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An anonymous reader shares a report: It might look like something from the early days of the internet, with its aggressively grey color scheme and rectangles nested inside rectangles, but FPDS.gov is one of the most important resources for keeping tabs on what powerful spying tools U.S. government agencies are buying. It includes everything from phone hacking technology, to masses of location data, to more Palantir installations. Or rather, it was an incredible tool and the basis for countless of my own investigations and others. Because on Wednesday, the government shut it down. Its replacement, another site called SAM.gov with Uncle Sam branding, frankly sucks, and makes it demonstrably harder to reliably find out what agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are spending tax payers dollars on. "FPDS may have been a little clunky, but its simple, old-school interface made it extremely functional and robust. Every facet of government operations touches on contracting at one point, and this was the first tool that many investigative journalists and researchers would reach for to quickly find out what the government is buying and who is selling it, and how these contracts all fit together," Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A fictional memo set in June 2028, published by short seller Citrini Research, wiped roughly $10 billion off Indian IT stocks in a single trading session on February 24 and sent the Nifty IT index down as much as 5.3% -- its worst single-day fall since August 2023 -- on the argument that AI coding agents have collapsed the cost advantage of Indian developers to the price of electricity. The index has shed more than $68 billion in market value in February alone, its worst month since 2003. But the core claim that India's entire $205 billion software export industry rests on cheap labor is roughly 15 years out of date, an analysis argues, custom application maintenance alone accounts for about 35% of a typical Indian IT firm's revenue, per HSBC, and enterprise platforms require deterministic outputs that probabilistic AI systems cannot wholesale replace. HSBC estimates gross AI-led revenue deflation for the sector at 14-16%, a measured headwind rather than an extinction event. The story adds: 24 years of software export data that has never posted a decline, $200 billion in annual revenue, partnerships with the very AI labs whose products are supposed to be the instrument of the sector's destruction, possibly a new $1.5 trillion market category emerging at the intersection of services and software, and the largest U.S. corporates in the middle of mapping their entire workforces into process architectures that require technology partners to modernise. I think India's IT is going to be fine.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York state has filed a lawsuit against Valve alleging that randomized loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 amount to a form of unregulated gambling, letting users "pay for the chance to win a rare virtual item of significant monetary value." From a report: While many randomized video game loot boxes have drawn attention and regulation from various government bodies in recent years, the New York suit calls out Valve's system specifically for "enabl[ing] users to sell the virtual items they have won, either through its own virtual marketplace, the Steam Community Market, or through third-party marketplaces." The vast majority of Valve's in-game loot boxes contain skins that can only be resold for a few cents, the suit notes, while the rarest skins can be worth thousands of dollars through marketplaces on and off of Steam. That fits the statutory definition of gambling as "charging an individual for a chance to win something of value based on luck alone," according to the suit. The Steam Wallet funds that users get through directly reselling skins "have the equivalent purchasing power on the Steam platform as cash," the suit notes. But if a user wants to convert those Steam funds to real cash, they can do so relatively easily by purchasing a Steam Deck and reselling it to any interested party, as an investigator did while preparing the lawsuit.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees. The voice-enabled chatbot, called "Patty," is part of an overarching BK Assistant platform that will not only assist employees with meal preparation but also evaluate their interactions with customers for "friendliness." Thibault Roux, Burger King's chief digital officer, tells The Verge that the company compiled information from franchisees and guests on how to measure friendliness, resulting in the fast food chain training its AI system to recognize certain words and phrases, such as "welcome to Burger King," "please," and "thank you." Managers can then ask the AI assistant how their location is performing on friendliness. "This is all meant to be a coaching tool," Roux says, adding that the company is "iterating" on capturing the tone of conversations as well.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HBO Max will be cracking down on password sharing around the world. From a report: The streamer first started cracking down on password sharing in the United States late last August. Subscribers are now able to add an additional out-of-household account for $7.99 a month. Before that August change, Warner Bros. Discovery had been testing for months to determine who may or may not be a "legitimate user," as CEO and President for Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming and Games JB Perrette described the plan. On Thursday during the company's fourth quarter earnings call for 2025, WBD revealed that the streaming limitations would be expanding. This news came as part of an answer about which levers the company plans to pull to grow HBO Max. Password crackdowns have proven to be a lucrative way to both boost revenue and subscriptions. Netflix, for example, saw 9 million more subscribers after its first wave of password crackdowns in 2024. The caveat is that password crackdowns do not lead to consistent growth, and they often infuriate subscribers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EBay is cutting about 800 jobs, or 6% of its full-time employees, saying the layoffs are needed to align its workforce with strategic priorities. From a report: "We are taking steps to reinvest across our business and align our structure with our strategic priorities, which will affect certain roles across our workforce," the San Jose, California-based company said early Thursday in a statement. "We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect." EBay will continue to hire in key areas. The cuts come a week after the company said it would acquire secondhand fashion marketplace Depop for about $1.2 billion in an effort to draw younger shoppers and after it reported robust quarterly results. Revenue increased 15% to $3 billion in the fourth quarter, surpassing analyst estimates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In its 250th year, is America, land of immigration, becoming a country of emigration? Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn't definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in. The Trump administration has hailed the exodus -- negative net migration -- as the fulfillment of its promise to ramp up deportations and restrict new visas. Beneath the stormy optics of that immigration crackdown, however, lies a less-noticed reversal: America's own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe. Since the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. hasn't collected comprehensive statistics on the number of citizens leaving. Yet data on residence permits, foreign home purchases, student enrollments and other metrics from more than 50 countries show that Americans are voting with their feet to an unprecedented degree. A millions-strong diaspora is studying, telecommuting and retiring overseas. The new American dream, for some of its citizens, is to no longer live there. In the cobblestoned streets of Lisbon, so many Americans are snapping up apartments that the newest arrivals complain they mostly hear their own language -- not Portuguese. One of every 15 residents in Dublin's trendy Grand Canal Dock district was born in the U.S., according to realtors, higher than the percentage of Americans born in Ireland during the 19th-century influx following the Potato Famine. In Bali, Colombia and Thailand, the strains of housing American remote workers paid in dollars have inspired locals to mount protests against a wave of gentrification. More than 100,000 young students are enrolled abroad for a more affordable university degree. In nursing homes mushrooming across the Mexican border, elderly Americans are turning up for low-cost care. [...] The U.S. experienced net negative migration -- an estimated loss of some 150,000 people -- in 2025, and the outflow will likely increase in 2026, according to calculations by the Brookings Institution, a public-policy think tank. The number could be larger or smaller because official U.S. data doesn't yet fully capture the number of people leaving, Brookings analysts noted. The total in-migration was between around 2.6 and 2.7 million in 2025, down from a peak of almost 6 million in 2023. The U.S. saw 675,000 deportations and 2.2 million "self-deportations" last year, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. A Wall Street Journal analysis of 15 countries providing full or partial 2025 data showed that at least 180,000 Americans joined them -- a number likely to be far higher when other countries report full statistics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A Cloudflare engineer says he has implemented 94% of the Next.js API by directing Anthropic's Claude, spending about $1,100 on tokens. The purpose of the experimental project was not to show off AI coding, but to address an issue with Next.js, the popular React-based framework sponsored by Vercel. According to Cloudflare engineering director Steve Faulkner, the Next.js tooling is "entirely bespoke... If you want to deploy it to Cloudflare, Netlify, or AWS Lambda, you have to take that build output and reshape it into something the target platform can actually run." The Next.js team is addressing this following numerous complaints that deploying the framework with full features on platforms other than Vercel is too difficult, with a feature in progress called deployment adapters. "Vercel will use the same adapter API as every other partner," the company said when introducing the planned feature last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Some Uber employees have built an AI clone of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi -- internally dubbed "Dara AI" -- and have been using it to rehearse and fine-tune presentations before delivering them to the actual Khosrowshahi, he revealed on a recent podcast. Khosrowshahi said a team member told him that some teams "make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me," and that the bot helps them adjust their slides and sharpen their delivery. Asked by the podcast host whether employees might eventually show Dara AI to the board, Khosrowshahi laughed but noted that AI models still can't process and act on new information the way executives do. "When the models can learn in real-time, that is the point at which I'm going to think that, yeah, we are all replaceable," he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic last week promoted Claude Code Security, a research preview capability that uses its Claude Opus 4.6 model to hunt for software vulnerabilities, claiming its red team had surfaced over 500 bugs in production open-source codebases -- but security researchers say the real bottleneck was never discovery. Guy Azari, a former security researcher at Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks, told The Register that only two to three of those 500 vulnerabilities have been fixed and none have received CVE assignments. The National Vulnerability Database already carried a backlog of roughly 30,000 CVE entries awaiting analysis in 2025, and nearly two-thirds of reported open-source vulnerabilities lacked an NVD severity score. The curl project closed its bug bounty program because maintainers could no longer handle the flood of poorly crafted reports from AI tools and humans alike. Feross Aboukhadijeh, CEO of security firm Socket, said discovery is becoming dramatically cheaper but validating findings, coordinating with maintainers, and developing architecture-aligned patches remains slow, human-intensive work.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kalshi, the prediction market platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has for the first time publicly disclosed the results of an insider trading investigation, naming an editor for YouTube's biggest creator as the offender. The company identified Artem Kaptur, an editor for MrBeast, who it says traded around $4,000 on markets tied to the streamer and achieved "near-perfect trading success" on low-odds bets -- a pattern investigators flagged as suspicious. Kalshi froze Kaptur's account before he could withdraw any profits, fined him $20,000, suspended him for two years, and reported the case to the CFTC.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech companies ranging from 300-person startups to giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce have moved beyond encouraging employees to use AI tools and are now actively tracking adoption and, in several cases, tying it to performance reviews. Google is factoring AI use into some software engineer reviews for the first time this year, and Meta's new performance review system will do the same -- it can track how many lines of code an engineer wrote with AI assistance. Amazon Web Services managers have dashboards showing individual engineer AI-tool usage and consider adoption when evaluating promotions. About 42% of tech-industry workers said their direct manager expects AI use in daily work as of last October, up from 32% eight months earlier, according to AI consulting firm Section. At software maker Autodesk, CEO Andrew Anagnost acknowledged that some employees had been using initially blocked coding tools like Cursor stealthily -- and warned that AI holdouts "probably won't survive long term."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Brian Merchant, writing for Blood in the Machine, reports that people across the United States are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras, amid rising public anger that the license plate readers aid U.S. immigration authorities and deportations. Flock is the Atlanta-based surveillance startup valued at $7.5 billion a year ago and a maker of license plate readers. It has faced criticism for allowing federal authorities access to its massive network of nationwide license plate readers and databases at a time when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is increasingly relying on data to raid communities as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Flock cameras allow authorities to track where people go and when by taking photos of their license plates from thousands of cameras located across the United States. Flock claims it doesn't share data with ICE directly, but reports show that local police have shared their own access to Flock cameras and its databases with federal authorities. While some communities are calling on their cities to end their contracts with Flock, others are taking matters into their own hands.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seamus Blackley, one of the original founders of Xbox who helped convince Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to back a console project more than 26 years ago, told GamesBeat in an interview that he believes Microsoft is quietly sunsetting the platform under the guise of an AI-driven leadership transition. Microsoft recently announced that Asha Sharma, whose career has focused on AI and software as a service, will replace Phil Spencer as Xbox CEO, and that COO and president Sarah Bond is leaving the company. Blackley said he expects Sharma's role to be that of "a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night," arguing that Satya Nadella's all-consuming bet on generative AI has turned every business unit -- Xbox included -- into a nail for the same hammer. He compared the appointment to putting someone who doesn't like movies in charge of a major motion picture studio, and advised Sharma to either develop a genuine passion for games or find a way to leave the job soon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A hacker exploited Anthropic's AI chatbot to carry out a series of attacks against Mexican government agencies, resulting in the theft of a huge trove of sensitive tax and voter information, according to cybersecurity researchers. From a report: The unknown Claude user wrote Spanish-language prompts for the chatbot to act as an elite hacker, finding vulnerabilities in government networks, writing computer scripts to exploit them and determining ways to automate data theft, Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security said in research published Wednesday. The activity started in December and continued for roughly a month. In all, 150 gigabytes of Mexican government data was stolen, including documents related to 195 million taxpayer records as well as voter records, government employee credentials and civil registry files, according to the researchers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

by Suparna Ganguly

This article explains all that you need to know about KernelCare. But before studying about KernelCare, let’s do a quick recap of the Linux kernel. It’ll help you understand KernelCare better. The Linux kernel is the core part of Linux OS. It resides in memory and prompts the CPU what to do.

Now let’s begin with today’s topic which is KernelCare. And if you’re a system administrator this article is going to present valuable information for you.

What is KernelCare?

So, what’s KernelCare? KernelCare is a patching service that offers live security updates for Linux kernels, shared libraries, and embedded devices. It patches security vulnerabilities inside the Linux kernel without creating service interruptions or any downtime. Once you install KernelCare on the server, security updates automatically get applied every 4 hours on your server. It dismisses the need for rebooting your server after making updates.

It is a commercial product and is licensed under GNU GPL version 2. Cloud Linux, Inc developed this product. The first beta version of KernelCare was released in March 2014 and its commercial launch was in May 2014. Since then they have added various useful integrations for automation tools, vulnerability scanners, and others. 

Operating systems supported by KernelCare include CentOS/RHEL 5, 6, 7; Cloud Linux 5, 6; OpenVZ, PCS, Virtuozzo, Debian 6, 7; and Ubuntu 14.04.

Is KernelCare Important?

Are you wondering if KernelCare is important for you or not? Find out here. By installing the latest kernel security patches, you are able to minimize potential risks. When you try to update the Linux kernel manually, it may take hours. Apart from the server downtime, it can be a stressful job for the system admins and also for the clients.

Once the kernel updates are applied, the server needs a reboot. This is usually done during off-peak work hours. And this causes some additional stress. However, ignoring server reboots can cause a whole lot of security issues. It’s seen that, even after rebooting, the server experiences issues and doesn’t easily come back up. Fixing such issues is a trouble for the system admins. Often the system admin needs to roll back all the applied updates to get the server up quickly.

With KernelCare, you can avoid such issues.

How Does KernelCare Work?

KernelCare eliminates non-compliance and service interruptions caused by system reboots. KernelCare agent resides on your server. It periodically checks for new updates. In case it finds any, the agent downloads those and applies them to the running kernel. A KernelCare patch can be defined as a piece of code that’s used to substitute buggy code in the kernel. 

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by David Burgess

With the evolution of technology, we find ourselves needing to be even more vigilant with our online security every day. Our browsing and shopping behaviors are also being continuously tracked online via tracking cookies being dropped on our browsers that we allow by clicking the “I Accept” button next to deliberately long agreements on websites before we can get the full benefit of said site.

Watch this article:

Additionally, hackers are always looking for a target and it's common for even big companies to have their servers compromised in any number of ways and have sensitive data leaked, often to the highest bidder.

These are just some of the reasons that I started looking into self-hosting as much of my own data as I could.

Because not everyone has the option to self-host on their own, private hardware, whether it's for lack of hardware, or because their ISP makes it difficult or impossible to do so, I want to show you what I believe to be the next best step, and that's a semi-self-hosted solution on Linode.

Let's jump right in!

Setting up a Linode

First things first, you’ll need a Docker server set up. Linode has made that process very simple and you can set one up for just a few bucks a month and can add a private IP address (for free) and backups for just a couple bucks more per month.

Get logged into your Linode account click on "Create Linode".

Don't have a Linode account?  Get $100 in credit clicking here

On the "Create" page, click on the "Marketplace" tab and scroll down to the "Docker" option. Click it.

With Docker selected, scroll down and close the "Advanced Options" as we won't be using them.

Below that, we'll select the most recent version of Debian (version 10 at the time of writing).

In order to get the the lowest latency for your setup, select a Region nearest you.

When we get to the "Linode Plan" area, find an option that fits your budget. You can always start with a small plan and upgrade later as your needs grow.

Next, enter a "Linode Label" as an identifier for you. You can enter tags if you want.

Enter a Root Password and import an SSH key if you have one. If you don't that's fine, you don't need to use an SSH key. If you'd like to generate one and use it, you can find more information about how to do so here "Creating an SSH Key Pair and Configuring Public Key Authentication on a Server").

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Manage Java versions with SDKMan Seth Kenlon Tue, 03/15/2022 - 02:01 Up Register or Login to like.

Java is more than just a programming language: It's also a runtime.

Applications written in Java are compiled to Java bytecode then interpreted by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which is why you can write Java on one platform and have it run on all other platforms.

A challenge can arise, however, when a programming language and an application develop at different rates. It's possible for Java (the language) to increment its version number at the same time your favorite application continues to use an older version, at least for a while.

If you have two must-have applications, each of which uses a different version of Java, you may want to install both an old version and a new version of Java on the same system. If you're a Java developer, this is particularly common, because you might contribute code to several projects, each of which requires a different version of Java.

The SDKMan project makes it easy to manage different versions of Java and related languages, including Groovy, Scala, Kotlin, and more.

SDKMan is like a package manager just for versions of Java.

More on Java What is enterprise Java programming? Red Hat build of OpenJDK Java cheat sheet Free online course: Developing cloud-native applications with microservices arc… Fresh Java articles Install SDKMan

SDKMan requires these commands to be present on your system:

• zip
• unzip
• curl
• sed

On Linux, you can install these using your package manager. On Fedora, CentOS Stream, Mageia, and similar:

$ sudo dnf install zip unzip curl sed

On Debian-based distributions, use apt instead of dnf. On macOS, use MacPorts or Homebrew. On Windows, you can use SDKMan through Cygwin or WSL.

Once you've satisfied those requirements, download the SDKMan install script:

$ curl "https://get.sdkman.io" --output sdkman.sh

Take a look at the script to see what it does, and then make it executable and run it:

$ chmod +x sdkman.sh
$ ./sdkman.shConfigure

When the installation has finished, open a new terminal, or run the following in the existing one:

source "~/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh"

Confirm that it's installed:

$ sdk versionInstall Java with SDKMan

Now when you want to install a version of Java, you can do it using SDKMan.

First, list the candidates for Java available:

$ sdk list java
=================================================
Available Java Versions for Linux 64bit
=================================================
Vendor   | Version      | Dist | Identifier
-------------------------------------------------
Gluon    | 22.0.0.3.r17 | gln  | 22.0.0.3.r17-gln
         | 22.0.0.3.r11 | gln  | 22.0.0.3.r11-gln
GraalVM  | 22.0.0.2.r17 | grl  | 22.0.0.2.r17-grl
         | 21.3.1.r17   | grl  | 21.3.1.r17-grl
         | 20.3.5.r11   | grl  | 20.3.5.r11-grl
         | 19.3.6.r11   | grl  | 19.3.6.r11-grl
Java.net | 19.ea.10     | open | 19.ea.10-open
         | 18           | open | 18-open
         | 17.0.2       | open | 17.0.2-open
         | 11.0.12      | open | 11.0.12-open
         | 8.0.302      | open | 8.0.302-open
[...]

This provides a list of different Java distributions available across several popular vendors, including Gluon, GraalVM, OpenJDK from Java.net, and many others.

You can install a specific version of Java using the value in the Identifier column:

$ sdk install java 11.0.12-open

The sdk command uses tabbed completion, so you don't need to view a list. Instead you can type sdk install java 11 and then press Tab a few times to get the options.

Alternately, you can just install the default latest version:

$ sdk install javaSet your current version of Java

Set the version of Java for a terminal session with the use subcommand:

$ sdk use java 17.0.2-open

To set a version as default, use the default subcommand:

$ sdk default java 17.0.2-open

Get the current version in effect using the current subcommand:

$ sdk current java Using java version 17.0.2-openRemoving Java with SDKMan

You can remove an installed version of Java using the uninstall subcommand:

$ sdk uninstall java 11.0.12-openMore SDKMan

You can do more customization with SDKMan, including updating and upgrading Java versions and creating project-based environments. It's a useful command for any developer or user who wants the ability to switch between versions of Java quickly and easily.

If you love Java, or use Java, give SDKMan a try. It makes Java easier than ever!

The SDKMan project makes it easy to manage different versions of Java and related languages, including Groovy, Scala, Kotlin, and more.

Image by:

Image by WOCinTech Chat, CC BY 2.0

Java What to read next This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. 6482 points (Correspondent) Vancouver, Canada

Seldom without a computer of some sort since graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1978, I have been a full-time Linux user since 2005, a full-time Solaris and SunOS user from 1986 through 2005, and UNIX System V user before that.

On the technical side of things, I have spent a great deal of my career as a consultant, doing data analysis and visualization; especially spatial data analysis. I have a substantial amount of related programming experience, using C, awk, Java, Python, PostgreSQL, PostGIS and lately Groovy. I'm looking at Julia with great interest. I have also built a few desktop and web-based applications, primarily in Java and lately in Grails with lots of JavaScript on the front end and PostgreSQL as my database of choice.

Aside from that, I spend a considerable amount of time writing proposals, technical reports and - of course - stuff on https://www.opensource.com.

Open Sourcerer People's Choice Award 100+ Contributions Club Emerging Contributor Award 2016 Correspondent Columnist Contributor Club Author Comment Gardener Register or Login to post a comment.

Open exchange, open doors, open minds: A recipe for global progress Ron McFarland Tue, 03/15/2022 - 02:00 Up Register or Login to like.

Could open organization principles successfully apply to entire societies?

That's the question I asked as I read the book Open: The Story of Human Progress by Johan Norberg, which aims to examine the relative success of "open societies" throughout global history.

Learn about open organizations Download resources Join the community What is an open organization? How open is your organization?

In this review—the first article in an extended discussion of the work from Open Organization community members—I will summarize more precisely what Norberg means when he uses the term "open" and offer an initial assessment of his arguments. Ultimately, however, our discussion will explore more expansive themes, like:

1. the importance of open societies,
2. what the future could (or should) look like in a more open world, and
3. how these principles impact our collective understanding of how organizations operate in service of "the greater good"

Four dimensions of openness

Essentially, Norberg is looking at four dimensions of "open," which he calls:

1. "open exchange" (global goods and service flows across borders),
2. "open doors" (global movement of people),
3. "open minds" (global receptivity to new and different ideas), and
4. "open societies" (how cultures should be governed to benefit from the above three)

Let me discuss each one more extensively.

Open exchange

Norberg uses the phrase "open exchange" to refer to the movement of goods and services not just across borders but within them as well. Simply put, he believes that people across the world prosper when trade increases, because increased trade leads to increased cooperation and sharing.

His argument goes like this: when a nation (and to be sure, Norberg aims his advice at contemporary nation-states) allows and includes foreign goods into their market, in general they also gain expertise, skills, and knowledge, too. Surplus goods/services that one may have should be sold anywhere they might provide value and add benefit for someone else—and those benefits might include, for example, favors, ideas, knowledge, not just goods and services themselves. Reciprocity and relatively equal exchange is for Norberg an unavoidable aspect of human nature, as it builds binding relationships that promote more generosity. Generosity in turn promotes more trade, creating a cycle of prosperity for all involved.

This view holds for organizations working with uncommon trade partners as well. Greater organizational specificity leads to the need for more cooperation and sharing, which leads to even more specialization. So here we can see a link between open societies and open organizations regarding trade issues.

Open doors

For Norberg, "open doors" refers to people's ability to move across national borders, for one reason or another. He believes the gradual inclusion of foreigners into a society leads to more novel and productive interactions, which leads to greater innovation, more ideas, and more rapid discoveries. For a society to be productive, it must get the right talent performing the right tasks. Norberg argues that there should be no barriers to that match-up, and people should be mobile, even across borders, so they can achieve it.

Norberg outlines how, throughout history, diverse groups of people solve problems more effectively—even if they create more friction as they do so, as members have their assumptions questioned. This kind of open environment must be promoted, supported, and managed, however, in order to avoid groupthink, the predominance of voices that are merely the loudest, and the outsized influence of niche interests.

Critical to the success of "open doors" are recognition, respect, understanding, acceptance, and inclusivity toward others. Norberg discusses the importance of these qualities, citing the World Values Survey, which measures some of them. Done well, open doors can allow societies to cross-fertilize, borrowing ideas and technology from each other and multiplying that which works best.

We could say that's equally true for an organization wanting to develop a new product or market, too.

Open minds

"Open economies stimulate open-mindedness," Norberg writes. For him, "open minds" are those receptive to thoughts and belief systems that may seem different, foreign, or alien to them—those that both offer and receive different perspectives. Open minds, Norberg claims, lead to more rapid progress.

Open minds flourish when given the space to encounter new ideas and explore them freely—rather than, say, simply accept the given dogma of an age. According to Norberg, people from a wide range of disciplines, specialties, and skills coming together and sharing their perspectives stimulates growth and progress. But this is only possible when they exist in an environment where they feel free to question the status quo and possibly overturn long-standing beliefs. Barriers to creating those environments certainly exist (in fact, the entire second half of Norberg's book offers a deeper analysis of them).

Open minds flourish when given the space to encounter new ideas and explore them freely—rather than, say, simply accept the given dogma of an age.

Of course this is true in organizations as well. The more people (and the more different people) who look at a problem, the better. This not only leads to faster solutions but helps overcome anyone's individual biases. Serendipitous solutions to problems can seemingly come out of nowhere more often, as there will be better and more peer review of strongly held positions. And yet differences create friction, so standards of protocol and behavior are required to ensure progress.

For Norberg, the world benefits when scientists, philosophers, industrialists, and craftspeople can influence one another's thinking (and are receptive to having their thinking changed!). The same is true in open organizations when people with different roles and functions can work together and enrich one another's thinking. More experiments and greater collaboration among disciplines lead to richer discoveries.

Open Organization resources Download resources Join the community What is an open organization? How open is your organization? Open societies

Combining open minds, open exchange, and open doors can lead to fully open societies globally, Norberg argues, and "the result is discoveries and achievements." Governments, he asserts, should work to foster those kinds of societies across the globe. In this way, societies can tap into the greatest talent from the entire global community.

According to Norberg, more inclusive societies based on these open policies can lead to material gains for people—fewer hours working, the ability to launch careers earlier (or retire earlier), longer lives in general, and more. This is not to mention reductions in extreme poverty, child and maternal mortality, and illiteracy globally. On top of that, for Norberg global cultural collaboration leads to better utilization of ecological, natural, and environmental resources. All this can be achieved through specific specialties that advance societies at an exponential rate though openness.

Open makes a historical argument. Norberg believes that throughout the ages it was not defenders of tradition that prospered most. Instead, those thinkers, engineers, and philosophers that challenged the status quo made the greatest contribution to global prosperity. Those figures benefitted from societies that were more open to improvements because they governed their own experiments, fostered rapid feedback loops, and built systems that quickly self-correct during setbacks.

Yet like any history, Norberg's is partial and selective, presenting isolated cases and examples. And some of those include even the most brutal empires, whose violence Norberg tends to overlook. In future parts of this review, we'll dive more deeply into various aspects of Norberg's analysis—and discuss its implications for thinking about a more open future.

Openness, this new book argues, has always been a necessary cornerstone of human civilization.

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Opensource.com

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22 Raspberry Pi projects to try in 2022 Opensource.com Mon, 03/14/2022 - 14:00 Up 1 reader likes this

The possibilities for Raspberry Pi projects continue to perpetuate this Pi Day! The beloved single-board computer recently turned ten years old. To celebrate, we put together a list of recent Raspberry Pi tutorials written by members of the Opensource.com community. 

More on Raspberry Pi What is Raspberry Pi? eBook: Guide to Raspberry Pi Getting started with Raspberry Pi cheat sheet eBook: Running Kubernetes on your Raspberry Pi Whitepaper: Data-intensive intelligent applications in a hybrid cloud blueprint Understanding edge computing Our latest on Raspberry Pi 10 Raspberry Pi projects for your home

The Raspberry Pi is ripe for DIY projects for the home. Why risk your data with a proprietary home automation tool when you can take full control with a $35 computer? Opensource.com authors have shared how they've built thermostats, monitored their home climate, set parental controls, and much more in the following tutorials.

• Build a home thermostat with a Raspberry Pi The ThermOS project is an answer to the many downsides of off-the-shelf smart thermostats.
• Monitor your home's temperature and humidity with Raspberry Pis and Prometheus Instrument a Prometheus application with Python on Raspberry Pis to collect temperature sensor data.
• Set up temperature sensors in your home with a Raspberry Pi Find out how hot your house is with a simple home Internet of Things project.  
• Build a router with mobile connectivity using Raspberry Pi Use OpenWRT to get more control over your network's router.
• Troubleshoot WiFi problems with Go and a Raspberry Pi Build a WiFi scanner for fun.
• Set up network parental controls on a Raspberry Pi With minimal investment of time and money, you can keep your kids safe online.
• Monitor your greenhouse with CircuitPython and open source tools Keep track of your greenhouse's temperature, humidity, and ambient light using a microcontroller, sensors, Python, and MQTT.
• Collect sensor data with your Raspberry Pi and open source tools Learning more about what is going on in your home is not just useful; it's fun!
• Measure your Internet of Things with Raspberry Pi and open source tools Setting up an environment-monitoring system demonstrates how to use open source tools to keep tabs on temperature, humidity, and more.  
• Track your family calendar with a Raspberry Pi and a low-power display Help everyone keep up with your family's schedule using open source tools and an E Ink display.

5 Raspberry Pi projects for productivity

You can be productive without a ton of fancy tools. Whether you want to host your personal blog or start crypto trading with a reduced carbon footprint, the Raspberry Pi has you covered.

• Host your website with dynamic content and a database on a Raspberry Pi You can use free software to support a web application on a very lightweight computer.
• Use your Raspberry Pi as a productivity powerhouse The Raspberry Pi has come a long way from being primarily for hacking and hobbyists to a solid choice for a small productive workstation.
• Run your blog on a Raspberry Pi I set up a Raspberry Pi to act as a web server to host my personal blog on Drupal.
• Use your Raspberry Pi as a data logger Here's how to log the CPU temperature of a Raspberry Pi and create a spreadsheet-based report on demand.
• Convert your Raspberry Pi into a trading bot with Pythonic Reduce your power consumption by setting up your cryptocurrency trading bot on a Raspberry Pi.

7 Raspberry Pi projects just for fun!

The Raspberry Pi is probably most famous for its serious use case of fun! The Pi offers lots of options for tinkering with Linux, learning about computers, or celebrating your favorite holiday.

• Create a countdown clock with a Raspberry Pi Start counting down the days to your next holiday with a Raspberry Pi and an ePaper display. 
• Track aircraft with a Raspberry Pi Explore the open skies with a Raspberry Pi, an inexpensive radio, and open source software.
• Control your Raspberry Pi remotely with your smartphone Control the GPIOs of your Raspberry Pi remotely with your smartphone.
• Build a programmable light display on Raspberry Pi Celebrate the holidays or any special occasion with a DIY light display using a Raspberry Pi, Python, and programmable LED lights.
• Make an automated Jack-o'-lantern with a Raspberry Pi Here's my recipe for the perfect pumpkin Pi.
• Cast your Android device with a Raspberry Pi Use Scrcpy to turn your phone screen into an app running alongside your applications on a Raspberry Pi or any other Linux-based device.
• Learn everything about computers with this Raspberry Pi kit The CrowPi is an amazing Raspberry Pi project system housed in a laptop-like body.

Go ahead and mark your calendar for trying out a few of these creative Raspberry Pi projects this year.

Celebrate Pi Day by checking out these creative and useful Raspberry Pi projects.

Image by:

Dwight Sipler on Flickr

Raspberry Pi What to read next Build a router with mobile connectivity using Raspberry Pi How I run my blog on a Raspberry Pi Control your Raspberry Pi remotely with your smartphone This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.