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Links 8/10/2020: GIMP 2.10.22 and DXVK 1.7.2



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Announcing the 2nd Generation Kubuntu Focus M2 Linux Laptop

        The Ultimate Turnkey Linux Laptop just got better. The Kubuntu Focus team announces the immediate availability of their second generation laptop. Customers experience power out of the box acclaimed by both experts and new users alike. The finely-tuned Focus virtually eliminates the need to configure the OS, applications, or updates. Kubuntu combines industry standard Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with the beautiful yet familiar KDE desktop. With dozens of Guided Solutions and unparalleled support, the shortest path to Linux success is the Focus.

        The Focus team provides unparalleled customer support with custom order built same-day, Guided Solutions, cross-shipping, and free live support. Our team takes care of the platform so customers can focus on work and play.

      • Kubuntu Focus M2 Linux laptop is here

        Back in the day, getting a laptop with Linux pre-installed was almost unheard of. For the most part, you had to buy a computer with Windows and then install Linux yourself. This wasn't bad, necessarily, but it did mean that the price of the computer included a Windows license you maybe didn't want. In other words, Microsoft was profiting off of Linux users -- just because they bought a Windows PC.

        In 2020, however, there are many computers to be had with Linux pre-installed, thanks to pioneers like System76. Of course, nowadays, big companies like Dell and Lenovo are selling Linux machines too. Today, yet another such laptop hits the market -- the second generation Kubuntu Focus M2. Yes, this is the second officially sanctioned notebook from the developers of the KDE variant of Ubuntu.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • FLOSS Weekly 599: Foresight Institute - Future of FLOSS, Open-Source Think Tank, Blockchain

        Christine Peterson is a Cofounder, and Senior Fellow at Foresight Institute, a leading think tank, and public interest non-profit organization focused on emerging world-shaping technologies. Christine is also credited with coining the term 'Open Source Software'. Host Doc Searls and Simon Phipps discuss with Christine the start of the open-source movement and the future of the module of open source. Christine also expresses her concerns with Blockchain.

    • Kernel Space

      • Graphics Stack

        • NVIDIA 455.28 Released As Stable Linux Driver For RTX 3080/3090

          Last month marked the release of the 455.23.04 beta driver for NVIDIA Linux users in providing support for the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards. The NVIDIA 455.28 Linux driver is out today as their first official 455 series release and also stable RTX 3080/3090 Ampere support.

          On top of the NVIDIA 455 series supporting the Ampere RTX 30 series, the driver series for Linux users also adds VDPAU VP9 10/12-bit support, improved base mosaic support, support for the NVIDIA NGX updater, Vulkan additions, and more.

        • NVIDIA driver 455.28 is out for Linux, new GPU support and lots of bug fixes

          NVIDIA have produced a brand new stable Linux driver with version 455.28, which adds in new GPU support and there's plenty of fixes for us too.

          This is a proper mainline stable driver, so it should be good for anyone to upgrade with. A lot of this is coming over from previous Beta releases.

          With this new 455.28 driver it sees official Linux support for the GeForce RTX 3080, GeForce RTX 3090 and the GeForce MX450. That's not all that was added. In this release they hooked up support for a new device-local VkMemoryType which is host-coherent and host-visible, which they said may lead to better performance for running certain titles with the DXVK translation layer like DiRT Rally 2.0, DOOM: Eternal and World of Warcraft. It also adds NVIDIA VDPAU driver support for decoding VP9 10- and 12-bit bitstreams.

        • Intel Releases OpenVINO 2021.1 With Tigerlake Support, Expanded Capabilities

          Ready to move past the tumultuous year that is 2020, Intel's open-source developers responsible for the OpenVINO toolkit today issued version 2021.1 with some big ticket additions.

          While it's only October 2020, OpenVINO 2021.1 is out today with support for 11th Gen Intel Core (Tigerlake) processors and Xe Graphics, TensorFlow 2.2.x support, the OpenVINO Model Server for distributing models across cloud/edge environments, and expanding beyond just computer vision.

        • AMDGPU Linux Kernel Driver Support Posted For The "Dimgrey Cavefish"

          At the end of September there were Mesa patches posted for the "Dimgrey Cavefish" at the same time as also posting VanGogh APU support for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver. The AMDGPU Linux kernel driver support has now been posted for the Dimgrey Cavefish.

          The Dimgrey Cavefish is another RDNA2 part alongside Sienna Cichlid and Navy Flounder.

        • Mike Blumenkrantz: Back To Caching

          I’m back, and I’m about to get even deeper into zink’s descriptor management. I figured everyone including me is well acquainted with bucket allocating, so I skipped that day and we can all just imagine what that post would’ve been like instead.

    • Benchmarks

      • Blender 2.90 Performance With GeForce RTX 3080, 18-Way NVIDIA CUDA/OptiX Comparison

        Complementing yesterday's large GPU compute comparison with the GeForce RTX 3080 across many different workloads, today's article is looking at the Blender 2.90 render performance for this consumer Ampere $699+ graphics card.

        Like with the numbers shown yesterday, the GeForce RTX 3080 is a serious upgrade over the RTX 2000 Turing series and older generations. With this Blender 2.90 comparison and testing the CUDA and OptiX back-ends, the comparison GPUs are going back to the GeForce GTX 900 "Maxwell" era hardware.

        Blender's CUDA performance remains great but the OptiX back-end really screams when it comes to performance on NVIDIA RTX GPUs where the RT cores can be exploited for great performance. The cards tested for this comparison based on availability included...

    • Applications

      • Voice Chat App Mumble 1.3.3 Released with Stability Improvements[PPA]

        Mumble, open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat software, released version 1.3.3 a few days ago. PPA updated for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 20.04.

      • The 10 Best Linux Hex Editors

        An Hex editor is a program that allows the user to view, edit, and manipulate binary files, which contain data that is readable by machines, but not humans. This is where hex editors come into play because unlike other programs and tools which interpret data from files, hex editors, on the other hand, offer the user an opportunity to edit the physical binary contents of a file.

        So, if you are looking to hex edit raw data, we will list the top 10 Linux hex editors to help you do so!

        A usual hex editor has three separate areas: the “hexadecimal area” located in the middle, the “address area” sitting on the left, and the “character area” on the right side. Furthermore, some of these hex editors, mainly known as sector or disk editors, have features that allow the user to edit and analyze sector data from hard disks and floppy disks.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Wine or Emulation

      • DXVK 1.7.2 Released With Many Fixes For Direct3D Atop Vulkan

        DXVK 1.7.2 was just released as this popular library for mapping Direct3D 9/10/11 atop the Vulkan API primarily for accelerating Windows games on Linux via the likes of Steam Play (Proton) and Wine.

        DXVK 1.7.2 brings fixes for various Direct3D 9 crashes, workarounds for rendering issues with AMD drivers for some Unity games, support for disabling log files, and various game-specific fixes/improvements.

      • D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 to Vulkan translation layer DXVK release 1.7.2 is up

        Developer Philip Rebohle announced today the release of DXVK 1.7.2 to further improve the D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 to Vulkan translation layer.

        Used with Wine, and part of the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer, it's great to see it still moving along. This is the first release since August and while it's technically a minor release in versioning, the actual fixes included look to be quite important.

        There's a "major" regression fixed for D3D9 titles that caused crashes in many games, a fix for D3D9 crashes on AMDVLK due to invalid Vulkan API usage, they've worked around some stack overflows in some 32-bit D3D9 games, a workaround is now in place for rendering issues on AMD drivers in some Unity Engine games, another workaround is added for Unicode on Windows "being garbage" and you can disable log files being created.

      • DXVK DirectX To Vulkan Translation Layer 1.7.2 Released

        The Fr-041: d e b r i s PC demo released by the German demo group Farbrausch in 2007 is one of the many DirectX 9 applications you can run in Wine with DXVK as a Direct3D to Vulkan translation layer.

        DXVK is a Direct3D 9 to 11 translation layer that transforms Direct3D draw calls into Vulkan. It is very useful as a back-end to Wine since it is slightly faster than Wine's own wined3d Direct3D to OpenGL translation layer.

        DXVK development has essentially been in maintenance mode for almost a year now. That doesn't mean it's dead, bug-fix releases do happen.

      • Orders from the Top: The EU’s Timetable for Dismantling End-to-End Encryption

        The last few months have seen a€ steady stream of proposals, encouraged by the advocacy of the FBI and Department of Justice, to provide “lawful access” to end-to-end encrypted services in the United States. Now lobbying has moved from the U.S., where Congress has been largely paralyzed by the nation’s polarization problems, to the European Union—where advocates for anti-encryption laws hope to have a smoother ride. A series of leaked documents from the EU’s highest institutions show a blueprint for how they intend to make that happen, with the apparent intention of presenting anti-encryption law to the European Parliament within the next year.

        The public signs of this shift in the EU—which until now has been largely supportive toward privacy-protecting technologies like end-to-end encryption—began in June with a speech by Ylva Johansson, the EU’s Commissioner for Home Affairs.

    • Games

      • 3rd Ova Magica Tech Demo Released

        Developer ClaudiaTheDev has released a third tech demo of a interesting new game called Ova Magica. The proprietary kick-starter funded game will be available for GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS. It is still in somewhat early stages of development, yet it is already playable with a small 3D world featuring a farm you can explore, good graphics and blob battle training.

      • To Hell With The Ugly is an upcoming adventure game about kidnappings and conspiracies

        Worker cooperative studio La Poule Noire have announced To Hell With The Ugly, an upcoming adventure that blends point and click mechanics with a combat system and it's now funding on Kickstarter.

        "To Hell With the Ugly is an adventure/narrative game set in a film noir atmosphere. Help Rocky find out why he was kidnapped and tortured in a hospital where strange things happen. Explore Los Angeles in the 1950s through bar fights, mysterious investigations, and a lot of twists."

        Just like with their previous title, Edgar - Bokbok in Boulzac (which I thought was great), it will support Linux.

      • Hugo Locurcio is hired to improve Godot's web infrastructure

        Hello! Calinou here. I've been a core Godot contributor for about 3 years now, working on the Godot editor, documentation and website. On top of that, I've developed many Godot-related tools such as the unofficial Godot nightly builds, Godot build options generator and the Godot class reference status viewer.

        This month, I was hired full-time by the Godot team to rework and improve Godot's web infrastructure. While Godot's core engine now has many full-time developers working on it, the website and hosted platforms aren't as well-maintained in comparison. Being a web developer by trade and a generalist at heart, this was a natural choice for me.

      • The Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition is up with fresh demos to play

        Another big event is happening on Steam now with the Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition and there's plenty of new and improved demos to check out until October 13.

        Long gone are the days where a demo would be a given, as they're often replaced with paid-for Betas where you get access if you pre-order and all sorts like that. Still a few appear but not a whole lot and that's why events like this are so good for us, although it is a lot to take in with such a short amount of time.

        [...] If you're after titles that will offer Linux support, here's 10 I think are worth keeping an eye on and trying out...

      • The WRONG Experience For New Linux Gamers

        Linux gaming gets some tough love as Jason and Matt put ProtonDB under the microscope. Is this kind of rating system broken? Should we be telling new Linux gamers about it? Are there better alternatives?

    • Distributions

      • Slackware Family

        • Liveslak new features, DAW Live, OBS Studio, logo contest

          Most importantly, the hard disk installer of the Slackware Live Edition – called “setup2hd” – was expanded. In the past, it used to allow only the installation of the Live OS to your hard drive. But I received requests to also make it possible for setup2hd to install regular Slackware like the official installer does. It sounded like a good idea, and starting with liveslak release 1.3.7 the “setup2hd” program will let you choose from more package SOURCES than just the Live OS. In addition to the Live OS, you can now choose to install regular Slackware from a NFS, HTTP, FTP or Samba server. In other words, Slackware’s network install feature was added. Why is this different from the setup program on the official Slackware ISO? Well, the most obvious improvement is that you are working in a graphical desktop environment (the Live OS). You can run the setup2hd hard disk installation in an X terminal while you keep doing other stuff like reading online materials or watching a video to pass the time. Moreover, you can install stable Slackware 14.2 from the Live OS. That means MMC and NVMe drives are supported during installation (which is something the official Slackware 14.2 installer does not provide for).

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Announcing the release of Oracle Linux 7 Update 9

          Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 7 Update 9, which includes Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Release 6 as the default kernel. Oracle Linux brings the latest open source innovations and business-critical performance and security optimizations for cloud and on-premises deployment. Oracle Linux maintains user space compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which is independent of the kernel version that underlies the operating system. Existing applications in user space will continue to run unmodified on Oracle Linux 7 Update 9 with UEK release 6 and no re-certifications are needed for applications already certified with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or Oracle Linux 7.

          Oracle Linux 7 Update 9 is available on 64-bit Arm (aarch64) and 64-bit AMD/Intel (x86-64) based systems. Oracle Linux 7 Update 9 ships with the following kernel packages, which include bug fixes, security fixes, and enhancements...

        • Goodbye Tekton Condition CRD

          Pipeline is one of the core building blocks in designing a CI/CD use case on Kubernetes with Tekton. A Tekton Pipeline is a collection of tasks, which run based on how they are arranged. These tasks can be represented as a graph in which each node represents a task and can be arranged in many different ways.

        • Kovair DevOps Achieves Red Hat Linux 8 Certification

          Kovair Software, one of the leaders in software development tools and integrations, has now achieved the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 certification for its DevOps platform – Kovair DevOps.This certification will provide users with the necessary confidence to use this Platform with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 operating system.

      • Debian Family

        • Old repos removed

          It will help to make painless dist upgrade from present Sparky testing to next Sparky stable, and from present Sparky stable to oldstable as well.

          As I mentioned before, the old repos: ‘oldstable’, ‘stable’ and ‘testing’ have been removed now, they are not needed any more.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Building competitive advantage by adopting cloud-native approach

          At virtual KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2020, Monzo’s platform engineers shared the learnings and challenges of self-hosting Kubernetes which was guided by regulatory constraints at the time when Monzo built their platforms. One key takeaway for all was that managing and running own kubernetes clusters can be a huge operational overhead. Managed K8s is an option that enterprises should be considering as part of their cloud deployment strategy.

          Experience suggests that enterprises are able to accelerate their cloud-native journey by having the right tools and a strong partner ecosystem. Canonical – the publisher of Ubuntu, delivers pure upstream Kubernetes tested across the widest range of clouds — from public clouds to private data centres, from bare metal to virtualised infrastructure.

          In summary, by adopting cloud-native application development, financial institutions can quickly modify existing products, get to market faster and provide innovative products and services to customers and thus gain competitive advantage.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Surrogation

            A year or so ago, I read this article about how Wells Fargo ended up in such a mess. If you don't remember, Wells Fargo was opening accounts in their clients' name without their consent and ended up paying a few hundred million dollars in fines.

            Long story short, a big part of the problem was that WF set a few metrics to guide the company, set strong incentives to optimize those metrics, and blindly let the machine get to work. The company did a great job of optimizing the metrics but lost sight of the strategy the metrics were meant to represent.

          • Extensions in Firefox 82

            Before we get to the Firefox 82 updates, I want to let you know that Philipp has passed the baton for these blog posts over to me. I plan to stick to the same format you know and hopefully love, but leave a comment if there’s anything you’d like to see change in future installments.

            [...]

            As mentioned earlier, we’re working on a big change to Firefox that isolates sites from one another. In the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out an experiment to enable isolation by default for most Nightly users, starting in Firefox 83, with plans for a similar experiment on Beta by the end of the year.

            For extensions that deal with screenshots, we’ve extended the captureTab and captureVisibleTab methods to enable capturing an arbitrary area of the page, outside the currently visible viewport. This should cover functionality previously enabled by the (long deprecated) drawWindow method, and you can find more details about new rect and scale options on the ImageDetails MDN page.

            While we haven’t seen many reports of extension incompatibilities till now, Fission is a big architectural change to Firefox, and the web platform has many corner cases. You can help us find anything we missed by testing your extensions with Fission enabled, and reporting any issues on Bugzilla.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • MariaDB 10.5.6 Release Notes

          MariaDB 10.5 is the current stable series of MariaDB. It is an evolution of MariaDB 10.4 with several entirely new features not found anywhere else and with backported and reimplemented features from MySQL.

      • CMS

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GIMP 2.10.22 Released with AVIF Support, Improved PSP and TIFF Support

            GIMP 2.10.22 is here to add support for the AVIF image file format, which is a variant of the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) container but using the powerful AV1 compression algorithm. Importing and exporting of AVIF files is supported.

            On top of that, users will now be able to import and export HEIF files, which contain both AVIF and HEIC formats, in 10-bit and 12-bit depth per channel. Furthermore, GIMP 2.10.22 enables proper importing of NCLX color profiles and metadata.

          • GIMP 2.10.22 Released With AVIF Image Support

            Exciting with the GIMP 2.10.22 point release is support for AVIF, the very promising image format based on royalty-free AV1 technology and that is already supported by web browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome while continuing to see adoption throughout other photo/imaging software. With GIMP 2.10.22, AVIF images can be used for both importing into The GIMP as well as exporting.

          • GIMP 2.10.22 Released

            The dashboard dockable now has a new option to record progressive performance logs that contain complete information after each recorded sample. This allows recording complete logs even in cases where they can’t be properly terminated, such as when GIMP crashes or freezes in the middle of the log.

            Progressive logs are disabled by default, since they potentially increase the sampling cost. They can be enabled through a toggle in the log file dialog, or through $GIMP_PERFORMANCE_LOG_PROGRESSIVE environment variable.

            Moreover, verbose debug information (gimp-2.10 -v on command line, or debug output) now displays Flatpak related information when it’s relevant: the exact Flatpak build hash, the runtime version, the installed Flatpak extensions, permissions, etc. This helps debugging Flatpak builds.

            [...]

            GIMP CI process now runs a distcheck step, hence producing a fully unit-tested source tarball without human interaction.

            Continuous builds of the development version (future GIMP 3) for Windows were already provided since GIMP 2.10.18 but the downloadable archive was huge, containing many temporary files from the build process and a wrapper to necessarily run at first launch. We now implemented a new CI job with a slimmed-down and hopefully usable build (if not please report, or better: send us patches!) and already fully set up with no first launch process.

            The idea came from the Siril project (astronomical image processing free software) after we helped them set up a cross-compilation CI, similar to ours, using crossroad. A pretty good example of exchange between free software where some code goes from one project to another where it is improved, then back to the original one.

          • GIMP 2.10.22 Released with Major File Format Improvements

            GIMP 2.10.22 is described as a “bug fix release” but it does include a number of notable new things, including support for opening and saving AVIF image files.

            What’s AVIF? It’s a variation of the HEIF format using AV1 compression. It’s being positioned as the next big web image format — and GIMP 2.10.22 supports opening and saving images using it.

            The file format improvements don’t end there, either.

            GIMP 2.10.11 also boasts better support for the .psp file format (used by Paint Shop Pro), including raster layers from recent versions; 16-bit integer, grayscale, and indexed images; and conversion of PSP blend mods to GIMP layer modes.

            Creatives can now (optionally) export multi-layer .tiff files with layers cropped to image bounds; .bmp exports now always include colour masks (where applicable); there’s better detection of .jpg and .webp image formats; and the ability to import and open .dds files with invalid header flags.

      • Programming/Development

        • Dirk Eddelbuettel: littler 0.3.12: Exciting updates

          The thirteenth release of littler as a CRAN package became available today (after a three day ‘rest’ at CRAN for no real reason), following in the fourteen-ish year history as a package started by Jeff in 2006, and joined by me a few weeks later.

          littler is the first command-line interface for R as it predates Rscript. It allows for piping as well for shebang scripting via #!, uses command-line arguments more consistently and still starts faster. It also always loaded the methods package which Rscript only started to do in recent years.

          littler lives on Linux and Unix, has its difficulties on macOS due to yet-another-braindeadedness there (who ever thought case-insensitive filesystems as a default where a good idea?) and simply does not exist on Windows (yet – the build system could be extended – see RInside for an existence proof, and volunteers are welcome!). See the FAQ vignette on how to add it to your PATH.

        • Laura Abbott: How to be a spooky ARMv8m hardware debugger

          Debuggers are one of many tools available to assist developers in figuring out problems.Many of the ARM Cortex-M boards support a standard called CMSIS-DAP for hardware debugging. This is designed to let board makers provide a dedicated chip to facilitate communication between a debugger chip and a host. The debugger chip then commmincates to the actual CPU being debugged via other signals. Like all standards, implementation can be incomplete and buggy but if a board says it has CMSIS-DAP support, there’s a good chance it will “just work” for debugging. You could leave all the details to debuggers but it also turns out you can do many of these steps with CMSIS-DAP yourself. Being a debugger is also a great Halloween costume because you can do mysterious things to your device and also stay home. There is no candy involved unfortunately but knowledge is pretty sweet.

          ARM has fairly detailed documentation on their website about how this works behind the scenes. At a very high level, you can write to the Debug Port and some number of Access Ports to affect the state of the chip. The actual detail of what’s implemented is given by ROM tables. A fairly common setup is a debug port and then a Memory Access Port (MEM-AP) per CPU.

        • MarsMap: What Features of Mars are Visible?

          I've been using an ancient Unix program called XEphem for many years. It's very accurate and reliable, but the program is no longer supported, and so it needs to be compiled. Not really an option for most people.

          Sadly, the more accessible open source program, Stellarium, does not show Mars features. I'm told that the paid (and well respected) paid program Starry Night does, for Mac and Windows. On my Android tablet and phone, I use a paid program called Sky Safari (it's also available for iOS and Mac). I bought the middle, "Plus", level since I use it for basic observing, not finding ultra-faint galaxies, and it shows Mars features pretty well. I suspect the cheaper basic version also shows Mars features, but you might want to check to make sure before purchasing.

          So, several paid programs plus a program you have to compile from source. What free options are there?

          Sky & Telescope magazine has a Javascript app called Mars Profiler -- but it seems to be wrong! At least right now, XEphem and Sky Safari (and my MarsMap, which I'll talk about in a sec), are both showing Solis Lacus front and center; Mars Profiler shows it way off to one side. So if you use it, be wary.

        • The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD (Part 5)

          Last month, the NetBSD/amd64 support was merged into gdbserver. This month, the gdbserver target support was extended to NetBSD/i386 and NetBSD/aarch64. The gdbserver and gdb code was cleaned up, refactored and made capable of introducing even more NetBSD targets.

          Meanwhile, the NetBSD/i386 build of GDB was fixed. The missing include of x86-bsd-nat.h as a common header was added to i386-bsd-nat.h. The i386 GDB code for BSD contained a runtime assert that verified whether the locally hardcoded struct sigcontext is compatible with the system headers. In reality, the system headers are no longer using this structure since 2003, after the switch to ucontext_t, and the validating code was no longer effective. After the switch to newer GCC, this was reported as a unused local variable by the compiler. I have decided to remove the check on NetBSD entirely. This was followed up by a small build fix.

          The NetBSD team has noticed that the GDB's agent.cc code contains a portability bug and prepared a local fix. The traditional behavior of the BSD kernel is that passing random values of sun_len (part of sockaddr_un) can cause failures. In order to prevent the problems, the sockaddr_un structure is now zeroed before use. I've reimplemented the fix and successfully upstreamed it.

          In order to easily resolve the issue with environment hardening enforced by PaX MPROTECT, I've introduced a runtime warning whenever byte transfers betweeen the debugee and debugger occur with the EACCES errno code.

        • Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn HTML

          HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used to create web pages and other information that is intended for display in a web browser. Each markup code is known as an element or a tag. The web developer uses these elements to describe and define the content of a webpage. The elements tell the web browser how to display the information (both text and images) to the user.

          HTML has seen a number of revisions. HTML5 is the fifth revision of the HTML standard. HTML5 makes for a rich user experience with the canvas and SVG elements, native elements video and audio which allow video and audio to be placed directly in the HTML code. Other important new features include web storage, which offers a more secure and faster alternative than cookies, and geolocation, the heart of every location-based application.

          HTML is the markup language, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) determines how it is rendered, and JavaScript is the programming language. HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript are open, efficient and reliable web standards and allow web designers to create advanced web sites with creative graphics, animations, transitions and typography.

        • Red Hat Developers: Kubernetes integration and more in odo 2.0

          Odo is a developer-focused command-line interface (CLI) for OpenShift and Kubernetes. This article introduces highlights of the odo 2.0 release, which now integrates with Kubernetes. Additional highlights include the new default deployment method in odo 2.0, which uses devfiles for rapid, iterative development. We’ve also moved Operator deployment out of experimental mode, so you can easily deploy Operator-backed services from the odo command line.

        • Python

          • Wing Python IDE 7.2.6 - Octboer 7, 2020

            Wing 7.2.6 improves exception reporting for pytest, implements 2w in vi mode, fixes problems with setting up a new Django project, improves auto-spacing for / and :, reduces CPU use when analyzing and waiting for remote files, and makes a number of usability improvements.

          • Even faster in-memory search with intersection popcount

            This is part of a series of essays I started to write a week ago where I use a few different approaches to implement cheminformatics fingerprint similarity search.

            My initial file scan implementation took 2 seconds per query. I then switched to a two stage in-memory search with a load step and a search step. Loading the data (an initialization cost) took 4.6 seconds and per-query search took about 0.5 seconds, making it more effective if there are three or more queries.

          • scikit-survival 0.14 with Improved Documentation Released

            Today marks the release of version 0.14.0 of scikit-survival. The biggest change in this release is actually not in the code, but in the documentation. This release features a complete overhaul of the documentation. Most importantly, the documentation has a more modern feel to it, thanks to the visually pleasing pydata Sphinx theme, which also powers pandas.

            Moreover, the documentation now contains a User Guide section that bundles several topics surrounding the use of scikit-survival. Some of these were available as separate Jupyter notebooks previously, such as the guide on Evaluating Survival Models. There are two new guides: The first one is on penalized Cox models. It provides a hands-on introduction to Cox’s proportional hazards model with $\ell_2$ (Ridge) and $\ell_1$ (LASSO) penalty. The second guide, is on Gradient Boosted Models and covers how gradient boosting can be used to obtain a non-linear proportional hazards model or a non-linear accelerated failure time model by with regression tree base learners. The second part of this notebook covers a variant of gradient boosting that is most suitable for high-dimensional data and is based on component-wise least squares base learners.

          • PyCharm 2020.2.3

            PyCharm 2020.2.3 is ready to be downloaded and brings some fixes that will improve your productivity. Update from within PyCharm (Help | Check for Updates), from the JetBrains Toolbox, or by downloading the new version from our website.

          • Python Community Interview With Anthony Shaw

            In this interview, we discuss a variety of topics, including Python security, advice for beginner developers, and his love for the beach. So without further ado, let’s welcome Anthony.

            Ricky: Thanks for joining me, Anthony. I’m glad you could join me for this interview. I’d like to start in the same manner we do with all our guests: how did you get into programming, and when did you start using Python?

            [...]

            I learned the basics of Python over a long weekend in 2010 and fell for the language’s flexibility in working with fluid data structures and natural way of using both object-oriented programming and procedural programming.

          • Learning to Code: How to Boost Up the Process?

            Let’s face it: people are impatient by nature and most likely want things to happen faster in their lives. I would apply the same to code learners. Students, when starting to learn programming, first wonder how to speed up the training and make a career as a programmer as soon as possible.

            I am not the one who convinces everyone that learning to program is a lightning-fast journey — the other thing is that it is not as difficult as people think. All boils down to interest, passion, regular practice, and patience, of course. I also often recommend different online and offline resources to my students to make their learning process easier, more effective, and faster. And in this post, I will share a few tips with you.

        • Rust

          • Why I Scatter Use Statements Throughout My Rust

            A standard pattern across pretty much every language I’ve worked with at least, is to stick statements that import modules and libraries at the top of the page. Some languages make you do this. In Rust I don’t do this for everything, here’s why.

            I started to think more and more about what code is like to read rather than write. I for one was reading code far more often than I was writing, and the code I was writing would, over its lifetime, be read far more often than written or edited.

          • This Week in Rust 359
  • Leftovers

    • At the Cusp: Marcel Brion
    • At Liberalism’s Crossroads

      In the famously long, hot summer of 1968, when Columbia University was coming apart like the rest of America, the historian Richard Hofstadter seemed like the one person who could hold the fraying school together. Anti-war militants were demanding that Columbia end its cozy relationship with the Pentagon. Other activists decried the university’s haughty disregard for its Harlem neighbors, most visible in the proposed building of a gymnasium in nearby Morningside Park—dubbed Gym Crow and leading to accusations of segregation because it would have separate entrances for Columbia students and the community in Harlem and unequal access to its facilities. After months of butting heads with Columbia’s administration, students occupied campus buildings, and the school threatened to call in the cops, which is what university president Grayson Kirk did that spring, resulting in more than 700 arrests and nearly 400 police brutality complaints.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Fauci Says Trump Could See “Reversal” of His COVID Recovery This Week or Next

        Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, suggested that officials within the Trump administration ought to keep their “heads up” to the possibility that President Trump’s condition may deteriorate this week (or even next week) after having been treated for COVID-19 over the weekend.

      • 'What an Anti-Everybody Agenda Looks Like': AOC Excoriates Trump for Walking Away From Covid-19 Relief Talks

        "Millions falling into poverty, millions on the edge of eviction, millions going hungry, millions losing their healthcare and this megalomaniac dime store dictator puts his knee of the neck of a nation."

      • 'Unacceptable in a Free Nation': Top Senate Democrats Accuse White House of Covering Up Details of Trump's Condition

        "Despite the risk to those who may have been exposed, the White House has conducted itself in a secretive manner and shown a complete lack of regard for public health and safety."

      • After Being Airlifted to a World-Class Hospital, Trump Compares COVID to the Flu

        On what should be his first full day back at the White House since he was airlifted by helicopter to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to be treated for coronavirus last week, President Trump arrogantly and foolishly compared COVID-19 to the flu in a tweet riddled with falsehoods on Tuesday morning.

      • Trump Fans Flames of COVID-19 Misinformation Effort After Hospital Exit

        Shocking medical experts, President Trump has returned to the White House while still infectious with the coronavirus and after more than a dozen people in Trump’s orbit have already tested positive for COVID-19. Emergency room physician Dr. Dara Kass says she was “horrified” by President Trump’s dismissive attitude toward a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States. “I had this virus,” says Dr. Kass. “I never left my bedroom without an N95 mask on my face, because I was petrified of giving it to my friends and family.”

      • Successful GOP Repeal of ACA Would Strip Health Coverage From Millions and Give Top 0.1% a Massive Tax Cut—During a Pandemic

        "If Trump gets the Supreme Court to strike down ACA, the richest 0.1% would get a tax cut of $198,000 a year, and Big Pharma would get a tax cut of $2.8 billion. But millions of seniors would pay billions more for prescription drugs, and 20 million would lose their health insurance."

      • Activist Who Lost Father to COVID Says Trump’s White House Photo Op Was Like “Sci-Fi Horror Film”

        As the highest-profile coronavirus patient in the world returns to the White House while still infectious and a danger to others, we speak with activist Kristin Urquiza, whose father died from COVID-19 earlier this year. She says President Trump’s minimizing of the disease is a slap in the face to families who have lost loved ones. “I was appalled,” says Urquiza. “Every single person out there who’s lost a loved one to COVID, who has seen up close and personal what this virus can do, felt the same way.” Urquiza, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August about her father, is co-founder of Marked by COVID, a project elevating the stories of Americans who have died in the pandemic.

      • Evidence-Free ‘Lab Leak’ Speculation Boosts Trump’s Xenophobic Approach to Coronavirus

        Ever since the outbreak of Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China has been the target of relentless hostile and racist media coverage, depicting the country as a uniquely nefarious source of disease (FAIR.org, 3/24/20, 5/7/20).

      • “Don’t Be Afraid of COVID”: Trump Removes Mask & Fuels Misinformation Effort After Leaving Hospital

        Shocking medical experts, President Trump has returned to the White House while still infectious with the coronavirus and after more than a dozen people in Trump’s orbit have already tested positive for COVID-19. Emergency room physician Dr. Dara Kass says she was “horrified” by President Trump’s dismissive attitude toward a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States. “I had this virus,” says Dr. Kass. “I never left my bedroom without an N95 mask on my face, because I was petrified of giving it to my friends and family.”

      • WATCH: Tlaib and Rouda Call for National Moratorium on Water Shutoffs During Pandemic

        The Democrats are pressuring the head of the CDC to use his authority to help Americans retain "essential" access to running water.

      • Trump Blocks FDA on Stricter COVID-19 Vaccine Standards

        Taking the advice of profit-driven pharmaceutical corporations over that of his own public health agencies and experts, President Donald Trump is blocking the Food and Drug Administration from imposing tougher safety requirements on the authorization of a coronavirus vaccine after drug company executives privately voiced disapproval with the push for stricter federal standards.

      • The Pandemic May Be With Us for the Long Haul. How Do We Adapt?

        After all these months and 210,000 deaths, you’d think I’d be used to it all, but I’m not. It doesn’t seem even a little normal yet. I’m still full of absences, missing so much I used to take for granted: hugs and handshakes, rooms crowded for funerals and weddings, potluck dinners and house parties. I miss browsing the stacks at the library and the racks at the thrift shop. I miss going to our Unitarian Universalist congregation and the robust community connection we enjoyed every Sunday.

      • International forum cites strong government response as key in battle against COVID

        worldwide forum convened to share insights gleaned from the fight against the novel coronavirus highlighted the importance of a strong, coordinated government response as crucial to stopping its spread, both within a country and internationally.

        “It has never been more important for us than it is now to shoulder the responsibility to respond quickly and effectively to the threat posed to human lives and to the health of our communities, local, regional, national, and global,” said Mark Elliott, vice provost for international affairs and the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History. Introducing “Global Perspectives on COVID-19,” which brought together medical and scientific participants from China, Italy, South Africa, and the U.S. on Wednesday, Elliott characterized the pandemic as a “monumental public health crisis.”

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Openwashing

            • OpenHPC Announces the Release of OpenHPC v2.0

              OpenHPC is pleased to announce the release of OpenHPC, v2.0. This is a significant update that targets support for two new major OS distro versions: CentOS8 and OpenSUSE Leap 15.

            • Postman: The role of open source in APIs - Part 2 of 2

              I think the Unix operating system is a good example of why this approach to software development is so valuable. Linux reimplemented Unix as an open source project, reimagining what was possible and paying it forward by introducing another powerful platform to help developers deliver software. Linux is now one of the world’s leading operating systems, proving that open source software also makes good business sense.

        • Security

          • Security updates for Wednesday

            Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (brotli, lib32-brotli, lib32-zeromq, samba, yaws, and zeromq), Debian (php7.0, puma, sane-backends, thunderbird, and tigervnc), Fedora (ghc-cmark-gfm, ghc-hakyll, gitit, pandoc, pandoc-citeproc, and patat), openSUSE (kdeconnect-kde and perl-DBI), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (chromium-browser and spice and spice-gtk), SUSE (hexchat and nodejs8), and Ubuntu (vino).

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Surveillance: victory in defeat

              The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has today released a long-awaited ruling regarding the regime of surveillance. For nearly fifteen years, the French government has been requiring ISPs and phone carriers to log metadata of the entire population (who talks to whom, when, from where). La Quadrature du Net, along with FDN, FFDN and Igwan.net, challenged the legality of French law in this matter before the EU jurisdictions.

              A first reading suggests that it was a “victorious defeat”. Although the Court affirms that France can no longer impose this bulk metadata retention obligation, it reveals several important exceptions. This decision is a defeat in the sense that these exceptions reduce the effectiveness of the right to privacy and will inevitably lead to abuses, which we will detail later.

              However, as disappointing as it may be, this morning’s ruling draws a legal framework that is much more protective of freedoms and right to privacy than the existing French law. For example, while the government can still require ISPs to keep the IP addresses of the entire population, these addresses can now only be used for the purpose of combating serious crime or of safeguarding national security (notably, terrorism). Another important victory is that web hosting services can no longer be forced by law to monitor all their users on behalf of the state, keeping track of who publishes what, with which IP address, when, etc.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Russian soldier and his brother are arrested on treason charges for allegedly sharing intelligence with Estonia

        Federal agents in Smolensk have arrested a Russian soldier on charges of treason, a source in the Federal Security Service told the news agency TASS. Officials in Pskov also arrested the suspect’s brother, who has permanent resident status in Estonia. The Russian authorities reportedly believe the two brothers were sharing state secrets with Estonia’s intelligence community. Both men face between 12 and 20 years in prison, if convicted of high treason. As a matter of national security, their trial has been classified and closed to the public — a standard procedure in Russian treason prosecutions.

      • Texas Cop Shaun Lucas Charged With Murder of 'Hometown Hero' and Unarmed Black Man Jonathan Price

        Lucas allegedly shot Price—described as a "pillar of the community" in tiny Wolfe City—after the victim intervened in a domestic violence incident.

      • Kyrgyzstan throws out contested results in parliamentary elections, following protests in Bishkek

        Election officials in Kyrgyzstan have invalidated the contested voting results from recent parliamentary elections that provoked widespread protests in the nation’s capital, Bishkek. Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Commission reportedly announced on Tuesday that it is also debating its own voluntary dissolution. At least one member told the news agency 24.kg that she believes the commission has discredited itself irreparably.€ 

      • Consider it a ‘sub-coup’ Central Asia expert Arkady Dubnov answers key questions about the political turmoil in Bishkek

        Kyrgyzstan held parliamentary elections on October 4. According to the official results, parties close to President Sooronbay Jeenbekov, his family members, and other powerful officials were the only ones that made it into the parliament. On October 5, opposition demonstrators took to the streets and were violently dispersed by riot police. Nevertheless, overnight on October 5–6, protesters managed to seize several key government buildings, including the so-called “White House,” which includes the Parliament and the offices of the presidential administration. In response, election officials invalidated the contested voting results and Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov resigned from office. That said, the current president hasn’t given up power. To answer the biggest questions about what’s happening in Kyrgyzstan, “Meduza” turns to political scientist and Central Asia expert Arkady Dubnov.

      • Kyrgyzstan’s prime minster steps down, is replaced by dissident freed from prison just hours earlier

        Kyrgyzstani Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov has resigned from office after just a few months on the job, amid protests and riots in Bishkek against election parliamentary election results. National lawmakers have already appointed his replacement: Sadyr Zhaparov, a former member of parliament who was freed from prison just hours earlier by demonstrators. A court previously sentenced Zhaparov to 10 years behind bars for allegedly organizing riots.

    • Environment

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • The Blacked-Out Line

        Nicholson Baker lay awake at night again beside his slumbering wife and their dogs, his mind caught in the tunnel of his obsession. As the novelist recounts in Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, he couldn’t stop thinking about the US government’s efforts to develop biological weapons during the early Cold War.

      • State investigators open criminal case over child abuse at convent seized by defrocked Orthodox priest

        The Sverdlovsk Region’s Investigative Committee branch has launched a€ criminal investigation into child abuse at the Sredneuralsk Women’s Monastery, a convent outside of Yekaterinburg that was taken over by its founder, recently defrocked Orthodox priest Sergii Romanov, in June.€ 

      • 'On the Level of Guantánamo': Oklahoma Jail Guards Accused of Torturing Inmates With 'Baby Shark' Song

        Echoing a notorious Bush-era "enhanced interrogation technique," guards allegedly subjected prisoners to hours of the popular children's song.€ 

      • This Form of Being

        Among many other things, 20th century Black feminism offered a powerful analysis of social exclusion. The preeminent midcentury Black feminist Claudia Jones described how poor Black women were frequently excluded not only from the concerns of white liberal society but also from the gains won by Black activists working against racism, the gains won by communists working against capitalism’s class system, and the gains won by feminists working against patriarchy. Poor Black women, she insisted, found themselves left out across the board.

      • Politics, Religion, Abortion, Use of Force and the Will of God

        There is in this world of concepts, ideas, and theories hardly any more absurd and therefore dangerous notion, than the idea of forced patriotism or forced religion. History is absolutely overwhelmed with tales of the horror and ultimate futility of those who attempted to force religion and politics onto others, others that is, who were simply living their lives according to their own ways and manners. As far back as written history can take us we find the pain and anguish dealt out onto those unfortunate “others” by the ones who felt that it was their place in life to impose their beliefs on mankind. Being expansionists these dominators have pushed their politics, their religion and their grand schemes of conquering nature and building monuments for themselves, their government, their religion, customs and fashions on anyone that they could. There are those who were coerced or enslaved into their service, and for those who would not comply, they were subjected to ostracism, torture and death.

      • Fascism is Breathing Down Our Necks in the US

        Each year about 9,000 people migrate to Canada from the US and that figure has held steady for€  several years (“‘An alternative exists’: US citizens who vowed to flee to Canada-and did,”€ Guardian, February 1, 2016). The number of searches about migration on the search engine Google has risen sharply during periods of political uncertainty such as at the inception of the US war against Iraq, after the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, and following Trump’s election victory in 2016. The searches on search engines must have soared during Trump’s insane performance in the first presidential debate on September 29, 2020.

      • ‘We couldnʼt tell the relatives’: Declassified transcripts show that Putin was obsessed with polling even as Bill Clinton consoled him after the Kursk submarine disaster

        Back on August 29, 2019, the Clinton Digital Library declassified a whole archive of transcripts that capture telephone calls and private conversations between members of the Clinton administration and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dated between 1999 and 2001, most of the documents were classified at the time as “secret.” In that short span of time, Putin wore many hats, communicating with Washington as Federal Security Service director, prime minister, acting president, and president. In September 2000, Clinton and Putin began with a meeting in New York with a discussion about the aftermath of the Kursk submarine disaster, which killed all 118 sailors aboard.€ 

      • 'Appalling' Comments by Justices Thomas and Alito Seen as Harbinger of New Wave of Attacks on Marriage Equality and Gay Rights

        "It is appalling that five years after the historic decision in Obergefell, two justices still consider same-sex couples less worthy of marriage than other couples."

      • Clarence Thomas Screed Suggests Supreme Court Should Overturn Same-Sex Marriage

        Obergefell v. Hodges was the landmark 2015 ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Two of the dissenters in that ruling were Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito — and now, Thomas and Alito are calling for that decision to be overturned. This comes at a time when there is a very real possibility that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a far-right social conservative nominated by President Donald Trump, will be replacing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

      • Mothers and Daughters

        Yaa Gyasi always intended to write about mothers and daughters. In a 2016 profile, the now 31-year-old Ghanaian American writer said that after her sophomore year at Stanford, she traveled to Ghana to research a story about maternal bonds set in her mother’s home region. But after Gyasi visited Cape Coast Castle, a commercial fort that held enslaved people bound for the Americas, and learned more about the relationships between some Ghanaian women and British soldiers, her interests shifted, and she decided to write a novel about the “fullness of slavery, both as it was in the 18th century and what is left behind today.”

      • NYFF Review: 'The Inheritance' Celebrates Radicalism and Black Culture

        After inheriting his grandmother's house in Philadelphia, Julian (Eric Lockley) and his girlfriend Gwen (Nozipho Mclean) decide to form a socialist collective, the House of Ubuntu, that embraces the culture and traditions of the African diaspora, while providing an educational and communal neighbourhood space. So goes the narrative thread of The Inheritance, which evokes the potential explosiveness of such a living arrangement, and while some drama thrives, the film is less Real World, and more French New Wave.

        [...]

        In between innocuous quibbles, like delegating chores to certain days of the week (so effortless in its humor, Asili clearly lived it), the seriousness and dedication of the cause that brings the housemates together is never a side note. MOVE members Debbie Africa, Mike Africa Sr., and Mike Africa Jr. lead a presentation to the house, where the film introduces a lengthier archival segment about the organization's history, including the horrific airstrike of their headquarters by police in 1985. Throughout the film, poets Sonia Sanchez and Ursula Rucker are also featured among other prominent artists, musicians, activists and politicians, such as Shirley Chisholm.

        Asili carefully collected pieces of the set over a long time and designed it within a black box studio. Whether hanging on the walls of the house, in a chest full of books, on a record player, as words spoken by the actors, or as a highlighted pieces of archival material, these objects — like the characters in The Inheritance — are conduits for exploring, celebrating and continuing a dialogue with the past. This glorious carousel of Black cultural and radical iconography and ideology itself becomes part of this discourse, within the House of Ubuntu and beyond its walls.

      • 2020 Digital #Law4thePeople Convention: THANK YOU!

        Thank you all so much for being a part of the first ever, all digital #Law4thePeople convention!

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • California Community Leaders Call on Governor to Help Get State Broadband Up to Speed

        Sacramento - More than 60 California community leaders—including public officials, businesses, education advocates, and civil rights groups—have joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Common Sense Media to call on California Governor Gavin Newsom to convene a special legislative session to pass universal broadband access legislation this year.

        The COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated California's longstanding broadband access crisis. More than 2 million Californians lack access to high-speed broadband today. As KQED recently reported, that includes some 1.2 million students across the state who lack adequate Internet access to do their work.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Software Patents

          • USPTO Issues Report on Artificial Intelligence

            I haven’t yet had the chance to read this, but officials at the USPTO and EPO, as well as working groups at AIPLA, WIPO, and others, have been struggling with AI as inventors, including who to name as an inventor (not AI, says the USPTO, UKIPO, and EPO), as well as what does 103/inventiveness mean when AI is involved.

      • Copyrights

        • Supreme Court Hearing in Oracle v Google: Will the High Court Fix the Federal Circuit's Mess?

          On Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the long-running case of Oracle v. Google. We’ll be following closely, and looking for signs that the Court will reverse the Federal Circuit’s dangerous decisions in this ground-breaking litigation. And then we’ll be waiting and hoping the Court will issue an opinion explaining that giving copyright protection to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is a bad idea or, if that protection exists, that reimplementing them is a lawful fair use.

          To summarize the last nine years: Oracle claims a copyright on the Java APIs, and that Google infringed that copyright by using certain Java APIs in the Android OS. When it created the Android OS, Google wrote its own version of Java. But in order to allow developers to write their own programs for Android, Google used certain specifications of the Java APIs. Since APIs are, generally speaking, specifications that let programs talk to each other, it would strike at the heart of innovation and collaboration in technology to declare them copyrightable.



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