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EFF is evaluating the feasibility of offering a prize for the first usable, secure, and private end-to-end encrypted communication tool. We believe a prize based on objective usability metrics (such as the percentage of users who were able to install and start using the tool within a few minutes, and the percentage who survived simulated impersonation or man-in-the-middle attacks) might be an effective way to determine which project or projects are best delivering communication security to vulnerable user communities; to promote and energize those tools; and to encourage interaction between developers, interaction designers and academics interested in this space.

I had a chance to catch up with David A. Wheeler, a long-time leader in advising and working with the US government on issues related to open source software. As early as the late 1990s, David was demonstrating why open source software was integral to the US goverment IT architecture, and his personal webpage is a frequently cited source on open standards, open source software, and computer security. In this interview, we explore the current state of use of open source software by the US government, the challenges of the Federal acquisition system, and what he's excited about as he looks ahead for open source and government.

Google's Project Tango is a platform for Android phones and tablets designed to track the full 3-dimensional motion of the device as you hold it, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment around it. The devices track themselves with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and collect 3D points with a built-in depth-sensing camera. Project Tango is progressing at a fast pace thanks to many open source tools that facilitate the use of the 3D data.  Only 200 of these devices have been made available to early testers and developers, and we had the luck of getting two of them at Kitware.

This phone was launched today with CyanogenMod pre-installed, unlocked bootloader, and you won't void your warranty if you access root. Check out the impressive hardware specs... 2.5GHz quad-core, 3GB memory and a 13 Mpixel compound-lens camera.

Every generation since the beginning of human existence has passed its value system, principles, methodologies, and skillsets on to the next generation. This passing on of information within cultures has been followed by the development of a systematic approach to learning techniques. Formal structures were created throughout the world to learn and apply these skillsets.

The “BB.Suit,” a wearable wireless router garment prototype created by Dutch design house By Borre, runs OpenWRT Linux on a TP-Link router board. Last month at South-by-Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, Dutch fashion designer Borre Akkersdijk unveiled his wearable computer called the BB.Suit. While most wearables are eye- or wrist-wear, the BB.Suit is an actual […]

Expunging the Heartbleed bug from vulnerable computers and gadgets is likely to take months, according to a leading vuln research firm. The cautionary assessment by Secunia comes as more and more products are judged to be vulnerable to the infamous OpenSSL security flaw.

Some cloud storage providers who hope to be on the leading edge of cloud security adopt a "zero-knowledge" policy in which says it is impossible for customer data to be snooped on. But a recent study by computer scientists at Johns Hopkins University is questioning just how secure those zero knowledge tactics are.

A targeted attack against an unnamed organization exploited the Heartbleed OpenSSL vulnerability to hijack web sessions conducted over a virtual private network connection.

A round up of weekly events in Fedora.

I’ve been using Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS), for the websites I manage for over four years now. Though there may be some quirks in working with an open source product, I cannot imagine doing it any other way. Hesitations people may have when considering whether to use an open source product probably include the fact that you can’t just submit a helpdesk ticket when you run into a problem and expect a response within two business days. Most of the time, no single company or entity exists behind an open source project, like with a proprietary system. Instead open source has communities.

Monster phablet rooted at the factory for your pleasure Review While most Chinese smartphone OEMs started life making cheap tat and then slowly began moving upmarket, Oppo has taken a slightly different tack. Its devices have been fairly high-end from the get-go and the N1, initially released running Android 4.2 back in September 2013, made quite a splash.…

The following is an adapted transcription from the keynote address given at the 2014 SIGCSE conference by Hadi Partovi, founder of Code.org.   Thanks for the warm welcome! Last year, SIGCSE (Special Interested Group on Computer Science Education) was a week after our launch. It questioned our motives, and existence. We made a video, and that that video got 12 million views, so I built an organization around it.

The future is here, or at least the next five years of it for Ubuntu fans. Canonical has released Ubuntu 14.04 Long-Term Support (LTS) release, meaning the Linux shop will be supporting this distro until 2019. Significantly, this is likely the first look that more conservative users will get at the direction Ubuntu has been pursuing since the release of 12.04 back in 2012. As I noted in the beta review, Ubuntu LTS releases understandably tend toward the conservative end of the spectrum when it comes to new features. You're not going to see Unity 8 in this release, nor will there be any trace of the Mir graphics stack which Canonical is hoping will one day support both its desktop and mobile offerings. However, for those who only upgrade when LTS releases come around, the picture is much different. The changes since 12.04 (the last LTS release) are significant and – apart from one major exception – very welcome.

Can a cheap, Linux-powered black box from a cloud storage specialist offer the reassurance of privacy in a post-Snowden world of paranoia?

Cloudproject and Elam Kitchen have launched a line of Android-based home furnishings and appliances that feature transparent multitouch displays. Embedded technology firm Cloudproject Generation S.r.l. and Elam Kitchen of the Tisettanta Group have begun shipping the first in their series of computers that offer transparent displays built into windows and mirrors. The two Italian firms […]

Do you never miss a new strip from xkcd? Read webcomics regularly? Or would you like to back up all the strips of your favorite website? Hopefully, the open source community has the solution: a command line program to download all your favorite webcomics from your terminal. Before we begin, remember that you should keep […]Continue reading... The post How to download webcomics from the command line on Linux appeared first on Xmodulo. Related FAQs: How to access Amazon S3 cloud storage from command line in Linux How to download YouTube playlist in Linux How to sync Google Drive from the command line on Linux How to check Internet speed from the command line on Linux How to access Dropbox from the command line in Linux

When I began my current job at Algoma University as the systems librarian, I really had no idea what I was getting into. Despite a decade in library information technology (IT), I felt nervous over my primary task: to help develop and administer Evergreen, an open source library catalogue system. The problem? My experience was almost totally in the world of Windows.

This year I attended my first GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California (it took place the week after the Game Developers Conference). Hosted by NVIDIA, the event featured a range of talks from a large array of market segments including automotive, motion picture, gaming, scientific, cloud, system integrators, and startups.

Global Product Security has determined that the following products have used OpenSSL cryptographic libraries which have been reported as vulnerable to CVE-2014-0160. Oracle has issued fixes for these products. Further mitigation instructions required to prevent the exploitation of this vulnerability may also be provided at a later time.