Chicago School of Data Session 3-1: Open Source
How do open source software projects work and how can organizations use them to get things done? This session will cover an introduction to the fundamentals of GitHub, how to buy and maintain...
By: Smart Chicago
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Chicago School of Data Session 3-1: Open Source - Video
Thiruvananthapuram, Sept 19:
International Centre for Free and Open Source Software at Technopark here has announced the launch of a new initiative called Code Free for India'.
As part of this, programmers from free software community will be invited to develop tools and applications for desktop, nternet, mobile, cloud, and Internet-of-Things for use by the civil society, government and institutions.
Software freedom
The initiative is timed with the celebration of the Software Freedom Day tomorrow (September 20) by the Free Software Centre and the Free Software User Group here.
The Code Free for India initiative will provide a broad umbrella for the free software community members and groups to address the local issues and needs, says Satish Babu, Director of the Free Software Centre.
It will provide a platform for initiatives proven successful locally to scale up to state or national levels.
It will also encourage the use of local language computing tools and contemporary free software technology, while keeping in mind bandwidth and device limitations.
Annual event
Software Freedom Day is an annual event coordinated by Software Freedom International, a non-profit organisation working towards promoting free software.
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‘Code Free for India’ initiative launched
A Waterford-based mobile software company was yesterday bought by US open source software giant Red Hat in a deal worth 63.5m.
FeedHenry which specialises in enterprise-focused mobile app platforms has agreed a deal with the US firm which it expects to close next year.
The acquisition will expand Red Hats portfolio of app development, integration and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, according to the company.
The mobile application platform is one of the fastest growing segments of the enterprise software market. As mobile devices have penetrated into every aspect of enterprise computing, enterprise software customers are looking for easier and more efficient ways for their developers to build mobile applications that extend and enhance traditional enterprise applications. FeedHenry will help us enable customers to take advantage of the capabilities of mobile with the security, scalability, and reliability of Red Hat enterprise software, said Red Hat application platform business senior vice president, Craig Muzilla.
FeedHenry, which employs 60 people across the UK, Ireland and the US, is a leading developer of cloud mobile application platforms for large companies.
The company which was spun out of Waterford Institute of Technologys Telecommunications Software and Systems Group also allows developers to create native apps as well as hybrid or web apps.
Commenting on the announcement, FeedHenry chief executive, Cathal McGloin said the move would enable the company to reach a wider audience.
We are excited to become part of Red Hat, the leader in open source enterprise solutions, and see this as confirmation of the combined power of mobile and cloud... we now have an opportunity to bring our leading mobile application platform to a wider audience of global customers and partners, to help them optimise for the mobile-first world, said Mr McGloin.
FeedHenry made an after-tax loss of 1.49m in 2012.
Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
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US software giant buys Waterford firm for €63.5m
A Cryptography Project
A Cryptography Project to store your passwords through hashing a password ten times and then unhashing it. No, I didn #39;t "replace letter w/ letter"; that #39;s ju...
By: MrCandonce
Accomplished cryptographers are among the five inductees into this year's National Cyber Security Hall of Fame.
Accomplished cryptographers, including Pretty Good Privacy creator Philip Zimmerman, are among the five inductees into this year's National Cyber Security Hall of Fame. They'll officially be enshrined on Oct. 30 in Baltimore.
Zimmerman, in addition to developing the widely used PGP email encryption software is founder of mobile privacy company Silent Circle and is known for his work in securing VoIP via protocols such asZRTP and Zfone.
+ ALSO on NetworkWorld: 2014 Women in Technology Hall of Fame inductees|Whirlwind tour of networking and computing's top prizes, awards & honors|Why there's no Nobel Prize in Computing+
The other inductees, chosen from among 200 nominations, are:
*Columbia University Professor of Computer ScienceSteven Bellovin,a noted security and networking researcher. Claims to fame include serving as chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission.
*Vinton Cerf, widely considered one of the Fathers of the Internet for his work on TCP/IP. He is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, as well as the member of more halls of fame than we can count.
*Paul Kocher designed the cryptographic elements of Secure Sockets Layer 3 in the mid-1990s while a Stanford University undergrad. He's now president of Cryptography Research, Inc.
*Richard Alan Clarke is the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States, and under President George W. Bush, he served as the Special Advisor on cybersecurity.
Nominees were considered for their accomplishments in areas such as technology, policy, public awareness, education and business. The Hall was formed by companies and organizationsto honor individuals and organizations whose vision and leadership established the building blocks for the cybersecurity industry.
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PGP creator, other top cryptographers head 2014 National Cyber Security Hall of Fame class
Copy of Inside The Dark Web
Exploring the use of technology to fight back against online surveillance by different corporations from Tim Berners-Lee and Julian Assange.
By: pcndahouse
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Copy of Inside The Dark Web - Video
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Podemos representatives with Julian Assange at the embassy of Ecuador.
Podemos, Spains new left-wing party, has offered its political resources to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Representatives of the grassroots party, which enjoyed surprise success at this years European elections, met Assange last Saturday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden and possibly to the United States. The whistle-blowing journalist and former hacker is the target of a criminal investigation over the deliberate release of classified military and diplomatic cables, and could face a US trial for espionage and treason.
Eurodeputy Tania Gonzlez and party spokesman igo Errejn offered Assange support to resolve his serious situation and legal limbo.
Help could involve bringing initiatives to the European Parliament, where Podemos holds five seats
Podemos, which received 1.2 million votes from Spaniards at the May 25 elections on a platform of profound change, believes that Assanges situation is an attack on freedom of information and an attack on minimum legal safeguards.
Its representatives also said that it reveals the fear of governments who are used to working with their backs to the people, and who are afraid that their practices may be publicized.
The kind of specific help that Podemos has in mind could involve bringing initiatives to the European Parliament, where it holds five seats. Several eurodeputies from several parliamentary groups have expressed an interest in Assanges situation.
The half-hour meeting was part of a visit to London during which Podemos members participated in a debate co-hosted by film director Ken Loach, writer Owen Jones and sociologist Cristina Flesher Fominaya.
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Podemos offers to help WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Bitcoin's price has continued to fall, while peercoin, namecoin and dogecoin all experience a surge.(IBTimes UK)
The price of bitcoin has has continued to fall in the last 24 hours, bringing the cryptocurrency's total price-drop over the last three days to $30 (18, 23).
There is no clear reason for this decline. Recent positive developments would hint at its price going the other way, with news of possible PayPal integration, a new Digital Currency Council, and Coinbase extending its services internationally.
Bitcoin's market capitalisation has fallen below $6bn for the first time since May.(CoinMarketCap)
Other major cryptocurrencies have fared better, with namecoin and dogecoin both seeing their values climb since yesterday.
Most sensational of all has been peercoin, which saw its price more than double in the last two days. It has now leapt past dogecoin to become the world's third most valuable (mineable) digital currency.
Overstock to donate to cryptocurrency advocates
Online marketplace Overstock, currently the largest retailer to accept bitcoin, has announced that it is to donate 4% of its bitcoin revenue to foundations that advocate cryptocurrency adoption.
Last week the firm revealed that it was extending its acceptance of bitcoin to international customers in an effort to build on the success it had experienced in the US with bitcoin.
Its latest move will initially see the Chamber of Digital Commerce benefit from Overstock's support.
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Cryptocurrency Round-Up: Bitcoin plummets, Peercoin Soars and Overstock Donates
Las Vegas. Tremendous wagers are commonplace in this town, and have been for decades. Big bets on cryptocurrency--those are a bit more unusual.
This explains why a local poker players recent investment into bitcoin ATMs has turned so many heads. The entrepreneur, 29-year-old Chris McAlary, essentially has pushed all-in on the virtual currency, using the entirety of his liquid assets to found Coin Cloud, a nascent company that operates ATMs for bitcoins.
McAlary's believes in bitcoin's future as the currency of choice for gamblers. And there is a confluence of factors that might make Las Vegas the perfect place to push bitcoin into mainstream use--if McAlary and like-minded entrepreneurs prove out its use on the Strip, casinos around the world are poised to make bitcoin its currency of choice.
Theres no question that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have the potential to be one of the most important innovations of the 21st century, says McAlary. Las Vegas could be one of the places that really helps drive it all forward.
Specifically, McAlary's company uses ATMs that are Internet-enabled kiosks that allow users to buy or sell bitcoin. The machines that went online this summer are in a particularly prominent spot, steps from the busiest part of the Las Vegas Strip. In the first few weeks, the machine outperformed even McAlarys most liberal estimates. After 45 days, the Vegas machine overtook the a bitcoin ATM in Vancouver as the No. 1 performing bitcoin ATM in the world. McAlary wont say exactly how many transactions the machine has handled so far, but hints that volume is already has surpassed $1 million.
While the cryptocurrency has yet to find a home in the average Americans wallet (so to speak), businesses appear to be getting more serious about it. In early September, Braintree, the online and mobile payments platform owned by PayPal, announced it would integrate bitcoin into its business. Other companies, including Expedia, Overstock.com, and Amazon.com also have announced they will accept bitcoin as a method of payment. (Full disclosure: I run a travel blog for Expedia.)
In Vegas, however, especially on the Strip, bitcoin has even more going for it. First of all, because so many people visit Sin City every year, the market attracts a high volume of people looking to spend money. The Viva Vegas souvenir shop, in which McAlary has placed his first ATM (he calls it the Bitcoin Bodega"), sees more than 100,000 people a day in foot traffic. Las Vegas also draws an international clientele who want to access their money instantaneously, and to gamble without paying transfer fees to centralized banks.
In other words, Vegas is primed for a bitcoin run.
What is bitcoin? The answer is more complicated than you think (and more complicated than we journalists usually report). Unveiled in 2009 (the identity of the creator is up for debate), the cryptocurrency is an online payment system that was introduced as open-source software. Under the protocols of this technology, payments are recorded in a public database, which is known as the blockchain. Because these payments work without a central repository or single administrator (a.k.a., a bank), the U.S. Treasury considers the currency to be decentralized and virtual.
(Also, because the currency is virtual, users must obtain a virtual wallet to help record transactions and securely buy, use, and accept the stuff.)
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Why Bitcoin Is Poised To Win Big In Las Vegas
John E. Dunn | Sept. 17, 2014
Berates Germany for allowing makers to operate.
Wikileaks has released what it claims are previously unknown fourth-generation versions of the controversial 'government' FinFisher spyware, lambasting the German Government for allowing it to be sold to "some of the most abusive regimes in the world."
In a media announcement fronted with statements from Ecuadorian embassy refugee and editor in chief Julian Assange himself, Wikileaks offered the files for a number of the spyware's components, including Relay 4.3, Proxy 2.1, and Master 2.1, and zips containing 'weaponised' executables for the Windows FinSpy client used to monitor events such as a Skype conversation.
The organisation said its motivation for releasing the files was to "challenge the secrecy and the lack of accountability of the surveillance industry," a reference to the fact that this malware is legally used by a wide variety of governments, including repressive ones.
"FinFisher continues to operate brazenly from Germany selling weaponised surveillance malware to some of the most abusive regimes in the world," wrote Assange.
"The Merkel government pretends to be concerned about privacy, but its actions speak otherwise. Why does the Merkel government continue to protect FinFisher? This full data release will help the technical community build tools to protect people from FinFisher including by tracking down its command and control centers."
Releasing files of malware looks more like a publicity stunt than a major help to the security industry, although it's unlikely that many or even any of them would have detected it. That said, even if they now do, the makers of FinFisher can simply produce a new iteration if they haven't already done so.
Also released by Wikileaks is a bundle of mostly old and known documents, including cheap-looking Videos, dull brochures and support details. However, one eye-catching one is a spreadsheet from April 2014 laid out like a perverse antivirus test where almost every single product fails on almost every single count. For these anti-testers, a failure happens when a program detects FinFisher.
This stands to underline how easy it now is to get past more or less any antivirus program going as long as the malware is new enough or the antivirus older. It is in fairness a tough job for security firms. FinFisher isn't like conventional malware in that it is directed against tiny numbers of people spread across the globe. Spotting malware this rare is a task.
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Wikileaks outs latest FinFisher 'government spyware' that anti-virus can't spot