Show Sidebar Log in

Category Archives: International IT News

News from around the world

First European Ubuntu community conference to be held in 2016

UbuCon Europe 2016 will be the first conference dedicated to the European Ubuntu community and will be held in Essen, Germany from 18th to 20th November 2016. The organisers are promising two days full of talks, workshops, demonstrations, exhibitions and (hopefully) great food. There will be social events in the evenings will give delegates the […]

0 A.D. Alpha 20 Timosthenes released

0 AD, the free and open source RTS game, has now reached its alpha 20 release, according to the latest announcement by the developers. This Alpha features 10 new maps, core functionality for a cinematic in-game camera, the ability to share dropsites with your allies, to name but a few new features of this latest […]

Today is Document Freedom Day

Today, 30th March, is Document Freedom Day, an annual celebration of the benefits of using open standards and open formats for the production and exchange of documents. Open standards are essential for interoperability and freedom of choice based on the merits of different software applications. They provide freedom from data lock-in and the associated vendor […]

Samsung is designing an IoT operating system

Le Monde Informatique reports that Samsung is currently developing an open source operating system tailored for the Internet of Things (IoT). Details of it will be given next month at the South Korean company’s developers’ conference. In order to gain a larger place in the world of domestic appliances, clothing, accessories and other connected items, […]

Bristol & Lund universities set new world record in 5G wireless spectrum efficiency

New research by engineers from the Universities of Bristol and Lund (Sweden), working alongside National Instruments (NI), has demonstrated how a massive antenna system can offer a 12-fold increase in spectrum efficiency compared with current 4G cellular technology.

Journalist displays ignorance of encryption

There’s a general media adage that says never let the truth get in the way of a good story. It seems this maxim is now being applied by members of the fourth estate to that most concise social medium, Twitter. We refer to one of a series of some twenty or so tweets put out […]

Ubuntu to launch tablet

In a brief post on Facebook, Ubuntu announced yesterday that it would soon be launching its first ever Ubuntu Linux-powered tablet, the BQ Aquaris M10. For this project, Ubuntu has partnered with smartphone, tablet and e-reader manufacturer BQ. No further details of this tablet’s launch are yet available, although a publicity video has been produced. […]

Everest Base Camp has better internet than English villages

News emerged last week that Everest Base Camp in Nepal has better internet connection speeds than some villages in Somerset and Gloucestershire. Research by Cable.co.uk revealed that Brent Knoll in Somerset has a download speed of a mere 1.3 Mbps. This is easily beaten by Everest Base Camp’s satellite internet link which has an average […]

CiviDay 2016 in Bristol

CiviCRM is a great free and open source CRM package that’s used by thousands of organisations (many in the community and voluntary sectors. Ed.) around the world to maintain their contacts database, produce email newsletters and much, much more. We at Bristol Wireless have been using CiviCRM for many years for those first two above-mentioned […]

Linux Mint security advisory

Linux Mint is a great and popular Linux distribution. Unfortunately its servers were recently compromised by malicious persons. If you’ve downloaded a Linux Mint disk image recently, we advise you to read on, as the text below appeared yesterday on and is reposted from the Linux Mint blog. I’m sorry I have to come with […]

Linux Foundation to build real-time OS for IoT

The Linux Foundation yesterday announced the Zephyr™ Project, an open source collaborative effort to build a real-time operating system (RTOS) for the Internet of Things (IoT). Early supporters for the Zephyr Project include Intel Corporation (including its acquired business groups Altera Corporation and Wind River), NXP Semiconductors N.V. (including its recent merger with Freescale), Synopsys, […]

The Document Foundation is 4 today

Today The Document Foundation, the independent self-governing meritocratic body created by former leading members of the OpenOffice.org Community to continue developing a free and open source office suite – LibreOffice – celebrates the 4th anniversary of its incorporation as a charitable Foundation under German law (gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts). To mark this milestone, […]

San Francisco to use open source election software

San Francisco is likely to become the first city to use open source software for elections, The Register reports. El Reg goes on to mention that the hope is for the city to develop balloting systems that can compete on reliability and security (with closed source, proprietary systems. Ed.) in time for the November 2019 […]

Russian government to switch to desktop Linux?

The Russian government is reported to be contemplating dropping Microsoft Windows and adopting Linux as the operating system for agency PCs according to its internet czar, German Klimenko. Mr Klimenko is reported as saying in an interview with Bloomberg, the business, financial and media company that Russia will consider moving all of its networks off […]

LibreOffice 5.1 released

The Document Foundation has announced the release today of LibreOffice 5.1, a full featured open source office suite with superior interoperability features, for all major platforms – Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Compared with previous releases, LibreOffice 5.1 offers a completely overhauled user interface and several improved features targeted at enterprise deployments, e.g. better support […]