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Category Archives: International IT News

News from around the world

Xiaomi is building a Linux laptop

It’s a rumour that’s been growing: Beijing-based electronics company Xiaomi would be prepared to enter the laptop market. Its first model would be a laptop running Linux sold for less than €450, French IT news site Le Monde Informatique reports. Xiaomi is a jack of all trades. After shaking up the telephony and TV markets, […]

Mozilla to fund open source projects

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organisation that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project (the purveyors of the Firefox web browser. Ed.), is supporting a series of open source projects to the tune of US $0.5 mn., German IT news site heise reports. The Mozilla Foundation announced a promotional programme for […]

Wifi from wee

Bristol boffins have developed a pair of socks embedded with miniaturised microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and fuelled with urine pumped by the wearer’s footsteps that have powered a wireless transmitter to send a signal to a PC. This is the first self-sufficient system powered by a wearable energy generator based on microbial fuel cell technology, […]

Moggy brings down Trusty Tahr

Linux distribution bug reports are not a place one expects to find stuff to make one smile: they’re normally places where the faults and failings of software are described in normally boring detail. However, today proved an exception to the rule, courtesy of one filed a short while ago for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, codenamed “Trusty […]

Orly airport brought to standstill by Windows NT 3.1 software crash

Last Saturday, Orly airport‘s air traffic was severely disrupted, leaving thousands of passengers stranded on the ground, Le Monde Informatique reports. The cause: a computer failure of the weather data management system running on Microsoft’s antediluvian Windows NT 3.1 operating system. Computer system failures in the aeronautical world are nothing exceptional, but always have a […]

Dutch MP: “Open source can liberate local authorities being held to ransom”

Open source software is a good option for local authorities who are dissatisfied with the price and quality of their software, says Dutch Labour MP Astrid Oosenbrug. This former sysadmin believes open source and open standards can liberate local authorities from their current suppliers, who she maintains can have too much power over their customers.  […]

A world without Linux – episode 3: no social connections

Although you may not realise it, Linux is the world’s largest collaborative project in the history of computing. It runs most of the world’s technology infrastructure and is supported by more developers and companies than any other operating system. In addition, it’s ubiquitous; it can be found in your phone, car and office. Besides that, […]

Wikipedia wins prestigious Spanish prize

Wikipedia, the free, collaborative encyclopaedia has been awarded Spain’s Princess of the Asturias Prize for international co-operation. The award was presented by the Spanish king and queen, the Tribune de Genève reported earlier this week. As a whole, Wikipedia comprises 37 million articles in 288 languages. “We are rewarding a brilliant and generous idea, a […]

GUADEC 2016 will be in Karlsruhe

GUADEC – the GNOME User and Developer European Conference – 2016 will be held in Karlsruhe in Germany, the GNOME Foundation has announced. GUADEC brings together hundreds of users and developers every year to further the GNOME project. It is anticipated that GUADEC 2016 will take place around July-August and the definitive dates will be […]

NTP updated to counter attacks

It’s that time of year again when summer daylight saving time has just ended in Europe and the developers of the NTP time synchronisation service are responding to a series of new attacks with an update, German IT news site heise reports. With these attacks communication between servers and clients can be manipulated so that […]

Bristol academics announce breakthroughs for fundamental computer science problems

Earlier this week academics from the University of Bristol presented new breakthroughs on two fundamental problems in computer science. These results were presented at the 56th annual IEEE symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2015) in California earlier this week, the University reports. One of the most challenging questions in computer science is whether […]

LibreOffice 5.1 – first bug hunting session announced

Writing on The Document Foundation blog, Italo Vignoli has announced that a bug hunting session will take place from 30th October to 1st November for LibreOffice 5.1, the next planned major release of this popular open source office productivity suite. Over those 3 days, volunteers and members of the LibreOffice community will check the first […]

1,125 public sector websites no longer advertise proprietary PDF readers

After six years of activity, the Free Software Foundation Europe’s (FSFE) PDFreaders campaign is coming to a close this month as one of the FSFE’s most successful campaigns. The campaign began in 2009 with the aim of removing advertisements for proprietary PDF reader software from public institutions’ websites. To start it all off, volunteers submitted […]

France: one-third of local authorities embrace open data

According to a study carried out by Markess International, the majority of local authorities should have initiated an open data process between now and 2017, French IT news site Le Monde Informatique reports. This type of project forms a springboard for digital transformation. While local government reform is is redrawing the local authority map, digital […]

Motor manufacturers should make their software available for review says Dutch MEP

The so-called “diesel dupe” in which the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many Volkswagen and Audi cars sold in the USA had devices in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested and changed performance accordingly to improve results is having repercussions on both sides of the Atlantic. In the States […]

FSF was 30 at weekend

The weekend just gone saw another anniversary that ought not be forgotten: the Free Software Foundation (FSF) passed the 30 years milestone. German IT news website heise reports that the FSF was founded by Richard Stallman (aka rms. Ed.) on 4th October 1985. At that time the organisation’s goal was fully consistent with the then […]