All the News that Matters

• Gentoo: GLSA-201904-25: QEMU: Multiple vulnerabilities
  Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in QEMU, the worst of which could result in the arbitrary execution of code.

• Gentoo: GLSA-201904-24: Ming: Multiple vulnerabilities
  Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Ming, the worst of which could result in a Denial of Service condition.

• Debian LTS: DLA-1763-1: putty security update
  Multiple vulnerabilities were found in the PuTTY SSH client, which could result in denial of service and potentially the execution of arbitrary code. In addition, in some situations random numbers could potentially be

• Debian LTS: DLA-1762-1: systemd security update
  Two vulnerabilities have been addressed in the systemd components systemd-tmpfiles and pam_systemd.so.

• RedHat: RHSA-2019-0877:01 Important: Red Hat OpenShift Application Runtimes
  An update is now available for Red Hat OpenShift Application Runtimes. Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability

• SUSE: 2019:1000-1 moderate: ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs
  An update that fixes one vulnerability is now available.

• openSUSE: 2019:1264-1: moderate: slurm
  An update that fixes one vulnerability is now available.

• openSUSE: 2019:1265-1: openexr
  An update that fixes one vulnerability is now available.

• SUSE: 2019:1019-1 moderate: ImageMagick
  An update that solves four vulnerabilities and has one errata is now available.

• SUSE: 2019:1001-1 moderate: ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs
  An update that fixes one vulnerability is now available.

• SUSE: 2019:1006-1 moderate: SUSE Manager Server 3.2
  An update that solves one vulnerability and has 24 fixes is now available.

• SUSE: 2019:1018-1 moderate: jasper
  An update that fixes three vulnerabilities is now available.

• 4 Ways to Get your Systems IP Address from the Linux Command Line
  Learn how to get your systems IP address information from the Linux command line using various tools including nmcli, hostname and ip commands.

• ExTiX 19.4 "The Ultimate Linux System" is Based on Deepin 15.9.3 and Linux 5.0
  GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton released a new version of his ExTiX GNU/Linux distribution based on the Deepin Linux operating system made by Deepin Technology.

• Apache Software Foundation Advances Enterprise App Development With Top Level Projects
  The open source Netbeans Java Integrated Developer Environment (IDE) and SkyWalking application performance monitoring (APM) project efforts move forward.

• Node.js version 12 is now out: Let's pop the hood and see what's inside this JS runtime
  TLS 1.3, speedups, reduced memory overhead, and moreNode.js, the popular JavaScript runtime that relies on the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, hit version 12 on Tuesday, bringing with a handful of potentially useful features and capabilities.…

• How to Mount an exFAT Drive on Ubuntu Linux
  exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) is a proprietary Microsoft file system optimized for flash memory devices such as SD cards and USB flash drives. It was designed to replace the old 32bit FAT32 file system that cannot store files larger than 4 GB.

• It's Complicated: Mozilla's 2019 Internet Health Report
  Our annual open-source report examines how humanity and the internet intersect. Here’s what we found ? Today, Mozilla is publishing the 2019 Internet Health Report [he]#8212[/he] our third annual examination [he]#8230[/he] Read moreThe post It’s Complicated: Mozilla’s 2019 Internet Health Report appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

• System76 Releases Pop!_OS 19.04 for Its Linux PCs, Based on Ubuntu 19.04
  System76, the computer manufacturer specialized in laptops, desktops, and servers powered by Linux, announced the general availability of the Pop!_OS 19.04 operating system.

• Fanless mini-tower runs Linux Mint on up to 5GHz octa-core i9-9900K
  Compulab’s passively cooled, Linux-friendly “Airtop3” mini-tower builds on a 9th Gen, octa-core Intel Core i9-9900K with Quadro RTX 4000 graphics plus up to 128GB DDR4, NVMe and SATA storage, triple displays, 2x GbE, 6x USB 3.1, and -40 to 70°C support. Compulab has launched a redesigned Airtop IoT edge server that accomplishes the challenging task [[he]#8230[/he]]

• History of Container Technology Offers Lessons for Future
  Many of the issues associated with container technology are due to infrastructure decisions made long before containers, cloud and the internet even existed.

• Hacking With Kali Linux
  ?Today I am going to start a very interesting series of topics, Hacking with Kali Linux. In this series, I will start from the basics of hacking with Kali Linux and go advance. I will not beat around the bush or discuss crap that's spammed all around the internet but will share real-life scenarios of hacking.

• Ubuntu 19.10 Daily Builds Are Now Available to Download
  Canonical just kicked off the development cycle of the next release of their widely-used Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu 19.10, allowing testers and early adopters to download daily build ISO images.

• ps_mem Shows Per-Program Memory Usage On Linux
  ps_mem is a tool for checking per-program core memory usage on Linux.

• Atom-based network security appliances focus on industrial control
  Lanner’s Apollo Lake based “LEC-6041” and Bay Trail “LEC-6032” are Linux-supported network security appliances for industrial control monitoring with up to 7x GbE ports, including SFP ports, plus magnetic isolation and extended temp support. Lanner has combined two previously unveiled industrial network appliances into a thematically linked flashback announcement. We’d normally skip it, but we […]

• Will your organization change itself to death?
  Open organizations are flexible and resilient organizations. This means they're able to change themselves as the world around them changes. It's a critical skill for remaining relevant over time, both for individuals and organizations.read more

• Improving Battery Life in Ubuntu with TLP
  TLP is a free, open-source and feature-rich utility for battery use optimization on laptops running Ubuntu and other Linux distros. You can find it both in CLI and GUI versions for your ease of use.

• Stilo Is A Pack Of Clean, Minimalistic GTK Themes
  Stilo is a pack of clean, minimalistic, yet stylish GTK themes for the GNOME desktop. It consists on 2 main themes, Stilo and Stiloetto, each with light and dark variations. A GNOME Shell theme is also available.

• Hydroelectricity and transmission planning in Chile use open source geospatial tools
  From 2014 and 2017, I had the good fortune of working with a multidisciplinary team in Chile, building decision support tools to facilitate the planning of hydroelectric capacity as an alternative to fossil-fuel based thermoelectric capacity. Our job was also to aid in the design of transmission line corridors. Transmission lines carry “bulk electricity” from where the electricity is generated to where it is consumed.read more

• How to Remotely Manage Ubuntu Server with SSH
  In this article, I am going to describe how you can remotely manage a Linux server with SSH. I will show how to install the OpenSSH server and how to access the Ubuntu server from Linux and Windows using an SSH client.

• Linux C Programming Tutorial Part 23 - Structures
  So far in this ongoing C programming tutorial series, we have discussed several aspects, ranging from variables to functions to even pointers. However, that's still like scratching the surface, as there are many other important concepts in the C programming language. Today, in this tutorial, we will discuss one such concept - the concept of structures.

• Once again, its 123456: the password that says 'I give up'
  The essence of most peoples regard for cybersecurity: we're DOOMED.

• Amazon's Alexa Team Can Access Users' Home Addresses
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: An Amazon team auditing Alexa users' commands has access to location data and can, in some cases, easily find a customer's home address, according to five employees familiar with the program. The team, spread across three continents, transcribes, annotates and analyzes a portion of the voice recordings picked up by Alexa. The program, whose existence Bloomberg revealed earlier this month, was set up to help Amazon's digital voice assistant get better at understanding and responding to commands.   Team members with access to Alexa users' geographic coordinates can easily type them into third-party mapping software and find home residences, according to the employees, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program. While there's no indication Amazon employees with access to the data have attempted to track down individual users, two members of the Alexa team expressed concern to Bloomberg that Amazon was granting unnecessarily broad access to customer data that would make it easy to identify a device's owner. When Bloomberg first reported on the Alexa auditing program, Amazon said "employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow."  In a new statement responding to this story, Amazon said "access to internal tools is highly controlled, and is only granted to a limited number of employees who require these tools to train and improve the service by processing an extremely small sample of interactions. Our policies strictly prohibit employee access to or use of customer data for any other reason, and we have a zero tolerance policy for abuse of our systems. We regularly audit employee access to internal tools and limit access whenever and wherever possible."
          
  
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• UK To Let Huawei Firm Help Build 5G Network
  AmiMoJo writes: The UK government has given Chinese telecoms giant Huawei the go-ahead to supply equipment for the UK 5G data network. The company will help build some "non-core" parts such as antennas. But the plans have concerned the home, defense and foreign secretaries. The U.S. also wants its allies in the "Five Eyes" intelligence grouping -- the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- to exclude Huawei. Huawei said it was "pleased that the UK is continuing to take an evidence-based approach to its work," adding it would continue to work cooperatively with the government and the industry.
          
  
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• Databricks Open-Sources Delta Lake To Make Delta Lakes More Reliable
  Databricks, the company founded by the original developers of the Apache Spark big data analytics engine, today announced that it has open-sourced Delta Lake, a storage layer that makes it easier to ensure data integrity as new data flows into an enterprise's data lake by bringing ACID transactions to these vast data repositories. TechCrunch reports: Delta Lake, which has long been a proprietary part of Databrick's offering, is already in production use by companies like Viacom, Edmunds, Riot Games and McGraw Hill. The tool provides the ability to enforce specific schemas (which can be changed as necessary), to create snapshots and to ingest streaming data or backfill the lake as a batch job. Delta Lake also uses the Spark engine to handle the metadata of the data lake (which by itself is often a big data problem). Over time, Databricks also plans to add an audit trail, among other things.   What's important to note here is that Delta lake runs on top of existing data lakes and is compatible with the Apache spark APIs. The company is still looking at how the project will be governed in the future. "We are still exploring different models of open source project governance, but the GitHub model is well understood and presents a good trade-off between the ability to accept contributions and governance overhead," said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO at Databricks. "One thing we know for sure is we want to foster a vibrant community, as we see this as a critical piece of technology for increasing data reliability on data lakes. This is why we chose to go with a permissive open source license model: Apache License v2, same license that Apache Spark uses." To invite this community, Databricks plans to take outside contributions, just like the Spark project.
          
  
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• Security Flaw Lets Attackers Recover Private Keys From Qualcomm Chips
  Devices using Qualcomm chipsets, and especially smartphones and tablets, are vulnerable to a new security bug that can let attackers retrieve private data and encryption keys that are stored in a secure area of the chipset known as the Qualcomm Secure Execution Environment (QSEE). From a report: Qualcomm has deployed patches for this bug (CVE-2018-11976) earlier this month; however, knowing the sad state of Android OS updates, this will most likely leave many smartphones and tablets vulnerable for years to come. The vulnerability impacts how the Qualcomm chips (used in hundreds of millions of Android devices) handles data processed inside the QSEE.
          
  
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• Mozilla Highlights AI Bias and 'Addiction by Design' Tech in Internet Health Report
  Mozilla this week released the 2019 Internet Health Report, an analysis that brings together insights from 200 experts to examine issues central to the future of the internet. From a report: This year's report chose to focus primarily on injustice perpetuated by artificial intelligence; what NYU's Natasha Dow Schull calls "addiction by design" tech, like social media apps and smartphones; and the power of city governments and civil society "to make the internet healthier worldwide." The Internet Health Report is not designed to issue the web a bill of health, rather it is intended as a call to action that urges people to "embrace the notion that we as humans can change how we make money, govern societies, and interact with one another online."   [...] The modern AI agenda, the report's authors assert, is shaped in part by large tech companies and China and the United States. The report calls particular attention to Microsoft and Amazon's sale of facial recognition software to immigration and law enforcement agencies. The authors point to the work of Joy Buolamwini, whom Fortune recently named "the conscience of the AI revolution." Through audits published by Buolamwini and others in the past year, facial recognition software technology from Microsoft, Amazon's AWS, and other tech companies was found to be less capable of recognizing people with dark skin, particularly women of color.
          
  
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• Academy Leaves Door Open To Netflix After Tussle Over Oscars Eligibility Rules
  The Academy of Motion Picture and Arts and Sciences has ruled that films from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video will continue to be eligible to win Academy Awards. The Academy had considered changing Rule Two, which allowed any film to be eligible for an Academy Award as long as it had a seven-day run in a Los Angeles theater. From a report: That proposal, reportedly pushed by megadirector Steven Spielberg, would have made it difficult for streaming services such as Netflix to compete for the academy's big prizes by restricting eligibility to just films that got a significant run in theaters. Films that debuted online and only got a limited theatrical release simply would be out of luck. But when the academy's board of governors released its rules for next year's prize -- a book that runs to 35 pages, all told -- the would-be changes were not among them. "We support the theatrical experience as integral to the art of motion pictures, and this weighed heavily in our discussions," John Bailey, president of the academy, said in a statement released Tuesday night. "Our rules currently require theatrical exhibition, and also allow for a broad selection of films to be submitted for Oscars consideration." Further reading: Justice Department Warns Academy About Changing Oscar Rules To Exclude Streaming.
          
  
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• Facebook Sets Aside $3 Billion For a Potential FTC Fine
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: Facebook is taking a $3 billion charge as a contingency against a possible fine by the Federal Trade Commission. The agency has been investigating Facebook, but has not announced any findings yet. The one-time charge slashes Facebook's first-quarter net income considerably, although revenue grew by 25% in the period. The FTC has been looking into whether Facebook is in violation of a 2011 agreement promising to protect user privacy.   The social network said Wednesday that its net income was 85 cents per share in the January-March period. Revenue grew 26 % to $15.08 billion from a year earlier. Excluding the charge, it earned $1.89 per share. Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of $1.62 per share and revenue of $14.98 billion. Facebook's monthly user base grew 8% to 2.38 billion. According to The New York Times, Facebook says it's expected to be fined up to $5 billion for privacy violations, including improper handling of people's data involving Cambridge Analytica, as well as a major data breach.
          
  
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• Some Amazon Sellers Are Paying $10,000 A Month To Trick Their Way To The Top
  Amazon's marketplace is so competitive that it has led to the emergence of a secretive, lucrative black market where agents peddle "black hat" services, sometimes obtained by bribing Amazon employees, that purportedly give marketplace sellers an advantage over their rivals, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. These consultants charge up to $10,000 to manipulate rankings by rewriting URLs and programming bots to click on products, a report says. From the report: Other tactics to promote sellers' products include removing negative reviews from product pages and exploiting technical loopholes on Amazon's site to lift products' overall sales rankings. These services make it harder for Amazon sellers who abide by the company's terms of service to succeed in the marketplace, and sellers who rely on these tactics mislead customers and undermine trust in Amazon's products.
          
  
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• Applying For Your Next Job May Be an Automated Nightmare
  merbs writes: If you think looking for a job is already daunting, anxiety-riddled, and unpleasant, just wait until the algorithms take over the hiring process. When they do, a newfangled 'digital recruiter' like VCV, which just received $1.7 million in early investment, hopes it will look something like this: First, a search bot will be used to scan CVs by the thousands, yours presumably among them. If it's picked out of the haystack, you will be contacted by a chatbot. Over SMS, the bot will set an appointment for a phone interview, which will be conducted by an automated system enabled by voice recognition AI. Next, the system will ask you, the applicant, to record video responses to a set of predetermined interview questions. Finally, the program can use facial recognition and predictive analytics to complete the screening, algorithmically determining whether the nervousness, mood, and behavior patterns you exhibit make you a fit for the company. If you pass all that, then you will be recommended for an in-person job interview.   [...] VCV, which did not respond to a request for comment, is far from alone here. A growing suite of startups is pitching AI-driven recruitment services, promising to save corporations millions of dollars throughout the hiring process by reducing overhead, to pluck more ideal candidates out of obscurity, and to reduce bias in the hiring process. Most offer little to no evidence of how they actually do so. VCV's much-larger competitor, HireVue, which has raked in a staggering $93 million in funding and is backed by top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Sequoia, is hocking many of the same services. It counts 700 companies as its clients, including, it says, Urban Outfitters, Intel, Honeywell, and Unilever. AllyO, which was founded in 2015, and "utilizes deep workflow conversational AI to fully automate end to end recruiting workflow" has $19 million in backing.
          
  
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• Scientific Linux Distro is Being Discontinued; The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and CERN Will Move To CentOS
  Scientific Linux, a 14-year-old operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and which was maintained by some significant members of the scientific community such as The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and CERN, is being discontinued. From a report: While current versions (6 and 7) will continue to be supported, future development has permanently ended, with the organizations instead turning to CentOS -- another distro based on RHEL. "Scientific Linux is driven by Fermilab's scientific mission and focused on the changing needs of experimental facilities. Fermilab is looking ahead to DUNE and other future international collaborations. One part of this is unifying our computing platform with collaborating labs and institutions," said James Amundson, Head of Scientific Computing Division, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
          
  
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• Drivers Think Bikers Are Less Than Human, Survey Says
  Researchers have found an explanation for why many drivers act out toward cyclists: They are actually dehumanizing people who ride bikes, according to an April study by Australian researchers in the journal Transportation Research. From a report: And this dehumanization -- the belief that a group of people are less than human -- correlates to drivers' self-reported aggressive behavior. Since 2010, cyclist fatalities have increased by 25 percent in the US. A total of 777 bicyclists were killed in crashes with drivers in 2017, and 45,000 were injured from crashes in 2015. Data compiled by the League of American Bicyclists also suggests that, in some states, bicyclists are overrepresented in the number of traffic fatalities.   "The idea is that if you don't see a group of people as fully human, then you're more likely to be aggressive toward them," said Narelle Haworth, a professor and director of the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety at Queensland University of Technology, one of the authors of the study. The researchers asked 442 Australians, including those who identified as cyclists, to rank the average cyclist on a scale from ape to human. This ape-to-human diagram has been used in other studies, like this one from 2015, looking at the dehumanization of marginalized groups, such as Muslims and black people.
          
  
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• Hacker Can Monitor Cars And Kill Their Engines After Breaking Into GPS Tracking Apps
  Reader eatmorekix writes: A hacker broke into thousands of accounts belonging to users of two GPS tracker apps, giving him the ability to monitor the locations of tens of thousands of vehicles and even turn off the engines for some of them while they were in motion, Motherboard has learned. The hacker, who goes by the name L&M, told Motherboard he hacked into more than 7,000 iTrack accounts and more than 20,000 ProTrack accounts, two apps that companies use monitor and manage fleets of vehicles through GPS tracking devices. The hacker was able to track vehicles in a handful of countries around the world, including South Africa, Morocco, India, and the Philippines. On some cars, the software has the capability of remotely turning off the engines of vehicles that are stopped or are traveling 12 miles per hour or slower, according to the manufacturer of certain GPS tracking devices.   By reverse engineering ProTrack and iTrack's Android apps, L&M said he realized that all customers are given a default password of 123456 when they sign up. At that point, the hacker said he brute-forced 'millions of usernames' via the apps' API. Then, he said he wrote a script to attempt to login using those usernames and the default password. This allowed him to automatically break into thousands of accounts that were using the default password and extract data from them.
          
  
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• First 'Marsquake' Detected on Red Planet
  There are earthquakes and moonquakes, and now a NASA spacecraft has detected what's believed to be a "marsquake" on the Red Planet. From a report: The spacecraft picked up the faint trembling of Mars's surface on 6 April, 128 days after landing on the planet last November. The quake is the first to be detected on a planetary body other than Earth or Moon. The shaking was relatively weak, the French space agency CNES said on 23 April. The seismic energy it produced was similar to that of the moonquakes that Apollo astronauts measured in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "We thought Mars was probably going to be somewhere between Earth and the Moon" in terms of seismic activity, says Renee Weber, a planetary scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "It's still very early in the mission, but it's looking a bit more Moon-like than Earth-like," she says. It's not yet clear whether the shaking originated within Mars or was caused by a meteorite crashing into the planet's surface.
          
  
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• Car Rental Company Hertz Sues Accenture Over $32M Website Project
  Car rental giant Hertz is suing consultancy firm Accenture over a website redesign. From a report: The US corporation hired monster management consultancy firm Accenture in August 2016 to completely revamp its online presence. The new site was due to go live in December 2017. But a failure to get on top of things led to a delay to January 2018, and then a second delay to April 2018 which was then also missed, we're told. As Hertz endured the delays, it found itself immersed in a nightmare: a product and design that apparently didn't do half of what was specified and still wasn't finished. "By that point, Hertz no longer had any confidence that Accenture was capable of completing the project, and Hertz terminated Accenture," the car rental company complained in a lawsuit lodged against Accenture in New York this month.   Hertz is suing for the $32m it paid Accenture in fees to get to that aborted stage, and it wants more millions to cover the cost of fixing the mess. "Accenture never delivered a functional website or mobile app," Hertz claimed. Accenture told El Reg on Tuesday this week it believes Hertz's lawsuit is "without merit."
          
  
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• Chalking Tires To Enforce Parking Rules is Unconstitutional, Court Finds
  Reader schwit1 writes: Marking your tires with chalk is trespassing, not law enforcement, the federal appeals panel said in a Michigan case. U.S. Circuit Judge Bernice Bouie Donald wrote that when drivers pull into parking spaces, "the city commences its search on vehicles that are parked legally, without probable cause or even so much as 'individualized suspicion of wrongdoing' -- the touchstone of the reasonableness standard." Moreover, overstaying your welcome at a parking space doesn't cause "injury or ongoing harm to the community," she wrote, meaning the city is wrong to argue that parking enforcement is part of its "community caretaking" responsibility, potentially justifying a search without a warrant. In fact, she wrote, "there has been a trespass in this case because the City made intentional physical contact with Taylor's vehicle." Further reading: A court ruling 'chalking' illegal could make way for more privacy-invasive tech.
          
  
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Engadget"Engadget RSS Feed"

• India lifts ban on TikTok
  An Indian state court moved to lift a nationwide ban on the popular short-form video app TikTok. A nearly week-long ban in India on the app is now reversed, lawyers involved in the case told Reuters on Wednesday. Google and Appleremoved the app from its stores in India last week after a high court in Tamil Nadu called for its removal, saying it was exposing children to sexual predators and pornography.
  
  The ban in India was a major setback for TikTok, due to India being its largest user base with nearly 300 million users. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok,estimatedin a court filing that the ban was losing the company nearly $500,000 a day.
  
  A TikTokspokesman applauded the court's decision in a statement. "We are glad about this decision and we believe it is also greatly welcomed by our thriving community in India, who use TikTok as a platform to showcase their creativity. We are grateful for the opportunity to continue serving our users better."
  
  TikTok sparked controversy in India late last year when a 24-year old user committed suicide after being bullied on the app. Indian officials and parents argued that the app was exposing children to pornographic and other harmful types of content. In response, TikTok removed over 6 million videos created in India that violated its content guidelines and introduced an "age-gate" for users to verify that they were at least 13 years old.
  
  This isn't the first sign of trouble for TikTok. The app has a much younger userbase compared to other social media platforms, but doesn't appear to go to any extra lengths to protect their privacy or safety. The FTC orderedthe video app to pay $5.7 million in fines to settle charges that it illegally collected the personal data of children. India and the United States now remain the only countries to require TikTok users to verify that they are at least 13 years old. The app is also highly popular amongst teens in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, as well as Russia, Mexico and Pakistan.
  
  Source: Reuters
  

• Amazon tries hiring lawyers for sellers claiming patent infringement
  Amazon has been battling counterfeits for years. It's tried charging merchants large fees, creating a registry of approved vendors and launching a self-service tool for removing knockoffs. Now, according to The Information
  

• Samsung's strange, gigantic Galaxy View is ready for round two
  You probably weren't looking for a sequel to Samsung's lap-crushing Galaxy View tablet, but you're getting one anyway. AT&T has teased the release of the Galaxy View 2, another take on the Android tablet and mobile TV hybrid. It's not quite as colossal as its predecessor with a 17.3-inch 1080p display, and implements a clever built-in cover that doubles as a kickstand. Still, this could easily be awkward to use in tablet mode -- it's really more of a vehicle for DirecTV Now and other AT&T streaming services than something you'd use to check Facebook on the couch.
  
  This will be a resolutely middle-of-the-road device outside of its dimensions. AT&T tells Engadget the View 2 will pack a mid-tier 1.6GHz Exynos 7884 eight-core chip, 3GB of RAM, a front-facing 5-megapixel camera and 64GB of expandable storage. You will get immersive Dolby Atmos audio, though, and the size allows for a hefty 12,000mAh battery that should keep the tablet humming. This being AT&T, there's built-in LTE with support for calling features like NumberSync (which turns this into a truly over-the-top speakerphone, we'd add).
  
  You'll want to brace yourself for the price. The View 2 arrives on April 26th for $37 per month on a 20-month installment plan, which translates to $740. Despite the smaller size, it's actually more expensive than the original $600 View. That could make sense if you're an avid viewer who insists on a sprawling screen at all times, but it might make more sense to spring for a more compact tablet if you just want something larger than your phone. Your wallet and your legs might just thank you.
  
  
  Via: Droid Life
  
  Source: AT&T (YouTube)
  

• Tesla will begin selling its own in-house insurance 'in a month'
  Tesla released its Q1 2019 earnings on Wednesday and despite having a significant slowdown from the previous quarter, the company remains confident that it will meet its ambitious production goals for the year.
  
  
  
  Despite "significant challenges with the battery module line at Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, and later with our general assembly line in Fremont" Tesla managed to deliver nearly 140,000 Model 3 vehicles in 2018. That trend continued through Q1 2019 with the electric sedan outselling its nearest competitor by nearly 60 percent.
  
  "To the best of my knowledge there were zero predictions that this would happen, that an electric vehicle would be the best selling car in the US," Tesla CEO Elon Musk told reporters during the company's earnings call. "And we believe, eventually, the best selling EV car throughout the world."
  
  The company expects its production for Model 3s to continue to grow thanks to its Fremont facility and expects a sustained capacity of 7,000 vehicles per week by the end of the year. The Gigafactory Shanghai plant is expected to reach its full production potential by the end of this year and boasts a capital spend per unit of capacity that's less than half of what we see at the Fremont facility's Model 3 line. "That 50 percent, our internal forecasts are actually better than that," a Tesla executive noted during the call.
  
  "We intend Model 3 to be the first step in a platform which we can cost effectively and quickly replicate across geographies and vehicle types," the earnings report reads. "We have spent years developing this platform, and Gigafactory Shanghai and our planned Model Y production line will be the first to reap the benefits of this investment."
  
  This added stock should help drive prices for the Model 3 even lower. "It is critical that we continue this trend so that we can keep increasing the affordability of Model 3 while retaining a sustainable level of profitability," the Q1 financials read. "The labor hours per Model 3 vehicle declined yet again by roughly 20 percent compared to Q3 and by about 65 percent in the second half of 2018 alone." Tesla hopes to further improve efficiencies in its delivery system by leveraging its fleet of self-driving semis.
  
  North American Model S customers will also soon have the the opportunity to buy Tesla's in-house insurance. The program which has previously rolled out in Australia and Asia seeks to provide a lower-cost alternative to third party insurance for the S, which is among the most expensive electric vehicles on the market to insure. "We are creating a Tesla insurance product," Musk confirmed during the call. "We are hoping to launch that in about a month. We think it will be much more compelling than anything else out there."
  
  Deliveries for the Model S and Model X fell sharply in Q1, hitting just 12,100 vehicles compared to the 2-year average of 25,000 units per quarter. The company cites seasonal downturns in demand as the driving cause of the shortfall. "Nobody buys cars in winter," Musk quipped during the call, also noting that the two models did recently receive new longer range motors.
  
  Still, Tesla expects to hit its previous guidance of delivering 340,000 to 400,000 vehicles in 2019 -- a 45 - 65 percent increase over the previous year. The company is also confident it will be "able to produce over 500,000 vehicles globally in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2020," per the earnings report. Overall, "we believe we will deliver between 90,000 and 100,000 vehicles in Q2."
  
  Source: Tesla
  

• Implant turns brain signals into synthesized speech
  People with neurological conditions who lose the ability to speak can still send the brain signals used for speech (such as the lips, jaw and larynx), and UCSF researchers might just use that knowledge to bring voices back. They've crafted a brain machine interface that can turn those brain signals into mostly recognizable speech. Instead of trying to read thoughts, the machine learning technology picks up on individual nerve commands and translates those to a virtual vocal tract that approximates the intended output.
  
  The results aren't flawless. Although the system accurately captures the distinctive sound of someone's voice and is frequently easy to understand, there are times when the synthesizer produces garbled words. It's still miles better than earlier approaches that didn't try to replicate the vocal tract, though. Scientists are also testing denser electrodes on the brain interface as well as more sophisticated machine learning, both of which could improve the overall accuracy. This would ideally work with any person, even if they can't train the system before using it in practice.
  
  That effort could take a while, and there's no firm roadmap at this stage. The goal, at least, is clear: the researchers want to revive the voices of people with ALS, Parkinson's and other conditions where speech loss is normally irreversible. If that happens, it could dramatically improve communication for those patients (who may have to use much slower methods today) and help them feel more connected to society.
  
  
  Via: MIT Technology Review
  
  Source: UCSF
  

• Microsoft's cloud business can't be stopped
  At this point, Microsoft's quarterly earnings reports sound like a broken record: Its cloud business is practically unstoppable, while its PC and productivity make steady gains. That's been the case for years, and this past third quarter was no different: Its intelligent cloud jumped 22 percent reaching $9.2 billion, mostly due to Azure's whopping 73 percent revenue growth. The Personal Computing side of things rose 8 percent to reach $10.7 billion, which includes a 21 percent increase in Surface revenues. And its Productivity and Business Group, which houses Office and LinkedIn, rose 14 percent at $10.2 billion. Altogether, revenues for the quarter were up 14 percent and profit 19 percent, reaching $8.8 billion.
  
  The takeaway? Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has set the company on a solid course, one focused on the massive potential of cloud computing, while not ignoring the bread-and-butter productivity software and services the company is known for. It's nice to see that the company's Surface lineup -- the Surface Go, Pro 6, Laptop 2and Book 2-- is getting some consumer love, as they're some of the best PCs we've reviewed recently.
  
  Microsoft's gaming business only saw a 5 percent rise during the quarter, but mostly I'd chalk that up to a slowing console generation and a lack of any major exclusives. We'll hear more about where the Xbox is going at E3, both in the form of a next-generation console for next year, as well as cloud gaming plans that could take on Google's Stadia service. Given just how much Microsoft's cloud business is booming, a game streaming service simply makes sense.
  
  Source: Microsoft
  

• Slack is adding email conversations and calendar integrations
  In case you don't already count on Slack for just about every part of your work day, the business communications service is adding a whole bunch of new features that will keep you chatting with your co-workers without having to open new tabs and applications. The company is introducing shared channels, email and calendar integrations and an improved search feature that makes it easier to find just about anything.
  
  The expanded search function is perhaps the most exciting addition. If you've ever used Slack -- or any chat app, for that matter -- you know that it can be a pain to find things that happened days, weeks or months earlier. The universal search bar now displays a list of unread channels and direct messages as well as the channels, files and people that you interact with most often. Slack is also promising quick results that show prior discussions and materials shared on the service, as you would expect from a search feature.
  
  
  
  In addition to improving its search functionality, Slack is also getting better integrations for the two other applications you probably rely on most: email and calendar. In the next few months, it will add the ability for people who have been invited to a Slack but are yet to join to receive emails that contain important message and information. That includes mentions, direct messages and other relevant conversations. Over time, the company plans to give people the ability to reply to Slack messages straight from email.
  
  
  
  Slack is also expanding on its recent integrations for Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar by introducing invites that can be sent and received directly through the communications platform. They will allow people to be alerted to important meetings, respond to make their availability known and join conference calls right on Slack. Outlook Calendar users will also be able to sync their schedules so Slack can update their status when a calendar event will have them away from their computer. The service will also start to automatically generate calendar invites when users type things like "Let's meet tomorrow and discuss." All of these features are expected to arrive before the end of the year.
  
  If that's not enough for you, Slack is expanding its Shared Channels feature that will let multiple organizations communicate within the same workspace. The service should be welcome for any company that works with outside agencies and vendors on projects. The beta version of the feature for Enterprise Grid customers will launch this summer.
  

• Facebook’s FTC fine could cost it between $3 and $5 billion
  Although Facebook's growth has slowed down over the past year, all the controversies it has facedin recent months haven't had an effect on its bottom line. But that may be changing. Today, during its Q1 2019 earnings report, Facebook reported a total revenue of $15.1 billion, a 26 percent year-over-year increase. The most interesting part, however, is that Facebook says it estimates spending between $3 and $5 billion as part of an ongoing investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) into its data-sharing practices.
  
  As a result of that, the company accrued a $3 billion expense this quarter, and its overall net profit dropped 51 percent compared to a year ago. In February, the largest of its kind for a technology company, eclipsing the $22.5 million penalty Google paid to the commission following an investigation on its privacy practices.
  
  "The matter remains unresolved," Facebook said in its earnings report, "and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome."
  
  Elsewhere, Facebook reported 2.38 billion monthly active users in Q1 2019, an increase of 8 percent compared to the same period last year. Daily active users, meanwhile, were at 1.56 billion during the quarter, also an 8 percent increase compared to 2018. "We had a good quarter and our business and community continue to grow," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "We are focused on building out our privacy-focused vision for the future of social networking, and working collaboratively to address important issues around the internet."
  
  
  
  During the earnings report conference call, Zuckerberg on how Facebook's main focus for the next few years will be its efforts to create the best possible privacy-focused social network. He pointed to WhatsApp as the perfect example of how the company is viewing these efforts, noting that the goal will be to offer private interactions, simple intimate spaces, end-to-end-encryption and reducing the permanence of posts. At the same time, he added, Facebook wants to make it easy for users to communicate with each other across its family of apps, including Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and, of course, core Facebook.
  
  In addition to that, Zuckerberg talked about his proposal to regulate the internet, which he says will only help establish trust between Facebook and its community. "Any regulation may hurt our business, but it is necessary," he said. "The trustworthiness can have a much larger positive impact."
  
  Zuckerberg also touched on how important artificial intelligence and machine learning is to keep Facebook and its products safe. "The only hope is building AI systems that can either identify things and handle them proactively, or at the very least flag them for a lot of people who work for us," he said. "99 percent of the [Al Qaeda and ISIS] content that we take down, our systems flag proactively before anyone sees it. That's what really good looks like."
  
  As for the impending, record-breaking FTC fine, Facebook CFO David Wehner said, "This matter is not resolved so the actual amount of payment remains uncertain. Can't comment further as this is an ongoing matter."
  
  Images: EFE (Mark Zuckerberg)
  
  Source: Facebook
  

• Microsoft knows password-expiration policies are useless
  Microsoft admitted today that password-expiration policies are a pointless security measure. Such requirements are "an ancient and obsolete mitigation of very low value," the company wrote in a blog post on draft security baseline settings for Windows 10 v1903 and Windows Server v1903. Microsoft isn't doing away with its password-expiration policies across the board, but the blog post makes the company's stance clear: expiring passwords does little good.
  
  As the blog post explains, if a password is never stolen, there's no need to expire it. And if a password is suspected to be stolen, you would want to act immediately, not wait until the expiration date. Forced updates also lead to more users writing their passwords down or forgetting them altogether. Plus, as Microsoft puts it, "if your users are the kind who are willing to answer surveys in the parking lot that exchange a candy bar for their passwords, no password expiration policy will help you."
  
  The company admits that the state of password security is problematic, but it says multi-factor authentication and banned-password lists are more effective security measures. Microsoft is proposing to drop password-expiration policies from its security baseline for Windows 10 v1903 and Windows Server v1903, but that will impact a relatively small subset of users. The company doesn't plan to change requirements for minimum password length, history or complexity. And while it can't include multi-factor authentication or banned-password lists in the security baseline, the blog post "strongly recommends" users seek additional protections. So, you can keep updating your passwords if you'd like, but even Microsoft will tell you that's not going to keep you safe.
  
  Source: Microsoft Security Guidance Blog
  

• 'Overwatch' Workshop adds more custom options for heroes and modes
  custom games (Ana Paintball, anyone?) and now they're getting a lot more options to flex their creative muscles. A new feature called Workshop, a scripting mode for custom games, is live on the PTR.
  
  You'll be able to set up games with new rules and win conditions, or adjust characters' abilities and movements. Perhaps most excitingly, game director Jeff Kaplan said in a developer update video that "You could even prototype your own Overwatch hero using this system." However, you won't be able to edit maps.
  
  
  
  To help you make sure your game mode works the way you want it to, Workshop has a debugging tool called Inspector. It aims to let you know "why certain things are happening" or "why aren't they happening," Kaplan said.
  
  He noted Workshop will be available on PC and consoles, while you'll be able to share your creations with others. He stressed this is more of a power user tool and those who have experience in scripting or programming might find it easier to get to grips with, at least at the beginning. However, Blizzard hopes to make Workshop as accessible as possible.
  
  The Overwatch team has added some of its own creations to the game browser, so you can take a look at how they were put together, tweak them and get to grips with Workshop. One is Molten Floor, which is essentially a game of "The Floor Is Lava" -- that could be especially helpful for Pharah and Lúcio players looking to sharpen their jetpack or wall-riding skills.
  
  Kaplan also discussed a mirrored deathmatch mode that could come to the Arcade at some point, in which every player in a free-for-all deathmatch is the same character for a series of short rounds. You'll also be able to, for instance, customize Mystery Heroes so teams are more balanced, and one side doesn't necessarily end up with five Bastions.
  
  As always with PTR updates, Workshop is a work in progress. Blizzard may adjust it or close it down as it refines the tool. Still, perhaps we'll soon start to see the likes of map-wide races or a Wrecking Ball swingball mode hit the game browser.
  
  Source: Overwatch (YouTube)
  

• What’s coming to Netflix in May: 'Wine Country' and Zac Efron as Ted Bundy
  April showers bring May flowers, and apparently it also brings a lot of new content to Netflix. The streaming service has packed the month of May with new shows and movies that will keep you entertained on the days you aren't enjoying the spring weather. Headlining the month are some high-profile comedies. There's Netflix
  

• Apple may unveil two new AirPod models by the end of 2019
  Apple's refreshed AirPods might be just the start of a tidal wave of new models. Historically accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims that Apple has two new AirPod variants launching sometime between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. One of them would be cosmetically similar to the current earbuds and would be priced accordingly, while the other would represent an "all-new design" and carry a higher price tag.
  
  The analyst was shy on just what would distinguish those new models, although both will supposedly shift to a system-in-package design that improves manufacturing, saves space and (most importantly for Apple) reduces the cost of production. There have been murmurs of AirPods with noise cancellation, longer range and water resistance, but it's not certain that's what Kuo is referencing. You can already get the water resistance and a degree of passive noise cancellation through the upcoming Powerbeats Pro.
  
  Accurate or not, Kuo's predictions wouldn't come out of nowhere. AirPods are still the best-selling true wireless earbuds, according to estimates, and Apple no doubt wants to keep the money flowing. Higher-end AirPods could appeal to people who don't think the existing models pass muster, and reworked innards could boost Apple's bottom line.
  
  Source: 9to5Mac
  

• Bumble will use AI to detect unwanted nudes
  Artificial intelligence will soon weed out any NSFW photos a match sends to you on Bumble. The dating app that requires women to make the first contactsaidit is launching a "private detector" to warn users about lewd images. Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd and Andrey Andreev, CEO of the dating app parent company that includes Bumble, Badoo, Chappy and Lumen, made the announcement Wednesday in a press release.
  
  Beginning in June, all images sent onBumbleand the other apps will be screened by the AI-assisted "private detector." If a photo is suspected to be lewd or inappropriate, users will have the option to view, block or report the image to moderators before they open it.
  
  Unwanted sexual advances are a daily reality for many women on the internet, and that figure only multiplies on dating apps. A 2016 Consumers' Research study found that 57 percent of women report feeling harassed on dating apps, compared to 21 percent of men. Unlike Tinderor Hinge, Bumble allows its users to send photos to people they match with on the dating app. All images sent on Bumble are automatically blurred out; recipients must long press the image in order to view it. While the image safeguards keep users from being bombarded with sexual images on Bumble, the company doesn't feel like it's enough.
  
  "The sharing of lewd images is a global issue of critical importance and it falls upon all of us in the social media and social networking worlds to lead by example and to refuse to tolerate inappropriate behavior on our platforms," said Andreev in a press release.
  
  
  
  Bumble claims that its private detector feature is 98-percent "effective". A Bumble spokesperson told Engadget that the AI tool will also be able to detect pictures of guns and shirtless mirror selfies, both of which are banned on the app.
  
  Wolfe Herd is currently working with Texas state lawmakers to make the sharing of lewd images a punishable crime. The bill championed by Wolfe Herd would make it a Class C misdemeanor--punishable by a fine of $500--to send a lewd photo without a recipient's consent.
  
  A Bumble spokesperson told Engadget that an AI tool to detect inappropriate messages and harmful language is under development. Bumble won't be the first to use AI to filter profiles and messages. While Tinder does not allow photo sharing on its app, it has been using an AI tool to automatically scan profiles for "red-flag language and images."
  
  
  
  Source: Bumble
  

• Amazon Alexa auditors could reportedly access user locations
  It emerged earlier this month that thousands of Amazon employees are reviewing some Alexa recordings (which are captured after you've said the wake word). The auditors transcribe, annotate and analyze a selection of commands to help improve Alexa. But it seems these workers could view users' personal information too, according to Bloomberg. At least some employees are said to have had access to location data, addresses and phone numbers.
  
  There's no indication any workers have tried to look up a customer's home (say, on Google Street View) using the data from these tools. However, the fact they were able to access more information than they perhaps need to might be cause for concern, particularly as smart speakers become more prevalent. In fact, analysts are predicting they'll be in most US homes by late next year.
  
  According to the report, a number of Amazon workers use a tool that provides audio clips along with some data about the devices on which they were recorded, such as geographic coordinates. When plugged into the likes of Google Maps, the coordinates might pinpoint a user's location. That location data isn't always spot on though, as Amazon often relies on a device's internet connection (which can be masked) or GPS on phones. It uses such data to help Alexa give more accurate answers to location-based queries for things like the weather or local businesses, and for location-based routines and reminders.
  
  Another tool is said to include more intimate contact data, such as addresses and phone numbers, along with the names, email addresses and numbers of contacts if a user shared them with Alexa. That tool was available to a small number of employees -- those who tag recordings to train Alexa to categorize requests. As such, the auditors would be able to, for instance, help Alexa be more accurate when you ask it to start a video call with a contact on Echo Show.
  
  It's uncertain how many employees were able to use the systems, though Amazon seems to have been restricting access, particularly after details about the Alexa auditing program were revealed this month. An Amazon spokesperson provided Engadget with the following statement:
  
  "[Access] to internal tools is highly controlled, and is only granted to a limited number of employees who require these tools to train and improve the service by processing an extremely small sample of interactions. Our policies strictly prohibit employee access to or use of customer data for any other reason, and we have a zero tolerance policy for abuse of our systems. We regularly audit employee access to internal tools and limit access whenever and wherever possible."
  
  Source: Bloomberg
  

• How Oppo fit a 10x zoom camera into its 5G phone
  Oppo may have already teased its first 5G smartphone in Zurich earlier this month, but today, the company is bringing its entire Reno family -- including the mid-range Reno and the flagship Reno 10x Zoom -- to Europe. This means the Chinese brand will be going head to head with Huawei using its very own 10x hybrid zoom camera outside of its home territory. With the $1,000 Reno 5G leading the party ahead of its May launch, the Reno 10x Zoom follows with a €799 (about $890) base price due in early June, whereas the Reno lands at a more modest €499 ($560) on May 10th.
  
  
  
  As we saw at the Shanghai launch event, all three Reno phones tout a cute pop-up camera wedge for 16-megapixel f/2.0 selfies, along with a 48-megapixel f/1.7 main rear camera. The Reno 10x Zoom is basically the Reno 5G sans 5G radio, featuring the same 13-megapixel f/3.0 periscopic zoom camera plus an 8-megapixel f/2.2 ultrawide camera. Together, the three rear cameras cover a focal length of 16mm to 160mm, hence the "10x hybrid zoom." The smaller Reno, on the other hand, only has a 5-megapixel f/2.4 assistive camera to add bokeh to the main camera.
  
  Ahead of today's launch event, Engadget sat down with Senior Camera Engineer Li Longjia to hear how Oppo's 10x hybrid zoom technology came together. It turned out that this camera project goes as far back as 2014, when Li's camera team was tasked with a mission to boost the mobile camera's zoom range. This led them to Hoya which offered a tiny periscopic camera with 3x optical zoom -- apparently the first of its kind in the mobile industry.
  
  In the end, Li's team deemed this solution infeasible, mainly due to the fact that Hoya's supply chain was an unfamiliar territory to Oppo and its peers. Li added that a purely continuous zoom solution like this -- as opposed to the current hybrid zoom tech -- comes with many limitations, especially the zoom range and package size. In this case, going beyond the mere 3x zoom would require much more space to accommodate different lens sizes. Still, Hoya's periscopic camera would end up on the ZenFone Zoom, but that didn't turn out so well for ASUS.
  
  In 2015, Israeli-based Corephotonics -- which was reportedly acquired by Samsung earlier this year -- approached Oppo with a cunning concept consisting of a normal camera plus a 3x zoom periscope. This "folded camera optics" solution boosted the overall zoom range to a more practical 5x, yet it was able to maintain a slim component height as the telephoto lenses could stick to similar diameters.
  
  Li was convinced, and by the end of 2015, his team pulled some resources together to start designing a new camera based on Corephotonics' solution. The first component samples came out in mid-2016, and these would eventually evolve into the demos shown at MWC 2017. As to why this wasn't commercialized soon afterwards, Li explained that there were still many hurdles surrounding the optics assembly method, optical stabilization in the periscope and lossless transition between the two cameras.
  
  Most interestingly, Li confessed that the periscope's prism in the original design was prone to detachment, and this was partly due to the prism's single-axis stabilization. Consequently, a revised design swapped things around: The prism was tasked with dual-axis stabilization, whereas the group of telephoto lenses only had to deal with autofocus. Problem solved. In fact, dual-axis stabilization is actually easier to apply to the prism than the much heavier set of lenses, anyway.
  
  
  
  Fast forward to today, Li's team boosted the hybrid zoom range once again to 10x using a more powerful 5x zoom periscope, while achieving an impressive f/3.0 aperture thanks to two large D-cut lenses. To put things into perspective, the P30 Pro's telephoto camera has a slower f/3.4 aperture. The downside is that this new camera module comes in at 6.76mm thick instead of the old 5.7mm, but given how it's vertically aligned down the middle of the Reno 10x Zoom (and Reno 5G, for that matter), I'm OK with that so long as it delivers.
  
  Understandably, Li refused to comment on the competition, so it'll be interesting to compare the telephoto modes and low-light modes on the Reno 10x Zoom and the P30 Pro. The pre-production Reno 10x Zoom I've been given still packs non-final camera firmware (plus a China version of ColorOS 6, based on Android 9), so I'll save the camera shoot-out for another time.
  Oppo Reno 10x Zoom sample shots: 1x vs 10x
  What I can say so far is that the hybrid zoom does come in handy even at just the default 6x stop, which has the best balance between zoom range and sharpness of the lot. This really showed under the bright sunlight today. Anything else beyond 6x often required several attempts before I could get a sharp enough shot, and jumping to 20x -- a manual setting in the scroll bar as a last resort -- would make things a lot more challenging. Hopefully Oppo can still improve the performance on this end of the scale, but before that, it has some bugs to fix on the ultra wide camera as well as low-light modes.
  
  
  
  Photography aside, one thing's for sure: Oppo is somehow beating Huawei to bringing the first 5G phone to Europe, and it's doing so with help from Qualcomm as well as local carriers EE plus Swisscom. The company has also pledged to invest $1.5 billion into R&D this year, with focus set on 5G, AI, photography and IoT. With Oppo trailing closely behind on the charts, Huawei may want to play its cards carefully in the 5G and foldable screen games this year.
  

• Penske debuts fast charging stations for electric delivery trucks
  Today, Penske Truck Leasing opened 14 DC fast charging stations at four facilities in Southern California. According to the company, they're the first high-speed charging stations specifically designed for heavy duty, commercial electric vehicles in the US. And they'll be used to charge semi trucks, like the Daimler Freightliners that Penske has been testing.
  
  For the most part, electric vehicle discussions center around passenger vehicles, but companies like Tesla, Daimler and Cummins are working to electrify larger trucks, like big rigs. One of the pressing questions is how those companies will handle charging. Some have speculated that Tesla's first fleet will rely on customers like Pepsi and UPS to build on-site chargers. Networks of high-speed charging stations, like Penske's, could help speed up the adoption of electric semis.
  

• Mark Zuckerberg debuts his own 'Tech and Society' podcast (updated)
  Yes, you read that correctly. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has launched his own podcast, Tech & Society with Mark Zuckerberg, that has the company founder siting down with luminaries to chat about (what else?) the social impact of technology. There aren't more details about the length of the series or just where you'll find it (we've only found it on Spotify so far). However, it won't surprise you to hear what the focus is -- it's issues relevant to Facebook.
  
  The first two episodes are available as we write this, and they cover well-worn topics for Zuckerberg. He talks with Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain about issues like privacy and fake news, and Axel Springer chief Mathias Dopfner about the importance of journalism in the digital era. Neither are small discussions (the first episode is an hour and 44 minutes long), but they most definitely touch on Facebook's plans. The chat with Dopfner, for instance, includes many references to Facebook's bids to support local news as well as its hopes for surfacing news in your feed.
  
  At first blush, the podcast could serve as a valuable insight into Zuckerberg's thinking on a range of topics. He also doesn't stop people like Dopfner from occasionally challenging his ideas and making suggestions. Simultaneously, though, this isn't going to be the most objective discussion of Facebook and related issues. You probably aren't going to hear much talk of Facebook's ongoing data scandals. This could still be worth a listen, to be clear -- just know that it's coming from a not-so-neutral perspective.
  
  Update 4/24 3:04PM ET: Facebook tells Engadget these are audio versions of videos Zuckerberg is posting on his profile. As such, you can expect to see new podcast episodes "every few weeks." You can also expect the podcast to reach platforms beyond Spotify in the "coming days." It's not completely novel, then, but it still represents the tech exec's first foray into podcasting.
  
  
  Source: Facebook (Twitter), Spotify
  

• Facebook's AI missed Christchurch shooting videos filmed in first-person
  In the 24 hours after the Christchurch shooting, Facebook removed 1.5 million videos worldwide, but more than a month later, footage was still circulating on the platform. Now, the company says its AI had a hard time detecting the footage because of the way in which it was filmed.
  
  "This was a first-person shooter video, one where we have someone using a GoPro helmet with a camera focused from their perspective of shooting," Neil Potts, Facebook's public policy director, told British lawmakers. As considering legislation that could fine social media platforms that don't remove terrorist content within one hour of notification. This revelation proves platforms will need to bolster their AI detection systems in order to meet such goals.
  
  Source: Bloomberg
  

• San Francisco could be the first US city to ban facial recognition tech
  The Chinese government has drawn widespread condemnation in recent months over its extensive use of public surveillance and facial recognition technology to monitor the movements of some 12 million Muslim citizens. "It's a 'Muslim tracker' funded by Chinese authorities in the province of Xinjiang to keep track of Uyghur Muslims," Victor Gevers, co-founder of GDI Foundation, a non-profit open-internet advocacy group, wrote on Twitter in February. Facial recognition tracking has received its fair share of criticism here in the US as well -- even as companies like Amazon field test their half-baked AIs with police departments across the country -- and may soon spawn the nation's first outright ban on the technology.
  
  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors convened on Tuesday to vote on, among other proposals, the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance (SSSO), which was first introduced by District 3 Supervisor, Aaron Peskin. The ordinance seeks to impose strict limits on what forms of biometric data can be collected by the city's various departments; how and when it is used, and establishes an oversight apparatus to ensure public transparency. These requirements closely resemble similar ordinances from other Bay Area counties like Oakland and Santa Clara but the SSSO goes a step further in flat-out banning the use of facial recognition technology by the local government. Should it pass muster with the Board of Supervisors, San Francisco is will become the first city in the United States to ban this surveillance technology.
  
  "It is essential to have an informed public debate as early as possible about decisions related to surveillance technology," the SSSO legislation reads. "While surveillance technology may threaten the privacy of us all, surveillance efforts have historically been used to intimidate and oppress certain communities and groups more than others, including those that are defined by a common race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, income level, sexual orientation, or political perspective."
  
  The ordinance goes on to define "surveillance technology" as:
  
  Any software, electronic device, system utilizing an electronic device, or similar device used, designed, or primarily intended to collect, retain, process, or share audio, electronic, visual, location, thermal, biometric, olfactory or similar information specifically associated with, or capable of being associated with, any individual or group.
  
  That includes cell tower spoofers like the Stingray, automated license plate readers, gunshot detection systems like Shotspotter, mobile DNA capture systems, surveillance cameras (including body-worn cameras), X-ray vans, RFID scanners and a multitude of hacking tools and software that allow for illicit entry into secured computers and networks.
  
  Before a city department can adopt any of these technologies for use, the department must first submit both ordinance and impact reports to the Board of Supes for review. Systems that have already been put into place, like the SFPD's body cameras or the city's ShotSpotter system, would undergo similar oversight through annual audits in which departments will be expected to provide evidence that the data collection systems are both operating as intended and effectively impacting the issue they are meant to address. Not facial recognition technologies though.
  
  "The propensity for facial recognition technology to endanger civil rights and civil liberties substantially outweighs its purported benefits," the ordinance argues, "and the technology will exacerbate racial injustice and threaten our ability to live free of continuous government monitoring." This technology would presumably be driven by the 2,700-plus public and private security cameras located throughout the city that can be called upon to provide footage to the San Francisco County District Attorney's Office as part of ongoing criminal investigations.
  
  Current facial recognition technologies are as widespread as they are woefully inaccurate. A 2016 study by Georgetown University found that most American adults appear in police photo databases while a 2018 test by the ACLU found that Amazon's facial recognition system falsely matched 28 sitting members of Congress (a vast majority of which are POC) to mugshot photos.
  
  Amazon finds itself in a bit of a pickle with regards to its Rekognition system. On one hand, it's wildly unpopular among both Amazon employees and investors -- so much, in fact, that the company tried to get the SEC to quash an upcoming shareholder vote scheduled for May 22nd that would have banned development of the tech entirely (a move opposed by Amazon's Board of Directors). On the other hand, such government contracts could prove quite lucrative -- especially as competitors like Microsoft keep citing "human rights concerns" when refusing to sell their similar technologies. As such, Amazon is stuck calling for increased government oversight while simultaneously lending its technology to the Orlando Police Department for field tests.
  
  It would appear that the only people who actually are in favor of facial recognition technology are members of the law enforcement community. The ACLU, the EFF and Fight for the Future have all voiced support for the measure while the San Francisco San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) opposes it.
  
  What's more, a recent statewide survey conducted by David Binder Research on behalf of the ACLU, Northern California, found strong opposition to biometric data collection by likely 2020 Bay Area voters. The study found that "three‐quarters of voters statewide and in the Bay Area support a law to require public debate and a vote by lawmakers before any surveillance technology is obtained or used by government and law enforcement." This opinion ran clear across party and racial lines and was just as likely to be held by Boomers as it is Millennials.
  
  "San Francisco residents want and deserve a seat at the table when it comes to decisions about government surveillance," Matt Cagle, Tech and Civil Liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California told Engadget. "Surveillance without oversight or safeguards makes people less safe and less free, and increases the likelihood that they will be unnecessarily entangled with police and ICE. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors should promote real public safety by passing this ordinance and giving the community control over surveillance in their city."
  
  Jelani Drew, a campaigner with Fight for the Future, echoed those sentiments. "These kinds of technologies that are being used by the government need public oversight," they told Engadget. "Or, at the very least, folks need to know what sorts of surveillance technologies are being used around them."
  
  The SFPD and SF District Attorney's office both did not reply to requests for comment, while the SF Sheriff's office had no comment to give on the subject. Supervisor Peskin's office also did not reply to requests for comment.
  
  This isn't the first time that a government entity has attempted to operate facial recognition technology in the region. Last August, BART's board of directors floated using the technology as part of its renewed anti-crime initiative but abandoned the proposal after loud and sustained public outcry.
  
  Nor is this the first time that state and local governments have attempted to legislate stronger privacy protections for the voting public. Last year, the state Senate passed SB 1186, which would "require each law enforcement agency, as defined, to submit to its governing body at a regularly scheduled hearing, open to the public, a proposed Surveillance Use Policy for the use of each type of surveillance technology and the information collected, as specified." That law goes into effect July 1st.
  
  Supervisor Peskin's Proposition B also passed during last November's elections. Prop B sought to outline a "Privacy First Policy" for San Francisco, requiring that the city administrator's office come up with an ordinance detailing how the city, its contractors and permitted third party companies like SalesForce would protect consumer data.
  
  This is "the first time a city has endeavored to protect its constituents from the misuse and misappropriation of their personal, private information by outside corporations for profit," Peskin told the Examiner last May. And, earlier this year, federal lawmakers put forth the bipartisan Commercial Facial Recognition Privacy Act of 2019, which would prevent companies from collecting or disseminating images of people's faces without their consent.
  

• Pew: Twitter users are younger and more Democratic than most Americans
  A recent report from the Pew Research Center says Twitter users are younger, more highly educated, have higher incomes and are more likely to identify as Democrats compared to the general public. They're also more likely to support immigration and see evidence of racial- and gender-based inequality in society. This might be surprising given how loud opposing views can appear on the platform.
  
  The study looked at a sampling of 2,791 US adult Twitter users. The median age of those users was 40, compared to 47, the national median age of adults. According to the report, 42 percent of adult Twitter users have a bachelor's degree, compared to 31 percent of the general public. The breakdown is almost the same when it comes to income. An estimated 41 percent of Twitter users earn more than $75,000, while just 32 percent of the general public meet that benchmark. In terms of gender, race and ethnicity, though, the makeup of Twitter users is similar to the adult population as a whole.
  
  It might not come as a shock that a handful of Twitter users are the most vocal, but the report finds that just 10 percent of users are responsible for 80 percent of tweets created by US adults. The median Twitter users post twice a month, while the most active accounts produce roughly 138 tweets in the same time. The most active users are also more likely to be women and to tweet regularly about politics.
  
  The report paints an interesting picture of the average Twitter user, especially given all the news about abuse and harassment on the platform, Twitter's complicated role in meddling with elections and bans on conservative users who violate the company's terms. As social media platforms face their darker sides, it could be helpful to have this kind of demographic breakdown.
  
  Source: Pew Research Center
  

• Google makes it easier to find work-from-home jobs
  While truck drivers can't operate their rigs from a home office just yet, telecommuting is an increasingly attractive option to many people for a host of reasons (wearing pajamas all day, for one thing). But having to slog through job postings to find ones that embrace remote work can be an exasperating experience. So, Google is aiming to make the working-from-home employment hunt more palatable by refining its job search options.
  
  When you're looking for a specific type of work, say "customer support jobs" or "design jobs," you'll be able to set your location as "work from home" to make the results more relevant. If you're not quite sure what remote opportunities are available, you can search for "work from home jobs" to see what's out there.
  
  Google is using Schema.org markup to determine job locations and requirements so it can better identify telecommuting positions and geographic limits. It's working with a number of job listing sites, including ZipRecruiter, Working Nomads and We Work Remotely, while more remote opportunities should pop up in search results as other sites adopt the markup. Employers and job boards which use Google's Cloud Talent Solution will be also able to mark which positions are open to remote work so they appear in filtered results.
  

• Nintendo's lower-cost Switch might arrive in late June
  That rumored lower-cost Switch might show up sooner than you think. Bloomberg sources maintain that Nintendo's more affordable console will "likely" arrive by the end of June, or not long after the big E3 expo in the middle of the month. Don't expect a supercharged version for enthusiasts, though. The current model would get a "modest upgrade" in 2019, according to the purported insiders, but a brawnier model apparently isn't in the cards.
  
  The company hasn't said anything about the rumored new Switch, and might only indirectly confirm it by factoring it into its financial expectations for quarterly sales. Historically, Nintendo has saved much of its bigger news around this time of year for Direct presentations at E3.
  
  If this is accurate, it might dampen the hopes of fans who want a high-end version with lavish graphics and other new features. A focus on budget gamers might make more sense, mind you. The Switch is barely two years old -- many owners aren't about to replace their existing systems. There are plenty of people who don't have Switches, though, and a more affordable model might bring them into the fold. We'd add that Nintendo has shifted its attention away from the 2DS and 3DS. They're still around, but the gaming giant may want a Switch variant that could eventually replace those older handhelds in terms of price, if not necessarily in spirit.
  
  Via: CNET
  
  Source: Bloomberg
  

• Academy says streamed films are still in the Oscars race
  Hollywood's biggest prize will still be open to streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences votedon Tuesday night to not change rules on Oscar eligibility. Any feature-length film on a streaming platform can be eligible for an Academy Award, as long as it also screens in a theater in Los Angeles for at least seven days.
  
  "We support the theatrical experience as integral to the art of motion pictures, and this weighed heavily in our discussions," Academy President John Bailey said in a statement. "Our rules currently require theatrical exhibition, and also allow for a broad selection of films to be submitted for Oscars consideration."
  
  Netflixmade history at this year's Oscar ceremony with Alfonso Cuaron's Roma, which wonthree awards, including best director for Cuaron. The historic event also raised concerns in some circles of Hollywood elite that streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu would soon take over traditional motion picture productions. But speculation that Academy board member Steven Spielberg would push for longer theatrical release requirements in order to bar Netflix from the Oscars turned out to be unfounded. Spielberg later clarified in a statement that while he wants to preserve the movie theatre experience, he wants people to "find entertainment in any form or fashion that suits them."
  
  Even if Spielberg had gone forth with an anti-Netflix campaign, it likely would meet legal obstacles. The Department of Justice informedthe Academy earlier this month that any change to eligibility rules that barred the streaming platforms could be in violation of antitrust laws. So it appears that Netflix and the other online streaming platforms will continue to have a place on the red carpet, even if not all Hollywood moguls don't like it.
  
  Source: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  

• Childish Gambino and Google team up for a multiplayer AR app
  Google and Childish Gambino are teaming up again for another augmented reality experience. Following the arrival of the Coachella headliner as a Playmoji on Pixel cameras earlier this year, the pair have released a multiplayer app called Pharos AR. It allows you and your friends to explore a trippy, neon-tinged world with Gambino as the soundtrack.
  
  When you open the app, you'll see a portal you can step through. Once you do, you can explore a cave in which you can find glyphs to interact with (while still being able to look at the real world). Track down all of them and the app will let you explore "more worlds throughout Childish Gambino's universe."
  
  You can check out Pharos AR on Android now and it'll arrive on iOS soon. You'll be able to experience it with your friends regardless of which phone each of you have, because the app uses ARCore's Cloud Anchors API.
  
  Source: Google
  

• Brave browser lets you see opt-in ads in exchange for rewards
  Brave is moving forward with its plans to pay people who view opt-in ads. Use the latest version of its desktop web browser, sign up for Brave Rewards and you'll have the option of viewing Brave Ads that give you a 70 percent cut of the ad revenue through crypto tokens if you decide to click. They won't compromise your privacy, Brave said, and they'll soon be useful for more than just donating to sites and content creators. You'll have the option of redeeming them for "real-world rewards" like gift cards and restaurant vouchers, and there are plans to convert tokens into real currencies.
  
  The launch comes a few months after an early access program in January, and has a few bigger supporters this time around. Vice and Home Chef are some of the partners supplying ads on top of existing allies like TAP Network, which will also supply the real-world rewards. You should also see ads from charities and non-profits like The Giving Block and the Human Rights Foundation.
  
  There's little doubt that Brave is being at least slightly optimistic. Its browser has a relatively tiny user base (it doesn't register on Netmarketshare's usage charts), and advertisers might balk at a platform where users won't even see ads. Brave, however, isn't deterred. It notes that the people clicking the ads will be those who want to see something (and are thus more likely to buy). And let's face it, the possibility of being paid for viewing web ads is alluring. Even if you only get a tiny reward for each ad you view, that could quickly add up if you make a habit of watching ads on a regular basis.
  
  Source: Brave
  

• Apache Bug Lets Attackers Gain Root Access
  
  Apache HTTP web server users are being urged to update their servers to patch for a critical vulnerability that could give an attacker a way to gain root access. Researcher Charles Fol discovered the vulnerability and writes about it in detail here: https://cfreal.github.io/carpe-diem-cve-2019-0211-apache-local-root.html.
        Apache                   

• Google Won't Allow DRM in an Open-Source Project, Collabora Announces the SPURV Project, WPS Office for Linux Version 11 Released, PyCharm 2019.1.1 Now Available, and KDE Plasma 5.15.4 Brings Many Bug Fixes and Improvements
  
  News briefs for April 4, 2019.
  
  Google won't allow DRM in an open-source project. Samuel Maddock is building a browser called Metastream, an "Electron-based (Chromium derived), MIT-licensed browser hosted on GitHub. Its main feature is the ability to playback videos on the web, synchronized with other peers. Each client runs its own instance of the Metastream browser and transmits playback information to keep them in sync—no audio or video content is sent." He sent a request to Google for a license to implement Widevine in his browser, and received this reply, "I'm sorry but we're not supporting an open source solution like this", four months later. See also "After years of insisting that DRM in HTML wouldn't block open source implementations, Google says it won't support open source implementations" by Cory Doctorow for more on the story.
  
  Collabora recently announced a new project called SPURV, which allows you to "run Android applications in the same graphical environment as regular Wayland Linux applications with full 3D acceleration." The announcement also notes that "For current non-Android systems, this work enables a path forward to running Android applications in the same graphical environment as traditional non-Android applications are run." Full build instructions are available on GitLab.
  
  WPS Office for Linux version 11 (2019) was released recently. Linux Uprising reports that the new version of the office suite includes "support for high resolution screens, skin support, and interface updates." See the WPS Community site to download the Linux version.
  
  PyCharm 2019.1.1 is now available. From the announcement: "PyCharm is the first JetBrains IDE to ship with the new JDK 11. This brings us improved performance and better rendering for our Jupyter Notebooks. Unfortunately, it also means that we ran into a couple of teething issues with the new JDK."
  
  KDE Plasma 5.15.4 was released this week with more than three dozen bug fixes and improvements. According to Softpedia News, highlights of this release include "improvements to the Flatpak and Fwupd (firmware update) backends in the Plasma Discover package manager, better support for the latest Nvidia graphics drivers in the KWin window and composite manager, along with proper support for restoring the current desktop from session." See also the release announcement at KDE.org for more information and links to live images and downloads.
        News  Google  open source  drm  Collabora  Android  Wayland  WPS Office  PyCharm  KDE  Plasma                   

• Open Source Is Winning, and Now It's Time for People to Win Too
  by Reuven M. Lerner   
  Teaching kids about open source? Don't forget to teach them ethics as well.
  
  Back when I started college, in the fall of 1988, I was introduced to a text editor called Emacs. Actually, it wasn't just called Emacs; it was called "GNU Emacs". The "GNU" part, I soon learned, referred to something called "free software", which was about far more than the fact that it was free of charge. The GNU folks talked about software with extreme intensity, as if the fate of the entire world rested on the success of their software replacing its commercial competition.
  
  Those of us who used such programs, either from GNU or from other, similarly freely licensed software, knew that we were using high-quality code. But to our colleagues at school and work, we were a bit weird, trusting our work to software that wasn't backed by a large, commercial company. (I still remember, as a college intern at HP, telling the others in my group that I had compiled, installed and started to use a new shell known as "bash", which was better than the "k shell" we all were using. Their response was somewhere between bemusement and horror.)
  
  As time went on, I started to use a growing number of programs that fit into this "free software" definition—Linux, Perl and Python were the stars, but plenty of others existed, from Emacs (which I use to this day), sendmail (pretty much the only SMTP server at the time), DNS libraries and the like. In 1998, Tim O'Reilly decided that although the "free software" cause was good, it needed better coordination and marketing. Thus, the term "open source" was popularized, stressing the practical benefits over the philosophical and societal ones.
  
  I was already consulting at the time, regularly fighting an uphill battle with clients—small startups and large multinationals alike—telling them that yes, I trusted code that didn't cost money, could be modified by anyone and was developed by volunteers.
  
  But marketing, believe it or not, really does work. And the term "open source" did a great job of opening many people's minds. Slowly but surely, things started to change: IBM announced that it would invest huge amounts of money in Linux and open-source software. Apache, which had started life as an httpd server, became a foundation that sponsored a growing array of open-source projects. Netscape tumbled as quickly as it had grown, releasing its Mozilla browser as open-source software (and with its own foundation) before going bust. Red Hat proved that you could have a successful open-source company based on selling high-quality services and support. And these are just the most prominent names.
  
  With every announcement, the resistance to using open source in commercial companies dropped bit more. As companies realized that others were depending on open source, they agreed to use it too.
      Go to Full Article          

• Fedora 30 Beta Released, Chef Releasing All of Its Software as Open Source, elementary Adopting Flatpak for AppCenter, Unreal Engine 4.22 Now Available and VMware Lawsuit Dropped
  
  News briefs for April 3, 2019.
  
  Fedora 30 Beta was released yesterday. Highlights include new desktop environment choices, DNF performance improvements, GNOME 3.32 and updated versions of many packages, such as Golang, Bash, Python and more. For more details, see the Fedora 30 Change set.
  
  Chef has announced it is releasing all of its software as open source. According to DevOps.com, "Chef has decided to open source its entire portfolio of IT automation software as part of an effort to make it easier for organizations to construct a DevOps pipeline using the company's software. A part of that effort, Chef also launched the Chef Enterprise Automation Stack—which combines Chef Infra for managing infrastructure, Chef InSpec for maintaining compliance, Chef Habitat for managing applications, Chef Automate for managing hybrid clouds and Chef Workstation, a starter kit for launching Chef—within a single distribution of Chef software. Chef Infra is the original Chef project around which the company was launched."
  
  elementary announced it is adopting Flatpak for AppCenter and its third-party developer ecosystem. The post makes clear that "while Flathub is a great place to get popular cross-platform apps, we still want AppCenter to be the best place to get apps that are specially developed for elementary OS." Also from the announcement: "Moving to Flatpak doesn't mean moving away from our focus on native apps, from enabling developers to get paid with pay-what-you-want downloads, or from the online AppCenter Dashboard where each app is carefully tested, reviewed, and curated before being published to users in AppCenter. We'll be providing our own hosted and curated Flatpak repo for AppCenter, much like we provide our own hosted and curated Debian repo today."
  
  Unreal Engine 4.22 is now available. Major features with this new release include real-time ray tracing and path tracing, high-level rendering refactor, C++ iteration time improvements and much more. According to the Unreal Engine announcement, "This release includes 174 improvements submitted by the incredible community of Unreal Engine developers on GitHub!"
  
  Linux developer Christopher Helwig has dropped the VMware lawsuit after a German court dismissed the case. ZDNet reports that "after the German Hamburg Higher Regional Court dismissed Helwig's appeal, he has decided that it would be pointless to appeal the decision." ZDNet summarized the background: "The heart of the lawsuit had been that Hypervisor vSphere VMware ESXi 5.5.0 violated Linux's copyright. That's because VMware had not licensed a derivative work from Linux under the GNU General Public License (GPL). True, VMware had disclosed the vmklinux component under the GPL, but not the associated hypervisor components. Or, as Helwig put it, 'VMware uses a badly hacked 2.4 kernel with a big binary blob hooked into it, giving a derived work of the Linux kernel that's not legally redistributable.'" See the article for more details on the history of the case.
        News  Fedora  GNOME  Chef  DevOps  elementary OS  Unreal Engine  VMware                   

• What Linux Journal's Resurrection Taught Me about the FOSS Community
  by Kyle Rankin   
  "Marley was dead, to begin with."—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
  
  As you surely know by now, Linux Journal started in 1994, which means it has been around for most of the Linux story. A lot has changed since then, and it's not surprising that Linux and the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community are very different today from what they were for Linux Journal's first issue 25 years ago. The changes within the community during this time had a direct impact on Linux Journal and contributed to its death, making Linux Journal's story a good lens through which to view the overall story of the FOSS community. Although I haven't been with Linux Journal since the beginning, I was there during the heyday, the stroke, the decline, the death and the resurrection. This article is about that story and what it says about how the FOSS community has changed.
  
  It's also a pretty personal story.
   A Bit about Me
  Although it's true that I sometimes write about personal projects in my articles and may disclose some personal details from time to time, I generally try not to talk too much about my personal life, but as it's useful to frame this story, here we go. I grew up in an era when personal computers were quite expensive (even more so, now that I account for inflation), and it wasn't very common to grow up with one in your home.
  
  In high school, I took my first computer class in BASIC programming. This class fundamentally changed me. Early on in the class I knew that I wanted to change any past career plans and work with computers instead. My family noticed this change, and my grandparents and mother found the money to buy my first computer: a Tandy 1000 RLX. Although there certainly were flashier or more popular computers, it did come with a hard drive (40MB!), which was still pretty novel at the time. Every time I learned a new BASIC command in school, I would spend the following evenings at home figuring out every way I could use that new-found knowledge in my own software.
  
  I never got internet access during high school (my mom saw the movie WarGames and was worried if I had internet access, I might accidentally trigger a house call from the FBI). This just made it all the more exciting when I went to college and not only got a modern computer, but also high-speed campus internet! Like most people, I was tempted to experiment in college. In my case, in 1998 a neighbor in my dorm brought over a series of Red Hat 5.1 floppies (the original 5.1, not RHEL) and set up a dual-boot environment on my computer. The first install was free.
   Desktop Linux in the Late 1990s
  If you weren't around during the late 1990s, you may not realize just how different Linux was back then, but hopefully a screenshot of my desktop will help illustrate (Figure 1).
      Go to Full Article          

• 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
  by Robert Young   
  Linux Journal's very first issue featured an interview between LJ's first Publisher, Robert Young (who went on to co-found Red Hat among other things), and Linus Torvalds (author of the Linux kernel). After 25 years, we thought it'd be interesting to get the two of them together again. You can read that first interview from 1994 here.
  Interview: Linus Torvalds and Robert Young
  Robert Young: It is a great pleasure to have an excuse to reach out to you. How are you and your family? Your kids must be through college by now. Nancy and I and our three daughters are all doing well. Our eldest, Zoe, who was 11 when Marc and I started Red Hat, is expecting her second child—meaning I'm a grandparent.
  
  Linus Torvalds: None of my kids are actually done with college yet, although Patricia (oldest) will graduate this May. And Celeste (youngest) is in her senior year of high school, so we'll be empty-nesters in about six months.
  
  All three are doing fine, and I suspect/hope it will be a few years until the grandparent thing happens.
  
  Bob: When I first interviewed you back in 1994, did you think that you'd be still maintaining this thing in 2019?
  
  Linus: I think that by 1994 I had already become surprised that my latest project hadn't just been another "do something interesting until it does everything I needed, and then find something else to do" project. Sure, it was fairly early in the development, but it had already been something that I had spent a few years on by then, and had already become something with its own life.
  
  So I guess what I'm trying to say is not that I necessarily expected to do it for another few decades, but that it had already passed the bump of becoming something fairly big in my life. I've never really had a long-term plan for Linux, and I have taken things one day at a time rather than worry about something five or ten years down the line.
  
  Bob: There is a famous old quote about the danger of achieving your dreams—your running joke back in the day when asked about your future goals for Linux was "world domination". Now that you and the broader Open Source/Free Software community have achieved that, what's next?
  
  Linus: Well, I stopped doing the "world domination" joke long ago, because it seemed to become less of a joke as time went on. But it always was a joke, and it wasn't why I (or any of the other developers) really did what we did anyway. It was always about just making better technology and having interesting challenges.
      Go to Full Article          

• Free to All: 25th Anniversary Issue of Linux Journal, Download Now
  
  We feel in the mood to celebrate. Free 25th Anniversary Issue of Linux Journal for everyone! Follow this link to get yours: https://www.linuxjournal.com/free_issue 
        Linux Journal                   

• The 25th Anniversary Issue
  by Bryan Lunduke   
  "Linux is an independent implementation of the POSIX operating system specification (basically a public specification of much of the Unix operating system) that has been written entirely from scratch. Linux currently works on IBM PC compatibles with an ISA or EISA bus and a 386 or higher processor. The Linux kernel was written by Linus Torvalds from Finland, and by other volunteers."
  
  Thus begins the very first Letter from the Editor (written by Phil Hughes), in the very first issue of Linux Journal, published in the March/April issue in 1994...25 years ago—coinciding, as fate would have it, with the 1.0.0 release of the Linux kernel itself (on March 14th).
  
  A quarter of a century.
  
  Back when that first issue was published, Microsoft hadn't yet released Windows 95 (version 3.11 running on MS-DOS still dominated home computing). The Commodore Amiga line of computers was still being produced and sold. The music billboards were topped by the likes of Toni Braxton, Ace of Base and Boyz II Men. If you were born the day Linux Journal debuted, by now you'd be a full-grown adult, possibly with three kids, a dog and a mortgage.
  
  Yeah, it was a while ago. (It's okay to take a break and feel old now.)
  
  In that first issue, Robert Young (who, aside from being one of the founders of Linux Journal, you also might recognize as the founder of Red Hat) had an interview with Linus Torvalds.
  
  During the interview, Linus talked about his hope to one day "make a living off this", that he'd guesstimate Linux has "a user base of about 50,000", and the new port of Linux to Amiga computers.
  
  A lot changes in a quarter century, eh?
  
  To mark this momentous occasion, we've reunited Robert Young with Linus Torvalds for a new interview—filled with Linus' thoughts on family, changes since 1994, his dislike of Social Media, and a whole lot more. It is, without a doubt, a fun read. (We're also republishing the complete original 1994 interview in this issue for reference.)
  
  And, if you're curious about the history of Linux Journal, Kyle Rankin's "What Linux Journal's Resurrection Taught Me about the FOSS Community" provides an excellent—and highly personal—look over the last roughly 20 years of not just Linux Journal, but of Linux and free software itself. He even includes pictures of his ahem "super-leet Desktop from 1999". How can you go wrong?
  
  Then we thought to ourselves, "How do we celebrate 25 years of talking about Linux?" The answer was obvious: by looking to the future—to where we (the Linux community) are going. And what better way to understand the future of Linux than to talk to the kids who will shape the world of Linux (and free and open-source software) to come.
      Go to Full Article          

• Official Raspberry Pi Mouse and Keyboard Now Available, SUSE to Become Largest Independent Linux Company, Google Fixed Two Critical Android Security Vulnerabilities, Canonical Announces AWS IoT Greengrass as a Snap and Qt 3D Studio 2.3 Released
  
  News briefs for April 2, 2019.
  
  The official Raspberry Pi keyboard and mouse are now available. You can purchase them now from approved Raspberry Pi resellers. The keyboard is available in six layouts (English (UK), English (US), Spanish, French, German and Italian) with more in the works. The mouse is a " three-button, scroll-wheel optical device with Raspberry Pi logos on the base and cable, coloured to match the Pi case". View a video of the products for more details.
  
  SUSE is on track to become the largest independent Linux company. ZDNet reports that this is due to IBM acquiring Red Hat and SUSE's growth for the past seven straight years. The ZDNet post quotes SUSE CEO Nils Braukmann, "We believe that makes our status as a truly independent open source company more important than ever. Our genuinely open-source solutions, flexible business practices, lack of enforced vendor lock-in, and exceptional service are more critical to customer and partner organizations, and our independence coincides with our single-minded focus on delivering what is best for them."
  
  Google fixed two critical security vulnerabilities in yesterday's 2019-04-01 patch level. According to Bleeping Computer, the issues CVE-2019-2027 and CVE-2019-2028 "are critical vulnerabilities impacting the Media framework which could allow potential remote attackers to make use of specially crafted files 'to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process.'" These vulnerabilities impact all Android 7.0 or later devices, but users should be safe after applying the latest patch.
  
  Canonical released AWS IoT Greengrass as a snap today. The AWS IoT Greengrass software "brings local compute, messaging, data caching, sync, and ML inference capabilities to your IoT device. IoT and embedded developers can now easily install and get started with IoT Greengrass in seconds on an ever-expanding list of Linux distributions. By combining IoT Greengrass as a snap and Ubuntu Core, an IoT-focused OS built entirely from snaps, device manufacturers and system integrators can build an IoT appliance in weeks with no compromise on security and long-term support." You can get the snap here.
  
  Qt 3D Studio 2.3 was released yesterday. This version introduces a new font rendering engine, Variant Tags and several performance improvements. See the Qt 3D Studio documentation page for more details.
        News  Raspberry Pi  SUSE  Google  Android  Security  Canonical  IOT  Qt 3D Studio                   

• Free Penguin Party Stickers!
  by Carlie Fairchild   
  Send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the address below to receive free Penguin Party 3"x4" stickers!
  
  Linux Journal
  
  9597 Jones Rd, #331
  
  Houston, TX 77065
  
  USA
      Go to Full Article