08.25.15
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 4:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“I’ve killed at least two Mac conferences. [...] by injecting Microsoft content into the conference, the conference got shut down. The guy who ran it said, why am I doing this?”
–Microsoft's chief evangelist
Summary: Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, helps Microsoft gain influence in the Foundation after payments are received
SEVERAL days ago LinuxCon ended. It was probably the biggest Linux-centric conference not only in the US but in the whole world. Microsoft, as usual, infiltrated and “injected Microsoft content into the conference,” to use the company’s own words. There’s a reason for this.
“This once again shows us an inherent weakness in the operations of the Linux Foundation. Microsoft moles or provocateurs managed to get in and change the agenda after they had paid.”We give some credit to Sean Kerner for writing about this as almost nobody else did. The first article from Kerner reminded us that the Linux Foundation is selling out again. It lets an anti-Linux company speak at Linuxcon because this company paid the Linux Foundation. Would the Linux Foundation also let SCO give some talks if SCO paid (hypothetical question as SCO is a defunct company now)? Remember that Intel (key funder of the Linux Foundation and OSDL before it) helped fund a SCO conference.
Kerner wrote repeatedly about this, noting that “Microsoft was a sponsor of the event and also had a booth in the vendor area [...] When Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, held up a Microsoft Tux penguin during a keynote session on Aug. 18, he was actually heckled.”
It is reported that these 'Microsoft loves Linux' buttons (see below) emerged at this event at well.
People who paid a lot of money to attend this event are reportedly upset, to use an understatement. And rightly so. See the quote at the top again. Microsoft succeeds at discrediting the event. Microsoft sure delivered its entryism first thing in the morning as “LinuxCon [was] infiltrated by Microsoft,” to quote one of our readers who sent us mail about it, as several other have done since then (many are furious as the Linux Foundation serves to legitimise Microsoft, in exchange for generous, self-serving payments).
This once again shows us an inherent weakness in the operations of the Linux Foundation. Microsoft moles or provocateurs managed to get in and change the agenda after they had paid. Microsoft entryism needs to be recognised as a potent threat and tackled accordingly. Such entryism and marketing not only reduces the popularity of GNU/Linux but also removes freedom because anything that Microsoft does around Linux merely promotes proprietary software like Hyper-V, Windows, and so on.
A third and final such article from Sean Kerner (not that it’s an issue, as he clearly helped raise awareness of what Microsoft had sneakily done again) got titled “LinuxCon Highlights: From Linus Torvalds to Microsoft”, demonstrating quite well that Microsoft interjected itself into the competition and it worked; it served to distract almost everybody and that’s how people may remember this event.
For those who believe that Microsoft actually likes GNU/Linux, recall the 6-part series below and see what Microsoft is distributing in FOSS conferences as though it is trying to deliberately provoke and upset attendees.
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Photo credit: Neil McAllister
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Posted in Microsoft, Vista 10, Windows at 3:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Confirmatory evidence that Vista 10 is failing in the market about a month after its much-hyped (paid coverage) release
MUCH as we expected even well before Vista 10 came out, the market is overwhelmingly apathetic, regardless of the price. It’s just not interested in Vista 10.
“Microsoft has been on a tear with Windows 10 updates,” Ryan wrote in our #techrights IRC channel (he used to be a Microsoft MVP and he follows Microsoft very closely). “It hasn’t even been a month and they’ve apparently already patched so many bugs it’s like an entire service pack has happened.”
“Vista 10 adoption is pathetic, especially when one considers the cost of an ‘upgrade’.”Vista 10 is clearly a failure (technically speaking and also in terms of sales), so Microsoft now wants to attract GNU/Linux users into its arms (to suffocate them with lock-in). It has gotten so bad that Microsoft (through Yahoo) is entering old versions of Ubuntu for surveillance purposes. If Canonical is pressured by Mozilla to make Firefox link to Microsoft (through Yahoo as a proxy/middleman), then users should move to IceWeasel or IceCat, if not drop Ubuntu altogether. There have also been several articles recently about how Microsoft was trying to sneak its surveillance and propaganda engine into Android.
At IDG, a Microsoft booster (strong professional ties to Microsoft) comes out with “False dichotomy,” to quote iopkh. “The real answer is move to GNU/Linux.”
“One common concern right now is privacy, not just the heap of serious bugs.”Vista 10 adoption is pathetic, especially when one considers the cost of an ‘upgrade’. This week it’s said that “Windows 10 now has 5.95 per cent of the desktop operating systems market, according to the folks at StatCounter.”
That’s hardly a gain since a week ago. “Windows 10′s growth has slowed, according to StatCounter Global Stats,” which means that it will possibly plateau at around 10%, despite so many people being ‘eligible’ for a ‘free’ ‘upgrade’.
One common concern right now is privacy, not just the heap of serious bugs. One has to wonder if Microsoft’s secret (proprietary) code in Vista 10 implements any callback functions for option buttons that relate to privacy. It is worth pursuing these questions. Did Microsoft add privacy ‘controls’ for a false sense of control or is this a bug? Is this just being disguised as a bug but is actually intentional? A lot of people were surprised that Microsoft does not obey privacy preferences from users; maybe they forgot it’s a company of cheaters and liars, not to mention bribes. Watch what Microsoft is still up to in Munich. █
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Posted in Patents at 2:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The Microsoft Mafia shows extreme hypocrisy
Summary: Possibly the world’s biggest patent abuser and monopolist, which also creates many patent trolls (including by far the biggest one), takes on a far smaller abuser in Court
“I owned the domain name http://nokiaplanp.com ,” wrote the President of the FFII this week, “p for patents, and now Nokia is turning in a patent troll” (we wrote about this before). Microsoft not only turned Nokia into a troll, but also used Nokia’s patents to feed other trolls, MOSAID for example (not to mention that Microsoft is behind the world’s biggest patent troll). Based on some of the latest reports from Finland [1, 2], Microsoft pushes Nokia further towards the cliff of patent trolling, turning the former mobile giant (bigger than any of its kind ever!) into nothing but a pile of patents. Reuters wrote that “initially announced in July, [additional cuts] are part of Microsoft’s plan to cut 7,800 jobs globally, most from the phone hardware business that it bought from Nokia last year.”
Microsoft layoffs are a Microsoft thing, not a Nokia thing, for reasons we explained before, so reject the Microsoft spin, but either way, Microsoft killed Nokia and quickly turned it into nothing but a parasite that taxes Microsoft’s competition, including Apple.
Now that InterDigital gives Microsoft a taste of its own medicine “Microsoft sues InterDigital for ‘monopoly power’ over mobile patents” (patents of InterDigital were covered here before [1, 2, 3, 4). Putting aside the obscenity of Microsoft suing for “monopoly power”, who’s really the troll and the patent abuser here? The hypocrisy is so fascinating. To quote one of the earliest articles about this (we found it last week), “Microsoft files antitrust suit against InterDigital in patent feud”:
InterDigital has violated U.S. antitrust law by failing to keep its promise to fairly license its technology considered essential to mobile phone communications, Microsoft said in a lawsuit on Thursday.
The complaint against InterDigital, filed in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, deepens a long-standing fight over patent licensing between the two companies.
It comes as the U.S. International Trade Commission is set to rule this month on whether Microsoft smartphones should be banned from being imported into the United States for infringing two of InterDigital’s patents.
For Microsoft to accuse InterDigital of abuses with patents, monopoly abuse (and use antitrust laws to tackle these abuses) is a bit like President Putin accusing President Obama of freedom of speech violations. Let that sink in for a moment. █
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Posted in Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 2:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft and its minions refuse to leave Munich alone, even though the vast majority in Munich are perfectly happy with Free/libre software
A story that we covered here on Monday has received quite some attention, far more than we anticipated. It’s basically about a letter composed by two technically-incompetent people, which means it’s full of factual errors and serves more as Microsoft endorsement and scare tactics against GNU/Linux, ODF, and Free software. It’s about Munich, where two officials got a lot more press than they deserved (even in English-speaking media [1, 2, 3]). As one article put it, “proprietary software companies are known for their public affairs (lobby) large budgets.” The article recalls “90 percent discount from then Microsoft CEO Steve ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ Ballmer to keep Windows” (a form of bribery in a sense).
“The article recalls “90 percent discount from then Microsoft CEO Steve ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ Ballmer to keep Windows” (a form of bribery in a sense).”Continuing the trend and the line which we went along the other day, in this article from the Monday Glyn Moody said that Russian “Members of parliament [are] worried about personal and classified data being sent to the US.”
The British media covered this as well, saying that “Russian lawyers have filed a complaint calling for an outright ban – or at least tight restrictions – over the sale of Windows 10 in Russia.”
Well, they’re right and Munich would be ever so dumb to abandon software Freedom, having already paid a lot to escape the lock-in/exit barrier, whereupon it chooses to be spied on by a hostile country which targets Germany (political espionage). Moving to Windows would mean Vista 10 or later (our contacts at Microsoft says that future version will have even more spying).
Munich is going to stay with Free software, as before, but the Microsoft camp keeps trying to maintain the mythology of failure there. The negative press gives many officials the wrong impressions and scares them, discouraging any other nation-wide moves to GNU/Linux. That’s what it’s all about. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 1:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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I enjoy using Linux on the desktop. Not because of software politics or because I despise other operating systems. I simply like Linux because it just works.
It’s been my experience that not everyone is cut out for the Linux lifestyle. In this article, I’ll help you run through the pros and cons of making the switch to Linux so you can determine if switching is right for you.
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What can’t Linux do? Nowadays you hear Linux powering just about any device imaginable — all the way from dime-sized computers via the Raspberry Pi all the way to most of the top 100 supercomputers in the world. We interact with it daily, whether it be on our personal computers, Android devices, Steam boxes (gaming), flight entertainment systems, web servers that power behemoths such as Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia, or more.
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Desktop
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NO operating system is perfect and Linux is no exception.
In contrast to Windows and Mac OS X, however, Linux gives you a lot of choices—some might say, too many choices. DistroWatch.com lists more than 200 active distributions (or flavors) of Linux—and what’s more, each of these distributions allows you to customize the desktop environment.
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I know of no other OS that is, as modular, or allows you this much control, over the ability…
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I wasn’t initially accepted as an intern via the application process. But the 2 IT staff saw me helping a teacher with his laptop, and reconsidered my application on the spot.
My high school was, and still is, a strong partner with Microsoft.
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Server
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The Top 10 Linux server operating system distros ranked by ease of use, cost, available support and data center reliability.
We’ve researched, crunched the numbers and put dozens of Linux distros through their paces to compile our latest list of the top ten Linux server distributions (aka “Linux server distros”) — some of which you may not be aware.
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Logic Supply’s Atom N2800 based “CC150″ industrial IoT gateway is loaded with a version of the Linux-based IoT Server software from Candi Controls.
The CC150 Internet of Things Gateway with Candi IoT Server is designed for “managing and controlling energy and operational data in commercial buildings and industrial sites with Internet of Things devices,” says Logic Supply. The hardware vendor teamed up with Candi, whose Linux-based IoT gateway software of the same name stands for Cloud-Assisted Network Device Integration. The preconfigured server enables connections to hundreds of IoT devices,” says Logic Supply
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Then again, I always have a good time at Linux conferences. Whether they be the more community-driven events like the Southern California Linux Expo and LinuxFest Northwest or the more company-run expos like SUSECon and LinuxCon, these moments give me an opportunity to, quite simply, be around Linux nerds. Lots and lots of Linux nerds. These are my people.
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IBM has made improvements to a set of services available through its cloud platform Bluemix, with the aim of enabling developers to integrate Java-based resources into their cloud-based applications.
With the new IBM Cloud tools, developers will be able to broaden the capabilities of their applications by utilising additional security and flexibility, providing users with a more robust cloud experience.
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IBM is partnering with the National College of Ireland as part of its Academic Initiative for Cloud programme which will train new developers.
NCI is one of more than 200 colleges and universities globally that are developing new curricula using IBM’s Bluemix development platform.
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Kernel Space
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A study carried out by two security researchers revealed that the internal system used by Linux systems to produce random numbers, which are later utilized to encrypt data, is much weaker than previously thought.
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If all goes well, the Linux 4.2 kernel will be officially released before the day is through. If you haven’t been keeping up with the flow of Phoronix articles over recent weeks, here’s a look at some of the highlights for Linux 4.2.
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So rc8 isn’t a big rc, and most of it is actually some last-minute reverts for stuff that just wasn’t quite ready. Mostly drivers, with some networking, an x86 fix, and a smattering of perf tooling fixes. The shortlog gives an overview of the details.
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Dear all, today is August 25, 2015, and the time has come for us, Linux users, to party in celebration of the 24th anniversary of the Linux project, announced by none other than its creator, Linus Torvalds, on the sunny day of Sunday, August 25, 1991.
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A total of 63 patches were contributed upsteam by Collabora engineers as part of our current projects.
In the ARM multi_v7_defconfig we have the addition of support for Exynos Chromebooks, all options that had a tristate Kconfig option were added as module. After this change it was found that a few drivers weren’t working properly when built as module, so this was fixed. This work was done by Javier Martinez.
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Many people have read that post by Linus Torvalds in the comp.os.minix newsgroup on Usenet, or at least heard about it. Many more are aware of how that (free) operating system ended up taking over vast swathes of the computing world, and becoming both “big” and “professional.” But what about before that famous moment? What were the key events that led to Linus creating that first public release of Linux?
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Why complicate container management with a new platform when systemd can help you deploy and manage containers today?
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The Linux Foundation is putting together a consortium that could have a big impact on cloud connectivity and storage. It is organizing a joint effort involving 13 tech companies to promote open source software and standards for cloud object storage technologies. Companies supporting the just launched Kinetic Open Storage Project include Cisco, Cleversafe, Dell, Huawei, NetApp, Red Hat, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital.
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This weekend I finished the penultimate feature for the LVFS. Before today, when uploading firmware there was up to a 24h delay before the new firmware would appear in the metadata. This was because there was a cronjob on my home server downloading files every night from the LVFS site, running appstream-builder on them locally and then uploading the metadata back to the site. Not awesome at all.
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Former Googler Kent Overstreet has announced that a long-term project to craft a new Linux file system is at a point where he’d like other developers to pitch in.
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Graphics Stack
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The developers of the open-source Mesa 3D Graphics Library that is currently used by default in numerous, if not all GNU/Linux operating systems, have announced the release of the fifth maintenance version of Mesa 10.6.
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In the earlier days of Wayland, Intel was known for contributing a lot of resources toward this next-generation display technology to unseat the X.Org Server, but these days their contributions have been minimal.
While Wayland 1.9 is coming next month, Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center hasn’t had much of a hand in the development of this new version along with the Weston 1.9 compositor. Wayland’s releases continue to be managed by Bryce Harrington over at Samsung’s open-source group.
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Benchmarks
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Earlier this week I began my Intel Skylake Linux benchmarking by posting some initial results from the HD Graphics 530, the new Intel “Gen9″ graphics. While more Intel Linux HD Graphics 530 results are on the way, completed for this weekend are the initial CPU benchmark results comparing the Core i5 6600K to various other Intel Haswell/Broadwell processors as well as some AMD APUs and CPUs.
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Applications
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Shotcut is an free, open-source video editor app based on the MLT Multimedia Framework which works flawlessly on major operating system (Linux, Mac OSX and Microsoft Windows). Dan Dennedy as main developer shotcut video editor was started shotcut project in 2011, it is amature and stable application; both professionals and armatures use this to fulfill their video editing needs.
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A pure maintenance release 0.1.3 of the RcppDE package arrived on CRAN yesterday. RcppDE is a “port” of DEoptim, a popular package for derivative-free optimisation using differential optimization, to C++. By using RcppArmadillo, the code becomes a lot shorter and more legible.
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Proprietary
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Opera Software, through Tomasz Procków, has informed all users of the Opera web browser that version 33 of the cross-platform software is now in development with lots of new features and numerous bugfixes.
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Redbooth, a company that sells software with task management, videoconferencing, and messaging features, is announcing today that it has built a new native desktop client for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Until now people were only able to use Redbooth in a web browser, or on iOS and Android.
Redbooth is beginning a four-week beta program for the new desktop client. The company will roll it out for all of its customers later.
The company chose to develop desktop apps to meet the needs of some of its large enterprise customers.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Shadowrun: Hong Kong, the third stand-alone game in the new Shadowrun series developed by Harebrained Schemes has been released on Steam, GOG, and Humble Bundle, and a Linux version is also available.
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In 2014 and 2015, Linux became home to a list of popular commercial titles such as the popular Borderlands, Witcher, Dead Island, and Counter Strike series of games. While this is exciting news, what of the gamer on a budget? Commercial titles are good, but even better are free-to-play alternatives made by developers who know what players like.
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The Ubuntu Touch platform needs a lot of apps to attract more users, but it also needs games. There aren’t a lot of complex, 3D titles available, and now TuxRacer is one of them.
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Some users are reporting that Dying Light for the Linux platform no longer starts after the latest patch has been released.
Dying Light is one of the newest triple A games that landed on Linux in the past few months. The performance wasn’t great, and many users complained about the fact that it didn’t seem like a quality port. The developers pushed a few patches out the door, and the quality of the game for Linux users increased tremendously, even if it’s still not up to par with Windows.
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Feral Interactive is a studio that specialized in porting games for the Linux and Mac OS X platforms, and they have already launched a number of titles. The developers are now making an extra effort to make their games work better on AMD hardware.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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The developers of the Enlightenment open-source desktop environment used in numerous GNU/Linux operating systems have announced the release and immediate availability of the ninth maintenance version of Enlightenment DR 0.19.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Tuesday, 25 August 2015. Today KDE releases a feature release of the new version of Plasma 5.
This release of Plasma brings many nice touches for our users such as much improved high DPI support, KRunner auto-completion and many new beautiful Breeze icons. It also lays the ground for the future with a tech preview of Wayland session available. We’re shipping a few new components such as an Audio Volume Plasma Widget, monitor calibration tool and the User Manager tool comes out beta.
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Kdenlive, one of the rare free-as-in-speech video editors, started its life more than 12 years ago using KDE3 libraries. At that time, it was mostly the effort of a single person—coding, fixing bugs, publishing releases, managing the website. There was no real connection with the KDE Community. Good contributions came in from other people, but no team was built, a risky situation. In 2013, the main developer, Jean-Baptiste Mardelle, was not able to work on the project, so it was on hold for several months and had some technical problems. We tracked him down like a “Giant Spy” to get the project running until his return! That taught us a lesson. When Mario Fux presented the KDE Manifesto, it was the exact answer to our problem.
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Reviews
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Zorin OS Zorin OS is a GNU/Linux distribution that attempts to mimic the appearance of the Microsoft Windows operating system. I gave it a go roughly about a year and eight months ago (Zorin OS 8 Core) and my general impression was that it succeed in doing so, meaning that it was quite appealing in the eyes of a Microsoft Windows user.
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So this time around, the grade is going to be much lower. About 6.5/10. SUSE, please, you’re better than that.
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Jacque Montague Raymer is currently in Hong Kong (lucky him) and has just informed Softpedia about the new features implemented in the upcoming Beta build of his MakuluLinux Aero 10 distribution, which uses the Cinnamon desktop environment with a theme that resembles the look of Windows Vista.
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New Releases
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The Solus operating systems is on track for an October 1 release, but its makers do need help from the community. A fundraiser has been put forth by the Solus team, and anyone can contribute.
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The OpenELEC team is proud to announce the fourth beta of OpenELEC 6.0 (v5.95.4)
The most visible change is Kodi 15.1 (Isengard). Beginning with Kodi 15.0 most audio encoder, audio decoder, PVR and visualisation addons are no longer pre-bundled into OpenELEC but can be downloaded from the Kodi addon repo if required. PVR backends such as VDR and TVHeadend will install needed dependencies automatically. For further information on Kodi 15.1 please read http://kodi.tv/kodi-15-1-isengard-maintenance-release/.
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The Mageia Control Centre is a good tool for managing your software installations, your hardware and internet connections.
There haven’t been any crashes since I started using Mageia. The only real issue I had was the lack of sound whilst watching MP4 videos which I can’t give an answer to because it suddenly started working again. (Cue the people saying “you had the volume turned down, didn’t you?”.
So with everything that has been written can I now recommend Mageia to the readers of this blog? Absolutely.
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Screenshots/Screencasts
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Gentoo Family
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The Docker container format makes it easier than ever to run application images on a Linux host, but what if you the application you want to run is an operating system? That’s what Sabayon Linux is now enabling with Docker based images for its upcoming releases. Sabayon is a desktop-friendly version of Gentoo Linux.
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Arch Family
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We are happy to announce our tenth update for Manjaro 0.8.13.
With this we updated most of our kernels, KDE frameworks to 5.13.0, mesa to 10.6.5, virtualbox to 5.0.2, fixed some issues with our steam client and renewed our KDE theme Maia. This new look will be included in our Manjaro 2015.09 release. Some work went into consolekit and the development branch of Calamares.
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat was ranked at 26 on the list, which recognizes a total of 100 companies from around the world. It is the third time Red Hat has been honored by Forbes.
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Legendary investor Warren Buffett advises to be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. One way we can try to measure the level of fear in a given stock is through a technical analysis indicator called the Relative Strength Index, or RSI, which measures momentum on a scale of zero to 100. A stock is considered to be oversold if the RSI reading falls below 30.
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Fedora
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The Fedora Project announced the release of Fedora 22. To celebrate the release a Fedora 22 a release party was organized at HackerEarth, Bangalore on August 01, 2015 with the help of rtnpro and lalatendu.
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Fedora is one of my favourite systems, because provides to me the best tools ever…
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Debian Family
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During Jacob Applebaum’s talk at DebConf15, he noted that Debian should TLS-enable all services, especially the mirrors.
His reasoning was that when a high-value target downloads a security update for package foo, an adversary knows that they are still using a vulnerable version of foo and try to attack before the security update has been installed.
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Debconf is a great opportunity to meet people in real life, to express and share ideas in a different way, and to work on all sort of stuff.
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Regardless, my contributions to Debian were never noteworthy so it’s also not that big of a deal. I just need to close cycles myself and move forward, and the ten year anniversary looked like a significant mark for that.
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Even though Debian has moved to systemd as default a long while ago now, I’ve stayed with sysv as I have somewhat custom setups (self-built trimmed down kernels, separate /usr not pre-mounted by initrd, etc.).
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Derivatives
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Valve is working on SteamOS version based on Debian 8, and it’s making good progress with it. The operating system is still considered a Beta, and it’s not ready for prime time, especially since developers are still making important upgrades.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Wubi was a tool made by Canonical that acted as an Ubuntu installed for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, allowing users to install Ubuntu alongside those OSes. It’s been deprecated for two years, but it somehow “mysteriously” survived on the installation media until now.
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We wrote just a few days ago about a Ubuntu 16.04 Stupendously Hot Charmander concept and a lot of people liked it. Because it’s the work of someone from the community, it’s unlikely that it will be become more than just that, a concept, but it seems to have taken a life of its own.
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Ubuntu will have a dedicated PPA for video drivers, for now only for the Nvidia ones, and third-party developers are already praising the devs for this decision.
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LibreOffice 5.0 was released a week ago, and one of the things mentioned in the announcement was the fact that it’s a cornerstone of the mobile clients for Ubuntu Touch and Android. A developer wanted to clarify what that actually meant.
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Canonical’s Kyle Fazzari wrote an interesting article on his blog informing about the latest work done by him and his team of Ubuntu developers at Canonical for the Ubuntu Core operating system.
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The new OTA update for Ubuntu Touch is almost here, but developers still need to work in order to fix all the problems. Some issues have been recently discovered, and the launch has been pushed back for few days, but it looks like we might get it this week.
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Dustin Kirkland, from Canonical’s Ubuntu Product and Strategy team, told me in a long interview at LinuxCon, “We are really steamrolling towards a GA release of Ubuntu on z Systems. Users of z Series systems are the types that buy hardware for 5 and 10 years and that lines up very well with our LTS of Ubuntu.” He also said they need to do some work on tool chain to ensure they have components like gclib libraries on all of the compilers, including other bits such as Perl, PHP, Ruby, Python, etc., which are needed to build the Ubuntu universe. Users will start seeing that work coming out later this year and alpha/beta builds of Ubuntu in early 2016.
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According to the latest statistics from The Cloud Market, Ubuntu now accounts for 59% of all images on the Amazon EC2 platform. Windows has 8%, and the other distributions of Linux split the remaining 33%.
Ubuntu’s popularity is due to the operating system’s regular updates, easily accessible images, and availability of enterprise-grade support. And, of course, the lack of license fees.
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Desktop apps stores are dead, and their mobile-oriented equivalents are the future. That’s the message from Canonical, which has quietly made clear that it intends to jettison the Software Center in Ubuntu Linux to focus on mobile apps for Snappy Ubuntu Core.
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Canonical’s Nathan Haines has informed us all about the launch of a new event for members of the Ubuntu Linux community, where they can contribute with photographic and illustrative wallpapers, as well as other multimedia content in order to celebrate the release of Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system.
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Today we have the great pleasure of introducing you to a brand-new project developed during the Ubuntu ShenZhen hackathon by Joseph Wang. It is called MrRobot, just like the TV show we taked about in a couple of articles right here on Softpedia.
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On August 24, Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak has sent in his daily report informing us all about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch developers in prepration for the major OTA-6 software update for the mobile operating system.
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We’ve seen them all, Ubuntu running on virtually anything, Ubuntu powering all sorts of devices, from mobile phones to embedded and industrial PCs. Today, we want to show you Ubuntu MATE 15.04 running on Banana Pi BPI-M1.
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We wrote a couple of weeks ago about the poor state of the Ubuntu Software Center, but it looks like other publications took this little too far. No, Canonical is not killing the Ubuntu Software Center, it’s just evolving.
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Canonical just announced that a number of Thunderbird vulnerabilities have been closed in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04, which also updates the version of the browser to 38.2.0.
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After being introduced earlier this year in European countries, the first Ubuntu phones are now been announced in India. A Spanish manufacturer, BQ has unveiled its Aquaris E4.5 and Aquaris E5 HD smartphones in India with the price tag of Rs. 11,999 and Rs. 13,499, respectively. The firm has reported that these handsets will be available in Black and White color variants, exclusively at e-commerce retailer, Snapdeal by the end of the month.
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Flavours and Variants
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Apparently, the creator and lead developer of the Linux Mint project, Clement Lefebvre, already works on the next major release of the acclaimed Cinnamon open-source desktop environment.
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The Logic Supply hardware company, known for selling all sorts of industrial and embedded computers powered by GNU/Linux operating systems like Ubuntu, announced the general availability of a fanless Internet of Things (IoT) gateway.
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Intel showed off a 147 x 140mm “5×5″ SBC form-factor slotted between NUC and Mini-ITX, designed for socketable, LGA-based Intel Celeron and Core processors.
Spurred on by the success of its reference design for 102 x 102mm (4.0 x 4.0-inch) NUC (Next Unit of Computing) mini-PCs, many of which run Linux, Intel showed off a “5×5″ mainboard form-factor at last week’s Intel Developer Forum. Billed as being the “smallest socketed board standard,” 5×5 measures 147 x 140mm (5.79 x 5.51 inches), or 29 percent less than the 170 x 170 (6.7 x 6.7-inch) Mini-ITX.
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Phones
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Android
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Google just launched its Android One initiative in Africa, a move that should help stave off competition and give the company even more mobile control in the region.
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Google’s Street View allows you to see panoramic views of streets from your mobile device, allowing you to “take a walk” along a street so that you can check out a neighborhood. The latest version of Google Maps for Android, which happens to be version 9.13.0, includes a link to a Street View for your destination. All you need to do is click on the thumbnail at the lower left of the screen to get there. The thumbnail will appear when you search for an address inside the app, or with a long press to the map.
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Google finally has a name for the next generation in Android OS, and it’s Marshmallow. While the update itself made its debut at Google’s I/O conference back in May, as reported by The Verge, it was then known as Android M. The new name follows Google’s pattern of naming individual releases after sweets alphabetically, something it has done for year
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Dell entered the Android tablet market late last year by releasing the Venue 8 7000, a device with an understated though appealing form that contains good specs and an interesting camera technology.
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An Android-powered slider may not be the only phone BlackBerry has pegged for Google’s mobile OS. Following the leaks of a device codenamed “Venice” that’s said to be offered in both Android and BB10 versions, a video of the recently announced Passport Silver Edition surfaced. The square QWERTY handset isn’t running BlackBerry’s software, though, it’s sportin’ Lollipop. In the video from Dudu Rocha Tec., a prototype version of the new Passport is equipped with what appears to be stock Android. It’ll be interesting to see if this phone also packs in some of BB10′s notable features like Venice is rumored to do. BlackBerry hasn’t tipped its hand on Android devices just yet, so we’ll have to wait and see if another model of the silver Passport will be the second model that’ll tempt those who prefer Google’s mobile software. BlackBerry is already working with Mountain View on a more secure enterprise version of Android, and a number of reports indicate that the company is planning it’s own Lollipop (or Marshmellow) phones in the near future.
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BlackBerry’s anticipated ‘Venice’ Android slider smartphone has been in the news for weeks now. While the Canadian company is yet to make the handset official, there’s no shortage of leaks about the it.
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Despite there being nearly 400,000 possible combinations of codes, an analysis by Martle Løge of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology of 4,000 of them found that they largely bore huge similarities.
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There is good news on this front, however, as upcoming Android devices won’t be infused with as much bloatware as you’ve grown accustomed to.
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Nokia may technically be non-existent in the mobile market right now as far as new devices are concerned. However, the Finnish manufacturer may already be looking for potential partner companies to help it make a comeback next year.
Based on the buyout deal between Microsoft and Nokia last year, Nokia may not be able to manufacture any mobile devices during that time as part of a non-compete agreement.
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When Google introduced Android Pay back at Google IO 2015 this year at the end of May, it displayed that Google would be taking the mobile payments solutions seriously, but at the time they didn’t give a hard date for a launch of the service. Alongside that, since there has been no confirmed launch date for Android Pay by Google, it means there is no confirmed date for when users can expect to see the app available to download to their devices. A new rumor circulating the internet over this weekend claims that Android Pay will be launching on August 26th, that’s this Wednesday.
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In the announcement, Huawei also boasted that the Honor 7i had a fingerprint sensor. However, unlike smartphones from other brands, the Honor handset’s sensor is neither located in front or at the back, but on its side.
In the report, the sensor can be easily reached by the thumb and can be used to take camera shots on the go. Like other fingerprint scanners, this sensor also enables the user to unlock the phone from sleep. Hopefully, there are more features and functions for this fingerprint sensor.
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Here’s my suggestion… at least on a user level. If you want to use Smart lock to be able to gain quick and easy access to certain aspects of your device (such as the phone), but keep a modicum of security on other aspects (such as email, messages, etc), employ an app locker app (such as AppLock) to lock down the applications that require security.
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With BlackBerry reportedly planning to release its first Android phone in November, the number of leaks surrounding the company’s rumored Venice slider are starting to come in at a furious pace.
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New details about the BlackBerry’s upcoming Venice smartphone have cropped up via the credible tipster Evan Blass of @evleaks fame. According to one of his latest tweets, the BlackBerry Venice will be using BlackBerry 10 as the Android skin.
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A new leak shows an image of the BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition running the Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system. This handset will reportedly be called the “BlackBerry Passport 2.”
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Still (still?) looking for the Android tablet that fits your lifestyle? Maybe LG will capture your imagination, / wallet with a G Pad sequel that cranks up the processor speed (now a quad-core Snapdragon 800) while pairing it with a battery that’s actually smaller (7,400mAh) than its name-based predecessor. It’s now got a sharper 10.1-inch 1,920 x 1,200 display and while there’s an LTE option, there’s only a single color choice: Brilliant bronze. We’ll ignore those with third-place connotations from the outset, but it otherwise sounds like pretty inoffensive Android tablet.
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This Android-based OS is quite probably being developed by Micromax’s Bengaluru team, and 75 people (mostly designers) acquired from Nokia‘s R&D department. Micromax’s co-founder has also mentioned that the developers will have the option to port their apps to the new OS, and that they’ll release far more details about the operating system in the coming months, though he did not provide any specific dates regarding unfortunately. He did, however, say that the first smartphones sporting this new OS will be available by the end of the financial year.
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Android is known for offering users a greater degree of customizability and control than any other mobile operating system, but there are still limitations to what you can do with an Android phone right out of the box. To push beyond those limits, you need to root your device, which means you gain admin rights to it. This somewhat complicated process could void your warranty or, if something goes wrong, break your handset. Are the benefits of having administrative control of your phone worth the risks? Android enthusiasts would give you an unequivocal “yes,” but we’ve gathered a list of pros and cons to help you decide for yourself.
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Can’t get enough of smartwatches? Well, a whole new batch is on its way.
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Android Pay will give millions of people a new way to buy goods and services using their phones.
It was thought the payment system would launch alongside Google’s Marshmallow operating system, expected in October, but a leaked document suggests it could launch as soon as tomorrow.
However, other details in the document have since been proved to be inaccurate so it is unclear how reliable the leak is.
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It took a while for Eric S. Raymond, one of the founding fathers of the open source movement, to prioritize the end user. But now that he has, he wants you to know how easy it can be.
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Ubuntu grabbed a large portion of the headlines today with Canonical’s decision to abandon its paid software for desktops to concentrate on mobile devices. The Everyday Linux User reviewed Mageia 5 and Distrowatch.com has added “Release Model” to their database search options. Elsewhere, Danny Stieben said Linux is so great because it’s Open Source and Munich is consdiering switching back to Linux on some machines because folks said there were no text editors, Skype support, or office suites installed. All this and more in today’ Linux news round-up.
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So if you have a musical bent, try composing an open source folk song. It’s fine to be silly, too. Surprise us with what you make. Share your story and your song(s) right here on Opensource.com
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To be clearer, this term decoupling arises time & time again in relation to the cloud computing model of service-based processing and storage power.
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In a nutshell, collaborative writing is writing done by more than one person. There are benefits and risks of collaborative working. Some of the benefits include a more integrated / co-ordinated approach, better use of existing resources, and a stronger, united voice. For me, the greatest advantage is one of the most transparent. That’s when I need to take colleagues’ views. Sending files back and forth between colleagues is inefficient, causes unnecessary delays and leaves people (i.e. me) unhappy with the whole notion of collaboration. With good collaborative software, I can share notes, data and files, and use comments to share thoughts in real-time or asynchronously. Working together on documents, images, video, presentations, and tasks is made less of a chore.
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Earlier this month, mobile backend-as-a-service provider Parse open sourced its iOS, OS X, and Android SDKs, and will be open sourcing additional SDKs in the future.
Parse, which was acquired by Facebook in 2013, says that its SDKs are used by more than 800 million active app-device pairs per month. By open sourcing those SDKs, Parse believes it can help developers facing challenges similar to those it faced. Specifically, according to Parse, “We’ve had to figure out a way to make a public-facing API easy to understand and use, but continue shipping features fast without breaking any existing functionality. To solve this, we structured our public API as a facade for internal code and functionality that could be consistently changing.”
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I have been recently reminded that while it may be hard enough to discuss the role and importance of communities for Free and Open Source Software, it is equally important to understand the complexities and the challenges that a Free and Open Source Software foundation has to meet.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Mozilla announced major upcoming changes to Firefox add-ons on the official Add-ons Blog today. These changes affect add-on developers and Firefox users alike, and will have a major effect on add-on compatibility and permissions.
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Information security man Clint Ruoho has detailed server-side vulnerabilities in the popular Pocket add-on bundled with Firefox that may have allowed user reading lists to be populated with malicious links.
The since-patched holes were disclosed July 25 and fixed August 17 after a series of botched patches, and gave attackers access to the process running as root on Amazon servers.
Ruho says the bookmarking app functioned as an internal network proxy and subsequent poor design choices meant he could glean information on users including IP address data and the URLs customers saved for later reading. Adding redirects meant he gained access to the etc/passwd file.
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SaaS/Big Data
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It was just last October that I put up a post noting that Mirantis, which has steadily remained a nimble player in the OpenStack cloud computing arena, had nailed down a massive $100 million Series B funding round led by Insight Venture Partners. The financing was billed then as the largest Series B open source investment in history.
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The OpenStack open-source cloud-computing platform stands to gain more enterprise features thanks to a major financial and engineering deal between Intel and Mirantis.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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The latest LibreOffice 5.0 is out for some time and it looks like the feature parity with Microsoft Office 2013 is now a lot better. The official wiki from The Document Foundation that shows off the differences and similarities between the two office suites has been updated, and it paints a pretty accurate picture of the progress that’s being made.
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Today’s release of LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.4 combines Collabora’s latest compatibility, deployment management, and document integrity features with a host of improvements from the LibreOffice community. Redesigned toolbars, menus, rulers, and dialogues make these powerful additions more attractive and efficient to use.
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Business
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Semi-Open Source
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Dan Hill, product lead at Airbnb, wrote the company’s pricing algorithm after the British-based rival startup he cofounded, Crashpadder, was acquired by Airbnb, the short-term rental giant, a few years ago.
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BSD
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OpenBSD, through Dave Wreski, announced the immediate availability for download of the first point release of the OpenSSH 7 and Portable OpenSSH 7 open-source SSH (Secure Shell) protocol 2.0 implementations.
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Project Releases
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Public Services/Government
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Poland’s Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (ARMA) wants to modernise its animal identification and tracking system. The new solution is required to use Zabbix, an open source solution for IT security monitoring.
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Openness/Sharing
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On September 4-5, the Port of Rotterdam is to hold the third edition of what has now become its annual World Port Hackaton. Hackers, programmers, stakeholders and enthusiasts are invited to attend the two-day event and join the teams. Together they will work on concepts and prototypes that deploy new technologies and (open) data, aiming to strengthen the safety, sustainability and competitiveness of the port.
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Open Hardware
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Fully upgradable virtual reality headset, the Open-Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) Hacker Development Kit is now powered by Xilinx FPGAs. Buyers of this kit are provided with modules based platform, positioning and head tracking device, a display, and double lens optics.
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Programming
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Ransomware are a pain for PC and laptop owners because they encrypt PCs/Laptop in return for a ransom which if not paid may permanently lock away users important folders like your images, word and excel files etc. However upto now the malware for Ransomware was only available on Dark Web, but that will change now thanks to a Turkish security researcher, Utku Sen.
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Faster PHP is approaching. PHP 7.0.0, which has been promoted as a much quicker upgrade to the server-side scripting language, has just gone into a release candidate stage, bringing its general availability even closer to fruition.
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I’m writing a replacement for libthread_db. It’s called Infinity.
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That’s from a great little article by Chromatic about modern Perl in the latest issue of PragPub. The article goes in to discuss a number of other strengths of Perl, such as its strong community dedication to testing across numerous architectures, services for understanding package dependencies (that sound like they go beyond anything presently available for Ruby), and legendary standards of documentation.
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Standards/Consortia
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The government has launched a consultation on how best to proceed with several open standards proposals that will support inter-connected systems and more cost efficient digital transformation across Whitehall.
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Open policy making, Open Data and international cooperation are three pillars that UK Minister for the Cabinet Office Matt Hancock wants to be included in the 2015 UK Action Plan, according to a speech given by the minister to mark the launch of a new Open Government Partnership (OGP) action plan (Transcript is accessible on the gov.uk website).
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Adobe’s Flash, hated the world over for slowing down computers, containing more holes in security than swiss cheese and stubbornly being the video carrier of choice until recently, is dying.
Video players are migrating to other systems, even if Microsoft’s Silverlight isn’t much better. HTML5-based video and animations are becoming mainstream, and uploaders and other more advanced web-based features can now be replaced with code that doesn’t rely on Flash.
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Back when Steve Jobs launched the first salvo in the war against Adobe Flash, declaring in no uncertain terms that the iPhone would never support the ubiquitous Web media framework, the anti-Apple crowd was much amused. No one is laughing now — least of all the many IT vendors that have built their management interfaces in Flash, for whom the death of Flash poses huge challenges.
At the time, Jobs seemed to be climbing out on a limb. But eventually, everyone came to see how painful it was to support Flash on mobile devices, and how much better HTML5 was at delivering the same basic functionality. Developers began skipping over Flash and going with alternative technologies so that they could support mobile and desktop clients with the same codebase.
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Jeff Lawson is a walking, talking example of the rise of the developer.
Today, he’s the CEO of API economy darling Twilio, a cloud platform that offers API-accessible telecom services to marquee customers like Home Depot and Uber. But 20 years ago, he was another computer science student who saw the power of the Internet and wanted to try his hand at building Web applications.
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Hardware
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I often get teased for taking so much tech hardware with me on trips—right up until the Wi-Fi at the hotel, conference center or rented house fails. I’m currently on vacation with my family and some of our friends from Florida, and our rental home has a faulty Wi-Fi router. Thankfully, I have a bag full of goodies for just this occasion.
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Health/Nutrition
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Local doctors are in the eye of a storm swirling for the past three years over whether corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides is a source of prosperity, as companies claim, or of birth defects and illnesses
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Security
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One of the best kept secrets at this week’s LinuxCon was the presence of Linus Torvalds. I’ve never not seen Linus at any of the LinuxCons I’ve attended since 2009, whether in Europe or North America, but no matter who you asked, the answer was, “He’s not here.” This morning, though, a little bird sang that the surprise guest for the upcoming keynote was none other than Torvalds.
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During the LinuxCon and CloudOpen events that took place last week in Seattle, North America, Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative announced that they were developing a new free Badge Program and that they wanted to know the open source community’s opinion on the matter.
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Some days it seems like the Internet is about as secure as an over-filled diaper. There’s always crap leaking from seamy businesses, such as Ashley Madison; the Federal government, OPM and IRS; and even security companies like LastPass. One of the weakest security links is the connection between you and unsecured web sites. Now almost a year since it was proposed, Let’s Encrypt is almost ready to enable any Internet site to protect its visitors with free Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates.
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Imagine it’s 1995, and you’re about to put your company’s office on the Internet. Your security has been solid in the past—you’ve banned people from bringing floppies to work with games, you’ve installed virus scanners, and you run file server backups every night. So, you set up the Internet router and give everyone TCP/IP addresses. It’s not like you’re NASA or the Pentagon or something, so what could go wrong?
That, in essence, is the security posture of many modern automobiles—a network of sensors and controllers that have been tuned to perform flawlessly under normal use, with little more than a firewall (or in some cases, not even that) protecting it from attack once connected to the big, bad Internet world. This month at three separate security conferences, five sets of researchers presented proof-of-concept attacks on vehicles from multiple manufacturers plus an add-on device that spies on drivers for insurance companies, taking advantage of always-on cellular connectivity and other wireless vehicle communications to defeat security measures, gain access to vehicles, and—in three cases—gain access to the car’s internal network in a way that could take remote control of the vehicle in frightening ways.
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In addition to unforgettable life experiences and personal growth, one thing I got out of DEF CON 23 was a copy of POC||GTFO 0×08 from Travis Goodspeed. The coolest article I’ve read so far in it is “Deniable Backdoors Using Compiler Bugs,” in which the authors abused a pre-existing bug in CLANG to create a backdoored version of sudo that allowed any user to gain root access. This is very sneaky, because nobody could prove that their patch to sudo was a backdoor by examining the source code; instead, the privilege escalation backdoor is inserted at compile-time by certain (buggy) versions of CLANG.
That got me thinking about whether you could use the same backdoor technique on javascript. JS runs pretty much everywhere these days (browsers, servers, arduinos and robots, maybe even cars someday) but it’s an interpreted language, not compiled. However, it’s quite common to minify and optimize JS to reduce file size and improve performance. Perhaps that gives us enough room to insert a backdoor by abusing a JS minifier.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Two light planes have crashed at an airshow in Switzerland, killing one of the pilots.
Swiss police said they were two of three C-42b aircraft from Germany, flying in formation. They crashed after they touched in mid-air on Sunday morning.
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For some writers, imperial freedom floats all boats (and not just the capitalists’). They thank hegemonic powers for liberalism itself, asserting that imperial naval (or air) power deployed overseas leaves domestic liberalism unharmed. By contrast, standing armies are said to threaten domestic liberty. Yet embracing imperial means, we might expect very thin liberalism indeed; with Machiavelli’s “republic for increase” walking the earth, we might at least speak frankly of “free trade imperialism.”
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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Saturday there had been “several shots” before the Moroccan was subdued by the passengers, who included three Americans.
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North and South Korea reached agreement early on Tuesday to end a standoff involving an exchange of artillery fire that had pushed the divided peninsula into a state of heightened military tension.
Under the accord reached after midnight on Tuesday morning after more than two days of talks, North Korea expressed regret over the recent wounding of South Korean soldiers in a landmine incident and Seoul agreed to halt anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts, both sides said.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Prof. Wolff joins RT News to discuss Soros coal investmens. Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has invested more than $2 million in US coal giants Peabody Energy and Arch Coal despite having once called the coal industry the “lethal bullet” of climate change.
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It’s a well-worn truth of our current, globally warming times that the glaciers are melting, but Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier is putting the rest to shame. The glacier, already one of the world’s fastest-melting, just lost what may have been its biggest chunk of ice to date.
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Finance
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Earlier today, as AAPL stock was plummeting and had lost a whopping $75 billion in market cap, dropping as low as $92/share, CNBC’s Jim Cramer pulled a rabit out of a hat, or in this case a previously undisclosed email out of his inbox.
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A demonstration in Helsinki opposing the current government’s proposed cuts to social services drew thousands of people on Saturday. Although the Helsinki Police say the event proceeded peacefully, they detained nine people that were blocking roads and refused to make way for traffic even after the march had reached its final destination.
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Prof. Wolff discusses with Jerry Robinson the dark side of capitalism on Follow The Money Daily podcast.
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This global public consultation, initiated by the German government, started in April 2015. It aims at creating a national dialogue on the quality of life in Germany. “The German government aims to identify yardsticks that can be used to pinpoint the many different facets of the quality of life”, according to a statement on the government website. Now members of the government are directly participating in the debate.
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Chinese market suffer worst day in eight years and Russia’s rouble falls to all time low in chaotic trading which has seen more than €5 trillion off global stocks in two weeks
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The Chinese market slumped 8.45 per cent on Monday trading as a terrifying selloff raised fears that Black Monday could spread to European and US markets.
The Shanghai Composite index, China’s most important index of shares, dropped 8.45 per cent, erasing gains made this year, while the tech-focussed Shenzhen Composite also slid 7.6 per cent.
Bank and energy stocks were worst hit, but the falling price of commodities such as oil and gas has also weighed on markets.
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The FTSE fell below 6,000 for first time since 1 January 2013 as the meltdown in China accelerated with the Shanghai composite crumbling by 8.5%.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The Oscar-winning director of Crash, who left the church in 2009, has criticised journalists for failing to address the Mission: Impossible star’s beliefs
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The stock market closed a wild Monday with the Dow Jones industrial average down over 500 points, setting off fresh fears about the health of the global economy.
The Wall Street drama quickly spread to the 2016 campaign trail and Washington, as flashbacks to the 2008 financial crisis drew responses from the political world.
Renewed concern about the strength of China’s economy kicked off a brutal opening, as the Dow opened down more than 1,000 points in the first minutes of trading. While the index largely erased those gains later in the day, it still ended Monday down 588 points, adding to large losses suffered the two days prior.
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Labour leadership candidates quizzed on BBC 5 live, Andy Burnham accused of making sexist remark and Yvette Cooper attacks Jeremy Corbyn
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Censorship
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Twitter has shut down a network of sites dedicated to archiving deleted tweets from politicians around the world. The sites — collectively known as Politwoops — were overseen by the Open State Foundation (OSF), which reported that Twitter suspended their API access on Friday, August 21st. Twitter reportedly told the OSF that its decision was the result of “thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors,” and that the social media site didn’t distinguish between politicians and regular users.
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On Friday night, August 21, Open State Foundation was informed by Twitter that it suspended API access to Diplotwoops and all remaining Politwoops sites in 30 countries. After Twitter suspended API access for the US version of Politwoops for displaying deleted tweets of US lawmakers on May 15, Open State Foundation was still running Politwoops in 30 countries, including the European parliament.
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Malaysia’s new Communications and Multimedia Minister has proposed amending the country’s Internet laws to force news websites to register with the government. Human rights groups have been quick to denounce the proposal as a threat to free speech.
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Hey, remember when this designer made a whole bunch of amazing internet-themed World War II propaganda parodies? Well, one of those just cropped up in the actual military, albeit not for the first time. In an online bulletin earlier this month, the US Air Forces Central Command repurposed the iconic “loose lips sink ships” slogan to warn service members about the potential dangers of social media. As you might have guessed from the photo above, it’s now “loose tweets destroy fleets.”
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Privacy
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Amazon has decided to stop accepting Adobe Flash ads starting next month. The move, which goes into effect on September 1, affects not just the company’s website, but its whole advertising platform.
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The crime itself was ordinary: Someone smashed the back window of a parked car one evening and ran off with a cellphone. What was unusual was how the police hunted the thief.
Detectives did it by secretly using one of the government’s most powerful phone surveillance tools — capable of intercepting data from hundreds of people’s cellphones at a time — to track the phone, and with it their suspect, to the doorway of a public housing complex. They used it to search for a car thief, too. And a woman who made a string of harassing phone calls.
In one case after another, USA TODAY found police in Baltimore and other cities used the phone tracker, commonly known as a stingray, to locate the perpetrators of routine street crimes and frequently concealed that fact from the suspects, their lawyers and even judges. In the process, they quietly transformed a form of surveillance billed as a tool to hunt terrorists and kidnappers into a staple of everyday policing.
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A BRACE OF LAW FIRMS ARE BEHIND A class action lawsuit against Ashley Madison because it did not do enough to protect personal and private information.
The class action case, from two Canadian law firms, argues that the hookup stations failed users by not protecting their information and for not deleting it after a fee had been paid to ensure its deletion. It seeks $578m.
According to the New York Post the lawyers want some satisfaction for a cluster of punters who are currently wearing outraged expressions and regretting joining a site that does what it does in the way that it does it.
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It’s already clear that, despite handling very sensitive data, Ashley Madison did not have the best security. Hackers managed to obtain everything from source code to customer data to internal documents, and the attackers behind the breach, who call themselves the Impact Team, made a mockery of the company’s defenses in an interview.
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Civil Rights
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In early March, Russian prosecutors launched spot inspections of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) across the country. Hundreds of groups have already been targeted, from human rights NGOs to environmental groups to health-care associations. Formally, prosecutors are checking compliance with a new law forcing organizations that receive foreign funding and are deemed to engage in “political activity” to register as “foreign agents” — a derogatory term that critics say aims to stigmatize NGOs. Russian authorities say the legislation, which entered into force in November 2012, aims at increasing the transparency and accountability of NGOs. But the audits have drawn international condemnation and raised fears of an unprecedented crackdown on civil society. The number of NGOs subjected to such inspections is difficult to assess due to the absence of an official registry. Most are still waiting for the inspection findings. RFE/RL is closely monitoring developments and will regularly update this chart and map.
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Black’s interest in the air traffic controller is not insignificant: testimony by “Carlos the Spanish air traffic operator” is one of the earliest versions of the MH17 catastrophe touted by RT and other Kremlin-aligned media, which were immediately exposed as fake. There’s no evidence that WikiSpooks is Kremlin-funded or in any way aligned, but its motivation is explicitly expressed in their mission statement: any fact promoted by the “official narrative” via the “commercially-controlled media” is inherently false and must be disputed. Hence, to WikiSpooks and other similar websites, the position that Russia or Russia-backed rebels shot down MH17 is false simply because it is endorsed by the American government and must be confronted, even if it leads to a jumble of contradictory versions of the same event, based on spurious evidence.
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…big companies offered paid holidays, guaranteed pensions related to your final salary, sickness benefit and recognised trade unions. Above all, they offered the chance of a career and personal progression…
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Lisa Simeone posts at TSA News Blog on some of what’s been revealed through the docs released in the request by Sai, “an intrepid, indefatigable young man.” As Simeone writes, “He has been forced to tangle with the TSA more than once, when the agency’s workers have bullied, harassed, and illegally detained him.” Chasing illegal movie downloaders proves an unprofitable exercise
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Google joined hands with Facebook to try and prevent the Internet and Mobile Association of India, which represents some of the largest Internet companies in India, from taking a stand that counters Zero Rating. According to emails exchanged between IAMAI’s Government Relations committee members, of which MediaNama has copies, Vineeta Dixit, a member of Google’s Public Policy and and Government Relations team, strongly pushed for the removal of any mention of Zero Rating from the IAMAI’s submission, as a response to the Department of Telecom’s report on Net Neutrality. Please note that Google hasn’t responded to our queries, despite multiple reminders.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Danish police have arrested two men alleged to be the operators of sites related to the open-source program Popcorn Time, which adds a user-friendly front-end to a BitTorrent client to make the whole process of finding, downloading, and viewing video torrents extremely simple. The two domains, Popcorntime.dk and Popcorn-time.dk, have now been shut down, but copies on the Wayback Machine show that both were merely information sites, and neither offered material that infringed on copyrights, nor any version of the Popcorn Time software itself. Both sites warned users about potential copyright infringement issues.
The men are accused of “distributing knowledge and guides on how to obtain illegal content online,” as TorrentFreak reports, and have apparently pleaded guilty. Moreover, distributing information is considered such a serious violation of Danish copyright law that “they could face punishment under section 299b of the penal code—offenses which carry a maximum prison term of six years.” That seems an extraordinarily harsh and disproportionate upper limit for merely explaining how to use a program, just because copyright is involved in some way.
A similar case has already been heard in the UK, where it was found that sites offering downloads of the Popcorn Time software contributed to the copyright infringement that results from its use. In April of this year, the English High Court ordered a number of sites to be blocked for this reason. However, in that case the sites enabled the program to be downloaded directly, whereas in Denmark, the accused simply offered basic information about how the software worked and could be used, together with links to other sites where the program could be obtained.
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Millions of users lost access to their personal files when Megaupload was raided, and after nearly four years their files are still stashed away in a Virginia warehouse. The company that owns the servers wants to get rid of them, so former Megaupload user Kyle Goodwin has once again asked the court if he can have his files back.
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It has been a bad week for companies wanting to build businesses around make money from illegal movie downloaders. Last Friday saw an Australian judge refuse Voltage Pictures the rigth to send downloaders of Dallas Buyers Club a letter demanding an undisclosed payment. Justice Nye Perram decided that Voltage and its lawyers, were engaging in “speculative invoicing”, a practice that is a form of legal blackmail: “pay us a large enough sum so that we don’t take you to court where you will possibly face an even larger but unspecified fine”.
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Discussions about copyright reform in Australia are now entering their fourth year, and the longer they go on, the worse the proposals become. That’s in part because there has been a change of government in the interim, and the present Attorney-General, George Brandis, has made it clear he’s firmly on the side of copyright companies, and indifferent to the Australian public’s concerns or needs in a digital world.
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Anti-piracy campaigns come in all shapes and sizes and usually aim to prod the public into action. To capture the imagination they are often provocative, but just how far is too far? A new campaign for Virgin Radio is currently testing those boundaries to an extent rarely – if ever – seen before.
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