Showing headlines posted by bob

The Free Software Foundation still isn't thrilled with Canonical.

Ceph is a fully open source distributed object store, network block device, and file system designed for reliability, performance, and scalability from terabytes to exabytes. Ceph utilizes a novel placement algorithm (CRUSH), active storage nodes, and peer-to-peer gossip protocols to avoid the scalability and reliability problems associated with centralized controllers and lookup tables.

To bring it into line with copyright infringement of physical goods, Ministers have launched a discussion on increasing the penalty up to 10 years. Tougher sentences would act as a "significant deterrent" said the government.

Two researchers with the University of Leuven have developed a new, more practical attack technique that exposes weaknesses in the RC4 encryption algorithm.

Google-in-a-box orchestration tool hits general availability. The open source Kubernetes application container orchestration system has reached general availability, and a whole host of its contributors and supporters have stepped forward to sing its praises.…

Google's open source container deployment and management tool is ready for general use in production environments.

Although the Linux kernel forms the beating heart of the Android operating system, it's still a very different platform from most distros. In fact, beyond the kernel, most of the libraries, services and applications are completely different. While there are hundreds of different Linux distros out there, they all share components from the GNU project.

Renesas unveiled a tiny, Yocto supported “ADAS Starter Kit” built around its octa-core R-Car H2 SoC featuring PCIe, HDMI, and support for multiple cameras. Japanese semiconductor firm Renesas Electronics has long supported its system-on-chips with Linux, including its ARM-based R-Car SoCs for the automotive market. The company has now launched what it calls “the smallest […]

Google is turning over its container management program, Kubernetes, to this new open-source foundation.

HHVM (Hip Hop Virtual Machine) is a just-in-time compiler developed by Facebook to run applications that are written in PHP and Hack language. HHVM is faster than the traditional PHP engine from ZEND and is used by Facebook to serve billions of web requests per day. This tutorial describes the steps to install WordPress with Nginx, MariaDB and HHVM on Ubuntu 15.04 Server.

"Open is a means to an end—and that end is trust." So writes Steve Song, a social entrepreneur, Shuttleworth alum, and blogger who writes extensively about openness and access to affordable communication infrastructure in Africa. Steve's posts exploring the paradoxes, moral philosophy, and future of open are a fascinating read. I recently caught up with him to learn more. This is an edited transcript of our conversation. read more

Welcome folks, to my latest Six Degrees column! Now, I wanted to mix it up a little bit for this one. In previous columns, I have written pieces about trends and patterns in communities and open source. This one is instead designed to provide some practical recommendations of tools you can use today as you build strong and empowered communities. read more

The Graphics and Visualization (GVIS) lab at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio specializes in creating scientific visualizations and virtual reality programs for scientists at Glenn and beyond. I am thrilled to be a member of the small army of interns in the GVIS lab. So are Carolyn Holthouse, Joe Porter, and Jason Boccuti, interns from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Wright Brothers Institute's Discovery Lab who are working remotely at NASA Glenn. Their project involves robots, open source software, and virtual reality. I caught up with Carolyn, Jason, and Joe to talk about their project. read more

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine introduced me to OpenTTD, an open source (GPLv2) transportation planning simulator game. Available for Android, I briefly opened the game on my phone and found the interface to be a little too difficult to use for me on a five inch screen. My friend suggested that it worked better on a tablet, and I thought I'd try again later when I had some time to kill and a larger Android device in hand. read more

NetComm unveiled a Linux-based 4G wireless router for M2M and IoT, equipped with a Sequans LTE chipset, a NAMUR sensor input, and remote management software. The term Machine-to-Machine (M2M) has been around for a lot longer than Internet of Things, but both often describe similar equipment, which communicate with other devices without the necessity of […]

Whistleblower addresses Prague meeting of 'net engineers NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has urged the world's leading group of internet engineers to design a future 'net that puts the user in the center, and so protects people's privacy.…

Jide Tech won Kickstarter funding for a $30 mini-PC running its productivity oriented, Android 5.0 based “Remix OS” on Allwinner’s 64-bit quad-core H64 SoC.

The target vehicle for this project is a vintage intercity transport bus (think Greyhound) whose instrument panel was sparse and mostly nonfunctional. The speedometer cable was twisted off some place back in 40 feet of cable, and the fuel sensor had sunk long ago. What I wanted was an instrument panel more in line with modern practice.

Recently, there has been a new wave of instant messaging services focused on the mobile world. Examples include Whatsapp, Messenger, Hangouts, and Viber. However, these are all closed and don’t have the best record of security and privacy. A new service with a different... Continue Reading →

The Stellarium virtual planetarium is one of the most widely used open source specialized tools in the world. It features a captivating dome that counts over 600000 starts, hundreds of constellations and asterisms, planets with their moons and realistic sky effects like atmospheric scattering, shooting stars and supernovae simulation. It can serve as an educational tool, telescope guidance software, position calculator, or even as a rendered for fish-eye projection on domes.