Private Internet Access announced that it is open-sourcing its software: "We believe that the shift to open source is the right move for a privacy-focused business, and recognise that code transparency is key. We appreciate that our code may not be perfect, and we hope that the wider FOSS community will get involved, provide feedback, feature requests, bug fixes and generally help provide a greater service to the wider privacy movement." You can check out the repo on GitHub and find them at #privateinternetaccess on chat.freenode.net.
Eric Raymond has started a new project after ranting about the state of the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) market, as The Register reports. The Upside project is hosted on GitLab and "is currently defining requirements and developing a specification for a 'high quality UPS that can be built from off-the-shelf parts in any reasonably well-equipped makerspace or home electronics shop'." You can read Eric's original UPS rant here.
An image of Scarlett Johansson is being used as a malware attack vector on PostgreSQL, ZDNet reports. According to security firm Imperva, this attack "places malware, which cryptomines Monero, on PostgreSQL DBMS servers."
Google is banning cryptocurrency ads, according to Ars Technica: "Google is not only banning advertisement of cryptocurrencies themselves, but also 'initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice.'"
Purism announced that it's collaborating with cryptography pioneer Werner Koch "to integrate hardware encryption into the company's Librem laptops and forthcoming Librem 5 phone. By manufacturing hardware with its own software and services, Purism will include cryptography by default pushing the industry forward with unprecedented protection for end-user devices."
Purism also recently announced that it has added "tamper-evident features" to its laptops, making it the "most secure laptop under customer control". The laptops are integrated with Trammel Hudson's Heads security firmware, giving users full control of the boot process.
Washington state is the first to pass net neutrality protection into law. Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bill on March 5, 2018, stating "Today we make history: Washington will be the first state in the nation to preserve the open internet."
You now can use a Raspberry Pi 3 to build your own cheap car head unit, thanks to Huan Truong's Crankshaft, a "'turnkey GNU/Linux distribution', which only needs to be downloaded and written to an SD card for the Raspberry Pi 3 tablet", as ZDNet reports. See Huan's Reddit announcement for more info and to report bugs.
The BleachBit open-source system cleaner released version 2.0, with "major improvements to infrastructure, security, stability, and the framework". BleachBit does two things: "removes junk files to make more room" and "removes private information like a virtual shredder". You can download it here.
