Category Archive

Infamous government hacker Edward Snowden believes open source is a fundamentally better way to use technology compared to proprietary technology that he believes disempowers users. Snowden was interviewed at the open source cloud computing project OpenStack Summit in Boston via video from a non-descript location and spoke about his personal use of open source technology. In 2013 Snowden, then a … Read More

GNOME Project’s Matthias Clasen just informed us a few moments ago about the general availability of the GNOME 3.24.2 desktop environment, the second and last scheduled maintenance update to the current stable series. The GNOME 3.24 desktop environment was launched on March 22, 2017, and it already received a first point release, GNOME 3.24.1, a month ago, on April 12. … Read More

Have you launched an open source project or are you considering doing so? Making a success of your project can involve everything from evaluating licenses to community outreach. The good news is that there are many free resources that can help you advance and protect your project. A recent webinar called “Best Practices for Starting an Open Source Project” focused … Read More

Input Club’s mechanical keyboards aren’t just about producing exceptional products. They’re also proof that open source can solve any problem. Keyboards are how we connect to our computers and very often to the rest of the world. The layout of keys is a physical representation of the languages we speak, and this simple tool gives us a limitless ability to communicate. A … Read More

At its Build 2017 developer conference today, Microsoft announced that Ubuntu has arrived in the Windows Store. The company also revealed that it is working with Fedora and Suse to bring their distributions to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10 — they will eventually come to the Windows Store as well. At Build 2016 last year, Microsoft … Read More

Intel has just patched a vulnerability which has been open and exploitable in all its enterprise targeted Core processors – for the last nine years. Since 2008 Intel’s business-focussed PC processors have shipped with Active Management Technology (AMT), Intel Standard Manageability (ISM) and Small Business Technology (SBT) features – all useful features for remote management. However, these powerful features could … Read More

Cambridge, United Kingdom – May 4, 2017 – Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, is pleased to announce a new major release of its flagship enterprise-ready cloud document suite – Collabora Online 2.1, including many new features and improvements. Collabora Online is a powerful LibreOffice-based online office suite allowing you to access document editing through … Read More

For the first time ever, Red Hat will align its flagship operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), development and release dates with a third-party: Amazon Web Services (AWS). This alliance underlines just how important the cloud is to Red Hat as it moves from being a Linux distributor first to being a cloud services provider first. This move also … Read More

Linus Torvalds has returned to an animal-themed nickname for Kernel 4.11. After 4.10 was named “Happy Anniversary” for a brief time in its development cycle, 4.11 is Fearless Coyote, a name carried over from version 4.10-rc6. And, after spending an extra week on rc8, Torvalds remarked how the last leg of the development of 4.11 “contained smaller fixes […] but … Read More

Linus Torvalds has given the world version 4.11 of the Linux kernel. “So after that extra week with an rc8, things were pretty calm,” Torvalds posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, adding “I’m much happier releasing a final 4.11 now. So what do we get this time around? Among other things, Linux is now better at hot-swapping solid state … Read More

There’s a lot of room for improvement in file sync and share, and the open source community is in the ideal position to add the killer features we’re all waiting for. The file sync and share movement started over a decade ago, led by the likes of Dropbox, Google Drive, and others, and became popular very fast. The killer feature … Read More

To understand why it is so difficult to defend computers from even moderately capable hackers, consider the case of the security flaw officially known as CVE-2017-0199. The bug was unusually dangerous but of a common genre: it was in Microsoft software, could allow a hacker to seize control of a personal computer with little trace, and was fixed April 11 … Read More

The popular image of online dangers is scary bad guys trying to steal our stuff. This image is accurate if you remember to include unfettered corporate interests as the scary bad guys. Our protections against our good friends the telcos and cable companies have never been strong, and now they’re nearly non-existent. Repealing Broadband Privacy Rules, Congress Sides with the … Read More

Given the increasing malware attacks against Linux-based IoT devices, there is growing interest in integrity protection schemes, as well as system update mechanisms that support over-the-air (OTA) field upgrades. At the recent Embedded Linux Conference, Patrick Ohly, a software engineer at Intel GmbH, Germany, who works on the Yocto Project and the IoT Reference OS Kit for Intel(r) architecture, surveyed … Read More

The ransomware that drove last year’s boom in file-encrypting malware is back, and this time it’s even harder to detect. Ransomware cost its victims some $1bn during 2016, with Locky one of the most widespread variants, infecting organisations across the globe. However, the start of 2017 saw a sudden decline in the distribution of Locky, to such an extent that … Read More