to work only with the Apple iPhone 5 and 5s, they lost out on widespread market appeal. Seek Thermal entered the market with a splash by launching their first smartphone-attached infrared camera for just $199. Two distinct models carrying the same features and capabilities were launched, only differing in the connector – one with a microUSB interface for Android devices and another with a Lightning connector for iOS devices. Before talking in detail about the Android version of the camera and the associated mobile app, let us take a moment to understand how thermal imaging works – particularly since this is not something we have covered on our site before.

Free Software/Open Source

  • My Open Source Recording Studio

    One of the ways I pay my bills is through content production for a trading card game called Magic: the Gathering. In addition to creating written content, I also produce video content in a series called “Crash Test”. Today I am going to talk about the hardware and open source software I use to produce these videos.

  • Google’s open source addressing system could replace longitude and latitude

    Google often decides to go about things in its own way, and is frequently found approaching common problems from a unique angle. The latest candidate to receive the Google treatment is the humble address. Not web addresses or email addresses, but regular postal addresses. So what’s the deal?

  • Events

    • Is Collaborative Software Development the Next Big Thing?

      The industry has had large collaboratively developed projects for some time, of course: Linux is the most obvious example. But to a large extent, projects such as Linux or more recently Cloud Foundry and OpenStack have been the exception that proved the rule. They were notable outliers of cross-organizational projects in a sea of proprietary, single entity initiatives. For commercial software organizations, Linux was a commodity or standard, and the higher margin revenue opportunities lay above that commonly-held, owned-by-no-one substrate. In other words, software vendors were and are content to collaborate on one project if it meant they could introduce multiple proprietary products to run on top of the open source base.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla: Deprecating Non-Secure HTTP

        Today we are announcing our intent to phase out non-secure HTTP.

        There’s pretty broad agreement that HTTPS is the way forward for the web. In recent months, there have been statements from IETF, IAB (even the other IAB), W3C, and the US Government calling for universal use of encryption by Internet applications, which in the case of the web means HTTPS.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Numbers & Names

      LibreOffice started with the 3.3 release; it then added micro releases with a third number next to the first two digits. As time went forward, so did the releases: 3.4.0, 3.4.1, 3.5.0, 3.5.1, onwards to the 3.6 branch, the last one to carry the number 3 as its major release number, and to the 4.0 and the 4.x.x based releases. This summer we will be releasing the 5.0, and you will hear a lot more about the changes and improvements that are being put into it. But when you think about it, we started our version numbering exactly based on the one of OpenOffice.org . In 2010, it meant something technically and something for the community and more broadly the users of OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. Fast forward to 2015: does anybody really know what a “4.3” release mean? What message does this numbering scheme convey?

  • CMS

    • How containers will shape the Drupal ecosystem

      I recently had the opportunity to interview David Strauss about how Pantheon uses containers to isolate many Drupal applications from development to production environments. His upcoming DrupalCon talk, PHP Containers at Scale: 5K Containers per Server, will give us an idea of the techniques for defining and configuring containers to get the most out of our infrastructure resources.

      Having recently dove into the container realm myself, I wanted to learn from the experts about the challenges of managing containers in a production environment. Running millions of production containers related to Drupal, David is certainly an expert resource to ask about this subject. I look forward to learning more details at DrupalCon!

    • WordPress promises patch for zero-day “within hours”

      WordPress statement hints at no prior notice on disclosure, contrary to researcher claims

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD 5.7

      This is a partial list of new features and systems included in OpenBSD 5.7. For a comprehensive list, see the changelog leading to 5.7.

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

    • After OpenStreetMap – OpenSeaMap

      As I’ve noted a number of times before, one of the most exciting aspects of the world of openness is the way in which ideas are not only shared within a given domain – amongst free software hackers, for example – but across completely different domains too. Thus the GNU project inspired first Nupedia, and then Wikipedia. Wikipedia, in its turn, inspired OpenStreetMap. And now OpenStreetMap has given rise to OpenSeaMap:

      OpenSeaMap is an open source, worldwide project to create a free nautical chart. There is a great need for freely accessible maps for navigation purposes, so in 2009, OpenSeaMap came into life. The goal of OpenSeaMap is to record interesting and useful nautical information for the sailor which is then incorporated into a free map of the world. This includes beacons, buoys and other navigation aids as well as port information, repair shops and chandlerys. OpenSeaMap is a subproject of OpenStreetMap and uses its database.

    • Help map Nepal, OpenMRS for Ebola, Apache Mesos for Apple, and more open source news
    • Revolutionizing content management, finances, LDAP, and more

Leftovers

  • Hidden cameras reveal airport workers stealing from luggage

    Inside a plane at Miami International Airport, baggage handlers are going on a shopping spree with passengers’ bags.

    What they don’t know is that they are being recorded on a hidden camera. The Miami-Dade Police Department set up the camera as part of an ongoing police investigation into luggage thefts by the very airport workers who are supposed to get bags safely onto planes.

  • Security

    • Linux / BSD Servers Pwned by Mumblehard Trojan

      WeLiveSecurity said victims should look for “unsolicited cronjob entries for all the users on their servers.” The backdoor will probably be found in /tmp or /var/tmp. “Mounting the tmp directory with the noexec option prevents the backdoor from starting in the first place.”

    • Human Error Still the Largest Security Concern

      If one listens to the mainstream media, these are the biggest cyber security threats facing American businesses. When hackers from these regions make any move against western businesses and governments, the news is magnified ten-fold in comparison to the actual source of the attacks: human error on the part of the victim organizations.

    • Report: six anti-virus solutions pass annual Linux test

      2015 will yet again not be the ‘Year of the Linux Desktop’, yet behind the scenes’ Linux plays an important role in many organisations by running the servers on which files are stored centrally.

    • OpenSSL Past, Present and Future

      The OpenSSL Audit, sponsored by the Core Infrastructure Initiative, is under way and the first set of results could trickle in by early summer. Like TrueCrypt, OpenSSL developers are curious to see the vulnerabilities dredged up during the inspection, and like its file encryption cousin, have fingers crossed that a backdoor isn’t lurking.

  • Finance

    • Tom Friedman: If We Don’t Sign The TPP Agreement, The World Will Be Overtaken By ISIS, Anarchy And China

      Famed NY Times columnist Tom Friedman is pretty widely mocked for his ridiculous platitudes that are designed to sound smart (or, more directly, to make readers think that Tom Friedman is smarter than you). But, outside of corporate boardrooms and elite politicians, it seems plenty of people recognize that Friedman’s musings don’t make much sense. There’s even a Thomas Friedman OpEd Generator that does a pretty good job, showing how formulaic his articles are.

      The key element in a Tom Friedman piece is to take some basic, simplified conventional wisdom, and try to gussy it up so that it sounds really profound. Often, this means ignoring all of the nuances and complexity behind the simple idea. A decade ago, he turned this into a whole book, The World is Flat, about globalization and how it was changing the world. He wasn’t wrong, but his insights weren’t particularly insightful or useful. Furthermore, he’s so wedded to his thesis, that he still fails to realize that he was focused on a very exaggerated view of things, without understanding all of the related forces and consequences of what he was selling.

    • NYT Warns Greece Away From Argentina’s Seven-Year Boom

      There is no doubt that 2002 was worse for the people of Argentina as a result of the default, but by the second half of the year, the economy returned to growth and grew strongly for the next seven years. (There are serious issues about the accuracy of the Argentine data, but this is primarily a question for more recent years, not the initial recovery.) By the end of 2003, Argentina had made up all of the ground loss due to the default, and was clearly far ahead of its stay-the-course path.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • GOP Prosecutor Defends Scott Walker Criminal Probe, Says “Let’s Get the Truth Out”

      The current criminal investigation into Walker involves serious allegations that the governor and his campaign disregarded the state’s campaign finance laws during the 2012 recall elections.

      Indeed, when Republican and Democratic District Attorneys petitioned for the investigation, Walker was already the highest-profile politician in modern Wisconsin history and a likely presidential contender. Launching a criminal investigation into the most powerful political figure in the state could not have been an easy choice: these career politicians initiated the probe because they believed there was a strong legal and evidentiary basis for doing so under Wisconsin’s long-standing campaign finance laws.

      Republican prosecutors gathered evidence of Walker secretly raising millions of dollars for the supposedly “independent” nonprofit Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG), with the express purpose of bypassing campaign finance disclosure laws. Talking points prepared for the governor advised him to “stress that donations to WiCFG are not disclosed,” to call the group “his 501c4,” and to tell donors “that you can accept corporate contributions and it is not reported.”

  • Privacy

    • Encryption won’t work if it has a back door only the ‘good guys’ have keys to

      David Cameron has made some headline-grabbing election promises, but none so technically implausible as his vow to eliminate communications tools that “we cannot read” earlier this year. He’s not alone in proposing a ban on effective cryptographic tools. The FBI wants the same thing, and their zeal to protect the state from citizens’ secrecy has even prompted it to alter its exemplary security advice. The suggestion that Americans should encrypt their devices so as to protect their data when they inevitably lose them, have them stolen or throw them away without securely erasing them has been expunged from the FBI’s site.

      It’s impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest – on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again – or on the wire, when you’re sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

    • How can I delete my Facebook account?

      Facebook has a help page: How do I permanently delete my account? This advises you to download a copy of your Facebook data, because you will lose it if you do delete your account. You can also do this by logging into Facebook, clicking the down arrow, and selecting Settings. Click the bottom entry that says “Download a copy of your Facebook data”.

      If you really, really want to delete your Facebook account, log on, go to the Delete my account page and click the button that says “Delete my account”. After that, no one will be able to see your Facebook info, though it may take a few months for your posts and photos to be removed from Facebook’s servers. However, note that any messages or emails you have sent to other people will not be removed. These are in the recipients’ accounts, not in yours.

    • Cabinet minister accepted donation from corporate spy

      A cabinet minister has accepted a donation from a corporate investigator with a history of spying on political campaigners.

      The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, who received £3,220 from Paul Mercer, is fighting to be re-elected in her marginal seat of Loughborough in Leicestershire. Mercer, who has lived in the area for many years, is taking an active part in promoting her campaign.

      His covert work monitoring campaigners was exposed in 2007 when legal papers revealed that he was paid £2,500 a month by the security department of the arms manufacturer BAE.

  • Civil Rights

    • Irate Congressman gives cops easy rule: “just follow the damn Constitution”

      Despite the best efforts of law enforcement to convince a Congressional subcommittee that technology firms actually need to weaken encryption in order to serve the public interest, lawmakers were not having it.

      Daniel Conley, the district attorney in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, testified Wednesday before the committee that companies like Apple and Google were helping criminals by hardening encryption on their smartphones. He echoed previous statements by the recently-departed Attorney General, Eric Holder.

04.30.15

Links 30/4/2015: Plasma 4.4 in the Making

Posted in News Roundup at 7:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

    • Is Watson Health Healthcare’s ‘Linux Moment’?

      One of those landmarks in the technology industry was IBM’s announcement in 2000 that it was throwing its corporate weight behind the open source Linux operating system. Up to that point, open source software had been viewed as the product of a plucky but overall irrelevant cadre of cranks, crackpots, and cheapskates. It may have been fine for a network of gamers who never left their geek caves, but “mission-critical” enterprise platforms? Please.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Wrap: Bitdefender joins the Linux Foundation

      Today, Bitdefender and Fox Technologies, Inc. said they be joining the Linux Foundation. “Backed by a global community of developers who deliver timely security fixes and regular kernel updates, Linux is the platform of choice for a growing number of security-conscious data center operators and cloud providers. From antivirus software to access management technology, today’s new members are increasing their Linux investment to address a range of security challenges.”

    • The Companies That Support Linux: Fox Technologies

      Linux has long been regarded as a stable and secure platform for enterprise applications. And the recent explosion of container technology presents yet another way for developers to build securely on top of Linux, says Mark Lambiase, CTO of Fox Technologies, Inc.

      The Linux container model “will provide for the opportunity to separate and segment applications from a shared OS model, which can provide both security and performance/configuration advantages,” Lambiase said.

      Fox Technologies, which helps companies manage and maintain Unix and Linux systems with its BoKS ServerControl application, is contributing to such growth and innovation in the Linux ecosystem, in part, by becoming new corporate members of the Linux Foundation.

    • As Moore’s Law Turns 50, Processor Market Keeps On Innovating

      The bottom line, according to TI is that the 66AK2L06 can do almost everything FPGAs can do in data acquisition, but can do it in a way that is cheaper, faster, and more power efficient. The SoC is also claimed to be easier to work with than using FPGAs.

    • Graphics Stack

      • EGL Sync Extensions Come To Gallium3D

        The EGL_KHR_fence_sync, EGL_KHR_wait_sync, and EGL_KHR_cl_event2 extensions are now available in the Gallium3D world. Initially these extensions are hooked up for the R600, RadeonSI, NVC0, NV50, and Freedreno drivers. Marek also tackled the GL_OES_EGL_sync extension for all Mesa drivers.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Plasma 5.4 Kicked Off

        Plasma 5.4 is scheduled for August, it’ll be a great addition to Kubuntu 15.10.

      • Plasma 5.3 for Fedora

        Plasma 5.3, new feature release of KDE workspace, has been released on Tuesday and you can get it now on Fedora.

        Plasma 5.3 brings new features, improvements and almost 400 bug fixes for basically all of its components ranging from power management to various applets.

      • KDE 5_15.04 for Slackware-current: back to work

        An update to my KDE 5 packages was overdue. Ever since the “big upgrade” in Slackware-current a week ago on 21 April 2015, there have been some stability issues in the Plasma 5 desktop. The instability was caused by the version bumps of various libraries that the KDE software is depending on – you can not dynamically link to a software library that’s no longer there because it has been replaced with a library bearing a new version number. I felt I had to recompile everything just to be sure there was no hidden “breakage” left, and so I took the opportunity to wait for the newest Plasna release and present you wilth all-new packages.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Ballnux/SUSE

    • Debian Family

      • What’s what in Debian Jessie

        Debian is arguably the most important Linux distribution. From it springs such popular Linux distributions as Mint and Ubuntu. Outside Linux’s inner circles, it’s not that well known because it’s purely a community operating system. There is no company behind it, as there is with Red Hat and CentOS, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Without fanfare, Debian is more than just the foundation for other better known Linux distros, it is a powerful desktop and server Linux in its own right.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) End of Life reached on April 30, 2015

            This is a follow-up to the End of Life warning sent last month to confirm that as of today (April 30, 2015), Ubuntu 10.04 is no longer supported. No more package updates will be accepted to 10.04, and it will be archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks.

          • Taking Ubuntu’s Monkey for a Ride

            That seems to be the response from desktop users and reviewers of Ubuntu’s latest and greatest, 15.04 or Vivid Vervet. The server and cloud crowd are all abuzz, tearing this baby down to see what it can do. But for the desktop folks — not so much. About all you read is that the new desktop is mainly cosmetic changes: that Unity’s color scheme is now purple, which isn’t quite true — to my eyes, there’s some orange in there too — and that a few things have been moved back to where they used to be. Other than that, everyone complains that this vervet is nothing more than lipstick on a unicorn, as Utopic Unicorn was Ubuntu’s last release.

            What this means, of course, is absolutely nothing. The folks at Ubuntu have made it clear that this is mostly a server/cloud release, so it’s not surprising that it offers desktop users little reason to upgrade. Besides, except for those few users who insist on living on the bleeding edge, most desktop users should be using 14.04, Trusty Tahr, anyway, because it’ll be supported until 2019, and our vervet friend will only see support through January.

          • Ubuntu Ditches Upstart

            Ubuntu is not the first distro to use systemd. Debian (Ubuntu’s daddy) recently made the switch too. Other distros have experienced bugs as a result of the switch. For instance, service managers, which configure the boot config files, must be changed to work with the new init system.

            Ubuntu cleverly sidestepped this problem by keeping its old init config file formats in place alongside the new format used by systemd. The version of systemd used in Ubuntu can read both. So old tools that work with the Upstart config settings still work.

            systemd does provide a boost in boot performance over Upstart, but some members of the community are concerned that the way systemd handles messages to services will reduce performance and even open the door to denial-of-service attacks.

            Clearly, Canonical must have a lot of faith in systemd to abandon Upstart (its own project) in its favor. As time passes, we will see whether this was a wise decision.

          • Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicon) Gets Linux Kernel Update

            Canonical has announced that a few vulnerabilities were found in the Linux kernel packages, affecting the kernel for Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicon) operating system, and they have been corrected.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • µQseven COM aims Allwinner A31 SoC at industrial apps

      Theobroma’s Allwinner A31 based µQseven COM offers a re-engineered Linux/Android BSP, and adds a security module, SATA, GbE, CAN, eMMC, a USB hub, and more.

      Austrian engineering design firm Theobroma Systems has begun selling a “A31 µQ7″ module that expands upon the quad-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner A31 system-on-chip using a half-size µQseven form-factor. The 70 x 40mm module supports Linux and Android, and offers optional -20 to 70ºC extended temperature support.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Turn your Android tablet into a Windows-like desktop with this cool app

          The Android user interface isn’t for everyone, but what if you could turn your Android display into something that looked more like a Windows desktop? With Andromium OS, a recently released app on Google Play, you can do exactly that.

        • Get an early look at new Chrome features on Android as Google releases the developer version to all

          Fancy a sneak peek at Google’s new mobile browser? All you have to do is download Chrome Dev from the Play Store onto your Android device and voilà.

        • Google makes Chrome’s bleeding edge developer version available on Android

          Google is letting hardcore Android users get their hands on the roughest, rawest, most advanced version of Chrome available, making the Dev channel for Chrome on Android available to download via the Play Store. This lets experienced users and developers try out the browser’s newest features on Google’s mobile OS before they hit the mainstream. Casual users should be warned however, this is the equivalent of riding in a supercar before the manufacturers have checked the brakes: it might look fun, but you’re going to crash. Although the Dev channel is already available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and ChromeOS, this is the first time it’s been released for Android as well.

        • Nexus 4 Android 5.1 Update: 5 Things to Know Now

          As April comes to a close, Google’s Android 5.1 Lollipop update is still on the minds of many Nexus 4 users. With Android 5.1 problems plaguing some owners and with a new Android 5.1.1 update seemingly on the way, we want to take a look at what Nexus 4 users need to know as we push into the month of May.

        • Android’s built-in texting app lets you reply from notifications

          Hangouts may be Android’s star messaging app at the moment, but Google is still willing to show its original Messenger client a little TLC. The company has updated its basic Android texting app with support for quick replies from notifications. While the feature isn’t quite as slick as what you get in iOS’ Messages (where the notification itself has a reply box), it’ll save you from constantly switching apps when you’re juggling a rapid-fire conversation alongside your usual phone tasks. Grab the upgrade today if you want some of Google’s latest bells and whistles without having to use Hangouts as your SMS software of choice.

        • Samsung Galaxy Android 5.1 Update: 5 Things to Know in April

          Google’s Android 5.1 update continues to pick up steam and it appears headed for top devices like the HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S6 and more. With Samsung Galaxy Android 5.1 release details heating up, we want to take a look at what Samsung smartphone and tablet users need to know about the Android 5.1 update as we push into May.

        • Lucky T-Mobile Galaxy S6 Edge Owner Gets Android 5.1.1 Update

          Last week, as we were telling you to expect Android 5.1.1 at any moment, we weren’t exactly including those of you who just picked up a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge in the conversation. No offense, but phones with OEM skins aren’t usually leading the pack when it comes to updates that feature the newest versions of Android. As it turns out, maybe we should have.

        • Nexus 7 Android 5.1 Update: 5 Things to Know Now

          It’s been more than a month since its release and Google’s Android 5.1 Lollipop update is still on the minds of many Nexus 7 users. With Android 5.1 problems plaguing Nexus 7 users and with a Nexus 7 Android 5.1.1 update seemingly on the way, we want to take a look at what Nexus 7 users need to know as we push into the month of May.

        • Waiting For Apple CarPlay And Android Auto? We Hope You Brought A Book

          In 2013, Apple introduced something called “iOS in the Car”, an infotainment system that could run on dashboards, mimicking the screens of our beloved iPhones. Early last year — nearly 14 months ago — Apple renamed the product CarPlay and said that it would become available on Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo models within days.

        • Nexus 5 Android 5.1 Update: 5 Things to Know Now

          As April comes to a close, Google’s Android 5.1 Lollipop update is still on the minds of many Nexus 5 users. With Android 5.1 problems continuing to plague many Nexus 5 users and with an Android 5.1.1 update seemingly on the way, we want to take a look at what Nexus 5 users need to know as we push into the month of May.

        • Top 10 Best Android Smartphones Buyers Guide: May 2015 Edition

          Things are starting to get more exciting in the Android smartphone world these days. LG have just launched the new G4 and while it won’t be featured in this list until it hits shelves, it’ll certainly make an impact later this year. As for May however, well there are still some excellent options out there no matter what sort of Android smartphone you’re looking for, and the flagships of 2015 are here, ready and waiting for you to pick them up at your local carrier store or from Amazon. This list is of the device available in North America right now, and next month’s list should be very interesting, indeed.

        • Upcoming Galaxy S6 and S6 edge Android 5.1 update to bring missing Android feature

          Samsung will update some of its devices to Android 5.1 Lollipop in the near future, starting with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge flagships. According to SamMobile, the update will bring a major Android feature that’s currently unavailable on the phones, even though other Lollipop devices from the competition have it.

        • The $1,400 Android Wear Watch, and Other Tech News You Missed

          With the arrival of the Apple Watch, and more specifically the fancy gold edition, luxury smartwatches are officially a thing. And Android Wear is going to try its luck. According to Bloomberg, the long-rumored Tag Heuer Android Wear smartwatch finally has a pricetag. How does $1,400 sound?

        • Android Powered Smartwatch To Be Available In May

          The LG Watch Urbane is compatible with any Android 4.3 or higher smart phone and is the fist Android Wear smartwatch enabled with Wi-Fi which allows users to disconnect from their smart phone.

Free Software/Open Source

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • BSD

    • vBSDcon 2015: September 11-13

      Please join us September 11-13, 2015 at the Sheraton in Reston, Virginia for the second biennial vBSDCon event. This exciting weekend will bring together members of the BSD community for a series of roundtable discussions, educational sessions, best practice conversations, and exclusive networking opportunities. Registration will open in July.

    • The Tor BSD Diversity Project (TDP)

      The Tor-BSD Diversity Project is an initiative that seeks to extend the use of the BSD Unix operating systems in the Tor public anonymity network.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • fattelo! presents noctambula, an open-source milk carton lamp

        fattelo! is an italian design studio focused on re-purposing household waste materials for unexpected uses. the ‘noctambula’ lamp is no different. created by fattelo! designers federico trucchia and mireia gordi vila, the LED light is switch-operated, battery-powered built with only a few standard components and one milk carton. no wiring, no soldering, and no big price tag. like their debut 01lamp, the design will be released under a creative commons license and freely available on fattelo!’s site.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Spam-blasting malware infects thousands of Linux and FreeBSD servers [Ed: Eset says that thousands of bsd and linux servers had malware installed on them by admins. Unlike with Windows--remotely exploited.]

      The Eset researchers still aren’t certain how Mumblehard is installed. Based on their analysis of the infected server, they suspect the malware may take hold by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Joomla and WordPress content management systems. Their other theory is that the infections are the result of installing pirated versions of the DirecMailer program.

    • Thursday’s security updates

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • 40 years later, Vietnam still deeply divided over war

      Forty years after it won the war, the Communist Party still rules Vietnam with an iron fist. But with crony capitalism, corruption and inequality now rife, many claim its victory was a hollow one.

    • The U.S. and Vietnam: 40 Years After the Fall of Saigon

      Forty years ago today, the United States lost its first war. And for the vast numbers of Americans who were deeply affected by the Vietnam debacle – including the military personnel who served there, the families of the nearly 60,000 Americans soldiers who died in Southeast Asia, and the citizens who lost faith in their country because of the events that unfolded – the conflict will remain a defining point in their lives.

  • Finance

    • Some bitcoin mempool data: first look

      Previously I discussed the use of IBLTs (on the pettycoin blog). Kalle and I got some interesting, but slightly different results; before I revisited them I wanted some real data to play with.

  • Privacy

    • Much of NSA bulk surveillance as you’ve known it may soon end

      Don’t look now, but much of the National Security Agency bulk metadata collection that stirred so much controversy in the wake of the Edwards Snowden revelations might — just might — be about to come to an end. While civil libertarians still worry about various aspects of the program continuing, this would be no small achievement.

    • Robbery suspect pulls guilty plea after stingray disclosure, case dropped

      A woman accused of being a getaway driver in a series of robberies in St. Louis has changed her plea from guilty to not guilty after finding out that a stingray was used in her case.

      Wilqueda Lillard was originally set to testify against her three other co-defendants, whose charges were also dropped earlier this month. As a result of changing her plea, the local prosecutor dropped the charges against her on Monday.

    • UK Tribunal Rules GCHQ Conducted Illegal Surveillance And Must Destroy Legally Privileged Documents

      A couple of months ago, we reported on a surprising admission by the UK government that GCHQ has been carrying out illegal surveillance by monitoring privileged conversations between lawyers and their clients. As we noted at the time, the reason for this sudden access of conscience was simply that it knew it was going to lose an imminent case before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the body that considers complaints about UK government surveillance. And that, indeed, is what has just happened. As the human rights organization Reprieve, which helped bring the legal action, explains, not only has GCHQ been found guilty of illegal spying, it has also been ordered to destroy the materials it collected as a result…

  • Civil Rights

    • Michael Moore: Disarm police, free nonviolent criminals

      Filmmaker Michael Moore is stirring up debate today with a series of tweets on race and police brutality in America.

      In his tweets, the Michigan native demanded that all African Americans incarcerated for drug crimes or nonviolent offenses be released from prison today.

      He also called for all police to be disarmed.

    • Media’s Baltimore ‘Teen Purge’ Narrative Falling Apart

      Had the Baltimore Sun sought out and published the actual social media sources, instead of cutting and pasting a screengrab from a friend on Facebook with “word” of a panic, they could have demonstrated whether the flier was being spread more in support or in disgust. Alas, in rushing to justify the police crackdown and to prop up the “both sides” parity our corporate media pathologically seek, they made assumptions about a viral orgy of violence and pinned the mid-afternoon clash entirely on the students and a barely readable “purge” flier of unknown origin.

    • Watch A Baltimore Resident Confront Geraldo Rivera Over Fox News’ Irresponsible Coverage

      Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera was confronted by a Baltimore resident frustrated by the network’s history of biased and incendiary coverage of racial issues. Rivera responded by retreating before going live on-air where he described the young black man as a “vandal,” yelling at him, “you’re making a fool of yourself!”

Links 30/4/2015: Debian GNU/Hurd 2015, Microsoft Copies Ubuntu

Posted in News Roundup at 7:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Dire Straits

      Vessels have the right of freedom of navigation through straits, on “innocent passage” under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. As it sounds, that amounts to a right to pass straight through on normal business. Territorial waters do not affect innocent passage. The coastal state has the right to establish sea lanes for maritime safety purposes.

      So whether the Marshall Islands flagged Maersk Tigris was in Iranian territorial waters is not relevant to its right to pass through. If, as Iranian sources have indicated, it really was impounded for commercial debt, then that would have to be in territorial waters. But for that the crew could not be detained, and the debt would have to be immediately stated and the ship released if paid. Iran is not acting as though this really is for debt.

      [...]

      I was sorry for the two American hostages who were killdied in a drone strike, but sickened that given all the hundreds of innocent women and children he has murdered in drone strikes, Obama finally got all sackcloth and ashes over two American men.

  • Censorship

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • BT finally admits its Home Hub router scuppers some VPN connections

      BT has coughed to a crappy glitch with its Home Hub 3A router that is blocking some VPN connections.

      However, the one-time state monopoly appears to have taken a long time to acknowledge customer gripes, which have been piling up for weeks.

      BT said it had taken a while to respond to individual complaints because it was essentially compiling a dossier so it could pinpoint the technical blunder.

04.28.15

Links 28/4/2015: Plasma 5.3, Cutelyst 0.8.0

Posted in News Roundup at 6:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Citrix Delivers Linux Virtual Desktop Offering

      Citrix is out with some interesting moves in the Linux virtual desktop arena. The company has a new kit called the “Linux Virtual Desktop Tech Preview” which is available here for XenApp or XenDesktop customers with active Subscription Advantage accounts. Citrix Partners can get it as well.

    • Chrome OS will get Lucid sleep mode

      François Beaufort, a Google developer, writes on his Google+ page that Chrome OS is receiving the ability to perform some Wifi functions while the device is sleeping.

    • VXL Launches Gio 6 Linux OS for its Suite of Thin, Cloud and Zero Client Desktop

      VXL Instruments has developed and designed exclusively in-house, VXL’s new, industry-leading Gio 6 Linux operating system features a new look, user-friendly design together with greater flexibility, connectivity, security and multimedia capabilities.

  • Server

    • Linux vendor Cumulus rolls out management pack

      Linux network operating system developer Cumulus Networks this week at Interop rolled out a management platform that provides a common interface and operational process for data center racks.

      The Cumulus Rack Management Platform is based on the company’s Cumulus Linux network operating system code base. Out-of-band management switches running Cumulus RMP may be managed by the same Linux toolsets as both servers and data-plane switches running Cumulus Linux, the company says.

    • VMware Draws on Open Source to Manage Cloud Micro Services

      VMware last week released details about two new open source projects that aim to bridge the divide between the company’s virtualization software and other vendors’ containers. Both projects integrate into VMware’s unified platform for the hybrid cloud, allowing the company to create a consistent environment for cloud-native and traditional applications.

  • Kernel Space

    • A Brief Update On Fwupd For Linux Firmware Updating Of Devices

      One of the latest focuses of prolific free software developer Richard Hughes has been on fwupd, an open-source and easy way to update device firmware.

      Fwupd is part of the initiative to make updating of UEFI/BIOS easily from the Linux desktop and fwupd can be used for updating the firmware of peripheral devices like Richard Hughes’ ColorHug device.

    • Updating OpenHardware Firmware

      One of the use-cases I’ve got for fwupd is for updating firmware on small OpenHardware projects. It doesn’t make sense for each of the projects to write a GUI firmware flash program when most of them are using a simple HID or DFU bootloader to do basically the same thing. We can abstract out the details, and just require the upstream project to provide metadata about what is fixed in each update that we can all share.

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD Radeon R9 290 OpenGL On Ubuntu 15.04: Catalyst vs. RadeonSI Gallium3D

        While I’ve posted some new AMD OpenGL benchmarks on Ubuntu 15.04 since last week’s release of the Vivid Vervet, the Radeon R9 290 wasn’t tested since at that time this Hawaii graphics card was busy on other Phoronix test systems. However, due to the interest level in seeing some fresh Ubuntu 15.04 numbers for the Radeon R9 290 series, here’s some numbers.

      • Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D Driver Now Exposes GLSL 4.10

        While there’s still more work to be done before advertising OpenGL 4.0~4.1 compliance, the Nouveau NVC0 Gallium3D driver is now advertising support for GLSL 410 (4.10), the GL Shading Language version to match OpenGL 4.1.

      • GTX 750 Maxwell Acceleration Starts Working On Nouveau With Linux 4.1

        While the Nouveau developers remain blocked by NVIDIA on bringing up accelerated support for the GeForce GTX 900 series, with the forthcoming Linux 4.1 kernel there is initial GeForce GTX 750 “Maxwell” accelerated support out-of-the-box.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • BackBox Linux 4.2 Is a Complete Penetration Testing Distro Based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS [corrected URL]

      BackBox Linux, a distribution based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS, developed perform penetration tests and security assessments has just received a new update and is now ready for download.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • CUDA enabled programs

          There is a new repository available with CUDA enabled programs in package format. This contains programs that have been linked to CUDA libraries or have CUDA support enabled. At the moment this is available only on Fedora 21, if there is sufficient feedback I will enable it also for other distributions.

        • Making It Easier To Deploy CUDA On Fedora

          While Fedora 21 ships with decent OpenCL support, if you’re running the binary NVIDIA graphics driver on Fedora Linux and wishing to use CUDA-accelerated programs, it’s a little bit easier today thanks to a new third-party package repository.

        • FLISOL Panama 2015 Report

          Panama Fedora team participated in Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre (FLISOL) given on Saturday, April 25th at Universidad del Istmo, main campus.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 8.0 Jessie Debuts After Two Years of Effort

        New Debian releases don’t occur every day, or even every year. This past week, Debian 8.0 codenamed Jessie was released after nearly two years of development effort. Debian is the first major milestone update for the GNU/Linux distribution since Wheezy was released in 2013.

      • why not trying to package Hadoop in Debian?

        OpenStack Sahara already provides the reproducible deployment system which you seem to wish. We “only” need Hadoop itself.

      • Backporting and git-buildpackage

        For working with Debian packages, one method of maintaining them is to put them in git and use git-buildpackage to build them right out of the git repository. There are a few pitfalls with it, notably around if you forget to import the upstream you get this strange treeish related error which still throws me at first when I see it.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Arrow Electronics Joins Open-Source Software Pioneer Linaro to Help Bring Innovative New Boards to Market
    • Compact embedded PC runs Linux on Bay Trail

      Aaeon’s ruggedized, 158 x 95 x 20mm “Boxer-6403″ PC offers Celeron or Atom SoCs, plus four USB ports and double helpings of GbE, serial, and mini-PCIe I/O.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Learn more about the Tizen Web Application Development Process

          Tizen is a new Linux based HTML5 centric Operating System that will offer developers a great opportunity for developers to bring their existing or new apps to a brand new ecosystem, where they actually have a chance of being discovered, and better still stand a chance of generating some real cash revenue.

        • Samsung’s 4K SUHD Smart Tizen TV

          The Samsung Smart TV revolution is upon us, and Samsung promises to redefine your viewing experience with television. We now have curved screens that feel more natural to watch as we see the world in a non-linear way, so why should we watch TV on a flat screen?

          Samsung Tizen TV offers some great image quality and promises to be able to become the Smart hub of your Smart home, allowing you to control peripheral devices from the comfort of your armchair.

      • Android

        • Android could ignite the Nokia of old

          For an entire generation, the name Nokia will stir up a lot of emotion. From the iconic 3210 to the symbolic N95, the pre-smartphone years were Nokia’s heyday and a large majority of current smartphone users will be able to recall using a Nokia handset in their past.

        • Disney’s Infinity Digital Toys Finally Come To Android With The Toy Box 2.0 App

          If you’re not familiar with Disney Infinity, it’s basically the media giant’s answer to digital toys like Skylanders, Angry Birds Telepods, and Nintendo Amiibo. The gist is that you buy your kids RFID-enabled collectible statues, they stick ‘em on a base station, and then they can use digital versions of those characters inside the Disney Infinity game. Is there a technical reason that a completely digital character needs a $15 hunk of physical plastic to unlock? Why certainly, so long as “technical reason” includes “making Disney a boatload of money.”

        • Google blushes over Google Maps showing Android icon urinating on Apple icon

          As of Monday, all was well in Pakistan’s Ayub National Park, at least as far as Google Maps was concerned, which was showing it as a verdant green swath of pixels.

          It was a nice change from the image of Google’s Android icon peeing on an Apple logo: an image that a map prankster uploaded to Google Maps and which had stayed up for an undetermined time.

        • Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition to get Android 5.1 Lollipop

          The Galaxy S4 may be more than two years old now, but it’s still very much a part of Samsung’s Lollipop upgrade plans. The device has already received an Android 5.0 upgrade, and according to a new report, Google Play Edition variants will get Android 5.1, too.

        • Will This Android Wear Update Fend Off the Apple Watch?

          Meanwhile, Google has kept the ability to customize Android Wear low compared to Android for smartphones and tablets, which has caused several manufacturers to experiment with homegrown solutions. These updates keep Android Wear’s feature set compelling enough to keep most OEMs from venturing out on their own.

        • The Livescribe 3 smartpen finally works with Android devices

          Livescribe has been in the business of merging physical content you generate — things like hand-written notes and voice recordings — with the digital world for years now. The Livescribe 3 “smartpen,” which launched in the fall of 2013, was certainly its most successful attempt to date. The combo of the Livescribe 3 pen alongside specially designed notebooks meant that you could take traditional notes, make drawings, do calculations, or anything else you do with a pen and paper and have them synced to your phone, tablet, or computer. That’s assuming you were an iOS user, of course — the Livescribe 3 only supported Apple’s mobile devices.

        • Samsung Galaxy Android 5.1 Release Details Arrive

          While the Android 5.1 update probably won’t be hitting the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S5 or Galaxy Note 4 anytime soon, it does appear that the rumored Galaxy Android 5.1 Lollipop update will be hitting at least one device in the near future.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • ‘All Weather Is Part of Actual Climate’
    • Climate change could drive air conditioning to boost carbon emissions

      The climate is full of feedback loops. When a warming climate melts sea ice, the water that’s left behind reflects far less sunlight, leading to a further warming. Now, some researchers at the University of California Berkeley have looked at a human feedback loop: the relation between climate change and air conditioning. Using Mexico as an example, they find that the rising use of air conditioning may boost the country’s electricity use and carbon emissions by 80 percent before the century is over—but only if economic growth continues at a pace that allows people to buy air conditioners.

  • Finance

    • The End of a Job as We Know It

      The concept of a job, as we know it, is starting to go away.

    • Wall Street Halts Twitter Trading Following Earnings Leak (Liveblog)

      Wall Street briefly halted trading for Twitter stock Tuesday afternoon after the company’s Q1 earnings were leaked early.

      Twitter missed analyst’s revenue projections, and the market reacted as Twitter stock quickly dipped almost 6 percent before trading was halted. Trading then resumed, and the stock finished the day down more than 18 percent.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Vouchers on the Move: Return to School Segregation?

      Twenty-five years ago, Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson signed the nation’s first school voucher bill into law. Pitched as social mobility tickets for minority students, Wisconsin vouchers allow children to attend private, and sometimes religious, schools on the taxpayers’ dime.

  • Censorship

    • Salman Rushdie: The authors boycotting event awarding Charlie Hebdo a prize for free speech are ‘pussies’

      Salman Rushdie has accused fellow authors, including Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje, of being “pussies” for boycotting an event organised by the free-speech organisation PEN at which the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is to be given an award.

    • Rieder: Why ‘Charlie Hebdo’ deserves free speech award

      A debate has erupted over the decision by PEN American Center to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

      It was at the offices of Charlie Hebdo that an assault by Muslim extremists in January left 12 people dead, including the publication’s top editor and a number of prominent cartoonists.

    • Demonoid Blocks Adblock Users – Fair or Fail?

      Demonoid, once one of the Internet’s most popular torrent sites, is now barring users who try to visit the site with advert blocking software Adblock installed. The move raises some interesting questions, not least the value of revenue to torrent sites and the intricacies of whether or not content really should be ‘free’.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

Links 28/4/2015: More on Debian 8 “Jessie”, Fedora 22 Beta Walkthrough

Posted in News Roundup at 7:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 2016 might just be the year of Linux on the (virtual) desktop

    Come November, some “pundit” will declare that next year is the year of Linux on the desktop. This November, expect a twist on that prediction, as 2016 could just perhaps conceivably be the year of virtual Linux desktops now that Citrix has taken kit capable of delivering it into Beta.

    That kit is called the “Linux Virtual Desktop Tech Preview” and can be had here if you’re a XenApp or XenDesktop customer with an active Subscription Advantage account. Citrix Partners can get it too.

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Anti-Systemd People

      For some reason the men in the Linux community who hate women the most seem to have taken a dislike to systemd. I understand that being “conservative” might mean not wanting changes to software as well as not wanting changes to inequality in society but even so this surprised me. My last blog post about systemd has probably set a personal record for the amount of misogynistic and homophobic abuse I received in the comments. More gender and sexuality related abuse than I usually receive when posting about the issues of gender and sexuality in the context of the FOSS community! For the record this doesn’t bother me, when I get such abuse I’m just going to write more about the topic in question.

    • Unix and Personal Computers: Reinterpreting the Origins of Linux

      So, to sum up: What Linus Torvalds, along with plenty of other hackers in the 1980s and early 1990s, wanted was a Unix-like operating system that was free to use on the affordable personal computers they owned. Access to source code was not the issue, because that was already available—through platforms such as Minix or, if they really had cash to shell out, by obtaining a source license for AT&T Unix. Therefore, the notion that early Linux programmers were motivated primarily by the ideology that software source code should be open because that is a better way to write it, or because it is simply the right thing to do, is false.

    • Linus Torvalds Announces Linux Kernel 4.1 RC1 with Initial ACPI Support for ARM64

      Linus Torvalds announced a few minutes ago, April 27, the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Release Candidate version of the upcoming Linux 4.1 kernel, due for release later this year.

    • Reducing power consumption on Haswell and Broadwell systems

      Haswell and Broadwell (Intel’s previous and current generations of x86) both introduced a range of new power saving states that promised significant improvements in battery life. Unfortunately, the typical experience on Linux was an increase in power consumption. The reasons why are kind of complicated and distinctly unfortunate, and I’m at something of a loss as to why none of the companies who get paid to care about this kind of thing seemed to actually be caring until I got a Broadwell and looked unhappy, but here we are so let’s make things better.

    • Intel Haswell/Broadwell Power Use On Linux Still Moving Lower

      The latest work of Matthew Garrett is on further lowering the power consumption of modern x86 systems powered by Intel’s Haswell and Broadwell processors.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Gallium3D’s HUD Gets New Customization Options

        For the past two years there has been an optional Gallium3D HUD to display various performance-related metrics as an overlay while running OpenGL applications with the Gallium3D drivers. With the latest Mesa Git code, the heads-up display can be a bit more customized.

      • Intel Is Making Some Progress With Compute Shaders

        One of the big extensions of OpenGL 4.3 and also a requirement of OpenGL ES 3.1 is support for compute shaders. While the work isn’t complete yet, Intel’s open-source developers are making progress on GL_ARB_compute_shader support.

    • Benchmarks

      • AMD Radeon GPUs With Linux 4.0 + Mesa 10.6-devel

        For at least the few graphics cards tested, the results of Linux 4.0 + Mesa 10.6-devel didn’t end up being much more interesting than the stock Ubuntu 15.04 numbers with Linux 3.19 and Mesa 10.5. However, for those interested, I’ve enclosed the results in this article. Though the Radeon HD 6870 numbers are missing as with Linux 4.0 stable the graphics card could no longer properly mode-set on this system: the HD 6450, HD 6570, HD 7850, and R9 270X all were fine in this situation.

      • GCC 4.9.2 vs. GCC 5 Benchmarks On An Intel Xeon Haswell

        For those craving some more GCC 5 compiler benchmark numbers following last week’s release of GCC 5.1, here’s some new comparison numbers between GCC 4.9.2 stable and the near-final release candidate of GCC 5.1.

        Pardon for this light article due to still finishing up work on migrating to the new Phoronix web server while separately working to take care of thermal issues coming about in the new Linux benchmarking server room.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KActivities powered recent media in Plasma Media Center

        As you may have already read the blog post from Eike Hein about Building on new pillars: Activities and KPeople in Plasma 5.3, activities can provide the useful information about the recent applications and resources used by them.

      • kreenshot-editor is incubating

        Now, kreenshot-editor is a new Qt-based project that was inspired by Greenshot’s image editor. It is hosted on KDE playground. It focuses on the image editing task, can be invoked from command line and should also provide a resuable editor component which could be integrated into other screencapture tools. The current code is already separated into an image editor widget and the main application.

      • Spring break for the KDE system monitor
      • Kubuntu 15.04 With Plasma 5.3 – A Totally Different Kubuntu

        The latest version of Kubuntu, 15.04, aka Vivid Vervet was released last week and it’s available for free download. With this release it has become the first major distro to ship Plasma 5 as the default desktop environment.

        There are chances that some users may still have bad memories of Kubuntu. It’s true. Back in 2011 when Ubuntu made a switch to Unity, I started looking for alternatives as their desktop environment was not suited for me. I started trying KDE-based distros and Kubuntu was among the top choices. However my experience with the distro was mixed. It was buggy, bloated and GTK apps would look ugly in it. That’s when I found openSUSE and settled down with it.

      • Google Summer of Code 2015

        The list of students accepted to the 2015 edition of Google’s Summer of code has just been published. We’ve got two students this working on Krita: Jouni and Wolthera. Wolthera has been a Krita developer for quite some time, working on color selectors perspective assistants and more, while Jouni has contributed with bug fixes for 2.9.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • A brief glimpse into usability testing

        This provides the description and results of my 1-person usability test for GNOME version 3.14.2. I set up the test environment on a virtual machine running Debian Jessie, and conducted the usability test with only one participant on February 21, 2015.

        When doing usability testing, I strongly believe that understanding the participants is a very important point that we shouldn’t ignore. Here, the tester was a 23 year old female student in computer science, who self-reported a medium level of computer expertise.

  • Distributions

    • BackBox Linux 4.2 Is a Complete Penetration Testing Distro Based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS

      BackBox Linux, a distribution based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS, developed perform penetration tests and security assessments has just received a new update and is now ready for download.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 5 Release Candidate Includes the LXQt Desktop, Supports Intel Broadwell

        After several delays, the Mageia development team, through Rémi Verschelde, announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the Release Candidate version of the upcoming Mageia 5 Linux operating system, due for release sometime in May 2015.

      • Debian 8 and Mageia 5 RC Released Over the Weekend

        What an exciting weekend that just passed. First up, the long-awaited Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 “Jessie” was released in live and traditional installation media. Elsewhere, Mageia 5 Release Candidate was released with UEFI support and other installation improvements. In addition, LibreOffice 4.3.7 was released Saturday as well.

      • All things come to those who wait

        While you wait for the download to complete, all restless and eager that you are to try this new release, let’s talk a bit about this release candidate: what can you expect of it, and why did it take so long?

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 8 Jessie released

        For the first time since 2013 the Debian team have released a major upgrade of Debian, bumping it up to version 8. The new version has gone under the moniker ‘Jessie’, a continuation of the Toy Story themed names.

      • Debian Edu 8.0 Beta 1 Is Now Available for Testing, Based on Debian 8 Jessie

        The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, through Holger Levsen, announced the general availability for download and testing of the first Beta release of the upcoming Debian Edu 8.0 distribution.

      • Debian 8.0 ‘Jessie’ arrives following Ubuntu 15.04 release

        The DEBIAN OPERATING SYSTEM has reached version 8.0 as the company announces the latest edition of the popular Linux distro.

        The Debian ‘Jessie’ release information says: “After almost 24 months of constant development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 8 (codename Jessie), which will be supported for the next five years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team.”

      • Debian 8 ‘Jessie’ Released: The Road To systemd Is Complete

        Following nearly two years of “constant development”, Debian 8 ‘Jessie’ hit the Web this past weekend. As with Ubuntu 15.04 and its derivatives, all released last week, Debian 8’s most notable feature is the adoption of systemd. With this move, Gentoo becomes the final major distro that doesn’t ship with systemd as default.

      • Debian 8 “Jessie” the GNU/Linux-based operating system released

        After being for almost two years in development, Debian 8 “Jessie” version is now released for download. Debian is a Unix-like computer operating system and a Linux distribution that is composed entirely of free and open-source software, most of which is under the GNU General Public License, and packaged by a group of individuals known as the Debian project.

      • Debian 8 released
      • Debian ships new ‘Jessie’ release with systemd AND sysvinit

        The Debian project is touting new ports for ARM and POWER architectures, a bunch of software updates, an upgraded Gnome desktop and better security in its just-unleashed Jessie release.

        However, El Reg fully expects that the switch to systemd as the default init system will divert at least some attention from the release.

      • Updates tothe Debian sources editor

        If your browser performs automatic updates of the extensions (the default), you should soon be upgraded to version 0.0.10 or later, bringing all those changes to your browser.

        Want to see more? multi-file editing? emacs and vim editing modes? in-browser storage of the modified files? that and more can be done, so feel free to join me and contribute to the Debian sources editor!

      • Debian 8 Linux moves to systemd by default and drops Itanium and Sparc

        Debian, one of the most widely used Linux distributions, has been updated with the release of Debian 8 ‘Jessie’, which now uses systemd to initialise the system and ships with updated versions of the Gnome desktop and numerous other enhancements.

      • These Are Good Days

        I decided to use the last hour of my day to install Debian GNU/Linux 8, Jessie, again, this time with defaults from “tasksel”: Debian desktop XFCE and “base utilities”. I did this in a virtual machine while grooving to a stream of my local “oldies” radio-station, checking the weather on the web, blogging, browsing the web and Beast’s CPU is barely above idling speed, and I’m nowhere near out of RAM. It’s all surreal compared to the work we had to do in the old days: downloading multiple .iso files, burning CDs, checking them for defects…, having the installation fail to boot or not start X, and the old systems ground away for an hour or more. Heck, Beast doesn’t even have a CD-drive these days.

      • GLT15: Slides of my “Debian 8 aka jessie, what’s new” talk

        I wasn’t sure whether I would make it to Linuxdays Graz (GLT15) this year so I didn’t participate in its call for lectures. But when meeting folks on the evening before the main event I came up with the idea of giving a lightning talk as special kind of celebrating the Debian jessie release.

      • virt-builder Debian 8 (Jessie) image

      • Derivatives

        • Debian-Based Distribution Updated With KDE 3.5 Forked Desktop

          Q4OS 1.2 “Orion” is the new release that is re-based on Debian Jessie, focused on shipping its own desktop utilities and customizations, and designed to run on both old and new hardware.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Is Ubuntu moving away from .deb packages? Here is the complete story

            Canonical loves to shake things up. After introducing Unity, HUD, Mir, Click and Snappy the sponsor of Ubuntu is now contemplating moving away from just .deb based desktop and adopting its own Snappy.

          • My Ubuntu Phone is here!

            The BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition comes in a nice, fancy package, with the right dose of orange color. Inside the box, you will find a phone that’s neither too big nor too slim. It’s more like what the mainstream market used to offer a couple of years ago, which makes far more sense than the ultra-slippery models today. Aquaris reminds me of iPhone 4, not that I’m a great connoisseur of phones and what they should be like, but that’s how it is.

          • First impressions of Ubuntu 15.04

            Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system is probably the most widely used Linux distribution in the world. Ubuntu is made available in several editions, including desktop builds, server builds and there is a branch of Ubuntu for mobile phones. Ubuntu provides installation images for the x86, ARM and Power PC architectures, allowing the distribution to run on a wide variety of hardware. The most recent release of Ubuntu, version 15.04, includes a fairly short list of changes compared to last year’s Ubuntu 14.10, however some of the changes are significant. Some small changes include an upgrade of the kernel to Linux 3.19 and placing application menus inside the application window by default. A potentially larger change is the switch from Canonical’s Upstart init software to systemd.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New gst-rpicamsrc features

      These bring the GStreamer element up to date with new features added to raspivid since I first started the project, such as adding text annotations to the video, support for the 2nd camera on the compute module, intra-refresh and others.

    • The most recent project hits a Yak-shaving milestone…

      …so that’s sucked me into the world of spectrometers, reverse engineering the protocols to use them on Linux (oh, yeah, I need to publish that), binning leds by hand with a makeshift integration chamber…

    • 64-bit STB SoC supports 4K video and Android TV

      Marvell announced an “Ultra” version of its Android-focused Armada 1500 STB SoC that advances to a 64-bit, quad-core Cortex-A53 foundation for 4K delivery.

      The Armada 1500 Ultra (88DE3218) is designed to “enable PayTV operators and set-top box (STB) manufacturers to cost-effectively deliver small form factor devices with feature-rich 4K entertainment and gaming services,” says Armada. As with earlier Armada 1500 system-on-chips, it’s primarily focused on Android, with specific support for Android TV

    • Interview: Eben Upton

      The founder and CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation talks about the Pi Model 2, and how Google’s Eric Schmidt convinced him to knock down the price.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Tizen DevLab coming to Bangalore and Mumbai in India for May 2015

          Following on from the successful Tizen DevLabs in London and Paris, we have some great news for developers as the Tizen DevLab Series is coming to India, well specifically to Bangalore and Mumbai. If your a you’re a novice or an expert, a programmer or an innovator then you are welcome to come along, you could even find yourself winning a Samsung Z1.

        • [Game] Angry Birds comes to the Tizen Store and the Samsung Z1

          The hugely successful game Angry Birds is now available for the Tizen based Samsung Z1 Smartphone. The game is an Android App (equivalent to Android Angry Birds version 5.0.2.) that is running on the Z1 thanks to OpenMobile’s ACL technology.

          Angry Birds is an iconic game for MeeGo and Tizen as this one of the big games to be shown running on developer devices at Tizen developer events. The original game supports In-App purchases, but this doesn’t seem to be working with the Tizen Store, most likely a compatability issue. The gameplay is pretty good and any slowness can be attributed to the modest hardware of the Z1.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • File a bug!

    Sadly, these are often just empty words. “Patches welcome” can be a seemingly-polite way of saying “your problem is not important to me. Go solve it yourself and I’ll accept your solution.” And telling a user to go file a bug can be equally dismissive, especially if the bug-filing process is unpleasant.

  • Bazel, Google’s Open Source Build System

    One of the most important, yet unsung, applications in a software developer’s life is the Make utility, or its equivalent. Make first appeared in 1977 and has been with us ever since. There are a very large number of build utilities, some based on Make, others completely different. The principle remains the same. The build system has a set of rules that tell it how to build an application from source files, usually fetched from a version control system. The Make utility reads the rules, then runs the compilers and linkers to do the build. The really good ones will run tests, as well.

  • Linux Freedom vs. Convenience

    One of my favorite websites that illustrate this point is WhyLinuxIsBetter.net. As the page loads, you’re immediately presented with clear, easy to understand reasons why Linux is better than proprietary operating systems. Now granted, the website is a bit dated. But the overall message is timeless and positive. What this site does well is show its readers exactly why Linux on the desktop is awesome. From its features to its built-in safety, everything is clearly illustrated and easy to understand.

  • Events

    • PyCon 2015 conference report & video roundup
    • [Event Report] April Python Pune Meetup 26th April, 2015
    • [Event Report] Docker Pune Meetup #5
    • Open Source Conference in Oslo – May 8 – 10

      In just a few days we’ll have an open source conference in Oslo. I’m happy that we’ll have a Qt and KDE track, so I’d like to invite everyone to join for the weekend May 8-10 at the University of Oslo.

    • LinuxFest Northwest in the Books for 2015

      Feast or famine: This is the typical modus operandi for FOSS shows, where Saturdays (or the “first days,” whatever they are) are a literal beehive of activity on the expo floor while talks are standing-room only. Sundays (or “second days”) — ah, those second days — the activity drops off a bit.

      [...]

      With Sunday being more low-key, I got to catch up with LibreOffice’s Robinson Tryon, who said that the show was a hit for the project. Without the cacophony of multiple conversations going on at the same time, like on Saturday, we got to talk about advances LibreOffice is making in Android, which is going faster than expected, and various aspects of document freedom, not the least of which is the successful growth of Document Freedom Day. Heady days are in store for LibreOffice.

    • KVM and Xen to Hold Joint Hackathon for Open Source Virtualization

      That’s right. The teams behind Xen Project Developer Summit and KVM Forum recently announced plans to co-host a hackathon and social event on August 18, 2015, at the close of the Xen Project Developer Summit and on the eve of KVM Forum. Virtualization is one of the most important technologies in IT today, so it makes perfect sense for the two best hypervisor projects to collaborate and socialize at an event that celebrates their similarities and bridges that gap between all things KVM and Xen.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Education

    • Microsoft & Education: The Song Remains the Same

      One of our hardware donors emailed me and asked if I would come to Austin and pick up a dozen Optiplex 745s with 17 inch monitors and accompanying keyboards. These Dells already had scrubbed drives and had either 4 or 8 GB of RAM, depending on what they were originally assigned to do. I said I most certainly would and arranged a time to be there. This donor has been especially generous to us, and not with just decent hardware. They also present us an annual Christmas cash donation of $1000. On the years they do employee matching, it is more than that — a lot more.

  • Healthcare

  • Funding

    • EUR 38 million EU funds for ICT in Malta

      Over the next seven years, the EU is funding ICT programmes in Malta with some EUR 38 million, the government of Malta announced in March. The funds are part of a EUR 400 million package earmarked to finance socio-economic development in the country. ICT is seen as one of the main ‘enablers’ for development and innovation in Malta.

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Can funding open source bug bounties save Europe from mass-surveillance?

      The report also suggests promoting open-source software as a way to build resilience to surveillance, which could be achieved by funding audits of important open-source software. Among several products it highlights is disk encryption software, TrueCrypt, which was recently subjected to a crowd-funded audit that was able to rule out the existence of NSA backdoors in the product.

      “TrueCrypt is a typical example of a problem of the commons: worldwide use of software package was probably dependent on two or three developers,” the study notes to highlight why funding open source projects may be valuable.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • C++ Daddy Bjarne Stroustrup outlines directions for v17

      Calm yourselves, readers. The Spring 2015 C++ Standards Committee Meeting takes place next week in Lenexa, Kansas. And at that meeting much of the discussion is expected to consider C++ 17, a major revision of the programming language due in 2017.

    • Atom Shell is now Electron

      Atom Shell is now called Electron. You can learn more about Electron and what people are building with it at its new home electron.atom.io.

Leftovers

  • UK Elections

    • Clegg Hoist With Own Petard

      Indeed if the total number of votes cast in the UK for Tories plus Lib Dems is equal to the total number of votes cast in the UK for Labour plus Scot Nats (which is more or less what the polls are showing), then Labour plus the Scot Nats will win approximately 35 more seats than the rival bloc for the same total votes, entirely because of the Lib Dem veto on the Boundary Commission proposals.

    • General Election 2015: What do MPs think about mass surveillance?

      Like the British public, the vast majority of MPs had no idea about the extent of bulk data collection by the security services when whistleblower Edward Snowden spoke out. With the election pending, what do parliamentary candidates think there needs to be done about mass surveillance?

    • BBC Mock Balance

      Whereas the “equal time” allowed the SNP candidate included BBC commentary giving direct personal criticism of her, there was no critical note in the Alexander side of the coverage. An interesting example of how the state propaganda system works.

  • Security

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • Dan Bull’s ‘Death To ACTA’ Video Silenced After Claim From Rapper Who Used The Same Sample

      Back in 2010 we wrote about rapper Dan Bull’s excellent “Death to ACTA” song and video, which is a parody of Jay-Z’s “Death of Autotune.” In 2011, we further wrote about the MP3 of that song (which Bull distributes willingly on file sharing platforms) being taken down from Mediafire due to a questionable takedown request. Now, years later (well after ACTA is pretty much long dead), Dan’s discovered that his video on YouTube was just silenced due to copyright claims.

  • Privacy

    • Facebook denies fresh allegation that it DOES collect the text you decided against posting

      Ever written out a status update or comment but decided against posting it? One techie has claimed Facebook collects this content, despite the company’s claims to the contrary

    • Encrypting Your Laptop Like You Mean It

      Unlike in Windows and Mac OS X, you can only encrypt your disk when you first install Linux. If you already have Linux installed without disk encryption, you’re going to need to backup your data and reinstall Linux. While there’s a huge variety of Linux distributions, I’m going to use Ubuntu as an example, but setting up disk encryption in all major distributions is similar.

    • Facebook Messenger Gets Video Calling on iOS, Android

      Move over Skype, Google Hangouts, and FaceTime. Facebook wants to host your next mobile video chat.

    • Senior Police Officer Suggests Companies Allowing People To Use Strong Crypto Are ‘Friendly To Terrorists’

      The technology is not being “exploited” by terrorists, it’s being used by them, just as they use telephones or microwaves or washing machines. That’s what those devices are there for. The idea that trying to make broken internet technologies should be “front and center” of technology companies’ thinking bespeaks a complete contempt for their users.

      This constant refrain about how awful strong crypto is, and how we must break it, is simply the intelligence services implicitly admitting that they find the idea of doing their job in a free society, where people are able to keep some messages private, too hard, so they would be really grateful if technology companies could just fall in line and make life easier by destroying privacy for everyone.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Treaties

      • As resistance grows, TTIP is increasingly in trouble.

        It’s been a couple of months since my last TTIP update. That hiatus reflects the talks themselves, which feel strangely suspended. That’s not to say nothing is happening: indeed, there’s an air of desperate busy-ness beginning to creep into the proceedings as even the most fervid supporter of the agreement realises that TTIP is not going to be finished by the end of 2015, and people rush around vainly trying to do something about it. That’s pretty astonishing when you remember that the original plan was to finish it by the end of 2014:

      • President Obama Demands Critics Tell Him What’s Wrong With TPP; Of Course We Can’t Do That Because He Won’t Show Us The Agreement

        President Obama is apparently quite annoyed by the fact that his own party is basically pushing against his “big trade deals” (that are not really about trade). Senator Elizabeth Warren has been pretty aggressive in trashing the TPP agreement, highlighting the fact that the agreement is still secret (other than the bits leaked by Wikileaks). In response, President Obama came out swinging against the critics of TPP arguing that “they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

      • NYT Lets Economic Pundit Disappear TPP’s Economist Critics

        So all economists are for TPP because TPP is a “free trade” bill and all economists are for “free trade.” Simple, right? The only reason Congress wouldn’t pass fast track, Mankiw suggests, is if politicians listened to voters who were “worse than ignorant about the principles of good policy.”

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