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Tag Archives: Goes
The Lower It Goes, The Safer It Gets
November 17, 2018 12:00 pm|Comments (0)
Last month, while stocks lost ground, we've pointed out that Bitcoin's volatility has dropped considerably. At a time when most assets experienced extreme moves (down), the biggest cryptocurrency has been as stable as it never been before.
In our last article covering Bitcoin, we've concluded that:
Bitcoin's long-term trend lines suggest that the downswing isn't over yet. The most valuable cryptocurrency has dropped more than 60% this year, but divergence analysis doesn't portend for a positive future.
Bottom line: Not yet. Make it times two:
Certainly not yet boring, but also not yet worthwhile buying.
Sudden Flash Crash
After two months that saw Bitcoin trading relatively calmly inside a rough range of $ 6,200-$ 6,800, we had an over 10% flash crash. On November 14th, the price dropped from ~$ 6,300 to ~$ 5,500, and on the next day the leading cryptocurrency traded as low as ~$ 5,300.
This was the first time that Bitcoin traded below $ 6,000 since August, falling to its lowest level this year.
Analysts emphasized uncertainty surrounding hard fork that is scheduled to take place in bitcoin cash.
Correction Mode
Overall, the Bitcoin correction is now -73% over the past 333 days. Although the magnitude of the correction is not unusual, the tenor is.
Out of past 11 corrections that Bitcoin went through:
1. Four had a deeper correction and another one saw (more or less) the same magnitude.
2. Only one correction spanned across more days than the current correction.
Interestingly, the average time it took for Bitcoin to reach a new record high post a correction is only 216 days. While this might be an evidence that we are past due, it took no less than 1181 days for Bitcoin to set a new record post the longest correction (410 days), which is (as mentioned above) the only correction that lasted longer than the current correction we're in.
Shrinking Market
The broader cryptocurrency market also suffered notable losses, declining from total value of $ 210B (a week ago) to $ 164B.
The combined market-cap of the 20 largest cryptocurrencies is down over $ 346 billion YTD, a decline of 68% (!) since the end of 2017.
Bitcoin annual returns for 2011-2018 show that, unless we see a miraculous recovery over the next six weeks, 2018 has a good chance to become the second year (only) with a negative return.
As a matter of fact, as it stands now, 2018 might go down in history as the worst year in Bitcoin's history.
Funny thing is that when one is looking at the 2018 YTD returns of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin doesn't look that bad… As a matter of fact, Bitcoin is one of the better performers in the space.
Bitcoin Investment Trust
At its peak last year, the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX:GBTC) was trading at a premium to NAV of over 100%. Today that premium moved down to 5%.
The Bitcoin Investment Trust is now down over 84% from its December 2017 peak. Putting it differently, GBTC is under-performing its underlying asset.
Even with all the noise and negative return, Bitcoin's annualized volatility continues to trade relatively calm. Bitcoin's rolling 30-day annualized volatility was (until Nov. 14) only 14%. That is/was an all-time low!
To put things into the right perspective, 14% is so low that recent Bitcoin volatility equals that of both stocks and oil.
Even bonds, in spite of remaining less volatile, aren't too far off.
When it comes to cryptocurrencies, it's hard – perhaps impossible – to time things perfectly.
Therefore, much of the in-and-out swings is about guts feeling, rather a clear, coherent, analysis.
As such, what we wrote recently in an article where we explain our shift from a short-term bull (Q4/2018) to a longer-term bear (Q4/2019) seem very relevant for Bitcoin too:
Remember: Timing is everything…
Allow me to finish with two quotes – a very old one and a fresh one.
The old one is attributed to King Solomon who was most famous for his wisdom:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven – World English Bible, Ecclesiastes 3
The fresh one is from Michael Batnick, aka The Irrelevant Investor:
When you were born might be the single most important factor when determining your experience in the market. It's also the one that is completely out of your hands. – Michael Batnick
…so is Risk Management!
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Posted in: Cloud Computing|Tags: gets, goes, Lower, Safer
WhatsApp Goes Full Facebook
(This is a guest post from Appilco Head of Platform and Modern Monopolies co-author Nicholas Johnson.)
RIP WhatsApp.
This week, the dream for what WhatsApp could have been was officially pronounced dead. What happened? Facebook announced a host of new business-oriented features that are coming to WhatsApp in a push to finally have its biggest acquisition generate meaningful revenue. Ads are included, contrary to the original vision for WhatsApp, whose founders once called advertising an "insult to your intelligence."
As I've written previously, WhatsApp's original direction presented an opportunity for a true Facebook competitor to emerge. But since Facebook's $ 19 billion acquisition, it's become increasingly clear that WhatsApp will inevitably end up looking like yet-another Facebook platform. That is to say, it will be driven by ads and the mass collection of user data, as required by Facebook's main revenue model.
With the WhatsApp Business API, this transition has kicked into high gear.
WhatsApp's business API will enable businesses to establish an official presence on WhatsApp, similar to how they exist on Facebook today. However, this doesn't mean you're suddenly going to start getting spammed by messages from companies, as customers still have to contact a business on WhatsApp first before the business can send them messages.
After that, using the API, businesses can respond to messages from customers. They can also send them updates such as order confirmations, delivery notices, appointment reminders and more. Many businesses will also use it for customer support, and the API will likely enable WhatsApp to plug into existing CRM solutions that businesses use for that purpose.
As for cost, the API will let businesses respond to customer inquiries for free within 24 hours. After that they will pay a fee per message sent of between half a penny to 9 cents, depending on the country. This framework will encourage businesses to respond to customer messages quickly. It also helps eliminate the incentive for businesses to spam customers after the initial outreach, as each message will cost them money. If that message doesn't create real value for the customer, you won't want to send it.
Additionally, WhatsApp will also be introducing ads, not all of which will appear within the WhatsApp app itself. How does that work? Business accounts on WhatsApp will soon be able to place ads on Facebook (and likely Instagram too) that let customers click to open up a WhatsApp message with that business. Additionally, WhatsApp will be adding advertisements to its Status platform, which is its version of Facebook's many Snapchat Stories clones. Facebook has been testing these ads already with Instagram Stories, and WhatsApp Status ads will tie into the same Facebook ad system as Stories.
Facebook's Stalling Revenue Engine
Taken together, these moves remove much of what made WhatsApp stand out from the rest of the Facebook ecosystem. Following the departure of WhatsApp's founders, every new change makes WhatsApp more and more like Facebook.
At its core, Facebook, much like Google, is driven by a giant money-making advertising engine. Eventually, everything that Facebook touches gets pulled into its vortex. Now WhatsApp, despite promises to the contrary to both users and regulators, will be no different.
For Facebook, the shift comes on the back of a poor showing in its latest quarterly earnings and as increasing investments in safety and community monitoring are likely to compress its profit margins in the years ahead. Facebook appears to be moving decidedly out of growth mode and into profit-taking mode with all of its platforms. Now that WhatsApp is one of the largest messaging platforms in the world, it's well positioned to turn into the monetization engine Facebook likely envisioned when it shelled out $ 19 billion.
Posted in: Cloud Computing|Tags: Facebook, Full, goes, WhatsApp
A 10% Yield, 11 Straight Hikes, No K-1, IDR Swap Deal Coming In Q2, Goes Ex-Dividend Soon
April 14, 2018 6:07 pm|Comments (0)
Looking for a new deal? In MLP land, there have been a few GP/Yieldco consolidations over the past few months, and we just came across another one, which looks rather interesting for income investors.
Tallgrass Energy GP LP (TEGP) is the parent/GP of Tallgrass Energy Partners LP (TEP) and has interests in a group of energy-related entities. On 3/26/18, TEGP announced a merger with TEP, in which TEP unitholders will receive two TEGP units for each TEGP unit they own.
TEGP's earnings are virtually synonymous with TEP's, which stem from midstream operations in the western U.S.
(Source: TEGP site)
Tallgrass Energy GP LP, through its interests in Tallgrass Equity LLC, provides crude oil transportation services to customers in Wyoming, Colorado, and the surrounding regions of the United States. The company operates through three segments: Natural Gas Transportation; Crude Oil Transportation; and Gathering, Processing & Terminalling.
Tallgrass owns and operates more than 6,700 miles of natural gas pipeline and about 760 miles of crude pipeline across a broad portion of the U.S. It also has one of the industry's leading water reclamation programs situated in close proximity to producers. (Source: TEGP site)
To say that the Tallgrass corporate setup was complex would be an understatement – trying to decipher this setup reminded us of those Franz Kafka novels we read in English Lit. 101:
This is one of the reasons that management is doing this merger deal – to simplify the group's structure for investors, in addition to reducing its cost of capital:
As mentioned above, TEP unitholders will receive two TEGP units for each unit that they own. In addition, management raised TEGP's quarterly distribution to be exactly half of TEP's, so there will be no distribution loss to TEP unitholders.
Tallgrass Energy Partners LP will be merged into a new entity, Tallgrass Energy LP, which will trade on the NYSE under the ticker "TGE."
The new entity will be taxed as a C-Corp, which eliminates K-1 hassles for investors, and can give the combined companies broader market exposure.
The deal has already been approved by the boards of both TEGP and TEP, in addition to the TEP conflicts committee.
On the Q4 '17 earnings call, management referenced the fact that there's a potentially valuable tax shelter available for the company.
"TEGP has a deferred tax asset of $ 313.0 million which is the expected tax benefit of available future deductions that offset future taxable income. It is currently expected that no cash taxes will be paid by TEGP for a period estimated to exceed 10 years".
However, it's uncertain if regulators will allow the new entity to use this asset or not.
Here's how the upcoming May distributions look for TEGP and TEP.
TEGP increased its quarterly payout by 37%, from $ .3675 to $ .4875, and was currently yielding 9.87%, at a price/unit of $ 19.75, as of 4/12/18 intraday. TEP's distribution is $ .975, (2x TEGP's). Both payouts go ex-dividend on 4/27/18.
Both companies have good quarterly distribution hike streaks going – TEP has raised their payouts for 19 straight quarters, while TEP has an 11-quarter streak.
We've added these two tickers to our High Dividend Stocks By Sectors Tables, in the Basic Materials section.
Arbitrage anyone? Unlike many mergers, in which the acquiring company pays a fixed price/share for the target company, this one is based upon a 2X multiple of the buying company's price, TEGP, which arbitrage players may want to try to profit from. As of 4/12/18 intraday, there was a -$ .30/unit variance between the two unit prices, including the effect of the upcoming distributions:
The yieldco, TEP, had huge growth in 2017, as new assets kicked into earnings. EBITDA rose 57%; DCF grew 50%; and revenue grew a more modest 7%. Management continued raising the quarterly distributions, which grew 20% in 2017, while TEP's distribution coverage improved by 16%.
You can see part of the reasoning for the merger in the GP Interest & IDR payout figures below. These payouts grew by 43% in 2017 and were ~24% of TEP's DCF. The total distributions payout was ~$ 563M, which should decrease after the elimination of the GP and IDR payouts post-merger.
Looking back further, it's clear that TEP has produced some outstanding results, with EBITDA growing by over 6X from 2014 to 2017:
This filtered into the Tallgrass group's earnings:
This is what supported all of these distribution hikes for TEP, which had a CAGR of 31% since 2013:
Analyzing the Deal
Here's how the merger shakes out, if management leaves the new entity payout at $ .4875/quarter, ($ 1.95/year). There will be 152.2M publicly held units and 126.7M LLC equity exchanged units, which would receive a total of ~$ 546M in annual distributions:
Can they afford to pay $ 1.95/year to all of those units? Management guided to a range of $ 755-835M in adjusted EBITDA for the new entity, with a coverage ratio of 1.20x or better:
They had slightly different guidance figures on the S-4 document for this deal – $ 807M for adjusted EBITDA, and a DCF figure of $ 662.00 for 2018.
(Source: TEGP S-4 2018)
We looked at it three ways, using low, high, and S-4 guidance figures. Since there wasn't a DCF figure given in the deal presentation, we used a 90% multiple of EBITDA guidance, (which is the same as 2017's ratio), in the low-end and high end columns.
As the merger presentation stated, the new entity should have solid distribution coverage:
On the low end, using a $ 1.95/unit annual payout, the new entity would have coverage of ~1.24X. The high end coverage would be ~1.20X, if management raised the distribution to $ 2.24/year (which they haven't stated as of yet).
If they hit the high end of their EBITDA target, and DCF is 90% of it, and they leave the payout at $ 1.95/year, their coverage would be a very robust 1.38X.
Using the S-4 doc's guidance figures of $ 807M in EBITDA, and $ 662M in DCF, we inferred that coverage would be ~1.21X, if the distribution was $ 1.95/year for the new entity:
A good part of TEP's EBITDA stems from unconsolidated investments. In 2017, TEP received $ 306.6M from these sources, which include the Rockies Express and the Pony Express Pipelines:
Here's a look at the 2015-2017 income statements for Rockies Express Pipeline LLC, often referred to as "REX" in the company docs. After a revenue and operating income dip in 2016, REX came roaring back in 2017, with revenues up 18.7% vs. 2016, and up 8.7% vs. 2015. Operating income also bounced back, rising 36% in 2017 vs. 2016, and 10.8% vs. 2015:
(Source: TEGP 2017 10K)
TEP unitholders must approve the deal. However, Tallgrass Equity owns ~35% of the TEP units, so the deal should go through. The TEP and TEGP boards, and the conflict committee also already approved the deal. The other holdup might be regulators, but as of yet, we've heard no negative news about this.
New Entity Debt Load
The new entity would own 75% of Rockies/REX, so we took a look at how the combined debt loads of TEP, TEGP, and REX would affect the new entity's debt leverage and interest coverage.
Both TEP and REX had good interest coverage in 2017, at 8.12X and 5.48X, respectively. The new entity would have ~3.6X interest coverage, based upon 2017 figures, which, of course, will change. It'll be lower coverage, but still reasonable.
They also had reasonable debt leverage of 3.17X and 2.76X, respectively, which is roughly in line with other midstream companies we follow. (See Financials section for more on this.)
The new entity's Net Debt/EBITDA leverage looks like it'll range from ~5X to 5.6X. The company's 10-K mentioned that there's an upper end limit of 5.5X leverage. Timing is often tricky in these deals – the new entity may experience higher levels of leverage initially for 1-2 quarters, depending upon when the deal is finalized. However, it doesn't appear that operations management will be changing, so that's an advantage.
Management also mentioned on the earnings call that,
"REX's board has agreed to repay the July 2018 maturity of $ 550 million. At TEP and Tallgrass equities current ownership that will amount to approximately $ 275 million and $ 137.5 million, respectively. This debt reduction will further strengthen REX's balance sheet for the long-term and should be the next step towards returning REX to an investment grade pipeline. The less interest at REX is paid at the entity, the more cash there is to distribute."
On the earnings call, management detailed several new growth projects:
On January 3, we announced an agreement to buy 51% interest in the Pawnee Terminal from Zenith Energy from $ 31 million and also announced the acquisition of a 38% interest in Deeprock North for $ 19.5 million. This past week TEP announced the acquisition of water infrastructure assets in the Bakken for $ 95 million, a prime customer there being XTO with an additional $ 45 million of capital expenditures expected.
We also announced the formation of a joint venture in the Powder River basin with Silver Creek midstream for the development of the Iron Horse crude oil pipeline. Iron Horse will transport crude oil from the PRB to Guernsey and then on into Pony Express. We expect to invest approximately $ 150 million into the joint venture and its associated Guernsey terminal.
Analysts' Estimates And Price Targets
TEGP has received some upward earnings estimate revisions over the past month, as details of the deal were digested. 2018 estimates rose from $ 1.30 to $ 1.44, while 2019 estimates rose from $ 1.25 to $ 1.61.
(Source: Yahoo Finance)
At $ 19.75, TEGP is ~23% below analysts' average price target, and ~42% below the $ 28.00 highest price target:
TEGP (candlesticks) and TEP (lavender line) are both down in 2018 but have moved higher since the March 26th merger announcement.
Two other strategies to potentially profit from the merger deal, on a short-term basis, are selling covered calls and/or cash secured puts.
If you want to be aggressive but still get a lower breakeven, this in the money May put trade offers a $ 1.25 bid premium, roughly 2.5X TEGP's $ .4875 quarterly payout, with a breakeven of $ 18.75.
Our Cash Secured Puts Table can give you more details for this put trade and over 25 other put-selling trades.
Conversely, you could hedge your bet by buying TEGP and selling covered calls against your units.
We've added this July trade to our Covered Calls Table, which tracks over 25 covered call trades on a daily basis. With the heightened volatility in 2018, we're finding higher option premiums, which help to hedge vs. price declines.
The July at the money $ 20.00 call strike pays $ 1.20/unit, for an annualized yield of ~22%.
Here are the 3 main profitable scenarios for this trade:
Static, in which TEGP doesn't rise to or above $ 20.00 near the ex-dividend date or the expiration date, and you keep your TEGP units. In this instance, you'd collect $ 1.69/unit, the combination of the option $ and the distribution.
Assigned pre- ex-dividend date. You'd collect the $ 1.20 option premium, and $ .25, the difference between TEGP's $ 19.75 price/unit and the $ 20.00 strike, but no distribution.
Assigned after the ex-dividend date. You'd collect all three profit streams, for a yield of 9.81% in this 100-day trade, or ~35% annualized.
You may be wondering why we didn't detail selling options for TEP. The problem is that, since TEP's eventual buyout price is tied to 2X TEGP's price, you could end up with a downdraft once you buy TEGP. We've been down that road before, and it wasn't pretty.
Since you'll end up with TEP's assets anyway, we prefer to own TEGP. Although the conventional wisdom is often to short the acquiring stock, and buy the target stock, we don't feel that this will work in this case.
Since it's TEP's earnings and operations that are mainly driving the Tallgrass group, we compared TEP's valuations and yield to those of other midstream high-yield stocks we've covered in other articles. These include DKL Logistics Partners LP (DKL), Summit Midstream Partners (SMLP), Holly Energy Partners, L.P. (HEP), MPLX LP (MPLX), PBF Logistics LP (PBFX), Martin Midstream Partners L.P. (MMLP), and Green Plains Partners LP (GPP), Energy Transfer Partners LP (ETP), and Williams Partners LP (WPZ).
in 2017, TEP had far and away the best distribution coverage, at 1.47X. As detailed above, the new entity, TGE, will probably have coverage of ~1.20X, which is in line with this group's average. TEP's Price/DCF of 7.41X is lower than the group's 8.82X average, as are its Price/Book of 1.97X, and its EV/EBITDA of 7.54X:
TEP's Net Debt/EBITDA of 3.17X is the second lowest in this group, and its ROE and Operating Margin are above average. Its Debt/Equity leverage is also better than the group average.
Debt And Liquidity
On the Q4 earnings call in February (which was prior to the merger deal announcement), management detailed TEP's liquidity status, as of 12/31/17:
At the end of the fourth quarter, TEP had nearly $ 1.1 billion of liquidity available on its revolver. TEP's leverage as of quarter end was approximately 3x based on the trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA as calculated according to our credit agreement provisions. As you know, this continues to be on the low end of our 3x to 4x long-term leverage target indicating ample leverage capacity at TEP to fund third-party acquisitions, organic growth projects, and TEP's share of REX's July 2018 debt maturity of $ 550 million.
We rate TEGP a buy, based upon its attractive, well-covered and improved yield, its sound management, and the oncoming merger deal, which will lower the cost of equity, and its ultimate overall organizational simplification – it'll remain a C-Corp as the new combined entity, with no K-1 hassles for income investors.
All tables furnished by DoubleDividendStocks.com, unless otherwise noted.
Disclaimer: This article was written for informational purposes only, and is not intended as personal investment advice. Please practice due diligence before investing in any investment vehicle mentioned in this article.
CLARIFICATION: We have two investing services. Our independent, legacy site, DoubleDividendStocks.com, has been specializing in increasing yields via selling options on quality high dividend stocks since 2009. Option yields have improved a great deal in 2018, due to higher market volatility.
Our new Marketplace service, Hidden Dividend Stocks Plus, focuses on undercovered and undervalued income vehicles.
We scour the world's markets to find solid income opportunities with dividend yields ranging from 5% to 10%-plus, backed by strong earnings.
Join Hidden Dividend Stocks Plus now with a no-risk 2-Week Free Trial.
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKL, TEGP, MMLP, PBFX, ETP.
Posted in: Cloud Computing|Tags: Coming, Deal, ExDividend, goes, Hikes, Soon, Straight, Swap, Yield
Usher – There Goes My Baby
August 6, 2017 1:10 pm|Comments (0)
There Goes My Baby
Artist: Usher
Label: LaFace Records, JLG
Album: Candy Valentine
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1270&vid=544989
Grace Park Gretha Cavazzoni Gwen Stefani Halle Berry Hayden Panettiere Haylie Duff
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Posted in: Web Hosting News|Tags: Baby, goes, There, Usher
Drone law goes down, and now hobbyists don't have to register
Buying a drone for fun just got a little less complicated.
A court ruling has declared that civilians c no longer need to register their non-commercial drones with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
SEE ALSO: Drone owners will now have to register with the government in China
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of drone user John Taylor, who filed an initial petition challenging the drone registration rule back in 2015, just days after the FAA's drone registry went live in December of that year.
The rule required drone hobbyists to pay a $ 5 fee to register their drone with the FAA's website. Read more…
More about Robots, Drones, Law, Faa, and Tech
Posted in: Web Hosting News|Tags: Don't, Down, Drone, goes, hobbyists, register
Hays County, Texas Goes Live with Industry Leading Land Records…
Hays County Records Division has a new Land Records management system that will enhance the County's ability to serve its citizens.
(PRWeb July 18, 2016)
Posted in: Web Hosting News|Tags: County, goes, Hays, Industry, Land, leading, live, Records..., Texas
The Future of Detroit Goes on Display in Venice
Including the evolution of the auto factory—seen through Microsoft's HoloLens The post The Future of Detroit Goes on Display in Venice appeared first on WIRED.
Posted in: Web Hosting News|Tags: Detroit, display, Future, goes, Venice
June 6, 2016 5:50 am|Comments (0)
Justin Bieber's 'Boyfriend' Teaser Goes Hard
March 6, 2016 3:25 am|Comments (0)
The 13-second preview of Mike Posner-produced track shows off an edgier side of Bieber.
By Jocelyn Vena
<P>Is it killing you that you have to wait until Monday to hear what <a href="/news/articles/1680882/justin-bieber-boyfriend-single-buzz.jhtml">"Boyfriend" sounds</a> like? Well, <a href="http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/bieber_justin/artist.jhtml">Justin Bieber</a> feels your pain and decided to release a teaser for the lead single off his <a href="/news/articles/1680373/justin-bieber-believe-album.jhtml">album, <i>Believe.</i></a> </P><P> </P><P>The 13-second, blink-and-you-might-miss-it tease is spare in terms of instruments, just bleeps and thumps, no singing or rapping. But it does play up Bieber's love for hip-hop; as it nears the end of the tease, a drum line-style beat kicks in. Come Monday, of course, the whole song will drop for Beliebers' listening pleasure. </P><P> </P><P><center><embed src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:744691/cp~id%3D1680192%26vid%3D744688%26uri%3Dmgid%3Auma%3Avideo%3Amtv.com%3A744688″ width="460″ height="260″ type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" base="."></embed></center> </P><P> </P><P>The video teaser also includes footage of Bieber in the studio, recording "Boyfriend," which was co-written and co-produced by Mike Posner. The clip premiered on Justin's <a href="http://www.justinbiebermusic.com/boyfriend" target="_blank">website</a> late Thursday night. </P><P> </P><P>"This record is different in a very good way," said producer/writer Mason Levy, who also worked on the song. "Definitely edgier, it's more grown-up, it's more developed and it's sexier. It's just like really dope. It's gonna definitely surprise people. People aren't really expecting that. They're going to like it." </P><P> </P><P>It's clear from the teaser that <a href="/news/articles/1681595/justin-bieber-boyfriend.jhtml">Bieber is using</a> influences from urban music and that he's looking to grow up sonically. The music in the new clip also seems to pay homage to Justin Timberlake, and even Chris Brown. Bieber has confirmed that he raps on the song. </P><P> </P><P>"It's more just the verses [that he's rapping on], and the rest he's singing," Levy told MTV News. "It's dope. It's hip-hop, but with great acoustic R&B, pop guitar with very hip-hop, clubby drums and really dope Justin Timberlake-y melodies." </P><P> </P><P><i>What do you think of "Boyfriend" so far? Tell us in the comments!</i></p>
Happy Birthday, Justin Bieber!
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1681664/justin-bieber-boyfriend.jhtml
Aaliyah Abbie Cornish Adriana Lima Adrianne Curry Adrianne Palicki Aisha Tyler
Posted in: Web Hosting News|Tags: 'Boyfriend', Bieber's, goes, Hard, Justin, Teaser
Watson Goes West As IBM Courts Next Tech Hotshots
Hoping to capture business from fast-growing Bay Area firms such as Uber and Tesla, IBM Thursday will announce plans to open a center in San Francisco dedicated to its Watson artificial-intelligence-driven computing service.
Posted in: Web Hosting News|Tags: Courts, goes, Hotshots, Next, Tech, Watson, West


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OLIN JONES - people search, genealogy, find deceased relatives and locate ancestors
OLIN JONES
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423-18-4755 July 25, 1906 June 1, 1975 68 years AL 36862 (La Fayette)
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358-30-0698 September 25, 1886 October 1, 1977 91 years IL 60640 (Chicago, Cook County) 60625 (Chicago, Cook County)
440-07-0069 August 2, 1880 December 1, 1978 98 years OK 73110 (Midwest City, Oklahoma County) 73103 (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County)
460-50-1764 January 15, 1899 November 1, 1980 81 years TX 75206 (Dallas, Dallas County) 75231 (Dallas, Dallas County)
247-26-6900 June 29, 1897 March 1, 1981 83 years SC 29526 (Conway, Horry County) 29526 (Conway, Horry County)
461-07-3961 April 4, 1907 October 1, 1981 74 years TX 77089 (Houston, Harris County)
354-16-2527 February 19, 1891 March 1, 1982 91 years IL 61401 (Galesburg, Knox County) 61401 (Galesburg, Knox County)
260-10-3172 June 19, 1916 February 1, 1983 66 years GA 31904 (Bibb City, Muscogee County)
521-10-3561 January 23, 1904 April 1, 1983 79 years CO 80110 (Englewood, Arapahoe County)
256-09-9714 October 13, 1911 September 1, 1984 72 years 30247
433-32-2964 April 27, 1914 November 1, 1984 70 years 29546 29546
235-01-1176 March 21, 1897 April 1, 1985 88 years WV 25311 (Charleston, Kanawha County) 25311 (Charleston, Kanawha County)
427-32-9394 March 21, 1916 November 1, 1985 69 years IL 60621 (Chicago, Cook County)
302-36-8804 October 3, 1914 February 1, 1987 72 years OH 44106 (Cleveland, Cuyahoga County) 44106 (Cleveland, Cuyahoga County)
OLIN W JONES
229-09-1715 February 24, 1894 August 4, 1988 94 years
OLIN E JONES
486-34-1730 July 14, 1931 April 15, 1989 57 years MO 65453 (Cuba, Crawford County)
OLIN T JONES
256-24-1150 April 20, 1905 October 29, 1991 86 years GA 31406 (Isle of Hope, Chatham County)
OLIN H JONES
455-01-8581 July 2, 1908 March 25, 1992 83 years
OLIN N JONES
373-20-9376 October 8, 1924 March 19, 1993 68 years FL 32976 (Micco, Brevard County)
417-10-1527 May 16, 1906 May 8, 1994 87 years AL 35901 (Gadsden, Etowah County)
OLIN J JONES
409-10-6634 December 8, 1908 July 23, 1995 86 years TN 37072 (Goodlettsville, Davidson County)
424-22-1564 April 29, 1918 April 16, 1996 77 years AL 36340 (Geneva, Geneva County)
OLIN F JONES
521-12-3871 January 15, 1914 May 23, 1997 83 years CA 95954 (Magalia, Butte County)
OLIN L JONES
512-03-6080 October 16, 1900 July 8, 2000 99 years KS 67211 (Wichita, Sedgwick County)
520-05-3250 May 30, 1913 July 10, 2003 90 years NV 89122 (Las Vegas, Clark County)
OLIN B JONES
362-40-2693 May 26, 1939 July 8, 2004 65 years MI 49093 (Three Rivers, St. Joseph County)
OLIN P JONES
278-16-1421 May 7, 1923 May 10, 2005 82 years NM 88005 (Las Cruces, Dona Ana County)
OLIN LUTHER JONES
431-36-3180 August 3, 1928 July 24, 2006 77 years AR 71822 (Ashdown, Little River County)
OLIN R JONES
219-74-9917 May 5, 1931 April 14, 2008 76 years MD 21802 (Salisbury, Wicomico County)
OLIN C JONES
417-36-6257 May 24, 1931 September 24, 2008 77 years AL 35502 (Jasper, Walker County)
OLIN D JONES
223-36-7580 June 10, 1936 January 3, 2009 72 years AR 72025 (Casa, Perry County)
403-22-3811 January 16, 1925 January 12, 2009 83 years KY 40831 (Harlan, Harlan County)
Death statistics by year for last name JONES
Average age at death for last name JONES
Death statistics by state for last name JONES
Last name popularity statistics for persons named JONES per 10,000 residents in every state
Popularity of last name JONES decreased from 0.621% in 1990 to 0.505% (1362755 people) in year 2000. Last name JONES moved from 4th to 5th place on the most common names list in the USA
KALEC
Other people with last name JONES:
HATTIE M JONES
ANGELA JONES
ALMA M JONES

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Coconut Motion Pictures and Actor Prepares, Mumbai launched the trailer of their upcoming film Ranchi Diaries on September 13 in Mumbai along with the film's cast, led by Mr. Anupam Kher. Lending the veteran actor support were some of the finest directors of Indian Cinema – Mahesh Bhatt, David Dhawan and Rohit Shetty, all of whom have played an integral part in Mr Kher's journey so far.
Earlier this month, Bollywood's queen Kangana Ranaut launched the first song of the film titled 'Fashion Queen', which has continued to receive immense appreciation from audiences across the country.
Releasing on 13th October 2017, Ranchi Diaries, is a slice of life comic small-town tale which will resonate with young urban and heartland audiences alike. The film features Anupam Kher, Jimmy Shergill, Satish Kaushik, Soundarya Sharma, Himansh Kohli, Taaha Shah, Harry Bala, Pradeep Singh in lead roles. It's a film by Sattwik Mohanty and produced by Coconut Motion Pictures in association with Actor Prepares, Mumbai.
Ranchi Diaries depicts the story of Gudiya and her friends who hail from a small town Ranchi. Gudiya dreams of becoming a pop sensation like Shakira. Her talent draws unwanted attention of the local Mafia kingpin Thakur bhaiya leading her to elope with childhood love, Manish. A chain of events occur and create a ruckus.
To get out of this mess, Gudiya and her friends plan a bank heist. Their ambitious bank heist becomes the joke of the town when they attempt it. Amidst the chaos between the goons and the cops whether Gudiya and her friends can make it to survival, is what Ranchi Diaries all about.


My client is a famous award winning creative agency who work with some of the world's biggest brands. They are looking for a Retail Designer to work with one of their biggest and most respected retail clients.
This requires the ability to work across refined and considered flat print, 3D print and digital based-designs. The successful candidate will have a great deal of creative ownership including taking briefs from clients and coming up with original ideas. A permanent role within such a highly respected agency is a unique and fantastic opportunity to progress in your creative career!


text:
Review of the slot ...
Review of the slot machine Reactoonz.
Emmanuel Robert
(@emmanuelrob)
Joined: 1 day ago
Topic starter 15/01/2022 10:59 am
Slot machine Reactoonz - a unique slot, represented by the developer Play'N Go. The game has an unusual user interface, spectacular graphics and high probability of large winnings. The game has a high RTP of 96.51% according to playamo review. With medium volatility and a wide range of available rates apparatus causes high interest from both high rollers, and from adherents of moderate investments in online casinos.
How to play Reactoonz
The playing field of the machine has an unusual format 7x7. And instead of the classic spins rotating drums used "falling" characters. Winning combinations disappear, and new images fall in their place. This continues as long as the field is formed combinations of payments. The player is offered to choose the bet in the range of 0.2 - 100 coins. Autoplay with the choice of a fixed number of spins is available. If necessary, you can turn off the sound and increase the size of the playing field across the width of the screen.
Symbols in the slot
The main game uses eight symbols. They give payouts ranging from 0.1 to 750 bets. If four of the same image from the more expensive group, they turn into a special symbol Giantoonz, doubling the payout on the combination in which it is involved. A feature of this machine is that any combination of five or more symbols standing next to each other is a winning combination.
Wild in the Reactoonz machine
The slot uses two Wild at once. The first of them randomly appears during the regular game, after the "explosion" of winning combinations. Also Wild images in number from four to eight appear in the field when activating Unstable mode (random, turns on after a win-win combination). The second Wild in the form of a monster can appear only during the main bonus mode Gargantoon. This symbol appears in the field three times in a row:
one 3x3 image;
two 2x2 jokers;
nine regular 1x1 Wilds.
Functions of the wild symbol are standard - it replaces all other game images.
In the slot Reactoonz there are no traditional paylines. Winning are any combinations of five or more of the same symbol adjacent to each other horizontally and/or vertically. The maximum payout is relevant for combinations of 15 or more symbols.
Bonus modes of the machine
To the right of the playing field is a quantum function indicator. There are five divisions, and each of them is filled if 25 or more symbols took part in winning combinations. For each completed division the player receives one of the following modes:
Explosion, which turns three to six symbols into jokers;
Incision, which creates two diagonals of identical images;
Annihilation, which removes all symbols of a cheap group from the field;
Change, which turns a group of characters into identical characters.
Filling the fifth division activates the main Gargantoon bonus mode, which was characterized in our review earlier. At this stage the player is guaranteed to perform three bonus win-win spins, after which the Reactoonz slot prize round is completed.
12 ANIMALS slot machine
Lucky Lady's Charm


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Links 25/8/2014: China's Linux Revolution Imminent
China hopes home-grown OS will oust Microsoft
China to take on Microsoft, Google, Apple with own domestic OS
China launches homegrown OS to compete with pirated US software
China planning to launch home-grown OS in coming months
China Developing Its Own OS To Take On Apple, Microsoft, and Google
Chinese OS expected to debut in October
China OS coming to a computer near you
Source: China-Backed Operating System to Launch By October
China's homegrown desktop OS could hit market in October
China Wants Its Own Homegrown OS To Replace Windows And Android
China to Release Government Sponsored Operating System in October, To Rival Microsoft Windows, Google Android and Apple Mac
Why China's new domestic desktop operating system could actually stick
China's next attempt at a mobile homegrown desktop operating system is slated for an October debut, according to state-run news agency Xinhua. China Operating System, abbreviated COS, will first appear on desktop computers, and later reach smartphones. We already caught a glimpse of the mobile version at the beginning of this year, and noted its strong resemblance to Android. However, Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, which makes COS, said it is not another Chinese Android skin. As for the upcoming desktop version, you'd be forgiven for being a bit skeptical. China has failed miserably at making its own operating systems in the past. But several factors have come together that could help Ni realize his dream of replacing domestic operating systems in the next one to two years.
China to launch homegrown OS in October as Windows replacement
China hopes to launch a homegrown operating system by October to wean the country from foreign-made OSs like Windows, the government-run Xinhua news agency said Sunday.
The operating system, which Xinhua did not name, will be initially offered on desktop PCs, with the plan to later extend it to smartphones. The news service cited a report in the People's Post and Telecommunications News, a trade paper run by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the agency responsible for, among other things, the regulation and development of China's software industry.
Linux Skills Gap: Where to Look for Linux Systems Management?
The 2014 Linux Jobs report showed that the demand for Linux professionals is on the rise throughout Europe, with developers and system administrators most in demand. Such is the demand that 93% of hiring managers reported difficulty finding professionals with the Linux Systems Management skills they require. Of those unable to fill open positions, 25% have delayed projects as a result.
The "skills gap" reflects the rapid growth of Linux right across the business world. LinuxIT CIO Mike Curtis sees two groups of Linux professionals: the very highly skilled system administrators from corporate computing backgrounds; and then the less skilled employees of smaller organisations or public services who have trained on other operating systems. The second group have learned Linux in their own time and perhaps implemented some systems to handle specific functions for their employer. There is a huge skills gap between the two groups, and it's not just technical.
Start Talking About the GNU/Linux Desktop
Shortly, I will be going to a meeting where one participant has asked me for help with GNU/Linux on a notebook. She doesn't like what M$ does for her there. I've made up a bootable USB-drive with the Debian installer and a repository of stuff the typical desktop user will need, including Synaptic and gksu so she can customize her notebook when she gets home. I will start her off with a basic installation of Debian GNU/Linux and add the XFCE4 desktop environment with a selection of a few typical applications: FireFox browser, VLC media player, GIMP image editor, and Ristretto image viewer. XFCE4 is similar to what she liked from M$: XP. If M$ won't give her what she wants, I and the FLOSS community will. When random people you meet are interested in desktop GNU/Linux, this is no time to abandon this thriving technology. It works for ordinary people.
On normal people using Linux, part 2
This is the story of a girl named Elisa, and Elisa liked to do girlish things like hang out with her friends, sunbath at the beach, go to riots and protests against the world cup, support the feminism movement and study. Regarding study, she does Psicology class in the Fluminense Federal University ( UFF ) in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. I'v met Elisa by a friend of a friend that wanted to introduce us beause of our common ideals:
what is "the desktop"?
Opening Up in New Ways: How the OpenPOWER Foundation is Taking Open to New Places
It's no secret that open development is the key to rapid and continuous technology innovation. Openly sharing knowledge, skills and technical building blocks is something that we in the Linux community have long been promoting and have recognized as a successful model for breeding technology breakthroughs. Much of The Linux Foundation's and its peerss efforts to date have been centered on fostering openness at the software level, starting right at the source — the operating system – and building up from there. Traditionally, the agenda has not included a great amount of attention on how to open up at the hardware level. Until now.
IBM Offers Power Systems Linux to Innovation, Client Centers; Doug Balog Comments
IBM innovation and client centers will now have access to Power Systems Linux and software developers will have access to tools for developing new applications for big data and cloud computing with open source technology.
Choose your side on the Linux divide
The battle over systemd exposes a fundamental gap between the old Unix guard and a new guard of Linux developers and admins
Linux and systemd: A case of the old versus the young?
In today's open source roundup: Is the systemd controversy a battle of the old versus the young? Plus: What Linux distros do you consider innovative? And a journalist spends a week using Ubuntu's Unity desktop
Linux Foundation Launches Certification Program for IT Professionals
Linus Torvalds Promotes Linux for Desktops, Embedded Computing
Don't Fret Linus, Desktop Linux Will Slowly Gain Traction
Of course there's not a kernel problem. From where I sit, there's not a GNU problem either. I've been using Mint with Xfce for a while now and I find it better than any version of Windows I've ever used, many times over. Other than needing a little polishing with some distros, there's no problem whatsoever with the penguin. Desktop Linux is only the best there is.
Linux turns 23 today, Happy Birthday Linux
On 25 August, 1991 a 21-year old Finnish programmer named Linus Torvalds sent out an email, titled 'What would you like to see most in minix?' to the Minix community. THAT was the beginning of a technology and social revolution called Linux.
Linus Torvalds Started a Revolution on August 25, 1991. Happy Birthday, Linux!
Linux Turns 23 Years Old Today
It was on this day in 1991 that Linus Torvalds first announced his new operating system that would go on to become Linux.
On 25 August 1991 is when Linus Torvalds in Helsinki announced his "free operating system" as a hobby that he had been developing since April. The initial release had GCC 1.40 and Bash 1.08 ported. The work wasn't originally known as Linux but originally was called Freax before being renamed to Linux. While most Phoronix readers have likely already seen that classic email many times, for those that haven't you can see the original posting to comp.os.minix. Happy birthday Linux!
Linux 3.17 Doesn't Boost Ivy Bridge Performance Numbers
Last week I ran some performance tests that found Sandy Bridge was faster with the Linux 3.17 kernel and these performance gains with the still in-development kernel extended beyond just graphics. Curious, I ran some tests this weekend to see whether Intel Ivy Bridge processors were also running faster with Linux 3.17 compared to Linux 3.16 stable.
Linux Foundation to offer two new certifications for IT workers
With an eye toward deepening the global Linux talent pool, the Linux Foundation today announced that it will offer two new certifications for engineers and administrators.
Interesting facts about Linux
There is a never-ending debate on whether or not Linux is an operating system. Technically, the term "Linux" refers to the kernel, a core component of an operating system. Folks who argue that Linux is not an operating system are operating system purists who think that the kernel alone does not make the whole operating system, or free software ideologists who believe that the largest free operating system should be named "GNU/Linux" to give credit where credit is due (i.e., GNU project). On the other hand, some developers and programmers have a view that Linux qualifies as an operating system in a sense that it implements the POSIX standard.
Haiku debates kernel switch (but it's not happening)
A very interesting discussion is taking place in the Haiku mailing list right now. A developer has created a working prototype implementation of the BeOS API layer on top of the Linux kernel, and he is wondering if the project is worth pursuing.
Running Ivy Bridge HD Graphics With Linux 3.16 + Mesa 10.3
Given our recent updated Sandy Bridge benchmarks on Linux, for those with Ivy Bridge processors curious how the HD Graphics are handling the latest Mesa and kernel, I have some updated benchmarks for you this Sunday.
AMD Releases UVD Video Decode Support For R600 GPUs
AMD has finally managed to publish open-source Unified Video Decoder (UVD) support for the original R600 graphics processors.
AMD Radeon R9 290 "Hawaii" Open-Source Driver Works, But Has A Ways To Go
With the Linux 3.17 kernel, Mesa 10.3, and the newest Radeon microcode files, there's finally working Hawaii GPU support by AMD's open-source Linux graphics driver. The Radeon R9 290 series launched nearly one year ago and finally now the open-source driver is working right, so we've conducted some preliminary tests using the R9 290 compared to AMD's other Radeon GPUs on the open-source Linux driver.
The New Features Of Mesa 10.3
Mesa 10.3 represents about three months of development work and is nearing completion with its OpenGL 4.0 support, but that wasn't completed in time to mark bumping the version number to Mesa 11.0.
Linux Performance Tools at LinuxCon North America 2014
This week I spoke at LinuxCon North America 2014 in Chicago, which was also my first LinuxCon. I really enjoyed the conference, and it was a privilege to take part and contribute. I'll be returning to work with some useful ideas from talks and talking with attendees.
Powerful and Free Video Editor LiVES 2.2.6 Now Available for Download
LiVES 2.2.6, a simple-to-use, powerful video editor and VJ tool that allows users to combine real time and rendered effects, streams, and multiple video/audio files, has been released.
Nemo Emblems, Folder Color, Image Converter and Filename Repairer Extensions Added To The WebUpd8 Nemo PPA
Reminder: the WebUpd8 Nemo PPA should not be used by Linux Mint / Cinnamon users! Nemo from this PPA uses various Unity patches (it should work with Unity, GNOME Shell, Xfce, etc. but not with Cinnamon!) that make it incompatible with Cinnamon.
Experimenting with Panamax
Panamax taught me a lot about Docker, and caused me to publish my first two images to the Docker registry, which is more than I expected to gain from trying it out. I'm not sure I'm the target audience – I don't think I'd want to run production Docker apps under it on a headless server (at least until it's more stable), which suggests that its main use is as an easy way to experiment with the development of containerized systems. But the friction introduced by the extra CoreOS host seems too great for it to be an awesome development platform for me. I think it's a solvable problem – if the team can find a way to make the network port forwarding and the filesystem NFS sharing be automatic, rather than manual, and to work with ecryptfs on Ubuntu, it would make a massive difference.
Free Report Solution CuteReport 1.0 RC2 Gets Multiple Improvements
CuteReport, a free report solution inspired by eXaro's project ideas that's similar to Jasper and Crystal Reports, is now at version 1.0 RC2.
BitTorrent Client Vuze 5.4.0.1 Beta 4 Now Ready for Testing
Vuze, a BitTorrent client previously known as Azureus, which is built on Java, has reached version 5.4.0.1 Beta 4 and is now available for download.
hunspell: A spellchecker with vast dictionary support
sncli: For cloud-based to-do lists, and more
lbdb: Looks can be deceiving
mnemonicode: At long last we meet
VueScan 9.4.40 Scanner Interface Gets New Filter Options
VueScan 9.4.40, an easy-to-use replacement for the software that usually comes with scanners and that supports most flatbed scanners, printer/scanners, and film scanners, has been released and is now available for download.
Instructionals/Technical
Identify PCI and USB Wired and Wireless Driver in Linux – Identify USB Driver. Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, CentOS, Fedora & all Linux distro
Install And Configure FTP Server On CentOS 7
Nginx Basic Configuration
How To Install Webmin 1.7 On Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, Elementary OS 0.3, Deepin 2014 And Other Ubuntu 14.04 Derivatives
How To Install Webmin 1.7 On Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia And OpenMandriva Systems
How To Install JRiver Media Center 20.0.7 On Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, Elementary OS 0.3, Deepin 2014 And Other Ubuntu 14.04 Derivatives
How To Install PPSSPP 0.9.9.1 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems
How To Install Brackets 0.42 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems
How To Install FreeCiv 2.4.3 On Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, Elementary OS 0.3, Deepin 2014 And Other Ubuntu 14.04 Derivatives
How To Install StepMania SSC 5.0 Beta 3 On Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems
How To Install Remarkable 0.965 On Ubuntu 14.04, Debian Jessie, Debian Wheezy And Derivatives
How To Install MKVToolnix 7.1 On Ubuntu 14.04, Debian Jessie, Debian Wheezy And Derivative Systems
How To Install Liferea 1.10.11 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivatives
RAW Sharpening and Noise Reduction With Raw Therapee on Linux
The full power of digital photography lies in knowing how to manipulate RAW images. When you shoot RAW you get the highest-quality images, and the most editing headroom for repairs and enhancements. Raw Therapee is a wonderful cross-platform RAW image processor. Use it for noise reduction, pulling details out of shadows, fine-grained sharpening, color adjustment, color management, contrast, luminance, brightness, gamma, and hue corrections, convert to black and white, exposure corrections, distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting repairs, apply lens correction profiles, and about a skillion more features.
Wine or Emulation
Wine 1.7.25 Brings Fixes for World of Warcraft, Adobe Creative Cloud, and More
Acky's Reloaded secures 15% funding, Linux version confirmed
If you are a retro gamer, chances are breakout holds a special place in your heart. That simple game of ping pong is perhaps the most iconic of all the games of yore. Though there have been many attempts to clone the game as well as the fun, few were successful. Acky's Reloaded is a reimagining of Acky's XP Breakout which was a famous breakout clone. Now, thanks to Kickstarter, the game has crossed the 15% milestone of funding, which means that it will be made available on Linux too!
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Adventure Game Might Arrive on Linux – Gallery and Video
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a superb adventure game with an almost photo-realistic engine, might be getting a Linux release.
The developers of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter from The Astronauts have been working on this game for quite some time and the results are outstanding. So far, the game has been announced on the PC and PS4 platforms, but the devs are thinking about releasing a Linux version as well.
Dreamfall Chapters Confirmed for the PS4 alongside OS X, Linux PC and Windows, Trailer and Release Date Revealed
Any Gamers in the house?
Ultimate Edition 4.2 Gamers 32 bit 100% exists today due to TheeMahn O/S Builder (tmosb) 1.8.8, 08/22/2014.
Leadwerks Launches On Steam For Linux
The Leadwerks Game Engine has officially launched on Steam for Linux.
Leadwerks had been in beta on Steam for Linux but as of today the official release has taken place. This milestone comes several months after Leadwerks launched in the Ubuntu Store. The Linux port of the game engine came after a successful Kickstarter campaign last year.
SteamOS Repositories Are Now Down
The SteamOS repositories and some of the other resources provided by Valve seem to have some connectivity problems and users can't perform updates.
The issues with the SteamOS repositories seem to be intermittent and there are already a number of users on the official forums complaining about this issue. So far, not many users have noticed it, but if it persists, the number of affected people might rise.
Abyss Odyssey 2D Platformer to Get a Linux Version Soon
Abyss Odyssey, a side-scrolling action adventure game developed by ACE Team and published ATLUS, will be getting a Linux version on Steam soon.
Vendetta Online Space MMO Becomes More Stable with the Latest Update
Vendetta Online, an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) from Guild Software Inc., has advanced to version 1.8.304.
LGOGDownloader: Command Line GOG.com Game Downloader For Linux [Ubuntu PPA]
The tool can download GOG.com games (including language-specific installers if available), list / download updated files, resume unfinished downloads, repair downloaded installers, download extras such as artwork or manuals and more.
The Humble Jumbo Bundle 2
Hey there! Time for a new Humble Indie Bundle, this time called The Humble Jumbo Bundle 2, featuring 7 games, and well…. Sadly, only 1 of them is available on our favourite operative system.
Desktop Environments/WMs
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
AN UPDATE ON KWIN_WAYLAND
With the initial release of Plasma 5.0 behind us I also started to look more in the direction of Wayland again. Now I'm kind of in full flow on Wayland work and kwin_wayland is progressing nicely. Yes, KWin 5.1 will introduce a new binary called kwin_wayland to complement the kwin_x11 binary which got introduced in KWin 5.0.
Now I do not want to list all the changes as you can hardly express them all in a blog post, but I can point to my Akademy talk. I will provide a small overview of the current state, what is new in KWin 5.0, what will be new in KWin 5.1 and where the journey is going.
KDE Commit-Digest for 25th May 2014
PicarOS is back!
I thus tried the GRUB2 tool that is included in KDE. Fortunately, in a matter of three clicks, KDE reinstalled the PicarOS GRUB2 to the distro's partition. After that, I ran GRUB customizer and it added the missing entry.
I cannot describe Eimi's happiness when the computer booted to PicarOS once again. She played a lot with GCompris and drew many pictures.
PicarOS is a child's magnet without any doubt. The comfort with which my little daughter uses the computer when booted to that OS is truly notorious…
GitHub.io killed the distro star: Why are people so bored with the top Linux makers?
Matthew Miller is a little concerned. As the new project leader for the Fedora Linux distribution, he thinks Fedora 20 is great and Fedora 21, when it ships, will be the best release ever. But he worries that to everyone else, Fedora – and Linux distros in general – are getting a little, well … boring.
Zorin OS 9 Core Review: As good as Linux Mint 17!
Though personally I don't like Linux operating system resembling Windows (I had really bad experiences with Windows and lost a lot of data in the past at a critical phase in my student life and OS resembling Windows reminds me of the same), but I have seen Zorin OS to be quite popular among the new users, specially those who are converting from Windows to Linux. Even I used Zorin OS for sometime in the past, but once I upgraded Zorin to the next release, it became Ubuntu and all Zorin specific customization are lost. However, the recent Zorin OS release is supported for 5 years (till April 2019) and possibly you don't need to upgrade it for quite sometime, given the customization I am recommending in this article.
Red Hat Family
REVIEW: RHEL 7 anchors enterprise-focused ecosystem
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is more proof that operating systems aren't dead, they're becoming vessels for containerized applications. RHEL 7 performed well in our testing, but it's worth noting that this no longer just a simple OS – it's an increasingly abstracted component in the larger Red Hat ecosystem.
Red Hat bids to become a hybrid cloud power
Make no mistake about it, Red Hat is a Linux power that wants to be a force in the clouds as well. The announcement that Red Hat CloudForms 3.1, its open hybrid cloud management solution, will be available in September 2014 on the opening day of VMworld underlines its cloud intentions.
Red Hat Upgrades Hybrid Cloud Management Platform, Releases Red Hat CloudForms 3.1
CloudForms 3.1 is the first release built from the open source ManageIQ community, introduced in May 2014. Red Hat acquired ManageIQ in December 2012 and fully open sourced the code earlier this year to drive innovation in hybrid cloud management through community-powered innovation.
10 things you need to know about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is more proof that operating systems aren't dead, they're becoming vessels for containerized applications. RHEL 7 performed well in our testing, but it's worth noting that this no longer just a simple OS – it's an increasingly abstracted component in the larger Red Hat ecosystem. In testing, we found that the RHEL 7 OS stands alone well, plays well with others, and is progressively easier to both deploy and configure.
Tanglu 2.0 Alpha 1 (Bartholomea annulata) Is an Interesting OS Based on Debian
Not too many people heard about the new Tanglu operating systems, although the developers are not at their first release. In fact, Tanglu 1.0 (Aequorea Victoria) was made available back in February, 2014. Now, the Tanglu devs have started to work on a second release and everything seems to be going as planned.
Canonical/Ubuntu
Flavours and Variants
Linux AIO Linux Mint DVD Has All Linux Mint 17 Flavors on One Disc
The Linux AIO Team is trying to provide a very simple and obvious service for the users and to gather all the releases for some of the most famous distros and offer them on a single DVD, which might seem like the obvious solution.
Hero hacks: 14 Raspberry Pi projects primed for IT
VoIP PBXes, NTP servers, Web-controlled power strips — hack together one of these handy, cheap solutions for the server closet and beyond.
Build a Raspberry Pi Arcade Machine
The 1980s were memorable for many things; the end of the cold war, a carbonated drink called Quatro, the Korg Polysix synthesiser and the Commodore 64. But to a certain teenager, none of these were as potent, or as perhaps familiarly illicit, as the games arcade. Enveloped by cigarette smoke and a barrage of 8-bit sound effects, they were caverns you visited only on borrowed time: 50 pence and a portion of chips to see you through lunchtime while you honed your skills at Galaga, Rampage, Centipede, Asteroids, Ms Pacman, Phoenix, R-Rype, Donkey Kong, Rolling Thunder, Gauntlet, Street Fighter, Outrun, Defender… The list is endless.
Watch out Motorola, LG set to release 2nd generation smartwatch and it's round
Last week we began to hear rumors that LG were already working on their 2nd generation smartwatch which came as a bit of a surprise.
The LG G was only released back in July at Google's I/O event although details are now coming through that this was simply a 'proof-of-concept' release. Behind the scenes LG had already been working on and anticipating a much bigger (and better) smartwatch.
CyanogenMod offer 'Call Recording' feature on nightlies
CyanogenMod (CM) seem to have added a 'Call recording' feature to its nightlies list although this is not being offered as a direct feature for legal reasons.
Does open source boost mental health?
Walk into any makerspace around the world and you'll encounter this infectious optimism. You'll see people playing with their Raspberry Pis, their Arduinos, their CNC machines, and their 3D printers. You'll encounter people intently focused on assembling something, their mind so engaged as to be in a state of flow.
What does an open design studio look like?
I'm really interested in open source philosophies. I like the camaraderie of the communities and the open collaboration. I like being able to have a direct effect on the development of products that I use. I like the idea of the freedom behind the licensing. I like the idea of supporting the underdog fighting picaresquely against the corporate giants. I like that the whole point of open source is being allowed to see (and modify) the code. In simple terms, with open source as a development model it allows access to a product's plans/blueprints through using a permissive license.
Need PCI Compliance? Try Open Source
In a recent presentation, security professionals unveiled a proposed Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) compliance model that is based on open source technology. The system is designed, they said, to help reduce expenses, enhance scalability and make it easier to manage the technological infrastructure that supports PCI compliance.
Chrome 38 Dev (Unstable) Has Been Updated. How To Install Chrome 38 Dev On Linux Systems
RenderObject and Resource object leak, an unused slider from the user manager tutorial has been removed, the VAAPI encoder flag has been turned into a kill switch, the support for alphaEnabled API has been enabled.
Google Chrome 38 Dev Update for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Is Out
Spice Fire One now in India: A look at alternate mobile OSes beyond Android, iOS, WP8
Finally, Firefox smartphone now arrives in India. Though Mozilla's Firefox OS as a smartphone operating system has had a negligible impact on the market, but all that could change very soon as the first Firefox smartphone has been announced for India. The Spice Fire One has predictable low-end specifications and a greatly attractive price tag of Rs 2,299.
First Firefox OS Phone Arrives in India, Priced at $33
Mozilla has announced that the first smartphone running its Firefox OS mobile operating system is now on sale in India, following earlier reports that a low-cost phone would arrive there in July.
Mozilla is launching its first Firefox OS smartphone in India this week
Slowly but surely, Mozilla is pushing its Firefox OS mobile operating system into new markets. Although the nonprofit had already discussed its approach for India, today it announced it will be launching its first smartphone in the region this week.
SaaS/Big Data
VMware Comes Full Circle, to Release its Own OpenStack Flavor
Ever since 2012, we've covered the unsure stance that VMware has displayed toward emerging open source cloud computing platforms, including OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus. In this post, we reported that VMware's CEO had cited OpenStack in particular as "lacking maturity."
VMware Announces Its Own OpenStack Distribution
VMware has been one of the top contributors to the open-source OpenStack cloud platform over the last several years, and now the company is taking the next logical step by announcing its own OpenStack distribution.
Whoa. VMware joins in on OpenStack, Docker, & Open Compute open-source projects
Developers have been quick to try the Docker open-source project that represents a free alternative to VMware's core virtualization software for running many apps on each server. Today no less than VMware chief executive Pat Gelsinger announced that it's working with Docker to make Docker's containers "enterprise ready."
The most popular open-source cloud projects of 2014
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
August 2014 GNU Toolchain Update
Here are the highlights of this month's changes in the GNU Toolchain…
revisiting common subexpression elimination in guile
Openness/Sharing
5 ways to boost community engagement
The room was packed with almost 30 community managers from around the world. We were attending the Community Leadership Summit in Portland, Oregon and I was leading a session called Building programs and other ways to engage your community. During the session, I shared a few of the programs that we've implemented here on Opensource.com to foster community engagement. But the session wasn't just about our community, it was an opportunity to hear from other community managers in open source out there in the trenches.
The push for interoperability, an OpenStack card deck, and more
Welcome CryptX2: an Open Source Hardware Encrypted Storage Device
Free Nvidia CUDA 6.5 Packs ARM64 Support
Improved debugging for CUDA Fortran applications (preview) is also here; this includes new debugging support for Fortran arrays (Linux only), improved source-to-assembly code correlation, and improved documentation.
Emacs verus notification area, again
Ages and ages I wrote about letting Emacs code access the notification area. I have more to say about it now, but first I want to bore you with some rambling thoughts and some history.
The "notification area" is also called the "status icon area" or the "systray" — it is a spot that holds some icons that are under control of various applications.
PHP 5.5.16 Officially Released
Out in the Open: How Animated GIFs Can Turn You Into a Web Coder
Basically, all the site's image effects are stored by a community of developers, much like any other open source software. Anyone can not only use these effects, but build their own and share them with the community by way of the code hosting and collaboration site GitHub. "Since everyone likes glitch art and animated GIFs, it's a creative outlet for developers to create something new that's outside their usual field," say Jen Fong-Adwent, the creator of revisit.link. "But it's also a way for new people to learn basics."
Programming in Rust
Discover Rust, the systems programming language developed by Mozilla that's fast, and wants to be better than C and C++!
Extra staff for OpenSSL group after Heartbleed drama
ABOUT four months after the discovery of the Heartbleed bug, the group overseeing the widely used OpenSSL software has added a new full-time staffer and is preparing for a comprehensive code audit.
Steve Marquess, co-founder and president of the OpenSSL Software Foundation, said the organisation's team of 14 now had two full-time employees — one started this week — and planned to add two more by the end of the year.
Security advisories for Monday
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND JOURNALISM
Last week, Turkish media reported that "the former employee at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, has revealed that British and American intelligence and Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)." Snowden said intelligence services of three countries created a terrorist organization that is able to attract all extremists of the world to one place, using a strategy called "the hornet's nest."
NSA documents refer to recent implementation of the hornet's nest to protect the Zionist entity by creating religious and Islamic slogans.
According to documents released by Snowden, "The only solution for the protection of the Jewish state "is to create an enemy near its borders." Leaks revealed that ISIS leader and cleric Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi received intensive military training for a whole year at the hands of Mossad, besides courses in theology and the art of speech."
Indeed, this is a scandalous claim, one that has been seen on numerous Turkish news websites worded differently. Daily Sabah first reported it with a small news article, and later Daily Sabah columnist Haşmet Babaoğlu wrote about it in the first paragraph of one of his articles. The first paragraph of his article titled "Who benefits from ISIS's existence in the Middle East?" stated, "Regardless of whether you are enthusiastic about conspiracy theories or not, Global Research's claim that 'former National Security Agency (NSA) systems analyst Edward Snowden recently revealed that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was trained by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence and spy agency' is a topic worthy of debate."
It seems to me that the current phenomena gives more striking signals than conspiracy theories, however.
The news first appeared in French on July 9 on a Hezbollah website with Lebanon's Hezbollah-sponsored channel, Al Manar, claimed as the source. After a short while, the news was translated into English, but, the source was now claimed to be Iran's Fars News Agency. According to the news article, former analyst of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, proved with leaked documents that ISIS was a MI6, CIA and Mossad joint project. However, there were no indications of when and where Snowden made those remarks.
The best way to prevent this is to present the source. When we read Babaoğlu's column, we see that he mentioned a website called www.globalresearch.ca. The site belongs to an organization called The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). They identify themselves as "an independent research and media organization based in Montreal. The CRG is a registered non-profit organization in the province of Quebec, Canada." They claim that their mission is to uncover "the unspoken truth."
Babaoğlu presented the news article of Global Research as a source, but what about their source? The claim was not based on evidence; however, this does not render his article worthless. After all, in his article, he speaks of who benefited from recent developments in the Middle East after ISIS's appearance with actual events. There are views mentioned of several experts as well. Not to mention, there are no inconsistencies and factual errors in the article.
Hayden: It's Just a Matter of Time Before ISIS Attacks America
ISIS attack on West 'a question of timing': Former CIA chief
How Much of a Threat is Isis to the West?
Daily Kos: ISIS 'Politicians' Are No Threat to U.S., So 'Stop Freaking Out' About Them
In a Sunday-morning post, Daily Kos blogger Mark Sumner argued that the "threat ISIS represents to the United States" is "[e]xactly none" and urged us not to overreact now the way we supposedly did after 9/11 and consequently "hand over freedoms for an illusion of safety. The NSA reading your email and listening in on your phone, idiots mistaking a dropped t-shirt at the Mexican border for the prayer rug of invading Muslims, TSA workers who know you more intimately than your spouse. Those are bin Laden's victories."
Edward Snowden the Most Wanted Man in the World
Venice Film Festival: Latin American Film Birdman to Open
One of the movies that tackles these topics is "Good Kill", from the U.S. director Andrew Niccol. This film explores the guilt of a man that controls militar drones to kill Taliban people.
Gaza live: Hamas finance official killed in Israeli strikes
The Israeli army has released what it says is a page from a seized Hamas training manual that would appear to support its case that Palestinian militants deliberately use the cover of residential areas for combat operations.
Gaza live: Hamas manual backing civilians as shields found, claims Israel
Israeli Army says it has found manual showing Hamas tactic of using civilians as shields
Gaza live: We will arm Palestine, says Iran as conflict spirals
Tehran will "accelerate" arming Palestinians in retaliation for Israel deploying a spy drone over Iran, which was shot down, a military commander said on Monday.
"We will accelerate the arming of the West Bank and we reserve the right to give any response," said General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of aerial forces of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, in a statement on their official website sepahnews.com.
Three killed in Brazil prison riot
Two prisoners were beheaded and another one died after being thrown off the roof in a riot that erupted in a jail in southern Brazil.
Militants Release U.S. Writer Held in Syria Since 2012
U.S. freelance writer Peter Theo Curtis, who was abducted in Syria and held by militants from al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, was unexpectedly freed Sunday. Curtis went missing in October 2012 after crossing into northern Syria from Turkey. Negotiations for his release were mediated by Qatar, and the United Nations facilitated his handover in the Golan Heights Sunday evening. Curtis's release came just days after the Islamic State posted a video online showing the execution of U.S. journalist James Foley. After the video was released, reports emerged that European countries and organizations had paid ransoms averaging over $2.5 million to negotiate the release of more than a dozen citizens held with Foley. The terms of Curtis's release are unclear, but U.S. officials denied paying a ransom. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, "The U.S. government does not make concessions to terrorists."
Iran TV shows off allegedly downed Israeli drone
Iran Shoots Down 'Israeli Drone' Near Nuclear Site
Iran says it downed Israeli drone near nuclear site
Iran 'will arm Palestinians' after Israel drone downed
Israel targets 2 Gaza mosques in latest airstrikes
Netanyahu Warns Gazans to Leave Hamas Sites
Gaza tower block collapses after Israeli air strike
A block of residential apartments in Gaza City has collapsed following an Israeli airstrike on Saturday night. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the building was being used as a command centre by Hamas, but local residents say it was purely residential.
Syrian govt 'ready to cooperate' with US on IS militants
Any US air strikes against Islamist militants in Syria must be coordinated with the country's government, according to the Syrian foreign minister.
Washington Foreign Policy Hands Make The Case For The Unthinkable: An Alliance With Assad
Revenge of the realists. "It is not in our interest to defeat Assad as long as groups like ISIS will be winners."
Stop picking passengers' pockets and bring trains back under public control
British rail fares, already the highest in Europe, are set to become higher still. This is a poll tax on wheels
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
Ex-Fox Employee Turned Senate Candidate Scott Brown To Fox Host: "I Want To Thank You For Your Activism"
Brian Kilmeade Replies: "Hard For Me" To Imagine "Another Candidate In The Country That Cares More" Than Brown
Fox News Worried That Referring To Michael Brown As "Unarmed Teen" Might Be Misleading
Fox Chops Context From Clip To Claim Eric Holder Is "Picking A Side" In Ferguson
Conservatives up in arms over video game with sovereign citizen Tea Partiers as the bad guys
Casualties of Cyber Warfare
American and Chinese companies are getting caught in the crossfire of the brewing cyber war.
Germany spying on Turkey for '38 years'
German foreign intelligence agency has been tapping Turkey for almost four decades, reports Focus amid the ongoing spy scandal between Berlin and Ankara. Some German officials defend the practice, saying that not all NATO allies can be treated as friends.
Facebook Messenger Hoax: Illegal Conversations Are Being Automatically Sent To Police
A new Facebook Messenger hoax claims that illegal conversations being held over private messenger conversations are being analyzed and automatically sent to police. The hoax specifically targets users of the new Facebook Messenger app, and it claims that 250 have already been arrested for their illegal conversations.
Spying blind: How polls provide cover for domestic espionage
Using inappropriately vague and misleading questions, polls have found an American public evenly divided in their support of NSA domestic espionage — and on whether Edward Snowden's role in revealing the breadth and depth of it makes him a patriot or a traitor. Closer scrutiny indicates these divisions are more likely the result of systemic methodological biases in the polls than an expression of genuine opinion. This points to a far more troubling problem: Bad polls subvert a fair and balanced public debate on mass government spying, resulting in potentially anti-democratic remedies.
What others say: USA Freedom Act a testimony to informed public debate
A little more than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the federal government was collecting and storing the telephone records of millions of Americans, Congress is poised to end the program and provide significant protection for a broad range of personal information sought by government investigators.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed a version of the bill that is significantly more protective of privacy than one passed by the House in May. Like the House bill, Leahy's proposal would end the NSA's bulk collection of telephone "metadata" — information about the source, destination and duration of phone calls that investigators can "query" in search of possible connections to foreign terrorism.
A closer look at the issue of the NSA and building spyware into apps
The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google
The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a "Google-like" search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.
The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies. Planning documents for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as key participants.
ICREACH contains information on the private communications of foreigners and, it appears, millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Details about its existence are contained in the archive of materials provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Earlier revelations sourced to the Snowden documents have exposed a multitude of NSA programs for collecting large volumes of communications. The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in secrecy.
Corporations Spy on Nonprofits With Impunity
Here's a dirty little secret you won't see in the daily papers: Corporations conduct espionage against U.S. nonprofit organizations without fear of being brought to justice.
Yes, that means using a great array of spycraft and snoopery, including planned electronic surveillance, wiretapping, information warfare, infiltration, dumpster diving and so much more.
The evidence abounds.
For example, six years ago, based on extensive documentary evidence, James Ridgeway reported in Mother Jones on a major corporate espionage scheme by Dow Chemical focused on Greenpeace and other environmental and food activists.
Greenpeace was running a potent campaign against Dow's use of chlorine to manufacture paper and plastics. Dow grew worried and eventually desperate.
Ridgeway's article and subsequent revelations produced jaw-dropping information about how Dow's private investigators, from the firm Beckett Brown International (BBI), hired:
• An off-duty DC police officer who gained access to Greenpeace trash dumpsters at least 55 times;
• a company called NetSafe Inc., staffed by former National Security Agency (NSA) employees expert in computer intrusion and electronic surveillance; and,
• a company called TriWest Investigations, which obtained phone records of Greenpeace employees or contractors. BBI's notes to its clients contain verbatim quotes that they attribute to specific Greenpeace employees.
Using this information, Greenpeace filed a lawsuit against Dow Chemical, Dow's PR firms Ketchum and Dezenhall Resources, and others, alleging trespass on Greenpeace's property, invasion of privacy by intrusion, and theft of confidential documents.
FBI scuttles contested $500 million, no-bid deal with Motorola
In the face of multiple vendor protests, the FBI has cancelled plans to hand industry giant Motorola Solutions Inc. a sole-source contract worth up to $500 million, saying that it will reassess how to upgrade the bureau's antiquated nationwide two-way radio network.
The FBI had argued, in a justification for skirting competitive bidding requirements, that switching to another vendor would force the purchase of a complete new system costing $1.2 billion. The existing Motorola network has proprietary features that can't interact with non-Motorola equipment, so the FBI said, sticking with Motorola would extend the use of equipment worth $300 million.
For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe
Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent.
Behold, John Brennan's Scary Memo!
Liberal candidates never seem to satisfy liberal voters' expectations: Farmer
It seems the worst thing that can befall a liberal is to actually win an election for public office. Just ask President Obama or, better still, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Each man's election was hailed by liberals as a kind of Second Coming, the arrival of Nirvana, the ultimate rejection, even repudiation, of their predecessors, George W. Bush and Michael Bloomberg, and of conservatism itself.
The Reclamation of Torture
Torture ConceptTorture is making a comeback. Not the practice, at least in this country, but the word. For a decade, politicians and the media fenced the term off to keep it from contaminating their description of American behavior. But gradually, the word is being reclaimed. We should pay close attention to this development, for as we rediscover words that were once taboo, we define anew what it means to be an American.
The Ignored History of the Migrant Refugee Crisis
Friday July 25 will not make history as the first time a war criminal was greeted at the White House. Nevertheless, this was the day that Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, who has been condemned for his role in the torture and murder of civilians by the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission as well as journalists and academics, sat down with President Obama. Along with the Presidents of El Salvador and Honduras, the Heads of State gathered to discuss the causes of the massive northern exodus from Central America, as well as the 50,000 migrants—largely women and children—that have already been detained by the US government for crossing the border. The silence about the literal skeletons in Molina's closet reveals a much larger historical legacy that has been ignored in the discourse around the border crisis.
Mubarak resisted US pressure to give up the Sinai: The Secret Files
Towards the end of his tenure, ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak resisted pressures from Washington to cede Egyptian territory in the Sinai Peninsula to help create a Palestinian state, former senior members of Mubarak's ruling party told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Russia's Humanitarian 'Invasion'
Official Washington's war-hysteria machine is running at full speed again after Russia unilaterally dispatched a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian supplies to the blockaded Ukrainian city of Luhansk, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Americans are back on the war bandwagon
Boosting US military involvement in Iraq will make matters worse.
Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they're private corporations, immune from open records laws
As part of the American Civil Liberties Union's recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.
Cornel West: "He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency"
Cornel West is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and one of my favorite public intellectuals, a man who deals in penetrating analyses of current events, expressed in a pithy and highly quotable way.
And we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist. It's like, "Oh, no, don't tell me that!" I tell you this, because I got hit hard years ago, but everywhere I go now, it's "Brother West, I see what you were saying. Brother West, you were right. Your language was harsh and it was difficult to take, but you turned out to be absolutely right." And, of course with Ferguson, you get it reconfirmed even among the people within his own circle now, you see. It's a sad thing. It's like you're looking for John Coltrane and you get Kenny G in brown skin.
Cop Assigned To Ferguson Protests Threatens Attorney General Holder
"AG Holder is in St. Louis Today. I should go in early and punch him in the nose for so many different reasons." – Tweet by Sgt. Mike Weston, Velda City Police
Student's Story About Shooting A Pet Dinosaur With A Gun Ends In Suspension, Arrest
It would appear that Stone was only "disturbing" school officials who seemed intent on finding some evidence of his desire to shoot people and was understandably frustrated that they wouldn't believe it wasn't some sort of threat. Whatever disturbance Stone caused was limited to a single office. There was no reason for anyone to claim, much less believe, that his written assignment, or his behavior inside that office, was "disturbing" his classmates, other classes or anyone else not directly involved.
Women need protection from undercover officers
Imagine the scenario. You meet someone and, from the outset, the attraction is mutual: silently shared smiles, lingering glances. You bond over shared interests and worldviews, and exchange telephone numbers. You start sleeping together and – as your pulse quickens every time the phone rings – you realise you are falling for each other. Days are spent together, walking in parks, trips to the cinema, romantic meals; time apart becomes difficult. Eventually, your partner moves in, and for years you share everything. Maybe you even have a child together. Then – suddenly – they appear depressed and become distant. One day, they are gone, leaving only an apologetic note on the kitchen table. You then discover everything you knew about them was false. They have invented a fake identity; their backstory, opinions, entire life, all a lie. They are undercover police officers, and were sent to spy on you and your friends.
Handcuffed Black Youth Killed Himself, Says Coroner
A coroner's report obtained exclusively by NBC News directly contradicts the police version of how a 22-year-old black man died in the back seat of a Louisiana police cruiser earlier this year — but still says the man, whose hands were cuffed behind his back, shot himself.
In a press release issued March 3, the day he died, the Louisiana State Police said Victor White III apparently shot himself in an Iberia Parish police car. According to the police statement, White had his hands cuffed behind his back when he shot himself in the back.
Cops admit to false reports in Malmö protest
Police withdrew statements that ambulance personnel were attacked at the anti-Nazi demonstrations on Saturday, and reported themselves for investigation after trampling protesters.
Give Killer Cops a Break, Says NYT
The message of a New York Times piece by Michael Wines and Frances Robles (8/22/14) was clear: Police officers who shoot unarmed civilians need to be be given the benefit of the doubt.
NRA News Praises White Vigilante Patrols That Shot African-Americans After Hurricane Katrina
Cam Edwards, host of the National Rifle Association's news show, claimed that after Hurricane Katrina residents of the New Orleans neighborhood Algiers "were looking out for each other by walking the streets armed with firearms." But according to a federal hate crimes indictment and numerous media reports, after Katrina white gun-toting vigilantes in Algiers targeted African-Americans with racially motivated violence.
Intellectual Monopolies
Police Freeze Mega Shares in Money Laundering Investigation
New Zealand authorities have placed 18.8% of the Kim Dotcom-founded cloud hosting service Mega under restraining order. The actions involve multi-millionaire William Yan, one of Mega's largest shareholders, who is alleged to be involved in money laundering. Mega itself is not suspected of wrong-doing.
Witness Offered $3.50/Hr to Testify Against Pirate Bay Founder
Witnesses are being summoned to appear in the trial of Gottfrid Svartholm set to take place in September. A Cambodia-based former colleague of the Pirate Bay founder has been offered $3.50 per hour to attend, but heated emails with Danish authorities indicate he will not be traveling.


When North Minneapolis natives DeAnna and Roger Cummings founded Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA), they envisioned "a space where kids could have the opportunity to understand what they're good at." More than two decades later (and with help from LISC), JXTA is a creative and entrepreneurial outlet for hundreds of young people, a force of community revitalization, and a flourishing anchor institution capable of leading a $14 million capital campaign to expand their impact into more neighborhoods, for more youth.
A good school is critical for the success of our children and the communities where they live. That's why we created SchoolBuild, the first-ever online guide to help charter schools learn what it takes, and how much it costs, to build a school. And now, SchoolBuild has been recognized with an Excellence in New Communications award by the prestigious Conference Board and the Society of New Communications Research.