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Whats the Difference between Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology… – Coinspeaker

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Even in 2020, blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) remain a black box to the majority of the world. In this article, we will explain all you need to know about the blockchain and the distributed ledger technology, and enough to get you into any conversation.

The blockchain has grown to be a far more popular term than the DLT itself, which of course is thanks in no small part to the rise of the Bitcoin and other digital currencies over the decade.

While blockchain is the spine of the major cryptocurrency, it, of course, has other use cases and applications with the potential of being implemented across diverse sectors other than finance, including health, agriculture, and countless other sectors that the blockchain itself might even redefine. Thus, what is it about blockchain that sets it apart as probably the most important innovation of the past decade?

The blockchain is, put simply, the sequences, and series of records that cannot be altered and is being managed by a large body of computers. Computers verifying transactions in a blockchain might be hundreds, thousands, or even in many practical cases, millions in numbers.

The blockchain, due to its immutability, security and lack of a central authority, has grown in popularity. By cutting away the need for a middle man, the blockchain allows products and prospective services to be rendered directly to the customers without the middleman.

Its like buying pizza without the delivery guy or paying client miles and oceans away from your country directly without any mediums such as Visa, or Paypal cutting in the deal. Blockchain has provided the ground for many smart protocols and contracts and is only going to get stronger and find more use cases.

The blockchain, modeled as a series of immutable records, is only secure because of the cryptography linking its blocks. This is where the concept of chain is derived.

There are two kinds of records in a blockchain system. The first is the Transaction, and the other is the Block. The transaction record stores time-stamped transactions over no transaction cost. The block records are secured by a cryptography hash, which has encoded information of the preceding block.

The blocks in a blockchain are time-stamped, recording the present state of the system cryptographically so that any future change would have to be verified by the majority of the network. This means the addition of a new block to the existing chain becomes harder and involves more processes. Each increase in block given each addition would have to be verified by the existing network.

Thus, the blockchain comes off more secure. By requiring the majority of the system to verify a change it eliminates the need for trust, simply giving authority to the majority. Kalle Alm, a Bitcoin Core developer, explained why this process is important. He stresses that verification eliminates the possibility of fraudulent transactions while still eliminating trust at the same time:

Blockchains alleviate the trust requirement in a shared time-stamped database, he commented. For a public cryptocurrency, this is obviously necessary or someone might just go and give themselves a million USD, but for a private database, especially when it is not a cryptocurrency but some more abstract form of smart contract platform, it starts to make less and less sense.

As hyped and known as the blockchain is, the blockchain is however just a type of distributed ledger. If a pencil is a writing material as well as a pen, then the blockchain is a very good pencil! This is a terrible over-simplification by the way, but the point remains that blockchain is a specific type of distributed ledger, and there could be other types of ledgers different from blockchain and with different use cases.

The distributed ledger is likewise a database that is public in nature. It requires many witnesses and is open to all participants. Like in the blockchain, the DLT does not require a middle man which makes the concept of distributed ledger technologies very alluring.

While the blockchain, of course, has stolen the march and grown into respectable popularity over the years, there is every possibility that other forms of DLTs would materialize in the very near future.

As James Wallis, Vice President of Blockchain Markets and Engagements for IBM explained, applications of DLTs in the future would come off in the most unlikely of ways and places.

You will see uses for DLT that you cant even think of today, he said. But that this will involve a level of sharing that hasnt really existed before.

As mentioned, the blockchain is only a type of DLT, and just so happens to be the one known to be underlying DLT technology in the world. However, other key differences set the blockchain apart from its parent term.

For one, the blockchain is a permissionless system while the DLT is not necessarily permissionless. In fact, a DLT is generally considered to require permission.

The underlying concept behind the blockchain is particular about the growth and openness of the network, thus, a blockchain is open to anyone. Meaning any party can create and verify nodes on the former while at the latter, it is not the case. According to the director of the ecosystem at Hyperledger, Marta Piekarska, this particular feature is probably the most important feature that separates the two. Explaining its corresponding impact on its application, he talked up Bitcoin:

First and foremost: one is permission less, the other is permissioned. This means that in the first case anyone can participate in the network, in the other: only chosen participants have access to it. This also determined the size of the network: Bitcoin wants to grow infinitely, while in a permissioned blockchain space, the number of parties is smaller.

Apart from this, not all DLT are cryptographically hashed: it is perhaps uncommon and unnecessary in the majority of other existing DLTs. These subtle differences contribute to other major differences that affect the performance of both subjects.

The blockchain, as known, is largely decentralized. However, while the DLT is shared by many participants, its database is majorly centralized. This, of course, leads to the issue of scalability. By decentralizing its entire network, the blockchain is generally slower in transactions than most DLTs, leading to significantly inferior scalability.

Nevertheless, the blockchain is here to stay, and its increasing use cases is more than enough proof. Other forms and applications of distributed ledger technologies would be emanating soon in the near future. We can only keep our fingers crossed and enjoy the unveiling evolution.

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Whats the Difference between Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology... - Coinspeaker

‘Trust no one’ is good enough for the X Files but not for software devs: How do you use third-party libs and stay secure, experts mull on stage – The…

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Enigma In a chilly conference room at the San Francisco's Hyatt Regency on Monday, legal and digital security pros convened at USENIX's Enigma conference to hold forth on security, privacy, and related matters.

Following a discussion panel on encrypted messaging, the talk turned to mitigating the risks that come with using third-party code, external vendors, and crowdsourced advice.

Those risks became more apparent in the security problems spotted in a series of software libraries over the past few years.

In August last year, a Ruby software package called rest-client was found to be sending credentials to a remote server. In November, 2018, the NPM module event-stream was modified to steal cryptocurrency. There were similar incidents in July last year involving the NPM module electron-native-notify and in September, 2017, when the PyPI, the repository for Python software packages, was found to be hosting malicious software libraries.

While in theory no one should use anyone else's code without a thorough security review, that's impractical in the open source software ecosystem, where so many applications depend on code libraries written and maintained by third-parties and those libraries, in turn, depend on still more third-party libraries.

So the presenters explored ways to deal with risky trust relationships.

Filippo Valsorda, a cryptography engineer on the Go team at Google, offered an overview of the Go checksum database, a system deployed last year to provide a central log of Go module checksums the values returned from a cryptographic hash function to verify the modules.

"We all use other people's code," he said. "Modern software development practices involve using third-party software that is made available through the open source ecosystem."

Valsorda explained that the Go team has attempted to design a system that ensures the integrity, availability, and provenance of third-party code. And he said the team had the benefit of seeing where other software repositories went wrong.

We all use other people's code...

Go developers can use the go command client to verify the log entries stored in the Go checksum database, which stored checksums for all publicly-available Go modules. This doesn't guarantee that a library is free of malicious code, but it does ensure that the library hasn't been altered without authorization from its author.

Valsorda pointed to the left-pad incident when the creator of an NPM module unpublished his code and mayhem ensured to emphasize why code availability matters.

"The Go solution here is that there is a proxy protocol specified that allows you to fetch modules," he said. "And as long as the license of a certain module allows for distribution, we will hold on to the contents so that even if they get deleted, they will still be available for you to build."

There are privacy implications in Google's oversight of the central Go module database. These involve the possibility of exposing the text of private module paths and exposing how developers use public modules. Google has tried to reduce these privacy consequences by supporting proxy servers that other organizations can run on their own.

Companies, he said, "can run their own proxy, which will cache everything that has ever been used an organization and guarantee within the organization that everything will still be available in the future for as long as the internal infrastructure is accessible."

In the presentation that followed, Sarah Harvey, a security engineer for payments biz Square, examined the workflows organizations can use when integrating third-party vendor systems to reduce the risk of bad outcomes. She pointed to the 2014 hacking of Target's payment system through credentials that had been granted to its HVAC contractor as an example of the potential consequences of a third-party with too much network access.

Harvey described the integration flow that third-party vendors go through to connect to Square's systems. It basically involves filling out online forms that specify contextual information about vendors and their products, descriptions of the data being transferred, and the network domains required to make the relationship work. That information must then be translated into network and policy rules.

Because forms of this sort introduce friction that could discourage thorough disclosure, Harvey said she did a lot of work on the UX and UI design to auto-populate many of the data fields.

"You have to be very calculated amount of friction you're you are introducing and try to reduce it as much as possible to get people through the system," she said.

The third presentation on the topic of third-party trust involved Felix Fischer, a security researcher at Technical University of Munich, delving into the ups and downs of Q&A site Stack Overflow as a source of code examples. Fischer and others have penned papers [PDF] on the security consequences of relying on community-contributed code, but he had more in mind than rehashing past findings about the problem with copying-and-pasting insecure snippets into apps.

"Ninety-seven percent of apps that reuse code from Stack Overflow applied insecure code," he said. On the other hand, he said, some 70 per cent of code examples from the Q&A site incorporated helpful advice that applied security best practices. So good advice is available on Stack Overflow. However, only 6 per cent of Google Play apps reuse those code examples.

The reason that bad advice becomes more popular than good advice, he explained, has to do with the incentive structure of Stack Overflow, where people to earn reputation points by duplicating popular answers and reposting them.

"What we found was that over a third of the so-called highly-trusted users, users with a particularly high reputation score, posted insecure code," he said. "So all the very meaningful indicators on Stack Overflow were indeed pointing in the wrong direction."

Denying developers access to Stack Overflow won't help and would probably make things worse, said Fisher. He argues that behavioral science can be used to guide UX and UI modifications to Stack Overflow that help nudge developers to make the right security choices without taking away their freedom.

"We developed a nudge system based on deep learning that knows what suggested code examples are about and whether they're insecure or not," he said.

One way this was tested involved having the nudge system re-rank search results on Stack Overflow to present the most helpful and secure advice first. The system also warned about insecure advice within discussion threads while also always offering safe alternative solutions.

"Our nudging interventions did not harm productivity and significantly increased code security," he said.

In short, third-party code, third-party vendor relationships, and third-party advice have the potential to be harmful, but they don't have to be that way.

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'Trust no one' is good enough for the X Files but not for software devs: How do you use third-party libs and stay secure, experts mull on stage - The...

Canada’s complicity in the persecution of Julian Assange – World Socialist Web Site

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Canadas complicity in the persecution of Julian Assange By Roger Jordan 27 January 2020

The British government is conspiring with the Trump administration to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US to face bogus Espionage Act charges and a possible 175-year prison term.

The Australian-born journalist and publisher has been the target of a 9-year legal vendetta, mounted by British and US authorities, and supported by the Canadian political establishment, because he sought to inform working people around the world of the crimes carried out by US imperialism and its allies.

The prosecution of Assange is a legal travesty. One, moreover, that is being used to gut basic democratic rights, including the rights of free speech and freedom of the press and the right to due process.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer has repeatedly denounced his treatment by British authoritiesincluding his seven years of effective detention in the Ecuadorean Embassy and his current incarceration, in virtual solitary confinement, at the hellish maximum security Bellmarsh Prisonas psychological torture. Scores of doctors have warned that this torture has placed Assanges life in grave danger.

The CIA has spied on Assanges interactions with his lawyers. Chelsea Manning, who handed over hundreds of thousands of secret US cables to WikiLeaks in 2010, has also been detained since last March because she refused to testify against Assange in a rigged US Grand Jury proceeding.

Assange has been subjected to this horrific treatment by some of the worlds most powerful governments for the crime of informing the public about the war crimes and diplomatic skullduggery of their governments. These include the massacre of civilians in Iraq by US troops, the mistreatment of prisoners of war in Afghanistan, and Washingtons bullying of governments around the world. Even leading bourgeois newspapers, like the New York Times, that have published scurrilous attacks on Assange have been forced to concede that his successful prosecution would represent a threat to journalists and the freedom of the press the world over.

The Canadian political establishment has maintained a deafening and complicit silence about the prosecution and persecution of Assange throughout the past nine years. This is true of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals, but also of all the other parties that posture as progressive, from the New Democrats and Greens to the Bloc Quebecois, and the pseudo-left Quebec Solidaire.

The reason for this deafening silence is not hard to find. The Canadian capitalist elite, which is more reliant than ever on its military-strategic partnership with US imperialism to advance its own predatory interests on the global stage, fears the impact of WikiLeaks exposures. Like its British and American allies, the Canadian ruling elite is anxious that Assange be subjected to exemplary punishment so as to intimidate all those who seek to lay bare the crimes and machinations of the western imperialist powers.

Whilst the Trudeau government is not directly involved in Assanges prosecution, it has provided crucial political support for it. Last July, for example, the then Canadian Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, co-hosted a Global Media Freedom Conference in London along with British Foreign Secretary Jeremey Hunt, just weeks after Hunt had presided over the British governments illegal seizure of Assange from his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Canada and the UK are working together to defend media freedom and improve the safety of journalists who report across the world, Freelands office declared in a truly Orwellian statement. Needless to say, neither Freeland nor Hunt mentioned the fate of Assange, an award-winning journalist and publisher, at the meeting.

The refusal of any section of Canadas political establishment to criticize the persecution of Assange, let alone mobilize popular opposition to it, is a damning exposure of their oft-repeated claims to stand for human rights and democracy on the world stage. The reality is Ottawa, like Washington, cynically and hypocritically invokes human rights as a cover for the rapacious pursuit of their imperialist interests. The North American imperialist powers denounce both real and fabricated violations of human rights committed by governments they view as obstacles to their interests, while covering up and excusing state repression, torture, and war crimes carried out by their client regimes, allies, and, last but not least, their own military and security intelligence apparatuses.

Since 1999, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have participated in US-led wars and regime change military interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, Syria and Iraq that have left entire societies in ruins. Trudeaus Liberals have further integrated Canada into US military-strategic offensives around the world. This includes participating in Washingtons war preparations against nuclear-armed Russia and China, but also its regime-change intrigues in Venezuela.

Canadas ruling elite has also moved to criminalize dissent and workers struggles at home and to build up the repressive powers of the state with the aim of suppressing popular opposition to austerity, social inequality, and war. Canada is a key partner in the global US National Security Agency-led Five Eyes spying network. Under the phony pretext of the war on terror, successive governments have dramatically expanded the powers of the intelligence services. Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) has been empowered to break virtually any law in disrupting activities deemed to pose a threat to public security or Canadas territorial integrity.

The work of whistleblowers like Assange and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been invaluable in bringing to light some of the crimes Canadian imperialism has committed as it pursues aggression abroad and attacks democratic rights at home. It was a US State Department memo released by WikiLeaks that informed the Canadian population that while the Liberal government of Jean Chretien publicly posed as an opponent of the George W. Bush-ordered 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was reassuring Washington behind the scenes that it would provide discreet support for the illegal US war.

Following the meeting, political director Jim Wright emphasized that, despite public statements that the Canadian assets in the Straits of Hormuz will remain in the region exclusively to support Enduring Freedom, noted the memo, which described a meeting between top US and Canadian foreign ministry officials on March 17, 2003. They will also be available to provide escort services in the Straits and will otherwise be discreetly useful to the military effort. The two ships in the Straits now are being augmented by two more en route, and there are patrol and supply aircraft in the U.A.E. [United Arab Emirates] which are also prepared to 'be useful.

Snowdens disclosures in 2013 revealed that the Canadian Security Establishment (CSE), Canadas signal intelligence agency, acts as a veritable arm of the NSA. Documents leaked by Snowden showed that the CSE helps develop NSA spying operations and techniques, provides information on countries that US citizens have difficulty accessing, and conducts economic spying for Canadian corporations around the world.

The Canadian ruling elite was outraged by these exposures. In 2013, Conservative Foreign Minister John Baird declared that Snowden should hand himself over to the US authorities, effectively condemning him to a death sentence. Three years later, Michael Doucetthe governments top watchdog for the countrys intelligence agenciesblurted out the true feelings of the ruling elite towards whistleblowers like Snowden and Assange. Asked his opinion on how Snowden would have been treated had he been an employee of CSIS, the countrys premier domestic spy agency, Doucet responded, If Edward Snowden had worked for CSIS and did what he did, he should be shot. (See: Canadas top spy watchdog says Edward Snowden should be shot)

Underscoring the fact that Doucets remark reflected broader sentiments in ruling circles, the Trudeau government took no action against him for this outrageous comment.

The complicit silence of Canadas political elite on Assanges torture, persecution, and imminent extradition underscores that his freedom can be won only through the mobilization of the working class, the basic constituency for the defence of democratic rights around the world.

Workers and young people who want to oppose Canadian imperialist aggression and war overseas and attacks on democratic rights at home should join the global struggle for the freedom of Assange and Manning, which has already won important and growing support in Britain, Australia, France, South Asia, and countries around the world. The struggle to defend these two courageous whistleblowers must be made the spearhead of the fight to oppose the imperialist powers drive to war and the gutting of democratic rights.

The Socialist Equality Party (Canada) is holding a public meeting in Montreal on Sunday, February 2 to initiate steps to develop a cross-Canada campaign to win Assanges freedom, defend democratic rights, and oppose Canadian imperialism and war.

We strongly urge those living in western Quebec and eastern Ontario to make plans to attend. For details see below.

No to war and the assault on democratic rights: Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning must be defended!

Montreal

Sunday, February 2, at 1:30 PMCentre St-Pierre, Room 2011212 Rue Panet (near the Beaudry Mtro station, on the Green Line)

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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Canada's complicity in the persecution of Julian Assange - World Socialist Web Site

Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the same party as Joe Biden – World Socialist Web Site

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Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the same party as Joe Biden By Genevieve Leigh 28 January 2020

Democratic Representative from New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said in an interview with New York Magazine that she and former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, would be in different political parties in any other country.

The comment came in response to a question about what role Ocasio-Cortez might play as a member of Congress should Biden win. She said in response, In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.

Ocasio-Cortez added that the Democrats could be too big of a tent and criticized the Congressional Progressive Caucuss standard for lawmakers. They let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive, she stated, adding, theres no standard.

The comments prompted a wide range of responses in the media. There were dozens of headlines touting (or lamenting) Ocasio-Cortezs radical left agenda, with many agreeing that the two prominent Democrats should not, in fact, be in the same party.

Jacobin, the unofficial media voice of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), ran an article with the headline: AOC Is Right: She and Joe Biden Should Not Be in the Same Party, which outlined the supposed gulf between the politics of Biden and those of Ocasio-Cortez on numerous issues. Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the DSA, and Jacobin and the DSA regularly celebrate the congresswoman as the way forward for the socialist movement in the US.

Jacobin concludes: She and Biden dont belong in the same party. No party is big enough for the both of them.

The obvious question is why, if Ocasio-Cortezs political opinions are indeed so radically different from Bidens, are they in the same party? Jacobin responds by attributing this to the particularly anti-democratic form of the American two-party system, with its restrictive ballot access laws and the absence of proportional representation.

In reality, Ocasio-Cortez, like Bernie Sanders, is playing a critical role that has long been assumed, in different forms, by supposedly left organizations and individuals within the Democratic Party: namely, channeling social tensions and opposition behind the oldest capitalist party in America.

There is the experience of the Peoples Party and the presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan in the late 1890s, through which the populist movement was appropriated and smothered by the Democratic Party; the Farmer-Labor Party campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s in the upper-Midwest, which were absorbed by the Democrats; the Jesse Jackson campaigns in the 1980s; and most recently the campaigns of figures like Dennis Kucinich and Sandersall of whom served in one form or another to contain social opposition within the framework of the Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system.

The DSA itself, from its inception, has existed as an auxiliary arm of the Democratic Party, with no serious pretense to independence. The predecessor organization of the DSA, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), emerged out of a split within the Socialist Party of America in 1972. Michael Harrington was the founder of both the DSA in 1982 and its predecessor organization, the DSOC.

Harringtons early political training came in the 1950s as a leader of the Young Socialist League, the youth organization of the Independent Socialist League, led by Max Shachtman. Shachtman had split from the Socialist Workers Party, the pioneer party of American Trotskyism, in 1940, leading a petty-bourgeois opposition opposed to the defense of the Soviet Union against imperialism.

By 1950, the Shachtmanites were defending US intervention in the Korean War. In 1961, soon after merging his organization with the US Socialist Party, Shachtman supported the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. He soon was defending imperialist war crimes in Vietnam.

Harrington broke with Shachtman over the latters vociferous support for the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. His criticisms were not based on principled opposition to imperialism, however, but rather on the view, shared by most sections of the Democratic Party, that the war was unwinnable and was undermining the interests of American capitalism.

Both Shachtman and Harrington, despite their political differences, sought to keep the working class tied to the Democrats. They attached themselves to different wings of this party of imperialist reaction.

Shachtman had become a top adviser to AFL-CIO President George Meany and to the most right-wing war hawks among the Democrats. Harrington was close to other sections of the trade union bureaucracy, and to the wing of the Democrats supporting George McGovern, the partys presidential candidate in 1972. The McGovern campaign played a critical role in the reorientation of the Democratic Party, abandoning all pretense of defending the working class and instead basing itself on privileged layers of the middle class on the basis of the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.

The first issue of Democratic Left, the flagship publication of the DSOC, laid out its orientation: to build a progressive majority for the Democratic Party in 1974 and 1976. In a prominent editorial in the same edition, Harrington explained the function of the newly founded group: We believe that the left wing of realism is today found in the Democratic Party. It is there that the mass forces for social change are assembled; it is there that the possibility exists for creating a new first party in America.

The time period when Harrington was drawing the conclusion that the Democratic Party was the way forward for socialists and social change is of particular significance. American capitalism was entering a period of protracted economic decline. The Vietnam War spelled the end of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. By the late 1960s, the postwar boom had begun to unravel and the policies of the Democratic Party underwent a shift to the right. The ruling class was preparing to launch a social counterrevolution, beginning the process of tearing up all the gains workers had won in an earlier period.

Further on in the same commentary, Harrington added: We do not want to purge the New Politics from the Democratic Party; we choose, rather, to help bring out its best potential.

The New Politics to which Harrington referred was a reflection of the Democratic Partys attempt to absorb middle class elements emerging from the movement against the Vietnam War. None other than President Richard Nixon adopted a similar strategy after 1968 with his embrace of black capitalism, a program that included policies such as affirmative action and racial quotas aimed at promoting a layer of black businessmen and politicians who then helped preside over an immense increase in social inequality.

Harrington articulated the views of a broad layer of 1960s radicals who were moving to the right. They had abandoned any conception, to the extent they ever had one, of socialism based on the working class. This layer did not want to be burdened by any principles, socialist or otherwise, that stood in the way of their entry into the upper-middle class.

The four decades since the founding of the DSA have seen an unbroken movement to the right on the part of the ruling class as a whole, and the Democratic Party in particular. The Democrats long ago rejected any association with social reform. Under the Obama administration (2009-2017), the Democrats oversaw the biggest redistribution of wealth from the working class to the rich in US history.

There is mass popular opposition to inequality and war, which has erupted in the form of demonstrations and strikes throughout the world, along with a growing political radicalization of young people. More and more, young people are identifying themselves as socialists.

The emergence of Ocasio-Cortez is completely in line with the traditional role of the Democratic Party as an instrument of the ruling class to capture and strangle popular opposition to capitalism. She herself is not the head of a mass movement that the Democratic Party is working to co-opt. She is rather the product of maneuvers by the DSA, operating inside the Democratic Party, to preempt the popular support for socialism that was revealed in 2016 in the 13 million votes for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primaries.

Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, is a long-time functionary for the Democratic Party. He ran as the supposed opponent of the billionaire class and champion of a political revolution, which turned out to be a campaign to hustle votes for Hillary Clinton, the candidate of Wall Street and the political establishment.

Ocasio-Cortezs marching orders are to keep the growing opposition in the working class within the safe confines of the two-party system. Neither Ocasio-Cortez nor Sanders has anything to do with a genuine movement for socialism, which must be based in the working class and guided by a program to mobilize workers on an international basis against world capitalism. In her brief tenure in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez has already demonstrated that her politics are entirely compatible with those of the Democratic Party establishment.

She has fully accepted the Democrats anti-Russia campaign and the right-wing, pro-war basis of their impeachment proceedings against Trump. She has dropped her demand to abolish ICE, which is spearheading Trumps war on immigrants, and cultivated a close relationship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

She has been silent on the persecution of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning and the associated attack on free speech, as well as the illegal military violence, mass spying and record deportations carried out by the Obama administration.

She, along with Sanders, joined in the disgusting chorus of praise for arch-warmonger John McCain following the Arizona senators death, tweeting: John McCains legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency. (See Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders praise McCain: An object lesson in the politics of the pseudo-left)

Her signature legislation, the Green New Deal, was put forward as a non-binding resolution. It features left-sounding rhetoric but has zero significance in terms of resolving the global warming crisis. It promotes the fiction that it is possible to avert an environmental catastrophe within the framework of capitalism and the Democratic Party.

At the end of the day, Biden and Ocasio-Cortez agree on all of the fundamental points that define the Democratic Party: support for imperialist war, which requires attacks on democratic rights and social programs; American nationalism and defense of the nation-state framework, which means attacks on immigrants and a buildup of police state repression; and the defense of capitalist ownership of the means of production, the source of the social evils that Biden and Ocasio-Cortez claim to oppose.

Ocasio-Cortez has moved steadily away from any association with the term socialism. In a particularly revealing interview with NBC News Chuck Todd last year, she was asked if one could be a socialist and capitalist at the same time. Ocasio-Cortez replied that she thought it was possible.

The working class has been repeatedly sold the same bill of goods about reforming the Democratic Party for more than a century. Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA are hoping they can pull off this political swindle one more time.

As the new decade opens, the working class is facing enormous political dangers: the threat of a third world war, the rise of fascism, a looming ecological catastrophe, and the further destruction of jobs and social services. At the same time, strikes and protests against social inequality and attacks on democratic rights are taking place on virtually every continent. The growing international movement against capitalism shows the potential for a revolutionary socialist alternative.

The critical question is the building of a revolutionary leadership, which requires the rejection and defeat of all those, such as Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA, who seek to trap working people within the confines of capitalist politics.

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the same party as Joe Biden - World Socialist Web Site

10 Years After His Passing, Howard Zinn Remains a Threat to the Status Quo – Truthout

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In Howard Zinns play Marx in Soho, Karl Marx remarks, They are all proclaiming that my ideas are dead! Its nothing new. These clowns have been saying this for more than a hundred years. Dont you wonder: why is it necessary to declare me dead again and again?

Reflecting on Zinns death 10 years ago, the parallel is striking: the right and all too many liberals still find it necessary to attack the historian, playwright and socialist thinker because of the remarkable clarity, power and danger his ideas represent today.

When whistleblower Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison, charged with releasing classified documents, including the video of a 2007 U.S. airstrike on Iraqi civilians that killed two Reuters journalists, Manning declared: As the late Howard Zinn once said, There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.

Protesters have carried placards bearing this quote and many others by Zinn in marches around the globe, and graffiti artists and muralists have shared his words and image internationally.

Zinn continues to be referenced in popular culture, including recent appearances in John Leguizamos one-person Broadway show and television special Latin History for Morons, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsons television series Broad City and Greta Gerwigs movie Lady Bird.

The actor Riz Ahmed, discussing his television miniseries Englistan, told Variety that A Peoples History of the United States had shown him the possibility of taking a different look at events of the past.

A Peoples History of the United States, Zinns most famous work, challenges traditional historical narratives taught in U.S. schools, and instead focuses on the history of those often erased from textbooks. A Peoples History of the United States continues to sell remarkably well, seeing a large bump after the 2016 presidential election, and has now sold more than 3.6 million copies of the U.S. edition alone. The book continues to influence how people both teach and learn history and how they see themselves in history.

More than 100,000 teachers have registered with the Zinn Education Project, which promotes and supports the teaching of peoples history in classrooms across the country, and are using its free resources and curricula in classrooms across the country.

Throughout his life, Zinn emphasized agency, not just of heroic individuals but of people in common cause, in organizations, in social movements. And he embodied in his everyday life a spirit of joyful defiance of authority.

This is at the heart of Zinns radicalism, and why he remains such a threat to the establishment, whether the right or establishment liberals.

Ten years after Zinns death, the world is at a perilous crossroads. The great English historian Eric Hobsbawm titled his history of the years 1914 to 1991 The Age of Extremes. But that title could well describe the decade we have just collectively survived, as well as the dangerous new one we are entering.

Right-wing authoritarianism in some cases, directly linked to newly emboldened fascist forces is openly shaping politics in Brazil, India, the United States and beyond.

The planet is on fire, as Naomi Klein has extensively documented, and eco-fascist movements are using the environmental crisis to advance their hateful ideology.

The ultra-rich hoard wealth, while billions face displacement, hunger, malnutrition, shortened lifespans, surveillance, caging and oppression.

The powerful would like to smash our planet, and grab as much as they can while they are alive. And they want no interference from the wretched of the Earth.

Zinn described our world as topsy-turvy, and dedicated his life to turning it right side up. That is why his ideas live on. That is why so many people need to declare them dead again and again.

Writing about the great writer and socialist Kurt Vonnegut, who died three years before him, Zinn noted his wry humor, a trait they both shared.

Zinn then observed, Vonnegut was often asked why he bothered writing. He answered this way: Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about. You are not alone. Millions and millions of people, all over the world, reading him, do not feel alone. What could be a more important achievement?

In our atomized and cruel world, the same can be said of Zinns remarkable life and achievement.

Zinn reminds us that we are not alone, that the only way anything has ever changed is when people collectively acted to bring about changes none of them could have imagined or achieved on their own, and that we can and must wrest the world from the fools who are destroying it.

Go here to see the original:
10 Years After His Passing, Howard Zinn Remains a Threat to the Status Quo - Truthout

14 Best Free And Open Source Software For Windows 10 Every …

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Microsoft is mostly criticizedby the Linux community for their closed-source Windows operating system which single-handedly outperforms the popularity of all the Linux distros combined. The company has been an advocate of proprietary software, but in the last couple of years, Redmond has made a lot of contributions to the open source community.

Microsoft is now one of the top-tier members of the Linux Foundation and has aregular presence on GitHub. Stuffing distros such as Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora into the Windows Subsystem is the sign of love Microsoft is showing towards the Linux community.

However, on the other hand, some people might want to tie this with Microsofts evil intentions. Earlier, it was predicted that they would digestLinux in the long run. If Windows becomes capable of running Linux applications someday, then people might fall for it.

Leaving all these things aside, one important thing to consider is that various free and open-source software available for Windows 10. If you want to take advantage of Windows 10s fluidity and other features, you can do so with a touch of open source.

Dont forget to check out our list of open source apps for Android.

Developed by Mozilla Foundation, Firefox is an open-source web browser which was first released in 2002. Firefox started to lose its user base after the arrival of Google Chrome in 2009. But last year, Mozilla gave a massive transformation to Firefox, and now it stands proudly in front of Chrome and other leading browsers.

Firefox is the default web browser on various Linux distributions, but it also has gigantic user based on the Windows platform, and not to mention Android.

Download Mozilla Firefox

People often criticize Google Chrome for its proprietary nature; its daddy Chromium is always ready to rescue the popular browser with its open source goodies. In fact, Chrome borrows itsbase code from Chromium after which Google makes some changes.

One of the advantages of having Chrome or Chromium is that you can stream content from your desktop to TV screen using a Chromecast receiver.

Chromium has posed itself as a serious contender for the default web browser on Linux systems. When it comes to Windows 10, many people are stuck to Chrome, but Chromium can be a great alternative if you want to fill your proprietary machine with some open source software.

Download Chromium

Its hard to imagine a Windows 10 machine without the VLC. Thats the reason it hasbagged the top position on our list of best media players for Windows 10. The open-source media player developed and maintained by VideoLAN.

Other than playing different audio/video formats, VLC can also be used to stream online content and download YouTube videos.

Download VLC

You might have heard about the direct connect (DC) protocol used for sharing files over the internet. The open source DC++ is the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing client based on the direct connect protocol.

You can use DC++ as an alternative to BitTorrent. Other than Windows, various DC clients are available for macOS and Linux. Read this post to know more about the pros and cons of DC++.

Download DC++

qBittorrent is an open source client for Windows 10 which is used to download torrent files. The letter q in the name qBittorrent is because it is designed using Qt. qBittorrent is also available for other operating systems including macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.

Download qBittorent

GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) can be assumed as the open source answer to Adobe Photoshop unless youre planning to spend ten years and master MS Paint,like, this guy did.

Created by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, GIMP has existed for more than two decades since its first release in 1995. The open source graphics editor can be used to create and make changes to photos and clipart in raster image formats including JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc. GIMP is available for Windows 10, Linux, and macOS.

Download GIMP

Another name in the list of free and open source software for Windows 10 is Libre Office. In 2011, the office application suite sprung out of another open source project known as OpenOffice.

Libre Office currently offers a variety of apps like Writer (similar to MS Word), Calc (MS Excel), Impress (Powerpoint), Math (used to create and edit maths formulae), Draw (vector graphics editor), and Base (a database management program).

There are two versions of Libre Office which are in continuous development. Fresh release comes with all the latest features created for Libre Office, on the other hand, Still release is a little behind in terms of features but focuses more on stability.

Download Libre Office

You cant question the capabilities of the 17-year-old open source tool 7zip when compressing and extracting files. The fact that 7zip is open source adds to the comfort of the haters of proprietary software.

7zip is primarily created for machines running Windows operating system. However, command line based versions for Linux distros are available. Other support for popular compression formats, 7zip also offers its own compression format called 7z.

Download 7zip

Probably, the only hypervisor software known to common users like us is VirtualBox. It allows people to run some other operating system, be it Windows or Linux, inside their primary operating system.

The original development of this open source software was carried out by Innotek GMbh before it was taken over by Sun Microsystems followed by Oracle.

Other than being an open source software available for Windows 10, VirtualBox is also available for other platforms including Linux, Solaris, macOS, etc.

Download VirtualBox

Tor Browser is the perfect solution for users who dont want to blow their anonymity cover on the internet. The open-source web browser for Windows 10, macOS, and Linux leverages Tor network to conceal users identity and IP address.

Its a modified version of the Firefox ESR browser which includes some add-ons such as HTTPSEverywhere, NoScript, etc. Tor browser reroutes the traffic through various nodes on the Tor network. It automatically deletes cookies and web history when the user closes the browser window, thus, reducing the chances of a user getting tracked.

Download Tor Browser

The file-sharing software FileZilla is also a great open source software for Windows 10. Its available for Linux and macOS as well. The FTP client was born as a class project of a student trio in 2001.

FileZilla offers protected file sharing which requires a username and password to access the shared data. Overall, the software has received a positive response, but it has been accused of storing passwords insecurely. Users have criticized FileZilla for bundling adware as a part of SourceForges revenue program.

Download FileZilla

Thunderbird is an email client developed by Mozilla. Launched in 2004, it was able to serve the rising demand for a dedicated email client. In the last few years, Mozilla has reduced their focus on Thunderbird because they dont believe it can make the same the industry-wide impact as Firefox does.

The open source email client is available for Windows 10, Linux, and MacOS. Other than an email client, Thunderbird includes a Calendar,Chat client, and can receive RSS feeds amongst various other features. However, the emails are listed in a congested manner and might ruin your user experience.

Download Mozilla Thunderbird

MPC-HC is also an open source media player for Windows 10. In terms of video and audio format support, it can easily go shoulder to shoulder with VLC. One thing I like about MPC-HC is that it can play 4K videos if youre running capable hardware.

The biggest drawback of MPC-HC is that its only available for Windows platforms, thats where VLC takes over by providing a cross-platform media player.

Download MPC-HC

In our list of the best password managers, you can find the open source Windows software called KeePass. Standing confidently among other proprietary password managers, KeePass provides an effective way to save and organize tons of usernames and passwords you have for your web accounts and various services.

All the account credentials added to KeePass are stored on the users system in an encrypted file to protect the information from attackers. It supports input and export of data from other password managers and also comes with built-in password generator which can suggest random passwords. Read more about creating a strong password.

Download KeePass

So, these were some of the free and open source software for Windows 10 you can use in your daily life. Ill try to extend this list in the future.

Did you find this helpful? Drop your thoughts and feedback.

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14 Best Free And Open Source Software For Windows 10 Every ...

Top 16 of the best open-source CAD software in 2020

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Posted By Lucie Gaget on Mar 21, 2018 |

3D modeling software are useful for many different applications and could be a great asset for your business. It is a real advantage to develop your project, and it can be used for architectural projects, in the medical field or even in the fashion sector. Everything is possible. In this blog post we are going to see how a 3D modeling program could help you in your daily work and what an open-source software exactly is. Then, we will see what are the best available open-source CAD software in 2020 in order to help you find the right CAD tool for your company.

3D modeling software could be useful for your company for diverse applications. It can be used by engineers or designers, and even by amateurs. It is becoming a convenient and essential tool to work on designs, prototypes, or to produce 3D printed parts. You can use it to 3D model your parts in order to 3D print them, or just for the visualization of your projects.

Do you need to improve your design process or want to elaborate industrial designs?

These kinds of programs are particularly convenient if you are looking for a new prototyping process. Indeed, prototyping is becoming quite simple while using 3D modeling software and additive manufacturing. You can do many iterations at a lower cost, and you just have to modify your CAD model if you need to change something.

3D modeling software could also be a good solution to get a better visualization of your project or to improve your product design. From technical drawings to advanced 3D models for mechanical engineering, everything is possible if you choose the right CAD tool. We know that there is necessarily a software on the market that will fit your needs, and it may be an open-source software!

Open-Source software has a free public code that can be downloaded and modified by developers. It can be great if you want to add features to specific software in order to improve it, and adapt it to the use of your business. All the community can participate in the software development, anyone can write an extension to make the software better. It clearly has a collaborative aspect.

There are various open source CAD software programs available, that you can download for free. You can use them to create and modify your 3D models and develop your professional projects. Are you interested in starting 3D modeling with an open-source CAD software? Lets see what the best programs are for your business.

Here is a selection of the best open-source 3D CAD software for 3D applications. You will mainly find software for advanced users, as these programs are addressed to professionals or programmers.

FreeCAD is a parametric 3D modeling software. You dont need previous experience with 3D modeling to use it, but you can totally achieve complex models with it, for engineering or architecture projects. Indeed, it has professional features adapted to work for mechanical engineering. It can be used by anybody: home-users, designers, programmers and even educators.

If you need to 3D print your part, check our tutorial to learn how to prepare your 3D model to 3D printing using FreeCAD.

Blender is a widely used open-source software. It is useful to create various 3D designs, from electronic projects to digital art. It can create impressive models, using polygonal modeling techniques. You can use Blender to create simulations and animations.

You need to be experienced with 3D modeling, but if you need a little help, Blender has a really large community, offering a lot of tutorials.

If you are planning to 3D print your model, check out our tutorial to prepare your design for 3D printing using Blender.

OpenSCAD is an open-source parametric software, that can be used to create 2D designs, and 3D models. It is a great tool to make 3D objects designed for additive manufacturing. While using OpenSCAD, you cant modify directly with your mouse the CAD model that is in the viewer. This software uses its own language.

OpenSCAD is perfect if you need to create accurate models, but you have to keep in mind that it is really programmer oriented.

Wings 3D is a free open-source software. It offers a great variety of modeling tools, that could help you with all of your projects. It is a good software to create your CAD models and work on texture and materials. However, it is not the perfect tool if you need a CAD program for animation and rendering.

We have a tutorial that could help you to create your 3D model with Wings 3D.

OpenCascade Technology is a complete 3D modeling tool: from modeling to visualization, everything is possible. The geometric, topological and visualization algorithms of this program will allow you to create 3D models for any type of sectors, just for visualization, or for manufacturing processes.

SolveSpace is a parametric 2D/3D modeling software. It is a good tool if you need an open-source CAD software to export your 3D files for 3D printing. It has all the basic features of a 3D software, and it is possible to make complex designs. You can work on the design of an object or process mechanical simulations with this program.

Art of illusion is an animation oriented software. It is an open-source program, allowing to work on 3D modeling, texturing and material, but also able to make some rendering. Art of illusion is a high end animation program, powerful enough to be used professionally.

OpenJSCAD is an open-source CAD program. It is quite similar to OpenSCAD, that we discussed previously in this blogpost, but the difference is that OpenJSCAD is a browser-based program. It is easier to use. Indeed, it is a good solution as you dont need to install any software to create the 3D model that you want to 3D print.

Moreover, all the features are well explained on the website, you just have to follow the indications to create your own 3D designs.

JS Sketcher

JS Sketcher is a CAD program that you can access with your browser. This open-source parametric modeling software is written in javascript. For the moment, there are not too many features, so it is a simple software to use if you are just beginning with open-source programs, but you will still need a little bit of training at the beginning. This is a really promising software.

QCAD is a free computer-aided design software. It is hosted on GitHub and is open to any contributions. This 2D CAD software offers a wide range of CAD tools. This CAD program can be extended through its complete ECMAScript (JavaScript) interface.

This CAD tool software has been developed by Mike Muuss at the Army Research Laboratory and used by US military. They used it for academic, industrial or even health applications. This solid modeling systemhas been around since 1984, it simply became an open-source project in 2004.

It is now possible to use this program for engineering or graphic applications.

LibreCAD is a free open-source CAD with a large community of users, contributors and developers. This 2D CAD software is really complete and useful for laser cutting projects, for example. The source code can be downloaded directly from GitHub

If you are looking for an open-source software for chara-design: you have to try Makehuman! It has an intuitive interface, and perfect software tools for beginners. It is allowing you to use parametric modeling to create your characters, and to work on body proportion, faces, eyes, etc. This software offers a lot of possibilities, but you will not be able to create realistic 3D models with this CAD program

http://www.makehuman.org/

OpenFX is a 3D modeling software, it has a powerful feature set. This open source software is majoritarly used for chara-design. OpenFX is a flexible program, offering you a lot of possibilities in terms of chara-design. For example, you can make good skeleton structures and skinning with this 3D software. You can even simulate actions with the character that youve created, to see how your design reacts.

MolView is a molecular modeling software. It is a free web-application, with a steep learning curve, so it is possible to use it even if you have no previous CAD experience. This open-source program allows to create various projects such as structural formulas, simulation of proteins, etc.

You can watch the video below to get more information about this software:

Open VSP (Vehicle Space Pad) is an open-source software for aircraft. It has been developed by NASA. This is a serious and intuitive tool that will allow you to create CAD models easily and create accurate designs and mechanical overview for all your aircraft projects.

If you are just getting started, here is a tutorial for you to discover the basic CAD software options of OpenVSP:

We hope that this top will help you to find the perfect open-source CAD software for your project. If you already have a 3D model, and want to try additive manufacturing, you can upload your 3D model right now on our online 3D printing service. You will access our 3D printers, allowing you to create amazing 3D printing projects.

If you want to read more about 3D modeling software and 3D printing, dont forget to subscribe to our newsletter.

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Top 16 of the best open-source CAD software in 2020

The Best Open Source Software in 2019 (Users’ Choice)

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Ravi Saive posted a question on Linux Inside FaceBook page asking users to mention the best open-source software they found in 2019 and boy did the comments come in.

I have decided to compile the applications our followers mentioned into a list which since the mentions are still coming in, is non-exhaustive.

LibreOffice is a free and open-source office suite written in C++, Java, and Python. It was first released in January 2011 by The Document Foundation and has since known to be the most reliable open-source office suite.

Usually used as an alternative to Microsoft Office Suite, it is regularly updated and is also compatible withdoc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx files.

Nextcloud is an open-source, self-hosted file sharing platform with support for communicating and collaborating with teams.

Its functionality is similar to that of Dropbox and ownCloud, and you can use it to sync your files, calendars, and other data formats.

Adminer is a minimalist Database Management System (DBMS) in a single PHP file and it focuses on security, UX, performance, feature set, and size.

It ships with several inbuilt themes and features all the operations you can perform in phpMyAdmin with the promise of offering a tidier UI with high performance and better support for MySQL features.

Slim Framework is a PHP micro-framework that enables users to write powerful web applications and APIs in a simpler way.

Fundamentally, it works as a dispatcher that receives an HTTP request, invokes an appropriate callback routine, and then returns an HTTP response.

uniCenta is an open-source commercial-grade Point Of Sale dedicated to providing business owners with innovative POS applications.

Its features include modules for system control, sales, inventory, suppliers, employees, customers, and reports.

Bitwarden is a free and open-source password manager for keeping digital records away from the sight of unauthorized users.

It features a clean minimalist UI with several client applications including one for a web interface, desktop, mobile apps, etc. and can be used by individuals, teams, and organizations.

The Elastic Stack is made up of various open-source applications designed to enable users to collect data from any source irrespective of its format and type.

It also enables users to search, analyze, and visualize data in real-time and it can be distributed as Software as a Service (Saas) or installed on-premise.

Steam is not open-source but it is regarded as the ultimate online gaming platform, is an online community where you can easily search, install, and manage game collections for different OS platforms.

SteamOS + Linux on Steam is the best thing that has happened to gamers in the Linux community.

The cockpit is a user-friendly, integrated, glanceable, extendable, and web-based GUI for managing servers. It is designed to have a beautiful, modern UI with support for teams, integration with the terminal, multi-server administration, and built-introubleshootingtools.

The NET Core refers to the free and open-source general-purpose software development framework for Linux, macOS, and Windows Operating Systems. It contains the .NET Native runtime and CoreRTand it can be used in device, cloud, and embedded/IoT scenarios.

IPFire is a versatile open-source Linux-based firewall that is easy to use and offers high performance in any scenario. IPFire originally started as an IPCop fork but was rewritten from scratch in version 2.

Flameshot is a simple but powerful screenshot application for Linux, that you can use to interact with it via GUI or CLI and perform markup operations on a per-screenshot basis.

Brave Browser is a free and open-source Chromium-based browser that ships with more features than Chrom typically does. It is customizable, security-focused, user-friendly, and ships with an inbuilt adblocker and password manager among other features.

BRL-CAD is a free and open-source cross-platform solid modeling system that includes interactive geometry editing, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, geometry libraries for application developers, and high-performance ray-tracing for rendering and geometric analysis.

ssh-chat is a custom SSH server through which you can hold secure chats with a limited number of users over an ssh connection. It is specially designed to convert your SSH server into a chat service after which you get a chat prompt rather than a typical shell.

PhotoRec is a CLI utility software for data recovery capable of recovering files with over 480 extensions. It is compatible with various digital camera memory, hard disks, and CD-ROMs.

GParted is a GUI utility for managing disk partitions and is capable of resizing, moving, and copying partitions without data loss. It is excellent at manipulating file systems including xfs, ufs, ntfs, udf, fat16/fat32, ext2/ext3/ext4, btrfs, etc.

Restic is an open-source CLI-based utility for performing backups easily, securely, quickly, and efficiently for free. It uses Semantic Versioning to always allow for backward compatibility within one major version.

Rclone is a command line-based utility for synchronizing files and directories to and from several storage locations including Dropbox, FTP, Hubic, Dreamhost, OVH, Nextcloud, Yandex Disk, etc.

Rclones features include checking for file hash equality, timestamps preserved on files, one-way sync mode to directories, Union backend, etc.

Minio is a private cloud storage stack that provides scalable and persistent object storage for several infrastructures including Docker, Kubernetes, GCP, etc.

Cmus is a powerful but lightweight CLI-based music player app for playing audio files from the terminal on Unix-like Operating Systems.

Etcher is a cross-platform GUI utility for easily and safely flashing OS images to SD cards and USB drives.

Cargo is a package manager for the Rust programming language and it is efficient at downloading the necessary Rust dependencies for your project as well as compiling the packages into distributable packages that it then uploads to crates.io.

Sayonara Player is a C++ audio player and library manager for Linux devices. It features several advanced functionalities including extending its features list with extensions, directory view, recording webstreams and podcasts, an inbuilt tag editor, crossfade, equalizer, etc.

Helm is a package manager created by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation for Kubernetes and it provides users with the easiest way to discover, share, and built Kubernetes applications.

Kubernetes also referred to as k8s, is an open-source system for automating application management, scaling, and deployment.

ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented Database Management System for generating analytical data reports in real-time using SQL. It is linearly scalable, fault-tolerant, simple to use, and hardware efficient.

Shotcut is a free, cross-platform and open-source video editor with wide support for video formats, and a clean User Interface. It features network stream playback, IP stream, webcam and audio capture, support for 4K resolution, capture from SDI, etc.

Kdenlive is an advanced free and open-source video editing software with support for multi-track video editing, proxy editing, timeline preview, automatic backup, and audio and video scopes.

Kdenlive also features several online resources for users, a titler for creating 2D titles, a configurable UI, etc.

Rufus is a lightweight utility for creating bootable USB flash drives and flashing BIOS or other firmware from DOS. It can also be used to format drives and can be run directly from a memory stick as a portable app.

DSpace is a customizable open-source dynamic digital repository whose aim is to make information easy to access, use, and manage. It is used in several academic, commercial, and non-profit settings for building open digital repositories.

Stellarium is an open-source OpenGL-powered planetarium software that shows a 3D simulation of the night sky in real-time. It also contains details of all the planetary bodies and constellations with engaging visualizations.

Krita is a cross-platform open-source raster graphics editor for digital painting and creating animations. It is among the most popular digital painting tools with features like native support for CMYK, a clutter-free UI, efficient resource management, a pop-up color palette, etc.

Tvheadend (TVH) is a Linux recorder and TV streaming server with support for various streaming formats includingISDB-T, IPTV, SAT>IP, ATSC, DVB-S2, DVB-S, DVB-C, etc.

OpenShot is a free, cross-platform, and open-source video editor created to be incredibly simple, powerful, and efficient. It features unlimited tracks, animations & keyframes, a title editor, slow motion and time effects, support for 70+ languages, etc.

GSConnect is an implementation of KDE Connect especially for GNOME shell with Nautilus, Firefox, and Chrome integration. Like KDEConnect, GSConnect allows devices to connect and share notifications, SMS messages, files, etc. e.g. connecting an Android device to an Ubuntu PC.

Borg Backup (short, Borg) is a deduplicating backup program with optional support for compression and encryption. It was built with the main goal of providing an efficient way to securely back data up.

Visual Studio Code is Microsofts free, cross-platform, and open-source feature-rich code editor. It is in the list top 5 GUI text editors used by developers and that comes as no surprise given its seemingly unending capabilities.

KeePass Password Safe is a free and open-source password manager that secures all your passwords and files in a single encrypted database. It is lightweight, easy to use, and multi-platform.

Discord is a proprietary freeware digital distribution platform and VoIP application created for gamers. It is cross-platform and supports both single-user and group chats with a specialty in communication via text, image, audio, and video between users.

Wine, which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, is a compatibility layer which enables its users to run Windows applications on any POSIX-compliant OS.

Wine cleanly integrates Windows apps with Linux desktops by translating Windows API calls into POSIX calls in real-time which eliminates the performance and memory repercussions of other methods.

Apache Synapse is a high-performance, lightweight Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) powered by the fast and asynchronousmediation engine that gives it support for Web Services, XML, and REST. It has so many features that you are better of checking its features page out yourself.

Pix is an advanced image browser, viewer, organizer, and editor forBMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TGA, ICO, XPM image formats and optional support for RAW and HDR images.

It has advanced tools for editing images by adding comments, scaling them, finding duplicates, tools for viewing and browsing images such as working with slideshows, performing lossless JPG transformations, etc.

Geany is a cross-platform GTK+ text editor with the basic features of an IDE. It is designed to have few dependencies on external libraries while offering its users a speedy and memory-friendly performance.

openLCA is a free feature-rich Life Cycle Assessment software created by GreenDelta in 2006. With it, you can model and assess any product for the whole duration of its life cycle from resource extraction to production, its usage and disposal.

Gophish is a free, robust cross-platform phishing framework that enables individuals and organizations to easily test their network for phishing attacks.

It contains customizable templates as well as the ability to import/export them, campaigns which you can schedule to launch and send emails in the background, a real-time results tracker, and a full REST API.

Flutter is a mobile app development SDK created and maintained by Google. It allows users to build sleek native applications on both Android and iOS from a single codebase.

Flutter is also compatible with code for the web, React Native, and Xamarin and it features built-in animations, widgets, and OS-specific designs that speed up the development process.

GIMP is a feature-rich cross-platform image editing software most commonly used as the Linux alternative for Adobe Photoshop.

Apart from GIMP being capable of doing almost everything Photoshop can, its features are extensible via plugins thanks to its integration with several programming languages, and its files can be used with other media editing software like Inkscape, SwatchBooker, and Scribus.

Clementine is a feature-rich music player and library organizer and it is among the most popular music players for Linux. Its features include being cross-platform, a queue manager, remote control using a Wii remote, CLI or MPRIS, Android device, visualisations from projectM, etc.

Mailcow is an open source mail server that makes use of other smaller open source services to provide users with an enjoyable mailing experience.

It features a UI that enables users to complete administrativetasks, use temporaryspam aliases, work with KIM and ARC, reset SOGo ActiveSync devices caches, and integrate with Fail2ban-like software, among others.

DBeaver is a robust free multi-platform GUI database tool for developers, analysts, DB administrators, and SQL programmers. It has support for all popular databases not excluding MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MS Access, Teradata, Sybase, Firebird, and Derby.

ONLYOFFICE is an open source office suite that is 100% compatible with the Microsoft Office suite. Its features include an online platform for creating and managing documents, team collaboration, calendar, and project and mail management tools.

ONLYOFFICE can integrate with your Saas or on-premise solution to provide your clients with a branded UI/UX, and web services like Nextcloud, SharePoint, Alfresco, etc.

Mailspring is a customizable cross-platform and open-source mail client created to boost users productivity and provide them with a more pleasant mailing experience.

It features a beautiful modern UI with several keyboard shortcuts and out of the box with features like click tracking, etc. and tons of other features that users can shell out some cash for.

Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client brought to you with love from the makers of Firefox. It was designed to be easy to set up and customize and it is among the most used email clients in the Linux community because of its rich feature set and it usually comes bundled with several distros.

VLC is a free, portable, multi-platform and open-source media player created by the VideoLAN project. It has maintained its rank as one of the most reliable media players you can use given the fact that it can play with almost any media format you throw at it. And for formats that it doesnt support out of the box, you can obtain the codecs.

VLC is also a streaming app so you can stream audio and video content online as you would in a browser without leaving the app.

Stacer is one of the coolest Linux system monitoring and optimizing software. It features a clean modern and intuitive interface with an informative dashboard and sleek icons.

You can use it to manage system services, startup processes, applications, script, files, etc. and you can work in different modes, limit its CPU and memory usage, customize its look, etc.

Godot Engine is a free and open-source game engine whose aim is to make the developers be creative with the games they make without reinventing the wheel or strings attached e.g. no royalties.

It is team-friendly, ships with a wide set of common tools to speed up game development. It features sleek 2D and 3D graphics and has its usage simplified. With Godot Engine, the games you build are 100% yours.

Inkscape is a professional free, cross-platform vector graphics editor for anybody with an interest in digital drawing. You can use it to create illustrations, icons, maps, web graphics, diagrams, etc.

Blender is a free and open-source professional 3D creation suite created with support for the entire 3D pipeline i.e. modeling, simulation, rigging, compositing, motion tracking, game creation, rendering, and video editing.

Cinelerrais a free and open-source software for professionally editing videos on Linux platforms. Its features include compositing, motion tracking, rendering, transitions, customizable text, effects, etc.

Mailspringis a freemium open-source email client application for Linux, Mac, and Windows computers. It is extensible with tons of add-ons with a feature set that includes link click tracking, open tracking, contacts enrichment data, a beautiful UI, etc.

Calibreis a free and cross-platform one-stop solution for electronic documents especially ebooks, comics, and PDFs. Its features include a robust ebook viewer, a built-in news/magazine downloader, advanced management options for ebook organization, and metadata update, to mention a few.

TexMaker is a free, cross-platform, and open-source LaTeX editor that enables users to create, edit, and manage LaTeX documents elegantly. It has a long feature including code folding, syntax highlighting, code completion, find in folders, unlimited number of snippets, and support for regular expressions, to mention a few.

FileZillais a free and open-source FTP solution that also has support for SFTP and FTP over TLS (FTPS). It features everything necessary for performing file operations from remote locations. Nevertheless, it offers enterprise-class users a paid package which bundles extra features such as additional protocol support for Dropbox, Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob, and WebDAV, to name a few.

Kodi is a beautiful, free, open-source, and multi-platform media center software from which you can manage and play music, movies, TV shows, and photo slideshows. It has good integration support and an awesome community.

Iris is a community-driven multi-platform web framework written in Go. It is easy to use and has now come to be among the fastest web frameworks housing several features including automatic HTTPS with Public Domain, caching, sessions, WebSocket, versioning API, dependency injection, MVC, and compatibility with 3rd-party packages and standard libraries.

Psiphon3 is a free and open-source network software designed for Windows and Android users to circumnavigate censorship while maintaining their optimal browsing and download speeds. It makes use of open-source components for SSH, VPN, and HTTP Proxy technology to provide users with uncensored online content.

Did you find any cool Linux apps in 2019 that are not on the list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Read more:
The Best Open Source Software in 2019 (Users' Choice)

What Is Open Source Software? – The Linux Foundation

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What is Open Source Software? Most of us think we already know, but in fact, there are a number of interpretations and nuances to defining Open Source.

This is the first article in a new series that will explain the basics of open source for business advantage and how to achieve it through the discipline of professional open source management. (These materials are excerpted from The Linux Foundation Training course on professional open source management. Download the full sample chapter now.)

Defining Open Source in common terms is the first step for any organization that wants to realize, and optimize, the advantages of using open source software (OSS) in their products or services. So lets start by defining what we mean when we talk about open source.

When people talk about Open Source, they often use the term in a number of different ways. Open Source can be a piece of software that you download for free from the Internet, a type of software license, a community of developers, or even an ideology of access and participation.

Although these are all aspects of the Open Source phenomenon, there is actually a more precise definition:

Open Source Software (OSS) is software distributed under a license that meets certain criteria:

1. It is available in source code form (without charge or at cost)

2. Open Source may be modified and redistributed without additional permission

3. Finally, other criteria may apply to its use and redistribution.

The most widely accepted definition for Open Source Software comes from the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI website also lists a number of licenses that have been reviewed and found compliant with the definition, but there are additionally many licenses currently in

circulation that meet these criteria.

The Free Software Foundation, for its part, prefers the term Free Software and a much simpler definition, but Open Source is compatible with and includes Free Software. Sometimes, these terms are combined as FOSS Free and Open Source Software.

Now, there are also other kinds of downloadable software that are not Open Source, and they must be accounted for. These other types of software include:

Shareware or Free Trialware, which is downloadable software with commercial terms that actually can involve payments under various circumstances

There is also any other software that does not allow free re-distribution as part of another program, like, perhaps, one of your organizations products.

Now that weve established what open source software is in common terms, we can move on to the business case for using open source software. Next week, well discuss how and why OSS can be used for business advantage. And in the following articles, well cover more open source basics including the operational challenges and risks for companies using OSS, common open source management techniques, open source licensing, and more.

Read more:

Using Open Source Software to Speed Development and Gain Business Advantage

6 Reasons Why Open Source Software Lowers Development Costs

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What Is Open Source Software? - The Linux Foundation

Open Source Software Examples – Techspirited

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If you have ever used Ubuntu or Linux, you probably have some idea about open source software. Here are some examples along with a brief insight into the whats and hows of open source computer software applications.

There are three major types of software Programming Software, Systems Software and Application Software. Of the three, the latter two come in two broad classifications open source and closed source. There are many different types of application software which are open source and most of us regularly download and use them on our PC/laptop, such as VLC. In this Techspirited article, we will take a look at some popular and highly recommended open source software examples for different types of operating systems.

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An open source computer software is either a systems software or an application software that is available freely in the form of source codes and the users are permitted, under the software license, to study, modify and improve the software. The Open Source Initiative has set certain parameters to determine whether a software license renders the software open source or not. These parameters are very specific and are as laid down below. In order to be considered Open Source, a software must qualify on all of these parameters.

VLC, Mozilla Firefox and MySQL are prominent software examples which are open source. Linux and Ubuntu are prominent examples of open source operating systems. Let us browse through some examples for two major operating systems Windows and Mac.

Popular Open Source Software for Windows

Notable Open Source Software for Mac

Most of these open source applications, as you can discern, are equally popular to Mac as well as Windows. The biggest advantages of open source computer software are their ease to penetrate the market without the companies offering them requiring to sweat over promoting them and providing a sense of empowerment and flexibility to users and developers. The greatest disadvantages are argued to be their being in a perennially developmental stage and the ignorance of system testing and documentation. This point of concern may be true in case of very small software projects but holds no water for larger, more successful projects which risk no such negligence and their software are well-defined and subject to rules regarding testing of modifications and documentation. Before downloading though, get thoroughly informed about free software download pros and cons to be on the safer side if you are downloading software from some obscure site.

We all have, sometime or the other, used and benefited from some of the best open source software available on the web. Most of you must be familiar with the aforementioned examples and know some of these to be the best things to have happened to web browsing, instant messaging, pod casting, media playing, photo editing and much more the scopes are unlimited! Download these wicked open source applications and open yourself to more variety and computing convenience. Happy installing!

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Open Source Software Examples - Techspirited


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