News

I was very dissapointed with the change of the desktop environment to Unity as well which I really can't stand, but the spyware is a real show-stopper for me so it's time for a change. Some other choices I've looked into which look really good are Linux Mint which currently holds the number one position in popularity of Linux distributions, Mageia which is number two, and gNewSense which has the strongest libre-oriented focus.

• Ubuntu - our local Ubuntu page (now legacy!)
• Debian - our local Debian page
• Ubuntu spyware, what to do?

• Video 1: Surviving the coming crises
• Video 2: The Property Purchase Checklist
• Video 3: Five Acre Abundance on a Budget
• Greening The Desert

Well it turns out the course is $1000 which although good value from the western middle-class perspective, is completely unthinkable for most of the planet's population where over half the people earn less than $2 per day and the vast majority are struggling merely to keep their family fed, clothed and housed.

The Organic Design sites have now been moved from Codero in the US to webgo24.de in Germany. We now have a faster 3.3GHz quad-core Xeon E3-1265L CPU (with 8 threads and 8MB L3 cache). We've also gone up from 4GB to 16GB of ECC RAM and from 250GB disk up to 1.8TB with raid-1 for extra data integrity.

Pretty much all the software is exactly the same on the new server as the last one apart form two things, first we changed from Ubuntu 10 to Debian 6, and secondly we've changed our database server from MySQL to MariaDB.

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement so that no configuration needs to be changed to migrate to it, and it has several advantages including better performance and flexible back-end storage options such as distributed "NoSQL" storage protocols. But most importantly for us is that MariaDB is 100% open source whereas MySQL has been getting less and less open source since it was bought by Oracle a few years ago. MySQL co-creator Michael "Monty" Widenius forked MySQL to create MariaDB, which has picked up momentum, being included by default in Fedora, Open SUSE, Slackware and Wikipedia.

This is a screenshot from the Bitcoinity chart site. The picture in the background is the Joker from the latest Batman movie and was changed from the default black background on the site for April fools day. When the price went over $100, money poured down the page and some people dressed as pink fluffy pigs danced at the top - sorry I missed that in my screenshot :-(

On Saturday, Cypriot deposit-holders got a nasty surprise when they learned that EU ministers and the IMF agreed to massive bailout plan for Cyprus, which includes a one-time tax of 9.9% on Cypriot bank deposits that exceed 100,000 euros, as well as a tax of 6.75% on smaller deposits.

The unprecedented decision, which appears to punish ordinary citizens for failures in the financial system, has sparked panic and protests as people queued up at ATM machines to rescue their savings. Many cash machines ran out of banknotes because of the panic withdrawals.

It would be hard to over-emphasize how significant the Cyprus situation is. The EU demonstrated under no uncertain circumstances that they will destroy the rule of law to maintain their own power. It was a recognition of tyranny that many of us have always assumed was the case but yesterday became reality.

Bitcoin jumped up a few dollars going over USD $50 shortly after the Cyprus haircut occurred showing that a significant loss of faith in the fiat currencies has likely been caused by the haircut (edit: now two weeks after the haircut, Bitcoin is over $90!). Expect gold to go up shortly too and silver even more as it's unnaturally far below it's usual 1/16^th of gold's value.

• Stop, thief! Run on ATMs in Cyprus as govt mulls savings tax
• It's not just Russian oligarchs that were hit!
• The End Of Systemic Trust: The Canary Just Died
• National planning Cyprus-style solution for New Zealand
• The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK
• Cypriot government agencies should be held accountable for crisis
• The new collapse template for the Western banking system
• Cyprus President Calls For "Iceland" Solution
• Financial Cleansing - The Cyprus Bail-in Template

Chávez’s closest allies were present at the state funeral in a military academy where his body has been laid in state. Among the high-profile leaders were Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Cuban President Raul Castro, Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko and Spanish crown-prince Felipe de Borbon. Other regional allies such as Brazil’s Dilma Rouseff and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa were also present.

Chávez died on Tuesday at the age of 58 following a two-year fight against cancer. His body will be embalmed and preserved just like Lenin, and laid out in the ‘Mountain Barracks’ where he devised a failed coup. The venue will be turned into a Museum of the Bolivarian Revolution.

• Venezuelans and world leaders bid farewell to Hugo Chávez
• President Hugo Chavez: A 21st Century Renaissance Man
• 50 Truths about Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution
• The Mass Media’s Defamation of Hugo Chávez
• The revolution will not be televised - excellent documentary about the 2002 coupa
• chavez.avi - a downloadable version of the film (use right-click, save as)

We've upgraded our version of Roundcube webmail from 0.71 to 0.85 which is a great improvement. It's more snappy and looks a lot slicker too :-) See our email configuration procedure for details about installation and upgrading of Roundcube, or Roundcube mail website for more information about the software.

The winning algorithm, Keccak (pronounced “catch-ack”), was created by Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen and Gilles Van Assche of STMicroelectronics and Michaël Peeters of NXP Semiconductors. The team’s entry beat out 63 other submissions that NIST received after its open call for candidate algorithms in 2007, when it was thought that SHA-2, the standard secure hash algorithm, might be threatened. Keccak will now become NIST’s SHA-3 hash algorithm.

See also:

• The Keccak web site
• The Sponge Functions Corner
• Random numbers, Encryption and Hashing

See also:

• Occupy Syria's Facebook page
• syrianyouth.com
• “Libyan style” fake fall of Damascus
• Interview with Assad on July 4^th part 1, part 2