The majority (75%) of municipalities in the Walloon region of Belgium are now using open source software and services. In the region 261 cities, towns, villages and other public administrations are using 8 open source-based solutions that are centrally managed and maintained by Intercommunale de Mutualisation Informatique et Organisationnelle (IMIO), an IT service provider set up in 2011 by the Walloon government.

C’est une nouvelle victoire du fisc italien contre les géants de la « tech ». Dans un communiqué publié jeudi 4 mai, l’administration transalpine a annoncé avoir conclu un accord soldant son contentieux avec Alphabet, la maison mère de Google, en contrepartie du versement par l’entreprise américaine de 306 millions d’euros à l’Etat italien.

Celui-ci reproche à Google de pratiquer l’évasion fiscale, en déclarant en Irlande des revenus générés sur son territoire, où se trouve son siège social européen – et où la fiscalité sur les entreprises est beaucoup plus attrayante (seulement 12,5 % d’imposition sur les bénéfices des sociétés contre 27,5 % en Italie). Outre le paiement de cette compensation, qui porte sur la période 2002-2015, « des accords préventifs sur la taxation correcte à l’avenir en Italie des activités [de Google] » vont être mis en place. Une disposition encore peu précise qui va faire l’objet de discussions entre le groupe californien et Rome.

Is the GNU GPL “dying” or is that just the prejudice of those whose open source exploitation would be hampered by its use? At the huge FOSDEM developer meetup in Brussels in early Febru…

Les finances au beau fixe

On y apprend que Facebook est a priori capable d'identifier les changements d'humeur soudains chez ses utilisateurs et de s'en servir à des fins commerciales. Les algorithmes analyseraient pour cela les statuts, réponses et photos postés, et pourraient en déduire si les utilisateurs sont nerveux ou bouleversés par quelque chose. Ils seraient également capables de repérer quand les adolescents "se sentent à l'aise avec leur corps" ou "souhaitent faire du sport pour perdre du poids". Il n'en faut pas plus pour être interloqué, certains imaginant, par exemple, Facebook être en mesure de profiter d'un état dépressif pour vendre des anti-dépresseurs...

There's something going on inside the intelligence communities in at least two countries, and we have no idea what it is.

The malware, developed during a hackathon between British and American spies, turns ordinary smart TVs into listening devices.

Apps are using ad-tracking audio signals that your phone can hear, but you can't.

With recent chipsets, Intel offers a mechanism called Active Management Technology (Intel AMT, part of the “vPro”* featureset, specifically the Intel Management Engine) which, Intel says,“allows IT or managed service providers to better discover, repair, and protect their networked computing assets”. This means somebody can control devices remotely, even when powered off—what is officially called out-of-band system access.

me_cleaner is a tool to remove as much code as possible from an Intel ME/TXE/SPS image.

If you did not know, built into all modern Intel-based platforms is a small, low-power computer subsystem called the Intel Management Engine (ME). It performs various tasks while the system is in sleep mode, during the boot process, and also when your system is running.

Completely and permanently (unless you re-install it) disable Intel Active Management Technology, Intel Small Business Technology, and Intel Standard Manageability on Windows. These are components of the Intel Management Engine firmware.

OpenSnitch is a GNU/Linux port of the Little Snitch application firewall.

The National Security Agency vacuumed up more than 151 million records about Americans’ phone calls last year via a new system that Congress created to end the agency’s once-secret program that collected domestic calling records in bulk, a report disclosed Tuesday.

Although the number is large on its face, it nonetheless represents a massive reduction from the amount of information the agency gathered previously. Under the old system, it collected potentially “billions of records per day,” according to a 2014 study.

The ethics of Facebook’s micro-targeted advertising was thrust into the spotlight this week by a report out of Australia. The article, based on a leaked presentation, said that Facebook was able to identify teenagers at their most vulnerable, including when they feel “insecure”, “worthless”, “defeated” and “stressed”.

Facebook claimed the report was misleading, assuring the public that the company does not “offer tools to target people based on their emotional state”. If the intention of Facebook’s public relations spin is to give the impression that such targeting is not even possible on their platform, I’m here to tell you I believe they’re lying through their teeth.

Facebook has officially relaunched the advertising platform Atlas in a new incarnation that will allow marketers to track users in new dimensions, according to a blog post from the company. Atlas will offer the ability to not only synthesize information about where users are seeing ads, but also to see how and whether those ad views play out into a purchase, even if it's offline.