|
1825 Monetary Lane Suite #104 Carrollton, TX
Do a presentation at NTLUG.
What is the Linux Installation Project?
Real companies using Linux!
Not just for business anymore.
Providing ready to run platforms on Linux
|
Show Descriptions... (Show All)
(Two Column)
- RedHat: RHSA-2018-2721:01 Moderate: Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack
`bbLinuxSecurity.com`/bb: An update is now available for Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13.0 (Queens). Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Moderate. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from
- Fedora 27: nss Security Update
`bbLinuxSecurity.com`/bb: Updates the nss family of packages to upstream NSPR 4.20 and NSS 3.39. For details about new functionality and a list of bugs fixed in this release please see the upstream release notes https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/NSS/NSS_3.39_release_notes
- Fedora 27: nspr Security Update
`bbLinuxSecurity.com`/bb: Updates the nss family of packages to upstream NSPR 4.20 and NSS 3.39. For details about new functionality and a list of bugs fixed in this release please see the upstream release notes https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/NSS/NSS_3.39_release_notes
- [$] Code, conflict, and conduct
A couple of surprising things happened in the kernel community onSeptember 16: Linus Torvalds announcedthat he was taking a break from kernel development to focus on improvinghis own behavior, and the longstanding "code of conflict" was replacedwith a code of conduct based on the ContributorCovenant. Those two things did not quite come packaged as a set, butthey are clearly not unrelated. It is atime of change for the kernel project; there will be challenges to overcomebut, in the end, less may change than many expect or fear.
- Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (ghostscript, icu, nspr, nss, nss-softokn, nss-util, and okular), Red Hat (java-1.7.1-ibm, java-1.8.0-ibm, OpenStack Platform, openstack-neutron, and openstack-nova), and Ubuntu (clamav and php5, php7.0, php7.2).
- PostgreSQL adopts a code of conduct
The PostgreSQL community has, after an extended discussion, announced theadoption of a codeof conduct "which is intended toensure that PostgreSQL remains an open and enjoyable project for anyone tojoin and participate in".
- Versity announces next generation open source archiving filesystem
Versity Software has announced that it has released ScoutFS under GPLv2. "ScoutFS is the first GPL archiving file system ever released, creating aninherently safer and more user friendly option for storing archival datawhere accessibility over very large time scales, and the removal of vendorspecific risk is a key consideration."
- Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (discount, ghostscript, intel-microcode, mbedtls, thunderbird, and zutils), Fedora (ghostscript, java-1.8.0-openjdk-aarch32, kernel-headers, kernel-tools, libzypp, matrix-synapse, nspr, nss, nss-softokn, nss-util, zsh, and zypper), Mageia (kernel, kernel-linus, and kernel-tmb), openSUSE (chromium, curl, ffmpeg-4, GraphicsMagick, kernel, libzypp, zypper, okular, python3, spice-gtk, tomcat, and zsh), Oracle (kernel), Slackware (php), SUSE (curl, libzypp, zypper, and openssh-openssl1), and Ubuntu (curl and firefox).
- Apache SpamAssassin 3.4.2 released
SpamAssassin 3.4.2 is out, the first release from this spam-filteringproject since 3.4.1 came out in April 2015. It fixes some remotelyexploitable security issues, so SpamAssassin users probably want toupdate in the near future. "The exploit has been seen in the wild but not believe to have beenpurposefully part of a Denial of Service attempt. We are concerned thatthere may be attempts to abuse the vulnerability in the future. Therefore, we strongly recommend all users of these versions upgrade toApache SpamAssassin 3.4.2 as soon as possible."
- [$] Fedora reawakens the hibernation debate
Behavioral changes can make desktop users grumpy; that is doubly true forchanges that arrive without notice and possibly risk data loss. Such asituation recently arose in the Fedora 29 development branch in theform of a new "suspend-then-hibernate" feature. This feature will almostcertainly be turned off before Fedora 29 reaches an official release,but the discussion and finger-pointing it inspired reveal somesignificant differences of opinion about how this kind of change should bemanaged.
- Kernel prepatch 4.19-rc4; Linus taking a break
Linus has released 4.19-rc4 and made a setof announcements that should really be read in their entirety."I actually think that 4.19 is looking fairly good,things have gotten to the 'calm' period of the release cycle, and I'vetalked to Greg to ask him if he'd mind finishing up 4.19 for me, sothat I can take a break, and try to at least fix my own behavior."
- Lights, Camera, Open Source: Hollywood Turns to Linux for New Code Sharing Initiative (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal covers the new Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), which is a project aimed at open-source collaboration in movie-making software that was started by theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the Linux Foundation. "Still at the early stages, the ASWF has yet to develop any of its own projects, but there is interest in having them host a number of very popular projects, such as Industrial Light & Magic’s OpenEXR HDR image file format, color management solution OpenColorIO, and OPenVDB, which is used for working with those hard-to-handle objects like clouds and fluids.Along with promoting cooperation on the development of a more robust set of tools for the industry, one of the goals of the organization moving forward is to put out a shared licensing template that they hope will help smooth the tensions over licensing. It follows that with the growth of projects, navigating the politics over usage rights is bound to be a tricky task."
- Writing More Compact Bash Code
In any programming language, idioms may be usedthat may not seem obvious from reading the manual.Often these usages of the language represent ways to make yourcode more compact (as in requiring fewer lines of code).
- Did you open source career begin with video games?
Certainly you don't need to be a gamer as a child to grow up and become a developer, nor does being a gamer automatically set you up for a career in technology.But there's definitely a good bit of overlap between the two.read more
- How to Run Commands Simultaneously in Linux
Let’s say you’re editing a configuration file in the Linux “vi” editor, and suddenly need to look up some data in another file? On a regular GUI system, this wouldn’t be a problem. You just open the second file, check when you need, and then switch back to the first program. On a command line, it isn’t that simple.
- 3 top Python libraries for data science
Python's many attractions—such as efficiency, code readability, and speed—have made it the go-to programming language for data science enthusiasts. Python is usually the preferred choice for data scientists and machine learning experts who want to escalate the functionalities of their applications. (For example, Andrey Bulezyuk used the Python programming language to create an amazing machine learning application.)read more
- Wharton Professor Says America Should Shorten the Work Day By 2 Hours
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, New York Times best-selling author, and The Wharton School's top professor, says Americans should work two hours less. Instead of the typical 9-to-5, people "should finish at 3pm," says Grant in a recent LinkedIn post. "We can be as productive and creative in 6 focused hours as in 8 unfocused hours." CNBC reports: In the LinkedIn post, Grant was weighing in on an Atlantic article about the time gap between when school and work days end, a bane for many parents. But it's not the first time Grant has given his stamp of approval to less work with more productivity. "Productivity is less about time management and more about attention management," Grant tweeted in July, highlighting an article about a successful four-day work week study. For the study, a New Zealand company adopted a four-day work week (at five-day pay) with positive results; the company saw benefits ranging from lower stress levels in employees to increased performance. In a recent blog post, billionaire Richard Branson also touted the success of a three-day or four-day work week. "It's easier to attract top talent when you are open and flexible," Branson said in the post. "It's not effective or productive to force them to behave in a conventional way." "Many people out there would love three-day or even four-day weekends," said Branson. "Everyone would welcome more time to spend with their loved ones, more time to get fit and healthy, more time to explore the world."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Linux On Windows 10: Running Ubuntu VMs Just Got a Lot Easier, Says Microsoft
Liam Tung reporting for ZDNet: Ubuntu maintainer Canonical and Microsoft have teamed up to release an optimized Ubuntu Desktop image that's available through Microsoft's Hyper-V gallery. The Ubuntu Desktop image should deliver a better experience when running it as a guest on a Windows 10 Pro host, according to Canonical. The optimized version is Ubuntu Desktop 18.04.1 LTS release, also known as Bionic Beaver. Microsoft's work with Canonical was prompted by its users who wanted a "first-class experience" on Linux virtual machines (VMs) as well as Windows VMs. To achieve this goal, Microsoft worked with the developers of XRDP, an open-source remote-desktop protocol (RDP) for Linux based on Microsoft's RDP for Windows. Thanks to that work, XRDP now supports Microsoft's Enhanced Session Mode, which allows Hyper-V to use the open-source implementation of RDP to connect to Linux VMs. This in turn gives Ubuntu VMs on Windows hosts a better mouse experience, an integrated clipboard, windows resizing, and shared folders for easier file transfers between host and guest. Microsoft's Hyper-V Quick Create VM setup wizard should also help improve the experience. "With the Hyper-V Quick Create feature added in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, we have partnered with Ubuntu and added a virtual machine image so in a few quick minutes, you'll be up and developing," said Clint Rutkas, a senior technical product manager on Microsoft's Windows Developer Team. "This is available now -- just type 'Hyper-V Quick Create' in your start menu."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Chrome OS Revamp Delivers a New Look and Linux App Support
Google has released a Chrome OS 69 update that introduces a range of new features. From a report: Most notably, there's now support for running Linux apps. You'll need a supported machine (a handful of machines from Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Google itself). Still, this could be more than a little helpful if you want to run a conventional desktop app or command line terminal without switching to another PC or a virtual environment. The new software also adds the long-in-the-making Night Light mode to ease your eyes at the end of the day. Voice dictation is now available in any text field, and there's a fresh Files interface that can access Play files and Team Drives.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- EU Drops Court Case After Apple Repays More Than $16 Billion In Taxes and Interest To Ireland
"Ireland's government has fully recovered more than [$16 billion] in disputed taxes and interest from Apple, which it will hold in an escrow fund pending its appeal against a European Union tax ruling," reports The Guardian. From the report: The European commission ruled in August 2016 that Apple had received unfair tax incentives from the Irish government. Both Apple and Dublin are appealing against the original ruling, saying the iPhone maker's tax treatment was in line with Irish and EU law. Ireland's finance ministry, which began collecting the back taxes in a series of payments in May, estimated last year the total amount could have reached -- [$17.5 billion] including EU interest. In the end the amount was [$15.2 billion] in back taxes plus [$1.4 billion] interest. For its part, the commission said it would scrap its lawsuit against Ireland, which it initiated last year because of delays in recovering the money. "In light of the full payment by Apple of the illegal state aid it had received from Ireland, commissioner (Margrethe) Vestager will be proposing to the college of commissioners the withdrawal of this court action," the commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said. Ireland's finance ministry said its appeal had been granted priority status and is progressing through the various stages of private written proceedings before the general court of the European Union (GCEU), Europe's second highest court. The matter will likely take several years to be settled by the European courts, it added.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- People Tend To Cluster Into Four Distinct Personality 'Types,' Says Study
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new study has sifted through some of the largest online data sets of personality quizzes and identified four distinct "types" therein. The new methodology used for this study -- described in detail in a new paper in Nature Human Behavior -- is rigorous and replicable, which could help move personality typing analysis out of the dubious self-help section in your local bookstore and into serious scientific journals. What's new here is the identification of four dominant clusters in the overall distribution of traits. [Paper co-author William Revelle (Northwestern University)] prefers to think of them as "lumps in the batter" and suggests that a good analogy would be how people tend to concentrate in cities in the United States. The Northwestern researchers used publicly available data from online quizzes taken by 1.5 million people around the world. That data was then plotted in accordance with the so-called Big Five basic personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The Big Five is currently the professional standard for social psychologists who study personality. (Here's a good summary of what each of those traits means to psychologists.) They then applied their algorithms to the resulting dataset. Here are the four distinct personality clusters that the researchers ended up with: Average: These people score high in neuroticism and extraversion, but score low in openness. It is the most typical category, with women being more likely than men to fit into it. Reserved: This type of person is stable emotionally without being especially open or neurotic. They tend to score lower on extraversion but tend to be somewhat agreeable and conscientious. Role Models: These people score high in every trait except neuroticism, and the likelihood that someone fits into this category increases dramatically as they age. "These are people who are dependable and open to new ideas," says Amaral. "These are good people to be in charge of things." Women are more likely than men to be role models. Self-Centered: These people score very high in extraversion, but score low in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Most teenage boys would fall into this category, according to Revelle, before (hopefully) maturing out of it. The number of people who fall into this category decreases dramatically with age.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Google's Android OS To Power Dashboard Displays
schwit1 shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Google is making a major push into the auto industry, partnering with the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance to use the tech company's Android OS to power media displays (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) that will eventually be sold in millions of cars world-wide. The auto-making alliance, which together sells more vehicles than any other auto maker, is picking Google to provide the operating system for its next-generation infotainment system, marking a major victory for the Silicon Valley tech giant, which has spent more than a decade trying to replicate the success it has had with the smartphone in the car. The alliance, which last year sold a combined 10.6 million vehicles globally, will debut the new system in 2021, giving drivers better integration of Google's maps, app store and voice-activated assistant from the vehicle's dashboard, the companies said. The move comes as other auto makers have been reluctant to cede control of this space to tech rivals, in part because they see the technology as generating valuable consumer data that can be turned into new revenue streams. Slashdot reader schwit1 adds: "But can I get it unlocked and can it be turned off, like this traveling telescreen?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- iPhone XS, XS Max Are World's Fastest Phones (Again)
According to "several real-world tests and synthetic benchmarks," the new iPhone XS and XS Max, equipped with the world's first 7-nanometer A12 Bionic processor, are the world's fastest smartphones, reports Tom's Guide. They even significantly outperform Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 chip. From the report: Geekbench 4 is a benchmark that measures overall performance, and no other phone comes close to Apple's new handsets on this test. The iPhone Xs notched 11,420, and the iPhone Xs Max hit 11,515. The older iPhone X scored 10,357, so that's about an 11 percent improvement. There's a lot more distance between the new iPhones and Android flagships. The fastest Android phone around, the OnePlus 6, scored 9,088 on Geekbench 4 with its 8GB of RAM, while the Galaxy Note 9 reached 8,876. To test real-world performance, we use the Adobe Premiere Clips app to transcode a 2-minute 4K video to 1080p. The iPhone X was miles ahead last year with a time of just 42 seconds. This time around, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max knocked it down further to 39 seconds. The Galaxy S9+ took 2 minutes and 32 seconds to complete the task, and that's the fastest we've seen from an Android phone. The OnePlus 6 finished in 3:45, and the LG G7 ThinQ took 3:16. One good way to measure real-world performance is to see how long it takes for a phone to load demanding apps. Because the phones have the same processor for this round, we just used the iPhone Xs Max and put it up against the iPhone X and the Galaxy Note 9. The iPhone XS Max was faster every time, including a 15-second victory in Fortnite over the Note 9 and 3-second win in Asphalt 9. The phones were closer in Pokemon Go but the iPhone XS Max still came out on top. The new iPhones did lag behind the competition in the 3DMark Slingshot Extreme test, which measures graphics performance by evaluating everything from rendering to volumetric lighting. The iPhone XS Max and iPhone X received scores of 4,244 and 4,339, respectively, while the OnePlus 6 received a score of 5,124. As for the GFXBench 5 test, the iPhone XS Max achieved 1,604.7 frames on the Aztec Ruins portion of the test, and 1,744.44 frames in the Car Chase test," reports Tom's Guide. "The Note 9 was far behind at 851.7 and 1,103 frames, respectively. However, the Galaxy S9+ edged past the iPhone XS Max on this test."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Tesla Is Facing US Criminal Probe Over Elon Musk Statements
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Tesla is under investigation by the Justice Department over public statements made by the company and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. The criminal probe is running alongside a previously reported civil inquiry by securities regulators. Federal prosecutors opened a fraud investigation after Musk tweeted last month that he was contemplating taking Tesla private and had "funding secured" for the deal. The tweet initially sent the company's shares higher. Tesla confirmed it has been contacted by the Justice Department. The investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of California follows a subpoena issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking information from the electric-car maker about Musk's plans to go private, which he has since abandoned. Tesla said in a statement following Bloomberg's report: "Last month, following Elon's announcement that he was considering taking the company private, Tesla received a voluntary request for documents from the DOJ and has been cooperative in responding to it. We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process. We respect the DOJ's desire to get information about this and believe that the matter should be quickly resolved as they review the information they have received."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Cyber Sleuths Find Traces of Infamous iPhone and Android Spyware 'Pegasus' in 45 Countries
Security researchers have found evidence that a piece of malware peddled as "lawful intercept" software to government agencies has been deployed against victims located in 45 countries, a number that far outweighs the number of known operators, meaning that some of them are conducting illegal cross-border surveillance. The findings come from a report published by Citizen Lab, a digital rights watchdog at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. ZDNet: The malware, known as Pegasus (or Trident), was created by Israeli cyber-security firm NSO Group and has been around for at least three years -- when it was first detailed in a report over the summer of 2016. The malware can operate on both Android and iOS devices, albeit it's been mostly spotted in campaigns targeting iPhone users primarily. On infected devices, Pegasus is a powerful spyware that can do many things, such as record conversations, steal private messages, exfiltrate photos, and much much more. Citizen Lab's researchers explained how they were able to arrive at the conclusion. They said they identified 1,091 IP addresses that matched their fingerprint for NSO's spyware. Then, they clustered the IP addresses into 36 separate operators with traces in 45 countries where these government agencies "may be conducting surveillance operations" between August 2016 and August 2018. Motherboard adds: Some of the countries where the researchers spotted Pegasus in democratic countries, such as the United States, France, and the UK, but there's also countries with questionable human rights records such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Mexico, Turkey, and Yemen. There's a caveat though. In some cases, the researchers aren't sure if the traces they found indicate an infection -- thus a target that may have been hacked from a foreign country -- or an operator. [...] "I can only hope that our research is causing these companies to think twice about sales where there is the potential for spyware abuse, causing potential customers to think twice about being associated with a company dealing with repressive governments, and causing potential investors to think twice about the inherently risky business of selling spyware to dictators." The report includes a corroboration of sorts from security firm Lookout, which noted that it had detected "three digits" Pegasus infections around the world.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Google is Giving up Some Control of the AMP Format
Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, has been a controversial project since its debut. Critics say AMP is a Google-specific project and it is creating a walled-garden, which would only serve Google's best interests. On its part, Google has insisted that AMP's mission is to benefit the open web, and that many who contribute to AMP are non-Googlers. On Tuesday, Google announced that it would be giving up some control of how the code behind AMP is managed. A report adds: It plans to move the AMP Project to a "new governance model," which is to say that decisions about the code will be made by a committee that includes non-Googlers. Until now, final decisions about AMP's code have been made by Malte Ubl, the tech lead for the AMP Project at Google. A model with a single person in charge is not actually all that rare in open source. That person is often cheekily referred to as the BDFL, or "benevolent dictator for life." Ubl's been that person for AMP, but, he writes, "we've found that it doesn't scale to the size of the AMP Project today. Instead, we want to move to a model that explicitly gives a voice to all constituents of the community, including those who cannot contribute code themselves, such as end-users." [...] Google has already signed up non-Google people for the Advisory Committee, which will include representatives from The Washington Post, AliExpress, eBay, Cloudflare, and Automattic (which makes WordPress). Ubl says that it will also include "advocates for an open web," including "Leonie Watson of The Paciello Group, Nicole Sullivan of Google / Chrome, and Terence Eden." Of course, as anybody who's taken part in a committee knows, it's neither a fun solution nor a guarantee that a single company or person won't dominate it. But it's a step in the right direction, and Google is encouraging people to comment on the plan at the AMP Contributor Summit on September 25th.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Microsoft tries a thinking cap on its cloud – voila, Dynamics 365 gets AI!
Also in news that will shock no one: HoloLens headgear a must, says Redmond
Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 got a tickling by AI on Tuesday as the software giant announced new applications aimed at sales and those at the pointy end of customer service, as well as mixed reality demoware creeping closer to reality.…
- Essential Software That Are Not Available On Linux OS
An operating system is essentially the most important component in a computer. It manages the different hardware and software components of a computer in the most effective way. There are different types of operating system and everything comes with their own set of programs and software. You cannot expect a Linux program to have all [0]
- Things You Never Knew About Your Operating System
The advent of computers has brought about a revolution in our daily life. From computers that were so huge to fit in a room, we have come a very long way to desktops and even palmtops. These machines have become our virtual lockers, and a life without these network machines have become unimaginable. Sending mails, [0]
- How To Fully Optimize Your Operating System
Computers and systems are tricky and complicated. If you lack a thorough knowledge or even basic knowledge of computers, you will often find yourself in a bind. You must understand that something as complicated as a computer requires constant care and constant cleaning up of junk files. Unless you put in the time to configure [0]
- The Top Problems With Major Operating Systems
There is no such system which does not give you any problems. Even if the system and the operating system of your system is easy to understand, there will be some times when certain problems will arise. Most of these problems are easy to handle and easy to get rid of. But you must be [0]
- 8 Benefits Of Linux OS
Linux is a small and a fast-growing operating system. However, we can’t term it as software yet. As discussed in the article about what can a Linux OS do Linux is a kernel. Now, kernels are used for software and programs. These kernels are used by the computer and can be used with various third-party software [0]
- Things Linux OS Can Do That Other OS Can’t
What Is Linux OS? Linux, similar to U-bix is an operating system which can be used for various computers, hand held devices, embedded devices, etc. The reason why Linux operated system is preferred by many, is because it is easy to use and re-use. Linux based operating system is technically not an Operating System. Operating [0]
- Packagekit Interview
Packagekit aims to make the management of applications in the Linux and GNU systems. The main objective to remove the pains it takes to create a system. Along with this in an interview, Richard Hughes, the developer of Packagekit said that he aims to make the Linux systems just as powerful as the Windows or [0]
- What’s New in Ubuntu?
What Is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is open source software. It is useful for Linux based computers. The software is marketed by the Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu community. Ubuntu was first released in late October in 2004. The Ubuntu program uses Java, Python, C, C++ and C# programming languages. What Is New? The version 17.04 is now available here [0]
- Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs In Windows With Regards To Colinux
The problem with Windows is that there are various limitations to the computer and there is only so much you can do with it. You can access the Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs by using the coLinux tool. Download the tool from the official site or from the sourceforge site. Edit the connection to “TAP Win32 Adapter [0]
- Getting It To Better Stability And Performance
Every computer user wants their computers to run as smoothly as possible. Here are few tips to ensure that: Clear out all junk files from time to time. Do not overload your computer’s C: drive. Uninstall all unnecessary applications. Remember to use the task manager to check out unnecessary service. Disable the service if you [0]
- Google China prototype links searches to phone numbers
Google built a prototype of a censored search engine for China that links users' searches to their personal phone numbers, thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people's queries, The Intercept can reveal. The search engine, codenamed Dragonfly, was designed for Android devices, and would remove content deemed sensitive by China's ruling Communist Party regime, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.
Don't be evil.
- Linus apologises for his years of abrasive behaviour
Linus Torvalds on the lkml:
This is my reality. I am not an emotionally empathetic kind of person and that probably doesn't come as a big surprise to anybody. Least of all me. The fact that I then misread people and don't realize (for years) how badly I've judged a situation and contributed to an unprofessional environment is not good. This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry. The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely. I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately.
Actions speak louder than words, so we'll see if this sudden realisation will lead to anything tangible.
- iOS 12: the MacStories review
With iOS 12, Apple wants to rectify iOS' performance woes, proving to their customers that iOS updates should never induce digital regret. Perhaps more notably though, iOS 12 doesn't have a single consumer feature that encapsulates this release - like Messages might have been for iOS 10 or the iPad for iOS 11. Instead, iOS 12 is a constellation of enhancements revolving around the overarching theme of time. Apple in 2018 needs more time for whatever the next big step of iOS may be; they want iOS users to understand how much time they're spending on their devices; and they want to help users spend less time managing certain system features. Also, funnily enough, saving time is at the core (and in the very name) of iOS 12's most exciting new feature: Shortcuts. iOS 12 isn't Apple's Snow Leopard release: its system changes and updated apps wouldn't justify a "No New Features" slide. However, for the first time in years, it feels as if the company is happy to let its foot off the gas a little and listen to users more. Will the plan work?
Federico Viticci's iOS reviews have become one of my favourite things about new iOS releases. They are detailed, thorough, fun to read, and lovingly crafted. So, after you're done updating your iOS devices - iOS 12, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12 have all been released today - grab yourself a coffee or tea and enjoy.
- A Commodore 64 operating system with modern concepts
C64 OS has one goal. Make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful in today's modern world. It's a very high bar. The C64 was introduced in 1982 and has an 8-bit, 1MHz, 6510 CPU with just 64 kilobytes of directly addressable memory. It has a screen resolution of 320x200 pixels, and a fixed palette of 16 colors. But, it is an incredibly versatile machine. And it enjoys an active userbase and a great variety of modern hardware expansions. The C64 has had many operating systems written for it, So why write another? Some of these projects were designed to be experimental, or to demonstrate a point, rather than to solve a problem or to make using the C64 better. Others had good intentions but pushed the machine in ways it wasn't designed for, compromising on speed and usability in the pursuit of features available on more powerful computers. The aim of C64 OS is to work with the limitations of the Commodore 64 and enable it to become useful.
It never ceases to amaze me how much functionality programmers can squeeze out of old micros.
- NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture deep dive: prelude to RTX
It's been roughly a month since NVIDIA's Turing architecture was revealed, and if the GeForce RTX 20-series announcement a few weeks ago has clued us in on anything, is that real time raytracing was important enough for NVIDIA to drop "GeForce GTX" for "GeForce RTX" and completely change the tenor of how they talk about gaming video cards. Since then, it's become clear that Turing and the GeForce RTX 20-series have a lot of moving parts: RT Cores, real time raytracing, Tensor Cores, AI features (i.e. DLSS), raytracing APIs. All of it coming together for a future direction of both game development and GeForce cards. In a significant departure from past launches, NVIDIA has broken up the embargos around the unveiling of their latest cards into two parts: architecture and performance. For the first part, today NVIDIA has finally lifted the veil on much of the Turing architecture details, and there are many. So many that there are some interesting aspects that have yet to be explained, and some that we'll need to dig into alongside objective data. But it also gives us an opportunity to pick apart the namesake of GeForce RTX: raytracing.
AnandTech's deep dive into NVIDIA's new Turing architecture - the only one you really need.
- Microsoft backs off from 'warning' about Chrome and Firefox
Microsoft started testing a warning for Windows 10 users last week that displayed a prompt when Chrome or Firefox was about to be installed. The software giant is now reversing this controversial test in its latest Windows 10 preview, released last Friday. The Verge understands Microsoft no longer plans to include this warning in the upcoming Windows 10 October 2018 Update that will ship next month, but that the company may continue to test these types of prompts in future updates.
Good move, but I don't think we've seen the last of this quite yet.
- The making of Total Annihilation
Total Annihilation came out when games, and RTS games in particular, were quickly evolving. By the mid-Nineties, PCs were capable of capturing the necessary scale of battles, and online gaming was about to become a phenomenon. And it was that world Total Annihilation creator Chris Taylor was waiting for. We caught up with Chris and asked him about the game's origins.
Total Annihilation was such an amazing game that kind of seemed to have gotten lost between the much more popular Command & Conquer and Warcraft games of its time. Which is a shame, because it had quite a few revolutionary elements for its time.
- x86 finds its way into your iPhone
In one of my several lives, I'm supposed to be a vulnerability researcher working on baseband exploitation. As every vulnerability researcher knows, being up to date with recent developments is of utmost importance for the success of your job. So of course, after Apple announced its new, shiny, big, bigger and biggest line of iPhone smartphones, I downloaded some OTA firmwares from ipsw.me and started to look into the new baseband firmware. What I discovered sent a shiver of horror down my spine, the kind of horror that only playing Doom at nighttime, alone in your room, without lights, can produce. Bear with me and I'll tell you what I found...
So the baseband processor inside the iPhone XS is a tiny x86 processor. That's not really all that meaningful or impactful, but I find it deeply fascinating nonetheless.
- Leaving Apple and Google: /e/ first beta is here
Less than a year ago, I posted a serie of articles "Leaving Apple & Google..." [part 2, part 2] to announce that I was planning to create a smartphone OS. A new OS that would: be free from Google (no Google services, no Google search, no Google Play store, etc.) be far more respectful of user's data privacy be attractive enough so that Mom and Dad, children and friends would enjoy using it even if they aren't technophiles or geeks Today we release a first beta of what we have done so far to make the initial vision a reality.
It's basically LineageOS with a number of additional tweaks and changes, but if it can become a fully-featured Google-free Android, that's always welcome.
- Linux Community to Adopt New Code of Conduct, Firefox Reality Browser Now Available, Lamplight City Game Released, openSUSE Summit Nashville Announced and It's Now Easier to Run Ubuntu VMs on Windows 10
News briefs for September 18, 2018.
Following Linus Torvalds' apology for his behavior, the Linux Community has announced it will adopt a "Code of Conduct", which pledges to make "participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation."
Mozilla announced this morning that its new Firefox Reality browser, "designed from the ground up to work on stand-alone virtual and augmented reality (or mixed reality) headsets", is now available in the Viveport, Oculus and Daydream app stores. See the Mozilla blog for more information, how to participate and download links.
The new game Lamplight City, "a steampunk-ish detective adventure" was released recently for Linux, Windows and macOS. See the Steam store for more info and to purchase.
openSUSE announces it will hold its openSUSE SUmmit in Nashville, Tennessee, next year, April 5-6, 2019. Registration is now open for the event and the call for papers is open until January 15, 2019.
It's now much easier to run Ubuntu VMs on Windows 10 via Hyper-V Quick Create. According to ZDNet, Canonical and Microsoft partnered to release "an optimized Ubuntu Desktop image that's available through Microsoft's Hyper-V Gallery".
News Community Linus Torvalds Firefox VR Mozilla gaming openSUSE Ubuntu Windows Desktop Virtual Machines
- Writing More Compact Bash Code
by Mitch Frazier
In any programming language, idioms may be used that may not seem obvious from reading the manual. Often these usages of the language represent ways to make your code more compact (as in requiring fewer lines of code). Of course, some will eschew these idioms believing they represent bad style. Style, of course, is in the eyes of beholder, and this article is not intended as an exercise in defining good or bad style. So for those who may be tempted to comment on the grounds of style I would (re)direct your attention to /dev/null.
Go to Full Article
- Globbing and Regex: So Similar, So Different
by Shawn Powers
Grepping is awesome, as long as you don't glob it up! This article covers some grep and regex basics.
There are generally two types of coffee drinkers. The first type buys a can of pre-ground beans and uses the included scoop to make their automatic drip coffee in the morning. The second type picks single-origin beans from various parts of the world, accepts only beans that have been roasted within the past week and grinds those beans with a conical burr grinder moments before brewing in any number of complicated methods. Text searching is a bit like that.
For most things on the command line, people think of *.* or *.txt and are happy to use file globbing to select the files they want. When it comes to grepping a log file, however, you need to get a little fancier. The confusing part is when the syntax of globbing and regex overlap. Thankfully, it's not hard to figure out when to use which construct.
Globbing
The command shell uses globbing for filename completion. If you type something like ls *.txt, you'll get a list of all the files that end in .txt in the current directory. If you do ls R*.txt, you'll get all the files that start with capital R and have the .txt extension. The asterisk is a wild card that lets you quickly filter which files you mean.
You also can use a question mark in globbing if you want to specify a single character. So, typing ls read??.txt will list readme.txt, but not read.txt. That's different from ls read*.txt, which will match both readme.txt and read.txt, because the asterisk means "zero or more characters" in the file glob.
Here's the easy way to remember if you're using globbing (which is very simple) vs. regular expressions: globbing is done to filenames by the shell, and regex is used for searching text. The only frustrating exception to this is that sometimes the shell is too smart and conveniently does globbing when you don't want it to—for example:
grep file* README.TXT
In most cases, this will search the file README.TXT looking for the regular expression file*, which is what you normally want. But if there happens to be a file in the current folder that matches the file* glob (let's say filename.txt), the shell will assume you meant to pass that to grep, and so grep actually will see:
grep filename.txt README.TXT
Gee, thank you so much Mr. Shell, but that's not what I wanted to do. For that reason, I recommend always using quotation marks when using grep. 99% of the time you won't get an accidental glob match, but that 1% can be infuriating. So when using grep, this is much safer:
grep "file*" README.TXT
Because even if there is a filename.txt, the shell won't substitute it automatically.
Go to Full Article
- Linus Torvalds Taking a Break, Help Krita Squash the Bugs, Vulnerability in Alpine Linux, Flatpak Now Works on Windows Subsystem for Linux and AnsibleFest 2018 Announced
News briefs for September 17, 2018.
Linus Torvalds is taking a break. In his rc4 email update over the weekend, he writes about his scheduling mix-up with the kernel summit and having a "look yourself in the mirror moment", and then (to summarize), he writes: "hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely. I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately."
Krita announced its developer fundraiser "let's squash the bugs"! The goal this year for the open-source graphics editor is to "fix bugs, make Krita more stable and bring more polish and shine to all the features we have made possible together". Visit here to learn how you can help.
A vulnerability, has been discovered in Alpine Linux, which is commonly used in Docker images. Worst-case scenario, according to post on Neowin for more on the story, and the "hacky workarounds" required.
Red Hat announces AnsibleFest 2018, which will be held October 2-3, in Austin, Texas and will cover many aspects of IT automation. See the AnsibleFest website for all the details.
News Linus Torvalds kernel Krita Alpine Linux Docker Security Windows Flatpak Ansible Red Hat
- Fedora Silverblue Test Day Next Week, Nextcloud 14 Released, Plasma 5.4 Beta Now Available, openSUSE's Recent Snapshots and Ansible Tower 3.3 Is Out
News briefs for September 14, 2018.
The Fedora Workstation Team is holding a test day next week for Fedora Silverblue, a new variant of Fedora that has rpm-ostree at its core and provides fully atomic upgrades. The test day is Thursday, September 20, 2018. For more information on how to participate, visit the Silverblue Test Day Wiki page.
Nextcloud announced the release of version 14 this week. This new version introduces two big security improvements: video verification and signal/telegram/SMS 2FA support. Version 14 also includes many collaboration improvements as well as a Data Protection Confirmation app in compliance with the GDPR. Go here to install.
KDE released Plasma 5.14 beta yesterday. New to this version are improvements to Plasma's Discover software manager and the addition of a Firmware Update feature, among other things. The final release should be available in three weeks.
openSUSE has released three new snapshots, and the latest brought new major versions of Flatpak and qemu. Flatpak version 1.0 came with snapshot 20180911, and Mozilla Thunderbird received a major update in snapshot 20180910. See the announcement for more details on all the recent snapshot updates.
Ansible Tower 3.3 is now available. New enhancements include added functionality with Red Hat OpenShift, more granular permissions, improvements to the scheduler, support for multiple Ansible environments and more. Visit here for a free trial of Ansible Tower.
News Fedora Nextcloud Cloud Plasma KDE openSUSE Ansible Red Hat
- Lights, Camera, Open Source: Hollywood Turns to Linux for New Code Sharing Initiative
by Gabriel Avner
Software has permeated all industries, bringing us technologies to help create fantastic products and even works of art.No longer confined to sectors whose products are software-focused, everyone from the automotive to the medical industries are writing their own code to meet their needs, some of which may surprise you.
In looking to code smarter, faster and more efficiently, developers across the globe and industries are turning to open-source components that allow them to add powerful features to their work without having to write everything from scratch themselves. One of the latest groups to embrace the Open Source movement is the entertainment industry.
Similar to many other initiatives that have come together in recent years to support the sharing of code between companies, a number of key players under the umbrella of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have teamed up with The Linux Foundation to establish the Go to Full Article
- A Look at KDE's KAlgebra
by Joey Bernard
Many of the programs I've covered in the past have have been desktop-environment-agnostic—all they required was some sort of graphical display running. This article looks at one of the programs available in the KDE desktop environment, KAlgebra.
You can use your distribution's package management system to install it, or you can use Discover, KDE's package manager. After it's installed, you can start it from the command line or the launch menu.
When you first start KAlgebra, you get a blank slate to start doing calculations.
Figure 1. When you start KAlgebra, you get a blank canvas for doing calculations.
The screen layout is a large main pane where all of the calculations and their results are displayed. At the top of this pane are four tabs: Calculator, 2D Graph, 3D Graph and Dictionary. There's also a smaller pane on the right-hand side used for different purposes for each tab.
In the calculator tab, the side pane gives a list of variables, including predefined variables for things like pi or euler, available when you start your new session. You can add new variables with the following syntax:
a := 3
This creates a new variable named a with an initial value of 3. This new variable also will be visible in the list on the right-hand side. Using these variables is as easy as executing them. For example, you can double it with the following:
a * 2
There is a special variable called ans that you can use to get the result from your most recent calculation. All of the standard mathematical operators are available for doing calculations.
Figure 2. KAlgebra lets you create your own variables and functions for even more complex calculations.
There's also a complete set of functions for doing more complex calculations, such as trigonometric functions, mathematical functions like absolute value or floor, and even calculus functions like finding the derivative. For instance, the following lets you find the sine of 45 degrees:
sin(45)
You also can define your own functions using the lambda operator ->. If you want to create a function that calculates cubes, you could do this:
x -> x^3
This is pretty hard to use, so you may want to assign it to a variable name:
cube := x -> x^3
You then can use it just like any other function, and it also shows up in the list of variables on the right-hand side pane.
Go to Full Article
- Support for a LoRaWAN Subsystem
by Zack Brown
Sometimes kernel developers find themselves competing with each other to get their version of a particular feature into the kernel. But sometimes developers discover they've been working along very similar lines, and the only reason they hadn't been working together was that they just didn't know each other existed.
Recently, Jian-Hong Pan asked if there was any interest in a LoRaWAN subsystem he'd been working on. LoRaWAN is a commercial networking protocol implementing a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) allowing relatively slow communications between things, generally phone sensors and other internet of things devices. Jian-Hong posted a link to the work he'd done so far: https://github.com/starnight/LoRa/tree/lorawan-ndo/LoRaWAN.
He specifically wanted to know "should we add the definitions into corresponding kernel header files now, if LoRaWAN will be accepted as a subsystem in Linux?" The reason he was asking was that each definition had its own number. Adding them into the kernel would mean the numbers associated with any future LoRaWAN subsystem would stay the same during development.
However, Marcel Holtmann explained the process:
When you submit your LoRaWAN subsystem to netdev for review, include a patch that adds these new address family definitions. Just pick the next one available. There will be no pre-allocation of numbers until your work has been accepted upstream. Meaning, that the number might change if other address families get merged before yours. So you have to keep updating. glibc will eventually follow the number assigned by the kernel.
Meanwhile, Andreas Färber said he'd been working on supporting the same protocol himself and gave a link to his own proof-of-concept repository: https://github.com/afaerber/lora-modules.
On learning about Andreas' work, Jian-Hong's response was, "Wow! Great! I get new friends :)"
That's where the public conversation ended. The two of them undoubtedly have pooled their energies and will produce a new patch, better than either of them might have done separately.
Go to Full Article
- The First Beta of the /e/ OS to Be Released Soon, Canonical's Security Patch for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Parrot 4.2.2 Now Available, Open Jam 2018 Announced and Lightbend's Fast Data Platform Now on Kubernetes
News briefs for September 12, 2018.
Gaël Duval writes that the first beta of the /e/ OS will be released soon. See his post for more information on how to test it and a list of supported Android devices.
Canonical yesterday released a Linux kernel security patch for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS that addresses two recnetly discovered vulnerabilities. See Softpedia News for more information, and update now if you haven't already.
Parrot, the Debian-based distro for "security experts, developers and crypto-addicted people", released verion 4.2.2 this week. This new version is powered by the latest 4.18 kernel and features a new version of the Debian-Installer, updated firmware packages, the latest LibreOffice 6.1 release, Firefox 62 and more. See the release notes for all the updates.
Open Jam, the open-source game jam, will run this year from October 5–8th: "Participants will build an open source game from scratch in 80 hours, play and judge other games, and compete for a chance to have their game featured at All Things Open." See the announcement on Opensource.com for all the details and how to participate.
Lightbend announced yesterday that version 2.0 of its Fast Data Platform is now available on Kubernetes, making it the "most complete platform for developing and operating microservices-based AI, ML, IoT and other streaming data-based applications. Visit the Lightbend website for more information.
News /e/ Android Mobile Canonical Ubuntu Security Parrot gaming Kubernetes
- IRC's 30th Birthday; Mozilla Working on New JavaScript APIs for VR; Arch Linux Answering Questions on Reddit; Microsoft Splits Its Visual Studio Team Services; and Hortonworks, IBM and Red Hat Announce the Open Hybrid Architecture Initiative
News briefs for September 11, 2018.
IRC recently celebrated its 30 birthday. The internet chat system was developed in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen at the Department of Information Processing Science of the University of Oulu. See the post on the University of Oulu website for more details.
Mozilla yesterday announced it is beginning a new phase of work on JavaScript APIs "that will help everyone create and share virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects on the open web". Mozilla's new WebXR Device API has two goals: 1) "To support a wider variety of user inputs, such as voice and gestures, giving users options for navigating and interacting in virtual spaces"; and 2) "To establish a technical foundation for development of AR experiences, letting creators integrate real-world media with contextual overlays that elevate the experience." For more information, see the Immersive Web Community Group.
The Arch Linux team is answering questions on Reddit. The post also mentions they are looking for new contributors. See the Arch Linux wiki for more information.
Microsoft is splitting its Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) into five separate Azure-branded services, which will be called Azure DevOps, Ars Technica reports. In addition, the Azure Piplines component—"a continuous integration, testing, and deployment system that can connect to any Git repository"—will be available for open-source projects, and "open-source developers will have unlimited build time and up to 10 parallel jobs".
Hortonworks, IBM and Red Hat yesterday announced the Open Hybrid Architecture Initiative, a "new collaborative effort the companies can use to build a common enterprise deployment model that is designed to enable big data workloads to run in a hybrid manner across on-premises, multi-cloud and edge architectures". For the initial phase, the companies will work together to "optimize Hortonworks Data Platform, Hortonworks DataFlow, Hortonworks DataPlane and IBM Cloud Private for Data for use on Red Hat OpenShift, an industry-leading enterprise container and Kubernetes application platform".
News IRC Mozilla Arch Linux Microsoft open source DevOps Azure Red Hat Kubernetes Cloud Big Data OpenShift
- Extended File Attributes Rock!
Worldwide, data is growing at a tremendous rate. However, one recent study has pointed out that the size of files is not necessarily growing at the same rate; meaning the number of files is growing rapidly. How do we manage all of this data and files? While the answer to that question is complex, one place we can start is with Extended File Attributes. Continue reading
- Checksumming Files to Find Bit-Rot
In a previous article extended file attributes were presented. These are additional bits of metadata that are tied to the file and can be used in a variety of ways. One of these ways is to add checksums to the file so that corrupted data can be detected. Let's take a look at how we can do this including some simple Python examples. Continue reading
- What’s an inode?
As you might have noticed, we love talking about file systems. In these discussions the term "inode" is often thrown about. But what is an inode and how does it relate to a file system? Glad you asked. Continue reading
- Emailing HPC
Email is not unlike MPI. The similarities may help non-geeks understand parallel computers a little better. Continue reading
|
