Conky, or call it an "Active Wallpaper", is an application that can display dynamic information on what's going on with the computer on our desktop.

Conky is highly configurable in its looks, in what and how it displays, whether text, bar, graph or special iconic fonts and how often and where-about on the screen, in all three dimensions.

Brightest Flashlight Free, available in the Google Play store, has been downloaded over 50 million times, but a complaint from the FTC reveals that the seemingly innocent app transmits “precise location” data to third-party advertisers alongside a unique device identifier.

  These are my reflections on CityCamp Minnesota 2013, which occurred at St. Thomas in Minneapolis on November 9, 2013.  What was it, and what worked well? CityCamp MN 2013, hosted by Open Twin Cities and E-Democracy.org, was an event for civic hackers, open data nerds and advocates, and social justice-minded individuals in the region. Saturday was an open space technology-style unconference event. It was brilliantly planned. While I’ve never been to an unconference before, I was impressed by the way it generally fostered a sense of community, conversation, and connection. This stands in opposition to most conferences I attend (and that is a pretty decent number), which primarily serve to foster a few connections in the hallways between tedious and oftentimes irrelevant-to-me presentations.

Clement Lefebvre has announced a minutes ago, December 6, the immediate availability for download of the OEM installation images of the recently released Linux Mint 16 operating system.

MakuluLinux 4.0 is a Debian-based distribution providing a sleek, smooth and stable user experience on any computer. It includes pre-installed multimedia codecs, device drivers and software for everyday use.

The Netrunner Team releases Netrunner 13.12 RC – 32bit for immediate download and testing.

The oddly-named Wayland Live CD environment for checking out the next-generation Linux display stack has been updated. The Wayland Live CD ships with many enabled tool-kits, the latest Wayland code, Orbital and Hawaii support, KDE Frameworks Wayland programs, and other new native Wayland applications.

The final and stable release of the Almanah 0.11 diary software for the GNOME desktop environment has been officially announced a few days ago, on December 2, 2013.

The quantum crypto business is hardly crowded, but ID Quantique is hoping to set itself apart with a 100 Gbps-capable unit.

While Google Chrome and other modern web-browsers -- even modern versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer -- support separate processes between the user-interface and other rendering tasks, notably missing from the threading party has been Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla developers, however, have been working towards a multi-process Firefox.

Today in Open Source: Valve joins the Linux Foundation. Plus: openSUSE 13.1 review, and a screenshot tour of Tiny Core 5.1.

Humble Bundle presents the Humble Jumbo Bundle. The games included are listed.

Marvell unveiled a more secure, graphics-rich Armada 1500 Plus SoC for Android 4.2.2 smart TVs “with Google services,” but never mentioned Google TV. Welcome to the post Google TV world.

Google entered the cloud infrastructure business this week, but they joined a crowded field. Just because they're Google doesn't guarantee success. They will have to earn their customers just like every other vendor in the space. But worth mentioning it does allow you to use any out of the box version of Linux for an OS.

The latest FreeBSD code (for 10.0) supports not only Intel KMS but also the open-source AMD Radeon driver ported from the Linux kernel. This Intel/Radeon KMS support has since trickled into DragonFlyBSD and other BSD platforms.

Matthew Garrett has written an insightful blog post about security issues pertaining to the Linux kernel's kexec functionality that could defeat any security benefits provided by Secure Boot. Using kexec could even allow you to boot a Windows kernel...

In an interview with Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, VentureBeat got a bird’s-eye view of the future of the open-source operating system for 2014. We also addressed the controversial issues of government spying and “backdoors” -- those nefarious windows into our personal online lives that the public recently discovered in most of the services we use every day.

Back on Halloween, when we ran our article on Ross Gardler’s presentation on “Microsoft and Open Source” at the All Things Open conference, we posted a poll that asked, “Is Microsoft committed to open source?” Guess what? You answered “no,” as in “nope,” “nadda” or “ain’t no way, baby.”

In Linux, there are several ways to access Google Calendar natively, such as by using email client plugins (e.g., Evolution or Thunderbird) or calendar apps (e.g., Sunbird or Rainlendar). These solutions, however, typically involve installing unnecessarily bulky software which you will probably not need. If all you want is to access and get reminded by Google Calendar natively on Linux, then you can consider Google Calendar command line interface (or gcalcli), which is much more light-weight. Even better for Linux desktop, you can use gcalcli together with Conky, so that you can integrate Google Calendar into your desktop theme transparently.

After Amazon tipped plans to build delivery drones, hacker Samy Kamkar unveiled a SkyJack drone designed to hijack them with an AR.Drone and a Raspberry Pi. When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos went on 60 Minutes last Sunday to show a prototype of a drone Amazon plans to use for a new Prime Air delivery service, […]

Researchers have uncovered a database where over two million stolen login credentials are being stored. Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo accounts are in the mix.

The nice folks at Usenix clued me in to this-- enter your email address(es) to see if you have any compromised accounts. The information is compiled from public records, and I can't promise that it's complete, but it should be useful. Adobe is the latest big breach, and it has information on several others including Stratfor and Yahoo.

Hashtags like #techdirt are not only an indispensable part of Twitter, but are also increasingly to be found elsewhere as a handy way of flagging up key topics in a compact and recognizable way. Given the monopoly-mad world we inhabit, it's something of a miracle that they weren't patented. Business Insider points out that Chris Messina, the former Google employee who came up with the idea in the first place, has explained precisely why he didn't try to patent them. The first reason is practical:

Vincent Hardy is Adobe's Director of Engineering for the Web Platform. He uses CSS to power projects that improve open standards for the web. He says there's nothing he hates about CSS—though the lack of variables and scoping bugged him for a long time—and is particularly enamored with the way CSS has organically developed into a robust technology. Sun Microsystems is where Vincent Hardy got his start in web standards and open source. In this interview, he tells me what lessons he learned there and how open standards are growing at Adobe.

The multiple monitor experience on Linux traditionally was very arcane and difficult; it would involve editing text configuration errors, trial-and-error, picking the right Linux GPU driver, and various other steps to get a working multi-monitor desktop. Since then there's been RandR 1.2+ and major improvements to all of the important Linux desktop graphics drivers -- both open and closed-source. How is the Linux multi-monitor now when using a modern distribution and the latest graphics cards that can drive four monitors simultaneously? Let's find out! Up for testing today are NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards using both the open and closed-source drivers while using DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI displays.

Amahi is an open source software that runs on a dedicated PC as a central computer for your home. It handles your entertainment, storage, and computing needs. You can store, organize and deliver your recorded TV shows, videos and music to media devices in your network. Share them locally or safely around the world. And it's expandable with a multitude of one-click install apps.

Over 280 attendees representing 177 mentoring organizations gathered for a two-day, code-munity extravaganza celebrating the conclusion of Google Summer of Code with the annual Mentor Summit held at Google in Mountain View, California.

The most dramatic outcome of the Oracle v. Google trial in spring 2012 wasn't anything the jury said; it was US District Judge William Alsup's finding that programming APIs can't be copyrighted. That sweeping ruling made the trial a total win for Google, and Alsup's opinion (PDF) is strongly supported by app developers who don't want to face legal threats for using simple "declaring code."

Not everyone sees it that way, however. Today it appears that Google's victory may be in danger. Oracle has appealed the case, and initial reports from both Bloomberg and Reuters on the oral arguments held this morning suggest the three-judge panel may be leaning against Google's position.

So this is nothing spectacular, but the thing about this, is that all the tools needed to pull this off are available for free. In fact, the SkyJack software, written by Samy Kamkar, is hosted on GitHub.

Newly anointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said this week that it would be OK for Internet service providers to charge Netflix and other companies for a faster lane to consumers.

Wheeler's stance is surprising given that it appears to contradict the FCC's Open Internet Order, passed under his predecessor in 2010. That order, which sets out the country's network neutrality rules, says that fixed broadband providers may not "unreasonably discriminate" against any type of traffic. The order specifically calls out pay-for-play arrangements as being potential violations.