Bitcoin Is the Technology of Dissent That Secures Individual Liberties – Bitcoin Magazine

The U.K. hearing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges U.S. extradition on the week of February 24, 2020, presented a test of Western liberal democracy. The indictment of Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified documents which exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan is recognized by free speech groups as an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.

With the governments criminalization of journalism, we are seeing a deepening crisis of legitimacy that had begun to unravel a decade ago. Bitcoin emerged during the 2008 financial meltdown as a response to bank bailouts and a cycle of austerity. Over its 10 years of existence, the technology has steadily maintained its fundamentals of censorship resistance and permissionless usage. Now, more than ever, Bitcoin shows these defining features as its value proposition.

As the government becomes more authoritarian, those who speak truth to power are being punished more harshly. Bitcoin as a technology of dissent provides alternative forms of resistance that are much more peaceful and joyous. It offers an avenue for people around the world to express their opposition against their government without directly confronting with power; instead it is simply creating a new world that makes the old system obsolete.

The invention of Bitcoin didnt happen overnight. It was built on cumulative efforts of the past. The development of this technology of dissent can be traced back in the history of peoples liberation from the arbitrary power of the king and despotic government. In the United States, after the victory of the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers rejected the rule of British monarchy. In the Declaration of Independence, the premise was given for unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, expressed in the words of Thomas Jefferson that is to be applied equally to all people.

In establishing the U.S. constitutional republic, these premises remained no more than ideals and they were constantly threatened. The original Constitution ratified in 1787 lacked the guarantee to secure individual liberties that inherently belong to all people.

The proponents of the Bill of Rights demanded a safeguard against the government. They articulated the protection of essential parts of unalienable rights in the First Amendment to the Constitution as a freedom of expression; freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Erosion of civil rights took place through a loophole in the security within the Constitution. While a wall of separation between church and state is placed in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, separation of money and state was not. Under the First Amendment, individuals right to create, choose their own money and transact freely was not recognized as a part of freedom of expression that needs to be protected.

The central control over money production faced a major security breach. Attorney Ellen Brown explains how most people think money is issued by fiat, declared to be legal tender by the government, but the creation of money has been taken over by private corporations like the Federal Reserve.

Privatized national and corporate currencies, created out of thin air around the world, came to function as a medium of control, allowing big business to create market monopolies. This began to debase the intrinsic value of the natural rights of a person evidenced in the nations founding document. By transforming those inalienable rights into a permissioned form of legal rights that can be infringed upon by the government, corporations and private banks began to steal individual liberties. Freedom of expression became further stifled through economic censorship and financial blockage enacted by payment processing companies like Visa and MasterCard.

As the states assault on civil liberty has increased, rebellion came from the internet. On February 8, 1996, when Congress enacted the Telecommunications Reform Act that enabled media consolidation and monopoly of flow of information, John Perry Barlow, internet pioneer, wrote a Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. Addressing it to governments of the Industrial World, he called for a creation of a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Those who revolted against the arbitrary power of the national government became dissidents in the new frontier of cyberspace. They found each other and formed an association that came to be known as cypherpunks: loosely tied online activists who advocate social change by the use of strong cryptography.

Tim May, one of the influential cypherpunks and the author of The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto recognized money as speech. At the Computer Freedom and Privacy Conference in 1997, he described how Digital Cash = Speech. He then noted how untraceable digital cash is indistinguishable from speech and explained how any laws intended to control it will almost certainly impinge on speech in general. Cypherpunks began envisioning a stateless digital form of money that is uncensorable and their collaborative pursuit created a movement for a new Enlightenment.

Philosophers in the Enlightenment era advocated for conceptions of democratic rights based on natural law. In his seminal work The Spirit of Laws published in 1748, Montesquieu wrote,

Laws in their broadest sense, are the necessary relations which are derived from the nature of things: Once free from the yoke of religion, we should still be subject to the rule of Justice Law, like mathematics has its objective structure, which no arbitrary whim can alter, before there were any enacted laws, just relations were possible.

Cypherpunks understood that while alienable rights that are bestowed by law can be taken away by legislation, inalienable rights are not to be created but can be discoverable by reason. Thus, laws that secure inalienable rights cannot be created by man but can be found in nature.

Like Enlightenment thinkers who tried to explain the laws of society and human nature through scientific methods, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin instigated a scientific process of discovering a way to restore money in its original form as an enshrinement of an unalienable right.

Bitcoin is free software that gives the user full control of the program. Anyone can observe, share knowledge and contribute to the development of protocol through participating in reviewing, testing and experimentation.

Here, principles of nature that were discovered were applied to create a decentralized digital currency and a market that is free from the control of the government. They included breakthroughs in computer science that led to the invention of a consensus algorithm, the laws of thermodynamics (study of science concerning heat, temperature and their relation to energy), and three natural laws of economics (self interest, competition, and supply and demand) that were identified by Adam Smith, a father of modern economics.

In Bitcoin, based on the principle of game theory to create fairness, miners engage in a broadcast math competition. Aligning self-interests of all in a network, with a careful balance of risk and rewards, rules are enforced without applying any external pressure. Bitcoin regulates itself through the spontaneous force of nature, flourishing healthy price discovery and competition in the best interest of everyone.

As the British court wrapped up its fake judicial process in the deliberation of the U.S. extradition request for the persecuted and tortured journalist, Julian Assange, Western democracy shows its final decline. This irreparable system continues to suck people into an electoral arena trying to keep them under its control. While many engage in protest or petitioning, busying themselves with cheering on their favorite candidates in political contests, Bitcoin provides a formidable tool for dissent, allowing people to simply opt out altogether from this corrupted system.

The bureaucratic system of the modern nation-state, administered by central banks, magistrates, presidents and prime ministers, has alienated us from the harmonious state of the world we belong to, depriving us of our innate rights and liberties. Now, imagination from computer science inspires us to rediscover intrinsic value within ourselves the wisdom of nature that governs our behavior and our rights to express ourselves freely and create our own life.

We, Bitcoiners, are all dissidents in the Old World of trusted third parties. We defy the rules of empire states in order to trust our ability to become our own authority. Laws of nature that are higher than man-made laws, being enforced by mathematics, have begun to reorganize a society. The frictionless flow of bitcoin allows us to diverge from the mainstream of national currency that keeps us in a debt spiral; it allows us to transcend borders and bypass checkpoints. Voluntary association formed through this free speech money is creating a new economy, fueling innovations and opportunities for jobs.

Every 10 minutes, the heart of Bitcoin beats, setting computers around the world in motion. From developers to miners and users running full nodes that relay and validate transactions, together, all engage in computing as an act of civil disobedience, keeping the network decentralized. As we collectively dissent, the wealth of the network rises, securing equality and liberty as unalienable universal rights for all people.

This is an op ed contribution by Nozomi Hayase. Views expressed are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bitcoin Magazine or BTC Inc.

More here:
Bitcoin Is the Technology of Dissent That Secures Individual Liberties - Bitcoin Magazine

WikiLeaks Suspect Wrote Of Waging ‘Information War’ On CIA – Law360

Law360, New York (February 26, 2020, 6:30 PM EST) -- Accused CIA leaker Joshua Schulte scrawled angry vows from his jail cell promising revenge against the spy agency after he was arrested for allegedly sending government hacking secrets to WikiLeaks, evidence presented to a Manhattan jury showed Wednesday.

"F--- your top secret .... Send all of your secrets here - Wikileaks," Schulte wrote in 2018 while detained as he imagined an "information war" to harm the CIA, according to notebooks and other writings shown by the government during a fourth week of trial before Manhattan U.S. District Judge Paul A. Crotty.

Diplomatic passport used by Joshua Schulte while he worked for...

In the legal profession, information is the key to success. You have to know whats happening with clients, competitors, practice areas, and industries. Law360 provides the intelligence you need to remain an expert and beat the competition.

TRY LAW360 FREE FOR SEVEN DAYS

Continued here:
WikiLeaks Suspect Wrote Of Waging 'Information War' On CIA - Law360

The feds are illegally intercepting everybodys emails, lawyer claims. U.S. court says he didnt prove it – PennLive

Is the National Security Agency illegally intercepting your emails?

Elliott J. Schuchardt insists that it is.

A federal appeals court has concluded that he didnt prove it, however.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit reached that conclusion this week in upholding the dismissal of a lawsuit Schuchardt, an attorney, originally filed against President Barack Obama and the NSA in 2014.

Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambros opinion on the case touches on such issues as domestic spying and has a cast of character that includes Edward Snowden, the internationally-known whistleblower and former CIA employee who leaked highly-classified NSA information.

As outlined by Ambro, Schuchardts allegations read like the plot of a thriller, maybe even the script for an episode of The X-Files.

Schuchardts claim, as relayed by Ambro, is that soon after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks the NSA began collecting massive quantities of email and other data created by U.S. citizens without legal warrants directly from the servers of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Dropbox and Apple.

The supposed collection violated the constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure, Schuchardt insisted. To back his allegations, Schuchardt cited Snowdens disclosures, articles in The Washington Post and The Guardian news outlets and affidavits from former NSA employees, including one who said he developed the technology used for the supposedly unlawful mass interceptions.

The first time U.S. Western District Judge Cathy Bissoon dismissed Schuchardts suit, the circuit judges sent the matter back to her for reconsideration. Bissoon dismissed the case a second time in February 2019 and this time around Ambro agreed with her finding that Schuchardt had failed to rebut the governments evidence that his claims are untrue.

Ambro found that Schuchardt didnt prove that affidavits from his alleged experts on NSA operations were reliable. The news media reports he submitted as evidence constituted only hearsay, the circuit judge agreed. Schuchardts reliance on the documents he claimed came, indirectly, from Snowdens whistleblower disclosures fell short as well, Ambro found.

Schuchardts argument that the Snowden documents are authenticated by the governments admissions that Snowden misappropriated documents also fails, he wrote. Any general admissions by government officials that Snowden stole documents did not authenticate the specific documents Schuchardt submitted to the court.

Ambro noted that federal officials countered Schuchardts claims with evidence including a sworn affidavit from NSA Operations Director Wayne Murphy. In that affdavit, Murphy stated no NSA intelligence-gathering activity involves the bulk collection or storage of all or substantially all of the email or other internet-based communications of all U.S. persons.

The government insisted Murphys statement is backed up by a 2014 report required under the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Bissoon credited the federal governments evidence and reasoned that Schuchardt could not show that his communications would have been targeted and collected, Ambro noted.

So, he found that since Schuchardts evidence was inadmissible in court and the governments evidence stood uncontroverted Bissoon was right to dismiss the suit on grounds that Schuchardt lacked factual standing to keep pursuing it.

Go here to see the original:
The feds are illegally intercepting everybodys emails, lawyer claims. U.S. court says he didnt prove it - PennLive

What Are The Most Common Issues With Free Open Source Software? – Analytics India Magazine

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has become a prominent aspect of the new age global economy. It has been analysed that FOSS makes up about 80-90% of any particular piece of todays software. It is to be noted that software is an increasingly-critical resource in almost all businesses, both public and private. But, there are many issues with FOSS, according to the Linux Foundation.

The Linux Foundation established the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) in 2014 as a part of which its members gave funding and support for FOSS projects, which are important to worldwide data and information infrastructure. In 2015, CII finished the Census Project (Census I) to find out which software packages in the Debian Linux distribution had been the most important to the kernels overall security.

While the Census I project emphasised on analysing the Linux kernel distribution packages, it did not go deep into which software was utilised in production applications. Thats where Census II comes in.

In the middle of 2018, the Linux Foundation collaborated with the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard University (LISH) with the objective of doing a second census to discover and analyse the extent to which open-source software is used within applications by private and public companies. This Census II thus gives a whole view of FOSS deployment by analysing usage data provided by the partner Software Composition Analysis (SCA) companies.

The Census II analysis and report from Linux Foundation published recently sheds light on the processes towards comprehending and solving structural and security complexities in the present-day supply chain in areas where open-source is present.

Linux Foundations Census II identifies the most commonly utilised free and open-source software (FOSS) parts in production apps and analyses them for potential vulnerabilities, which can inform actions to sustain the long-term security and health of FOSS.

According to Linux Foundation, there is too little data on actual FOSS deployment. Although there is public data on package downloads, software changes, and known security vulnerabilities, the record on where and how FOSS packages are being utilised is unclear.

Members of the Census II team and the Steering Committee spent months in the time leading up to the projects acquisition of data attempting to anticipate and prepare for expected obstacles and challenges to the datas use and analysis. The challenges created by the lack of a standardised naming schema for software components (that had troubled Linux Foundations Census I effort) still persisted. The naming conventions for software components across all the data contributed to the Census II effort were unique, individualised, and inconsistent.

Despite the considerable effort that went into creating the framework to produce these initial results for Census II, the challenge of applying it to other data sets with even more varied formats and naming standards still remains.

The struggles with this lack of standardised software component naming schema are not unique to the CII Census projects. The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has grappled with this issue for decades in the context of software vulnerability management.

The bottom linerevealed by the Census II project, the NTIA process, NISTs vulnerability management struggles, and other similar projectsis that there is a critical need for a standardised software component naming schema.

The next challenge and lesson learned that arose after the data had been analysed was the criticality of the security of individual developer accounts. Out of the top ten most-used software packages in analysis, the CII team found that seven were hosted under individual developer accounts. The results of such high dependence reliance upon individual programmer accounts must not be ignored. For many causes pertaining to legal, bureaucratic, and security, individual developer accounts have a few security safeguards with them than organisational accounts in a majority of instances.

While these individual accounts can use measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA), they may not always do so, and individual computing environments are probably more vulnerable to attack, finds the Linux Foundation. This means that code changes under such individual developer accounts are way easier to make, and also without much detection. And as a result, developer account takeovers have begun occurring with increasing frequency. Backdooring is one popular method used to infiltrate accounts: hackers insert malicious code into seemingly innocuous packages that create a backdoor for hackers to enter once the host package is installed.

comments

Follow this link:
What Are The Most Common Issues With Free Open Source Software? - Analytics India Magazine

Open Source Software Market : Up-To-Date Analyses Of Industry Trends And Technological Improvements 2020-2024 – News Times

Open Source SoftwareThe new report has been added by alexareports.com to give point by point understanding into the worldwide Open Source Software market.

The investigation will assist with showing signs of improvement understanding about the business contenders, a channel for the dispersion, Open Source Software development potential, possibly problematic patterns, Open Source Software industry item advancements, advertise size worth/volume (provincial/nation level, industry sections), piece of the overall industry of top players/items.______________________________________________________________________________

Download Sample Copy of the Market Report Study 2019-2024 At https://www.alexareports.com/report-sample/482004______________________________________________________________________________

Alexa Reports has procured extraordinary involvement with statistical surveying and has been creating reports offering a basic investigation of different markets with quality and precision. Our market examiners use different research techniques to offer exact and dependable data to the Open Source Software Business players to viably plan new development procedures with an intend to fortify their essence in the Open Source Software market. They additionally give different SWOT and PESTLE examinations that go about as a valuable instrument for the market members to assess various situations of the concerned market and take a further choice.

The report reviews the competitive landscape scenario seen among the top Open Source Software players, their company profile, revenue, sales, business tactics and forecast Open Source Software industry situations. According to the research, the highly competing and disparate due to global and local vendors. The global Open Source Software market report chiefly includes the following manufacturers-

The Key manufacturers that are operating in the global market are:Global Open Source Software Market Report 2020, With the slowdown in world economic growth, the Open Source Software industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, Open Source Software market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of 1.90% from 3174 million $ in 2014 to 3358 million $ in 2019, our analysts believe that in the next few years, Open Source Software market size will be further expanded, we expect that by 2024, The market size of the Open Source Software will reach 3649 million $. , This Report covers the Major Players data, including: shipment, revenue, gross profit, interview record, business distribution etc., these data help the consumer know about the competitors better. This report also covers all the regions and countries of the world, which shows a regional development status, including market size., Besides, the report also covers segment data, including: type segment, industry segment, channel segment etc. cover different segment market size. Also cover different industries clients information, which is very important for the Major Players. , Section 1: FreeDefinition, Section (2 3): 1200 USDMajor Player Intel, Epson, IBM, Transcend, Oracle, Acquia, Actuate, Alfresco Software Inc, Sophos, RethinkDB, Canonical, ClearCenter, Cleversafe, Compiere Inc.,

Market Competition

The competitive landscape of the global Open Source Software market is broadly studied in the report with a large focus on recent developments, future plans of top players, and key growth strategies adopted by them. The analysts authoring the report have profiled almost every major player of the global Open Source Software market and thrown light on their crucial business aspects such as production, areas of operation, and product portfolio. All companies analyzed in the report are studied on the basis of important factors such as market share, market growth, company size, output, sales, and income.______________________________________________________________________________

Ask For [emailprotected] https://www.alexareports.com/check-discount/482004__________________________________________________________________________

Table of Content

Market by Product: This section carefully analyzes all product segments of the global market are Shareware, Bundled Software, BSD(Berkeley Source DistributionIndustry SegmPhpbb, BMForum, Phpwind.

Market by Application: Here, various application segments of the global market are taken into account for the research studies are Phpbb, BMForum, Phpwind.

Market Overview: This is the first section of the report that includes an overview of the scope of products offered in the global industry, segments by product and application, and market size.

Market Competition by Player: Here, the report shows how the competition in the global Open Source Software market is growing or decreasing based on deep analysis of market concentrate rate, competitive situations and trends, expansions, merger and acquisition deals, and other subjects. It also shows how different companies are progressing in the global Open Source Software market in terms of revenue, production, sales, and market share.

Company Profiles and Sales Data: This part of the report is very important as it gives statistical as well as other types of analysis of leading manufacturers in the global Open Source Software market. It assesses each and every player studied in the report on the basis of the main business, gross margin, revenue, sales, price, competitors, manufacturing base, product specification, product application, and product category.

Market Forecast: It starts with revenue forecast and then continues with sales, sales growth rate, and revenue growth rate forecasts of the global market. The forecasts are also provided taking into consideration product, application, and regional segments of the global market.

Upstream Raw Materials: This section includes industrial chain analysis, manufacturing cost structure analysis, and key raw materials analysis of the global Open Source Software market.______________________________________________________________________________

For Further Detailed insights and Any Query About Market, Place your Query Here!- https://www.alexareports.com/send-an-enquiry/482004_________________________________________________________________________

Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors: Here, the research study digs deep into behavior and other factors of downstream customers, distributors, development trends of marketing channels, and marketing channels such as indirect marketing and direct marketing.

Research Findings and Conclusion: This section is solely dedicated to the conclusion and findings of the research study on the global Open Source Software market.

Originally posted here:
Open Source Software Market : Up-To-Date Analyses Of Industry Trends And Technological Improvements 2020-2024 - News Times

Open source companies are thriving in the cloud – ARNnet

Quick, can you spot the common link between MongoDB, DataStax, Redis Labs, Percona, Couchbase, and EnterpriseDB?

If you said, Theyre all open source database vendors, youd be mostly correct. Not all offer databases governed by an open source licence.

But if you said, Each offers an increasingly popular database-as-a-service cloud offering, youd be spot on. Indeed, while weve spent a few years with erstwhile open source vendors changing their licenses to ward off evil cloud vendors, what were starting to see is these same vendors embracing the cloud, and to hugely positive effect.

Hence, while Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi has correctly argued that its extremely hard to manage and run a high quality managed service in the cloud and not all open source companies are good at it, its also true that more companies are figuring this out, making the next decade the era of open source databases in the cloud.

Signs, signs, everywhere the signs

Already were seeing clear indicators that open source is leaving behind its on-premises roots and heading to the cloud. Arecent Red Hat surveyfound that 95 per cent of respondents view open source as important, with use of proprietary software declining to 42 per cent (from 55 per cent the year before).

And while it may be too soon to call it a trend, 28 per cent of respondents called out Designed to work in the cloud as a key benefit of using modern open source tooling (like Kubernetes), the fourth-most cited benefit (up from eighth place last year).

Meanwhile, as more applications are born in the cloud, cloud databases have been booming. When I first started writing about this in earnest, cloud database mostly referred to databases offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and Google.

Quite quickly enterprises figured out that rather than having one massive Oracle database to run their diverse workloads, they couldinstead leverage a broader array of databases, with cloud databases increasingly central to their selections.

So much so, in fact, that in mid-2019 Gartner was ready to declare that cloud is now the default platform for managing data and that only legacy compatibility or special requirements should keep you on-premises.

This declaration, however, isnt just about databases offered by public cloud vendors. No, an interesting thing has happened to open source vendors on their way to financial success: Theyve discovered the cloud, and in a big way. Consider MongoDB, for example.

Atlas lifts MongoDB

MongoDB launched Atlas, its fully managed cloud database service, in 2016. A year later, MongoDB reported that Atlas accounted for 10 per cent of its Q4 2017 revenues.

By March 2019, Atlas revenues had surged to 34 per cent of AWS revenues, worth over $100 million in 2018. At that time, MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria was asked about the impact cloud database vendors were having on MongoDB.

Ittycherias response? We see no impact on a negative basis whatsoever. If anything, he said, it was raising awareness for MongoDB.

And how. In MongoDBs most recent quarter, Atlas revenue boomed by 185 per cent year-over-year, claiming 40 per cent of the companys revenue. In the earnings call, Ittycheria touted MongoDB as a cloud-first company, citing three ways in which focusing on delivering MongoDB as a fully managed cloud service has changed the company:

This calls to mind some advice Couchbase director Andy Oliver recently offered to database competitors who try to innovate open source licensing rather than offer real product innovation: Only better service, support, and innovation... will save them. Changing the open source definition wont fix what is, in the long-term, a business model problem.

Open source as-a-service

But as MongoDBs results show, creating cloud database services is possible for these current or former open source vendors.

And as difficult as it may be to create competence in operational efficacy, says Ghodsi, its the only way forward: The reality is open source software itself has zero intrinsic monetisation value because anyone can use it, so there will always be a requirement for open source vendors to determine the value beyond the software. We believe this value lies in the vendors ability to deliver open source software as a service.

As results from MongoDB, Redis Labs, DataStax, and others show, database vendors are figuring out how to be as good at operationalising software as they have been at developing software. This should give hope to would-be open source entrepreneurs that worry about how to monetise open source.

Ironically, it turns out that the open source model is the same as it ever was: charge for support. The difference, of course, is that support is baked into the product in a cloud offering.

The database future is firmly planted in the cloud, as Gartner has declared. Fortunately, open source database vendors got the message.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags Cloudopen source

The rest is here:
Open source companies are thriving in the cloud - ARNnet

SystemInfo is a simple open source system information tool for Windows – Ghacks Technology News

Most of us have used some system information tool at some point or the other to quickly analyze the devices, hardware, and software of a computer system. Tools like HwInfo display information that is useful in various situations. SystemInfo belongs to the genre and is an open source software.

The program is a portable software, so you can just download the executable and run it directly. The interface looks a lot like Piriform's Speccy, and as a matter of fact even the GitHub page for the program has a Speccy tag. Maybe it was the inspiration behind the application?

Do note that this is not a system monitoring application. If you want one of those, you can try Thilmera7 or Desktop Info, or Conky for Linux. Regardless of that, SystemInfo is quite the useful tool. You can view all of your system's hardware information on a single page. Built a new computer? Bought a new laptop? Run the program to see if everything is as it's supposed to be.

There are no settings whatsoever. It's that simple. SystemInfo lists the BIOS/EUFI name and version number, Operating System information, CPU model and clock frequency, Motherboard model number, total memory and the RAM frequency, GPU, Display, Storage drives (model number and total storage), Optical drives, Network Adapters, Sound cards and the Uptime of the computer.

I'm not certain if this is a bug, but there are a couple of issues with the application. It detected only 1 of my memory modules and showed that the laptop has 4GB of RAM. In reality, it has 2 memory chips, and Windows detects it correctly as a total of 8 gigs. Aside from this, it works pretty well and accurately detected that the system doesn't have an optical drive, and has an SSD (which I have installed using a SATA Caddy in place of the DVD drive).

SystemInfo has a built-in screenshot saving option that you can access from the File menu. Snapshots are saved in the PNG format at a location of your choice. The default file name is saved in the following format: sysinfo-capture-YYYY-M-DD_@_HH.MM.SS.

The file name contains the Year, Month, Day, Hour, minute and even the second when the screenshot was saved. You can optionally upload the screenshot to gyazo. The program offers to open the saved file in the default viewer.

If you'd rather have a text based result, you're in luck. SystemInfo can save the details in HTML, XML or TXT documents. You can also Import XML files that you have saved previously.The Hide IP (Show IP) button can be used to toggle the IP address. This is useful when you're taking a screenshot of the window, or exporting it to a file, and wish to hide your IP address from prying eyes. The program is written in C++.

The fact that its portable makes SystemInfo a useful little tool to carry on a USB Flash Drive. And since it has no options to tinker with, it's suitable for all users.

Author Rating

Software Name

SystemInfo

Operating System

Windows

Software Category

System

Price

Free

Landing Page

Follow this link:
SystemInfo is a simple open source system information tool for Windows - Ghacks Technology News

2020 Call for Code Global Challenge Led by IBM Takes On Climate Change on 75th Anniversary of United Nations – The Weather Channel

Call for Code founding partner IBM and creator David Clark Cause, in partnership with United Nations Human Rights and the Linux Foundation, announced this year's Call for Code Global Challenge on Wednesday and invited the world's software developers and innovators to help fight climate change with open source-powered technology.

On its 75th anniversary, the United Nations is demanding a "global reality check" and has launched the biggest-ever global conversation on how to address the world's most pressing issues such as climate change. Heeding the U.N.'s rallying cry to help build the future we want, IBM is joining forces with key U.N. agencies and world leaders to help tackle the climate crisis.

Following two successful years, the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge encourages and fosters the creation of practical applications built on open source software including Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, IBM Blockchain, and data from The Weather Company. The goal is to employ technology in new ways that can make an immediate and lasting humanitarian impact in communities around the world.

A recent global IBM study conducted by Morning Consult surveyed more than 3,000 developers, first responders and social activists across China, Columbia, Egypt, India, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States, and found:

-77% of first responders and developers surveyed agree with the statement "Climate change is the single most pressing issue facing my generation."

-79% of respondents agree that climate change is something that can be reduced or combated with technology.

-87% of respondents feel it is important that a potential employer has taken action on climate change.

-Three quarters of respondents agree that the open source community can help scale climate change solutions to communities in need.

-Eight in 10 respondents agree that most people want to do something to help combat climate change, but don't know where to start.

-Over 180,000 participants from 165 nations took part in Call for Code in 2019; they created more than 5,000 applications focused on natural disaster preparedness and relief.

-This year Call for Code is challenging applicants to create innovations based on open source technologies to help halt and reverse the impact of climate change.

"There is an urgent need to take action against climate change, and IBM is uniquely positioned to connect leading humanitarian experts with the most talented and passionate developers around the world," said Bob Lord, IBM senior vice president of cognitive applications and developer ecosystems. "IBM is determined to identify, deploy, and scale technology solutions that can help save lives, empower people, and create a better world for future generations."

Lord noted that IBM has been mobilizing throughout the company, from policy commitments on climate to IBM's weather forecasting capabilities powered by AI and supercomputers.

Last years Call for Code Global Challenge winning team, Prometeo, created a wearable device that measures carbon monoxide, smoke concentration, humidity, and temperature to monitor firefighter safety in real-time as well as to help improve their health outcomes in the long-term. The solution has been developed further through IBMs Code and Response program and has just completed its first wildfire field test during a controlled burn with the Grups de Refor d'Actuacions Forestals (GRAF) and the Grup d'Emergncies Mdiques (GEM) dels Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya near Barcelona, Spain. Prometeo was developed by a team comprising a veteran firefighter, an emergency medical nurse, and three developers. As recently piloted, the Prometeo hardware-software solution is based on multiple IBM Cloud services.

Other applications like 2018 Call for Code winner Project Owl and 2018 Puerto Rico Call for Code hackathon winner DroneAid have also been cultivated through the Code and Response program.

Visit CallforCode.org to join the community and learn more about the challenge, which will open for submissions on March 22, World Water Day 2020. Additional details, a schedule of in-person and virtual events, and training and enablement for Call for Code will be available at https://developer.ibm.com/callforcode/.

Read the original here:
2020 Call for Code Global Challenge Led by IBM Takes On Climate Change on 75th Anniversary of United Nations - The Weather Channel

Best F-Droid apps to replace your existing apps – The Android Soul

Lets admit it. Googles Play Store is the single largest app store available at the moment but theres no doubt that it does a significantamount of tracking as well. After all, the Mountain View company is the worlds largest ad broker and data is todays biggest currency. Besides that, there are several apps in Google Play that exploit the companys privacy and security policies to track user data and perform malware attacks.

F-Droid is an app repository that only provides Fully Open Source Software (FOSS) with no tracking or hidden costs. It offers to focus on privacy and security with safety precautions like avoiding leakage of browsing data, sending all data through HTTPS, Tor support, and converting supported languages in the metadata so as to not reveal your location.

Hence, F-Droid looks like a good bet when it comes to safety of your data.That being said, we cannot guarantee that F-Droid, or any other apps store, is 100% safe, or safer than the Play Store itself.

RELATED:

You can install F-Droid like any other app on your phone and browse over 2000 apps that are available for download for free.

Luckily for you, weve compiled a list of best apps that you can download from F-Droid. Some of the apps listed below could even replace the app that youre using now while the others will add more functionality and productivity features on your phone.

Note: You need to install the F-Droid app first to be able to install the Android apps given below.

NewPipe is the open-source alternative to watching YouTube videos but thats not the thing it specializes in. The app not only lets you watch YouTube but also supports subscriptions, floating player, downloading videos and audio, view history, queue videos, local playlists, and subtitles.

Besides that, the app is more privacy-orientated than YouTube since it saves your data offline by not using proprietary Google APIs that generally collects your watch history data. NewPipe also doesnt require you to sign-in to Google and you can bypass regional restrictions with the app.

Download: NewPipe

How to stop pop-up ads on Android

This app is a fully-featured email client, with support for POP3, IMAP and Push IMAP accounts. You can log in using multiple accounts and can export your settings and account configurations whenswitching betweenpackages. Additional features include multi-folder sync, flagging, filing, signatures, BCC-self, and PGP/MIME.

Download: K-9 Mail

RELATED:

In order to access Facebook without its own tracking and invasive features, F-Droid offers Face Slim which is a lightweight replacement to the otherwise memory-hogging Facebook app on Android. The app weighs at 1.3MB but includes full Message functionality and provides features that arent present on the official app. Additional features include dark mode support, a basic mode for usage in low-speed networks, personalization inside the feed, and more.

Download: Face Slim

Twidere is the only open-source app thats officially supported by Twitter. The app comes with a built-in image and map viewer, direct messages that support conversations, multiple account support, secure and direct login with a username and password. Theres a night mode option that lets you enjoy dark theme as well as options tomute filters, schedule tweets, customize tabs, avoid ads and promotions in your timeline.

Download: Twidere

Firefox preview might be an open-source app but Fennec F-Droid is a version of Firefox stripped of any proprietary bits found in official Mozillas builds.

Download: Fennec F-Droid

An open-source alternative for Reddit is Slide which is material-designed, ad-free, and packs an array of features for power users. The app comes with support for over 12,000 theme combinations, has offline capabilities complete with images and gifs, Gallery and shadowbox modes, Synccit integration, multiple accounts support, and more. In terms of bonus features, Slide offers Image Flair support, replying to comments without opening a new window, a filter system to block content, viewing and deleting browsing history, and casual subscriptions that wont show up on the front page.

Download: Slide

ownCloud is a self-hosted cloud storage option that lets you manage files, contacts, calendars, music, pictures, and more through its app. The service allows you to browse all of your ownCloud synced files, create new ones, edit existing files, and share files to others. ownCloud supports syncing of content across all devices and you can define different paths for different types of files before uploading.

Download: ownCloud

Open Camera as the name implies is an open-source camera app that offers full manual controls, customizable hotkeys, HDR support, widgets, external mic support, and multitouch zoom. The app comes with an auto-stabilize option, different focus modes, face detection, burst mode, and silenceable shutter which are something that many default camera apps dont offer on their own.

Download: Open Camera

To replace your existing file manager, F-droid lists the Amaze app which is a file manager that follows theMaterial Design guidelines. In addition to basic features like cut, copy, delete, compress, and extract, the app offers the ability to work on multiple tabs, theme support, a navigational drawer, and an app manager. With Amaze, you can quickly access bookmarks, history and search for any files that are present on your device with Root explorer support for advanced users.

Download: Amaze

OsmAnd is a Google Maps alternative that utilizes OpenStreetMap for capturing maps data and is available for free. The app provides turn-by-turn directions, voice guidance, offline support, lane guidance, automatic re-routing, and searching for places like gas stations, museums, restaurants, and also any geographical coordinates. The app offers offline viewing with data consumption of under 200MB for a specific region.

Download: OsmAnd

OpenVPN is an open-source client to create a VPN without root. The app can be used to connect to any services using OpenVPN certificates.

Download: OpenVPN for Android

AntennaPod is an open-source podcast manager that offers you instant access to both free and paid podcasts from publishers and independent podcasters. You can import and export feeds through gPodder, OPML, RSS URLs, and the iTunes podcast database. The app provides users with powerful automation controls that can be used to save effort, power, download episodes and delete them.

Download: AntennaPod

You might be used to tethering your mobile data for use on your computer but what if we tell you can reverse that process and use your computers internet connection on your Android device using SimpleRT. The app, unlike others, works without root and can set custom DNS servers, and sports multiple tethering.

Download: SimpleRT

While AdAway is also an open-source alternative, it only works on rooted phones. Thats why, we have listed the DNS66 app which can block ads, malware, and trackers by creating an encrypted server to filter ads including popup ads, intrusive Ads and even advertisements across the web and apps.

Download: DNS66

Ever thought of gifting a smartphone to the elderly ones in your family? Thats a nice idea but its important to know that they might find it difficult to get through their day using the modern UI that Android and iOS offers. BaldPhone solves that problem as it dumbs down your smartphone with simple tools that can be easily accessed by the elderly.

When you install and open the app, you will be greeted with large-sized icons and shortcuts that are basically displayed as the default launcher. In addition to that, the app offers shortcuts for Contacts and Phone, Voice Assistant, Alarms, Notifications, Voice Assistant, and WhatsApp. However, the highlights of BaldPhone comes in the form of timely reminders for pills and an SOS button in case of an emergency, both of which can help the elderly in an immense way.

Download: BaldPhone

Have you tried using apps from F-Droid? What do you think about them? Let us know in the comments below.

RELATED:

More:
Best F-Droid apps to replace your existing apps - The Android Soul

Australian police are using the Clearview AI facial recognition system with no accountability – The Conversation – Australia

Australian police agencies are reportedly using a private, unaccountable facial recognition service that combines machine learning and wide-ranging data-gathering practices to identify members of the public from online photographs.

The service, Clearview AI, is like a reverse image search for faces. You upload an image of someones face and Clearview searches its database to find other images that contain the same face. It also tells you where the image was found, which might help you determine the name and other information about the person in the picture.

Clearview AI built this system by collecting several billion publicly available images from the web, including from social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Then they used machine learning to make a biometric template for each face and match those templates to the online sources of the images.

It was revealed in January that hundreds of US law enforcement agencies are using Clearview AI, starting a storm of discussion about the systems privacy implications and the legality of the web-scraping used to build the database.

Australian police agencies initially denied they were using the service. The denial held until a list of Clearview AIs customers was stolen and disseminated, revealing users from the Australian Federal Police as well as the state police in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.

This development is particularly concerning as the Department of Home Affairs, which oversees the federal police, is seeking to increase the use of facial recognition and other biometric identity systems. (An attempt to introduce new legislation was knocked back last year for not being adequately transparent or privacy-protecting.)

Gaining trust in the proper use of biometric surveillance technology ought to be important for Home Affairs. And being deceptive about the use of these tools is a bad look.

Read more: Why the government's proposed facial recognition database is causing such alarm

But the lack of accountability may go beyond poor decisions at the top. It may be that management at law enforcement agencies did not know their employees were using Clearview AI. The company offers free trials to active law enforcement personnel, but its unclear how they verify this beyond requiring a government email address.

Why arent law enforcement agencies enforcing rules about which surveillance tools officers can use? Why arent their internal accountability mechanisms working?

There are also very real concerns around security when using Clearview AI. It monitors and logs every search, and we know it has already had one data breach. If police are going to use powerful surveillance technologies, there must be systems in place for ensuring those technological tools do what they say they do, and in a secure and accountable way.

Relatively little is known about how the Clearview AI system actually works. To be accountable, a technology used by law enforcement should be tested by a standards body to ensure it is fit for purpose.

Clearview AI, on the other hand, has had its own testing done and as a result its developers claim it is 100% accurate.

That report does not represent the type of testing that an entity seeking to produce an accountable system would undertake. In the US at least, there are agencies like the National Institute for Standards and Technology that do precisely that kind of accuracy testing. There are also many qualified researchers in universities and labs that could properly evaluate the system.

Instead, Clearview AI gave the task to a trio composed of a retired judge turned private attorney, an urban policy analyst who wrote some open source software in the 1990s, and a former computer science professor who is now a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. There is no discussion of why those individuals were chosen.

The method used to test the system also leaves a lot to be desired. Clearview AI based their testing on a test by the American Civil Liberties Union of Amazons Rekognition image analysis tool.

However, the ACLU test was a media stunt. The ACLU ran headshots of 28 members of congress against a mugshot database. None of the politicians were in the database, meaning any match returned would be an error. However, the test only required the system to be 80% certain of its results, making it quite likely to return a match.

Read more: Close up: the government's facial recognition plan could reveal more than just your identity

The Clearview AI test also used headshots of politicians taken from the web (front-on, nicely framed, well-lit images), but ran them across their database of several billion images, which did include those politicians.

The hits returned by the system were then confirmed visually by the three report authors as 100% accurate. But what does 100% mean here?

The report stipulates that the first two hits provided by the system were accurate. But we dont know how many other hits there were, or at what point they stopped being accurate. Politicians have lots of smiling headshots online, so finding two images should not be complex.

Whats more, law enforcement agencies are unlikely to be working with nice clean headshots. Poor-quality images taken from strange angles the kind you get from surveillance or CCTV cameras would be more like what law enforcement agencies are actually using.

Despite these and other criticisms, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That stands by the testing, telling Buzzfeed News he believes it is diligent and thorough.

The Clearview AI case shows there is not enough understanding or accountability around how this and other software tools work in law enforcement. Nor do we know enough about the company selling it and their security measures, nor about who in law enforcement is using it or under what conditions.

Beyond the ethical arguments around facial recognition, Clearview AI reveals Australian law enforcement agencies have such limited technical and organisational accountability that we should be questioning their competency even to evaluate, let alone use, this kind of technology.

See the article here:
Australian police are using the Clearview AI facial recognition system with no accountability - The Conversation - Australia