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Lego began shipping its hackable, Linux-based Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot for $350. Texas Instruments revealed that the robot is powered by its 300MHz ARM9-based Sitara AM1808 system-on-chip and CC2560 Bluetooth chipset. As promised a month ago, Lego is now shipping its Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot kit for $350. In conjunction with the release of the […]

A couple years ago, we were disappointed to see a judge take the technologically wrong stance that data transmitted over WiFi is not a "radio communication," thereby making sniffing of unencrypted WiFi signals potentially a form of wiretapping. Indeed, based on that, the court eventually ruled that Google's infamous WiFi sniffing could be a violation of wiretap laws. This is wrong on so many levels... and tragically, an appeals court has now upheld the lower court's ruling.

Momentum seems to be building in Congress to tackle patent reform. From an open source perspective, any reform that reduces the risk and expense of patent lawsuits is surely a good thing. But the reforms under current discussion so far have largely been focused on the problem of NPEs (non-practicing entities) and have not directly addressed the problem of software patents. Are the two issues best viewed as one? So argues Boston University Professor James Bessen in his recent piece, The patent troll crisis is really a software patent crisis.

PengPod, a low-quantity Linux tablet vendor, released the PengPod 1040 tablet today that they claim will "transform the PC and Tablet world by merging both elegantly together to fit any lifestyle." But will it really pan out?..

This article is part of an interview series highlighting the speakers of the upcoming All Things Open 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC I first heard of Carlos "Caike" Souza about a year ago while interviewing another developer for my bi-weekly podcast. My guest and I were discussing the things and people who inspired him and helped pave the way for his career. Carlos came up several times during that conversation. Carlos Souza is a developer for Envy Labs, the company behind Rails for Zombies, Code School, and TryRuby.org. I recently got an opportunity to speak with him,

Chinese tech firm Xiaomi announced a 47-inch, Wistron-built smart HDTV based on a Snapdragon 600 SoC less than $500. The Xiaomi TV was announced along with a 5-inch Mi3 phone, which similarly runs a homegrown MIUI Android build on a Snapdragon 800 or Tegra 4 SoC, and offers a 13-megapixel camera. On Sept. 5, Xiaomi […]

If all goes according to plan by Red Hat engineers operating in conjunction with Intel, Fedora 20 will be the first tier-one Linux distribution with decent support for Wayland and a usable desktop environment having its own compositor...

The US intelligence agency NSA has been taking advantage of the smartphone boom. It has developed the ability to hack into iPhones, android devices and even the BlackBerry, previously believed to be particularly secure.

The federal government’s march to the cloud has, at times, seemed more like a cautious ballet than anything else. While cloud-based projects are slowly rolling out, much of the agency emphasis is on private or community clouds as opposed to public providers. Security and data handling concerns play a role in this "tiptoeing," but another reason is far more insidious: the fear of lock-in. The Federal Shared Services Implementation Guide, the agency blueprint to the cloud, makes it very clear that government entities engaging in cloud computing need a clear “exit strategy” for anything as a service. It might seem ridiculous to consider how one should migrate from a technology before it is even implemented, but when it comes to the cloud, being able to get your data out is just as important as getting it in. It's about choice and control.

During the August Congressional recess, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released its long-awaited study on Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs), required under the America Invents Act (AIA). The report paints a rather grim picture of the current patent system. It reinforces the call by key leaders in Congress for legislative reforms that address abusive patent litigation as well as action by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the courts, and the US PTO.

While the Linux 3.12 kernel isn't even up to its first RC release and thus the merge window hasn't closed yet, Linux 3.12 has already collected a number of promising features for the open-source kernel...

While 4K resolution monitors are still extremely expensive, there's growing curiosity over support for 4K monitors by the open-source Linux graphics drivers...

The "Ilo" driver that began targeting Sandy/Ivy Bridge graphics support on the Gallium3D architecture in mainline Mesa now has initial support for Haswell graphics...

Samsung unveiled its first smartwatch at IFA in Berlin this week. Although the Galaxy Gear reportedly runs a customized Android OS, the device serves as a remote Bluetooth accessory to a paired Samsung smartphone or tablet, and cannot independently access Internet content or services. The Galaxy Gear runs a customized Android 4.3 OS on an […]

Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments ... The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry that U.S. government officials long courted as a potential partner in spying programs.

I'm currently working on what I believe are several significant new NSA stories, to be published imminently here, as well as one very consequential story about NSA spying in Brazil that will first be broadcast Sunday night on the Brazilian television program Fantastico (because the report has worldwide implications, far beyond Brazil, it will be translated into English and then quickly published on the internet).

Among the ARM changes for the mainline Linux 3.12 kernel is adding platform support for the Allwinner A20 and A31 SoCs along with continued work on NVIDIA's Tegra 4 support...

Megabuck giveaway for cloudy apps Google is preparing to dispense a couple of hundred thousand dollars in prizes for developers in emerging countries who are willing to take its cloudy platform for a spin.…

Linus Torvalds released 3.11. Prior to 3.11 release, Linus's 3.11-rc7 announcement was posted to his Google Plus page on Linux's 22nd birthday. Here is what he had to say in his nostalgic and reminiscent statement of the passing of time in which so much has been accomplished.

"Hello everybody out there using Linux -

Intelligence officials asked The Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read. The news organizations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the article because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful tools for protecting the privacy of Americans and others.