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Links 25/11/2020: Raspberry Pi 400 With Touchscreens, Animation Framework in GTK/GNOME



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • Everything you need to know to become an expert Linux admin - TechRepublic

        IT professionals have to be life-long learners with quarterly goals for improving their skills to keep up with the industry, particularly when it comes to Linux. System administrators should be constantly looking for new ways to improve their skills for managing Linux servers and distributions.

        This roundup of TechRepublic Premium resources, by Linux expert Jack Wallen, can help you fill the holes in your skills gap. There is advice for mastering the command line as well as selecting the best GUI tool. Maybe your challenge is managing users or permissions? Wallen has got you covered with that task, too.

        Sysadmins can use any one of these resources to get smarter about Linux and bring value to the IT team.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux READFILE System Call Revived Now That It Might Have A User

        Earlier this year we mentioned Greg Kroah-Hartman working on a new READFILE system call. The goal of this new syscall is for reading small and medium files more efficiently by having one call to read a file straight into a buffer without having to use the separate open/read/close system calls. It's looking like that system call is back on the table and could be mainlined now that there's a possible user.

        The READFILE system call is simple for reading lightweight files straight into a buffer without the overhead of multiple system calls that in turn can help performance, especially if reading many files such as on sysfs/debugfs and the like.

        It had been a number of months without any updates on that syscall and it wasn't mainlined in the cycles since it was proposed earlier this year. But now it looks like it's back on the table.

      • Graphics Stack

        • ZLUDA: Drop-In Open-Source CUDA Support For Intel Xe / UHD Graphics

          An interesting solution built off Intel's oneAPI Level Zero is the open-source "ZLUDA" that is providing a "Level Zero CUDA" implementation for being able to run programs geared for NVIDIA CUDA atop Intel UHD / Xe Graphics hardware.

          ZLUDA is a project independent of NVIDIA and Intel but one of the most interesting external projects we have seen so far targeting Intel's Level Zero interface. ZLUDA allows for unmodified CUDA applications to run on Intel GPUs with "near native" performance through this alternative libcuda running with Skylake / Gen9 graphics and newer.

    • Applications

      • The 10 Best Linux Backup Tools

        If you are a high-end software developer, system admin, or content creator who changed their Alien ID to the Linux world, then this article piece is for you. There is no worse enemy to a committed Linux enthusiast than data loss. To deal with data loss, you must understand the essential services of backup tools software.

        You might be thinking, well, my machine system has several partitions. One has my Linux operating system installed, and the remaining ones I use to back up the data that I continuously use and develop. Moreover, you might be considerate enough to acquire an external hard disk drive to store your important files. However, the game of data loss is like playing chess against a supercomputer. The odds are never in our favor. It is usually when everything is going smoothly that an unfortunate event tends to introduce itself.

        An unstable surge could occur and put your entire machine system in an ICU state. Such circumstances tend to corrupt or put your important data in an irretrievable state. Furthermore, a filled coffee mug that puts your ingenious mind in an active and productive state could accidentally spill on your machine or external HDD and commit the highest level of treason. This coffee that keeps our minds awake could have the opposite effect on our machines and any other external storage devices. Worse still, you will be forced to stay awake the whole night to mourn your data loss because the dark shades of coffee you took are still in your system.

      • Vivaldi Web Browser Now Has a Built-in Email Client

        A fully-featured email client is the latest feature to be added to Vivaldi, the Chromium-based web browser.

        The bods beavering away on the wannabe web fave have added a native IMAP and POP3 email client to the app, as well as a RSS feed reader, and multi-account friendly calendar. Other recent feature additions have included a word processor and a built-in arcade game.

        Although Vivaldi Mail (as the feature is known) is currently of a ‘pre-Beta quality’ it is fully functional and works relatively well already.

        On paper Vivaldi Mail will work with most modern e-mail services via IMAP or POP. Alas, for now, this doesn’t include Google or Gmail accounts.

      • GPUOpen Software Updated For The Radeon RX 6000 Series - Phoronix

        AMD has updated their collection of software offered under their "GPUOpen" umbrella for Radeon RX 6000 series / RDNA 2 compatibility.

        The Radeon GPU Profiler, Radeon Memory Visualizer, and other software packages offered via GPUOpen have been updated with "Big Navi" RDNA2 support.

      • OctopusWAF: A Customizable Open-Source WAF for High Performance Applications

        Mainstream web application firewalls (WAFs) can be very difficult to understand, with thousands of lines of code and obscure plugins. This complexity makes it challenging for developers to modify code to block specific anomalies and secure their applications. But OctopusWAF is different - the open-source WAF is customizable, user-friendly and optimized for a large number of parallel connections - making it ideal for high performance Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) applications.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • PAM Bypass: when null(is not)ok

        Someone enters an IRC support channel and proclaims their dovecot server has been hacked and a non existing user sends spam email from their server. The initial reaction might be something along the lines of

        Wat ಠ_ಠ

        With the following assumption that the user clearly did something wrong. Hosting email is difficult after all. I don’t quite recall how rest of the support went, but it was solved and the root cause was not found. However, we keep on rolling! Then someone posts about a similar incident on r/archlinux.

        Now, if this happens twice something is amiss! Arch has had a few issues with PAM lately, thus it could be that there is a configuration issue. Johannes and I try to reproduce, but I don’t get far and Johannes keeps on working on the issue.

      • How to install Discord on Linux Mint 20 - YouTube

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Discord on Linux Mint 20.

      • How to install Discord Canary on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Disord Canary, the Alpha Builds of Discord, on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • Automated CI/CD Deployment to App Engine with Cloud Build - Cloudbooklet

        Automated CI/CD Deployment to App Engine with Cloud Build. In this guide you are going to learn how to setup a CI/CD deployment which deploys the code to App Engine when a push is made to a specific branch in GitHub using Google Cloud Build.

      • Ansible Roles: Complete Beginner's Guide [RHCE Ansible Series]

        This is the ninth chapter of RHCE Ansible EX 294 exam preparation series. You'll understand how roles are structured in Ansible. You'll also learn to use ready-made roles from Ansible Galaxy and create your own custom Ansible roles.

      • How to remote access Linux from a Linux system

        Are you trying to figure out how to access your Linux desktop from your Linux laptop? Don’t know the first thing about remote access? We can help! Follow along with this guide as we show you how to access your Linux desktop from your Linux laptop!

      • How to add controller support to Minecraft on Linux

        Minecraft is one of the few mainstream video game franchises to support the Linux platform. That said, although the game works natively on Linux, it does not have controller support.

      • How To Install ModSecurity Apache on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ModSecurity Apache on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, ModSecurity is an Apache module that helps to protect your website from various attacks such as cross-site scripting, SQL injection attacks, path traversal attacks, etc. ModSecurity can also monitor web traffic in real-time and help you detect and respond to intrusions.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of ModSecurity Apache on an Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.

      • Enable File Browser in Default Gedit Text Editor in Ubuntu 20.04 | UbuntuHandbook

        Editing files regularly with the default text editor in Ubuntu? Without looking your documents through Files (Nautilus file browser), gedit offers a built-in file browser mode to make life easy.

        And this is the beginner’s guide shows you how to enable this built-in file browser mode in Gedit text editor.

        1. First open the text editor either from system applications menu or by click opening a document file.

        2. When the editor opens, go to menu (the icon after Save button) -> View, and enable Side Panel. You can alternatively press F9 on keyboard to toggle ‘Side Panel’ on / off.

      • Container image short names in Podman | Enable Sysadmin

        This new feature, pulling images with Podman by using short names, includes more security, greater convenience, and is another step forward for container management.

        [...]

        When people approach me to talk about Podman and containers, I usually ask if they are familiar with Docker. Most people are, and the conversations quickly move beyond the fact that Podman can act as a drop-in replacement for Docker. In fact, there are many useful and innovative features that make Podman special. Podman has excellent rootless support, it can generate systemd unit files for easily containerizing systemd services, and it has a powerful RESTful API that allows for running Podman on macOS and Windows. Those are just a few of the great features.

      • Looking forward to Linux network configuration in the initial ramdisk (initrd) | Enable Sysadmin

        One of the tasks that the initrd might be responsible for is network configuration.

      • The Ultimate Guide to Dolphin Emulator. - Make Tech Easier

        Today you can find hundreds of emulators for dozens of old systems for multiple platforms. However, Dolphin manages to stand out from the crowd by achieving something almost impossible: combining advanced features and a high degree of compatibility with ease of use.

        With Dolphin, which is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, you gain access to the vast majority of titles for Nintendo’s GameCube and Wii consoles. Theoretically, since it’s easy to use, you only have to run it, add some games, and play. Practically, though, it’s worth investing some time to customize and configure Dolphin to your liking. This way, you’ll be able to take advantage of its advanced features and play your games better than you would on the actual hardware.

      • Terminal Vitality

        Ever since Douglas Engelbart flipped over a trackball and discovered a mouse, our interactions with computers have shifted from linguistics to hieroglyphics. That is, instead of typing commands at a prompt in what we now call a Command Line Interface (CLI), we click little icons and drag them to other little icons to guide our machines to perform the tasks we desire.

        Apple led the way to commercialization of this concept we now call the Graphical User Interface (GUI), replacing its pioneering and mostly keyboard-driven Apple // microcomputer with the original GUI-only Macintosh. After quickly responding with an almost unusable Windows 1.0 release, Microsoft piled on in later versions with the Start menu and push button toolbars that together solidified mouse-driven operating systems as the default interface for the rest of us. Linux, along with its inspiration Unix, had long championed many users running many programs simultaneously through an insanely powerful CLI. It thus joined the GUI party late with its likewise insanely powerful yet famously insecure X-Windows framework and the many GUIs such as KDE and Gnome that it eventually supported.

      • Build a motion detection system with a Raspberry Pi | Opensource.com

        If you want a home security system to tell you if someone is lurking around your property, you don't need an expensive, proprietary solution from a third-party vendor. You can set up your own system using a Raspberry Pi, a passive infrared (PIR) motion sensor, and an LTE modem that will send SMS messages whenever it detects movement.

      • Create a machine learning model with Bash | Opensource.com

        Machine learning is a powerful computing capability for predicting or forecasting things that conventional algorithms find challenging. The machine learning journey begins with collecting and preparing data—a lot of it—then it builds mathematical models based on that data. While multiple tools can be used for these tasks, I like to use the shell.

        A shell is an interface for performing operations using a defined language. This language can be invoked interactively or scripted. The concept of the shell was introduced in Unix operating systems in the 1970s. Some of the most popular shells include Bash, tcsh, and Zsh. They are available for all operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows, which gives them high portability. For this exercise, I'll use Bash.

      • Use SSH keys for authentication

        Use SSH keys for authentication without password when you are connecting to your server. simple and secure login process.

      • Authentication and authorization using the Keycloak REST API - Red Hat Developer

        Enabling authentication and authorization involves complex functionality beyond a simple login API. In a previous article, I described the Keycloak REST login API endpoint, which only handles some authentication tasks. In this article, I describe how to enable other aspects of authentication and authorization by using Keycloak REST API functionality out of the box.

      • Hording AD groups through wbinfo €« On the third side

        In a samba setup where users and groups are fetched from Active Directory to be used in a unix/linux environment, AD may prohibit the samba winbind tools like wbinfo to recurse into its group structure. You may get groups and users and their corresponding gids and uids, but you may not get the members of a group.

    • Games

      • Build your own ruler in the massive Crusader Kings III update out now | GamingOnLinux

        Paradox has released the big 1.2 update to Crusader Kings III, with it comes a fun new feature that lets you properly design your initial ruler.

        Since the release you've been able to step into the shoes of pre-set historical monarchs and leaders. Carrying their legacy on through the ages, and across the world. Now though, Paradox are giving us much more control over our game and our leader. You can now design them yourself with various options including appearance, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and more with the results sometimes looking quite amusing. You start by choosing a location, then the option to design your own will be available.

        Unlike how it was handled with Crusader Kings II, this is an entirely free feature added to the base game.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • GTK: At the Heart of GNOME

          GTK is at the heart of the GNOME application and software development kit. GTK is used to create graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for desktop environments, applications, and window managers. Since the GTK 4 development process began in 2016, we have about 250 individual contributors, with more than 100 active this year.

          Thanks to the funding received by the GNOME Foundation in 2020, the GTK development team was able to run hackfests, including one we were lucky enough to have at FOSDEM. This funding also supported Emmanuele Bassi, Core GTK Developer at the GNOME Foundation, working on GTK full-time. For most of 2020, Emmanuele worked on implementing a new accessibility interface for GTK 4, to ensure that more people can use GNOME applications, including those with disabilities. We are building a diverse and sustainable free software computing ecosystem where everyone can be empowered by technology they trust. Since Emmanuele works directly for the Foundation he’s uniquely able to focus on the needs of the community, project, and users to support these goals.

          GTK is a project with a long history, and throughout that history, it has gone through multiple iterations. A new major release is on the horizon. After four years of development that included a complete overhaul of the internals of the toolkit, GTK 4 promises to be faster through hardware acceleration; more efficient, in terms of performance and power consumption; and more ergonomic, for both application developers, and end users. Over the past four years, the GTK team has continued work on the existing stable versions of GTK and put out multiple releases.

        • GTK Planning More Improvements In 2021 From Better Accessibility To Animation Framework

          In addition to shipping the much anticipated GTK 4.0, this toolkit driven by the GNOME desktop environment is making more plans for an exciting 2021.

          The GNOME Foundation recently laid out their new initiatives and plans for 2021 while today there was a similar look ahead from the GTK toolkit perspective.

    • Distributions

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Kubernetes and SUSE Enterprise Storage 7 - SUSE Communities

          Rook is a CNCF – the Cloud Native Compute Foundation (CNCF) hosts Kubernetes and related open source projects – graduated project which automates the installation, deployment and upgrade of Ceph. It takes care to launch and configure all Ceph components correctly, setup Ceph on storage devices and allows Kubernetes applications to use Ceph as storage – for block, file, and object storage.

          Deployment with Rook is like many other Kubernetes installation, you install Rook using a helm chart that you can configure, and then Kubernetes will do all the necessary steps to setup Ceph. You can also connect to the Ceph dashboard and see how your applications use storage.

          Once Rook is up, your containerized applications can use Ceph as persistent storage using the usual Kubernetes APIs like PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs).

          Running Ceph with Rook on Kubernetes means that you have a smaller footprint overall instead of setting up a separate Ceph cluster and a Kubernetes cluster. Kubernetes will run applications and storage together in the same infrastructure. This is not advised for very large storage installations but a great option for a Kubernetes cluster that needs a smaller storage configuration. Depending on your use-cases and requirements, you can use dedicated storage nodes in your single cluster – and have dedicated application nodes – or use all your nodes for storage and applications.

        • Digest of YaST Development Sprint 113 | YaST

          Time flies and it has been already two weeks since our previous development report. On these special days, we keep being the YaST + Cockpit Team and we have news on both fronts. So let’s do a quick recap.

          Cockpit Modules

          Our Cockpit module to manage wicked keeps improving. Apart from several small enhancements, the module has now better error reporting and correctly manages those asynchronous operations that wicked takes some time to perform. In addition, we have improved the integration with a default Cockpit installation, ensuring the new module replaces the default network one (which relies on Network Manager) if both are installed. In the following days we will release RPM packages and a separate blog post to definitely present Cockpit Wicked to the world.

          On the other hand, we also have news about our Cockpit module to manage transactional updates. We are creating some early functional prototypes of the user interface to be used as a base for future development and discussions. You can check the details and several screenshots at the following pull requests: request#3, request#5.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Fedora program update: 2020-48 – Fedora Community Blog

          Here’s your report of what has happened in Fedora this week. Elections voting is open through 3 December. Fedora 31 has reached end of life. EPEL 6 will reach end-of-life on Monday.

        • Oracle Linux 8: Oracle Ksplice made easy with free training

          This week’s training blog presents a set of free, short videos on using Oracle Ksplice on Oracle Linux 8. Oracle Ksplice allows you to install the latest kernel and key user-space security and bug fix updates while the system is running. You don’t need to coordinate with users to schedule system down time. You don’t need to stop running applications and you don’t need to reboot your systems to install kernel and user-space updates.

        • More for developers in the new Red Hat OpenShift 4.6 web console - Red Hat Developer

          Red Hat OpenShift 4.6 streamlines developer onboarding in the OpenShift web console, but that’s not all. This article details improvements and new features in the topology view and introduces OpenShift’s new, form-based approach to creating horizontal pod autoscalers and Helm charts. I also touch on application monitoring improvements and the latest updates for Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines, Red Hat OpenShift Serverless, and the Kiali Operator in OpenShift 4.6.

        • Log-On Wave for IBM Z Simplifies Administration and Operation of Virtualized Linux Infrastructures on IBM Z and LinuxONE

          Log-On Software (Log-On) an IBM Business Partner and developer of software solutions for IBM Z, has announced Log-On Wave for IBM Z, with general availability planned for January 2021.

          According to the company, Log-On Wave for IBM Z simplifies the administration and operation of virtual Linux servers running on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE. The result is that IT organizations and service providers benefit from an intuitive graphical interface and intelligent functionality that improves productivity by simplifying administration, configuration and management and future-proofs operations by shielding complexity and enabling less experienced administrators to easily manage highly virtualized infrastructures.

        • Implementing storage: Compliance concerns for stateful financial services applications

          There’s little doubt that industry pressures have driven financial services firms to implement - and to continue to adopt - transformative solutions to maintain competitive advantages that help streamline operations and introduce new products.

          However, along with having to surmount technical issues, this industry presents special challenges regulatory and compliance concerns, in addition to technology considerations. Regulators play a major role in financial institutions, therefore, by necessity, banks create organizational models and processes to ensure that work is being delivered with the most minimal risk possible - and technology solutions must also adhere to this regulatory overlay.

        • Web interfaces for your syslog server - Blog - syslog-ng Community - syslog-ng Community

          This is the 2020 edition of my most read blog entry about syslog-ng web-based graphical user interfaces (web GUIs). Many things have changed in the past few years. In 2011, only a single logging as a service solution was available, while nowadays, I regularly run into others. Also, while some software disappeared, the number of logging-related GUIs is growing. This is why in this post, I will mostly focus on generic log management and open source instead of highly specialized software, like SIEMs.

        • Red Hat Quarkus Java stack moves to OpenShift

          Red Hat’s Quarkus framework for building Kubernetes-native Java applications is now included with the company’s OpenShift 4.6 open source container application platform, a step Red Hat describes as important in bringing Java into modern cloud-native application development.

          Previously supported in Red Hat Runtimes middleware, Quarkus now is natively integrated into OpenShift to provide for easier development, the company said. Developers can use familiar tools and do remote development on clusters via IDEs such as CodeReady Workspaces. Developers also can do serverless workload deployment and application storage management.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Canonical publishes set of secure container application images

          The LTS Docker Image Portfolio comes with up to ten years Extended Security Maintenance by Canonical. “LTS Images are built on trusted infrastructure, in a secure environment, with guarantees of stable security updates,” said Mark Lewis, VP Application Services at Canonical.

          “They offer a new level of container provenance and assurance to organizations making the shift to container based operations.”

          Canonical and Docker will collaborate on Docker Official Images and LTS Docker Image Portfolio to bring the best of the two to the community and ecosystem. The entire LTS Docker Image Portfolio will be exempted from per-user rate limits.

        • Torsten Franz: My first month at the Ubuntu Community Council

          In the last few weeks I have been asked by many people what topics we have in the Community Council and what we are doing. After a month in the Council, I want to give a first insight into what happened in the early days and what has been on my mind. Of course, these are all subjective impressions and I am not speaking here from the perspective of the Community Council, but from my own perspective.

          In the beginning, of course, we had to deal with organisational issues. These include ensuring that everyone is included in the Community Council’s communication channels. There are two main channels that we use. On the one hand, we have a team channel on IRC on Freenode to exchange ideas. The channel has the advantage that you can ask the others small questions and have a relaxed chat. To reach everyone in the Council, we have set up the mailing list: community-council at lists.ubuntu.com

          No, I haven’t yet managed to read through all the documents and threads that deal with the Community Council or how to make the community more active again. But I have already read a lot in the first month on the Community Hub and on mailing lists to get different impressions. I can only encourage everyone to get involved with constructive ideas and help us to improve the community of Ubuntu.

          I haven’t worked on an international board since 2017 and had completely forgotten one topic that is more complex than national teams: the different timezones. But after a short time we managed to find a date where we all can basically do it and we had our public meeting of the council. This took place twice and the second time we all managed to attend. The minutes of the meetings are publicly available: 1st Meeting and 2nd Meeting. We have decided that we will hold the meeting twice a month.

        • Design and Web team summary – 24th November 2020 | Ubuntu

          Hi, I am Carlos Wu. I work for the Webteam as a web developer, and I just recently reached 1 year at Canonical!

          I have worked previously in a number of Front-end roles and Canonical and the webteam gave me the opportunity to work on both back-end and front-end, which has been my professional goal for some time. I quite like our tech stack, which includes Python and Flask, React, and we use Docker to deploy our projects, so I really enjoy working and learning in this team.

          Coming from agencies and companies where managers would just tell me “Don’t ask questions, just do your work”, Canonical’s webteam has proved to be like a family, where I can be curious and ask questions and not be afraid to explore my boundaries.

          In my free time, I like to do a variety of things. Sometimes, I like to play music, try as many instruments as I can. Although I have been a long time guitar player, I also enjoy playing chords on the piano or fiddling with a violin. Furthermore, I also sometimes build my own small projects to help me in my daily life. I very much enjoy a walk in the park! As you can see in the picture above in Hyde Park, London.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Raspberry Pi V3DV Is Officially Vulkan Conformant, Lavapipe Also Nearing 1.0 Conformance

        There are two interesting bits of news today pertaining to open-source Vulkan drivers being officially conformant with the Vulkan 1.0 specification in passing the necessary Vulkan CTS tests.

        First up, Igalia and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are celebrating that their V3DV Mesa driver for Vulkan support on the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer is officially Vulkan 1.0 conformant. This Mesa Vulkan driver has been passing the Vulkan CTS and the results submitted to The Khronos Group.

        They have now approved of V3DV as being an official Vulkan 1.0 implementation as tested on the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.

      • Raspberry Pi 400 kit ships with 7-inch or 13.3-inch touchscreen display

        The Raspberry Pi Foundation has recently launched the Raspberry Pi 4 keyboard computer with impressive performance thanks to a well-designed cooling solution, and I think it’s a great tool for kids (and adults) who may want to carry a Raspberry Pi around.

      • Shutdown button with Raspberry PI and Python - peppe8o

        Because of their low price, mini button switches are useful for many purposes. We have already analyzed how they work (ref. Using mini Switch Button with Raspberry PI and Python) and a funny use case (ref. Reaction Game (v2) with Raspberry PI and Mini Button Switch).

      • Portwell and Congatec spin Elkhart Lake modules in multiple form factors

        Portwell unveiled a “PQ7-M109” Qseven module with Intel’s Atom x-6000. Congatec recently announced x6000 modules in Qseven (Conga-QA7), SMARC, (Conga-SA7), Mini Type 10 (Conga-MA7), and Compact Type 6 (Conga-TCA7) form factors.

        Portwell has announced the PQ7-M109, its first product based on Intel’s 10nm fabricated Elkhart Lake family of low-power system-on-chips, which includes several Atom x-6000, Celeron, and Pentium models. In September, in reporting on Congatec’s Elkhart Lake based Conga-PA7 Pico-ITX SBC, we promised to cover Congatec’s four Elkhart Lake compute modules in a separate report. Well, better late than ever: We briefly summarize Congatec’s Conga-QA7 (Qseven), Conga-SA7 (SMARC), and Conga-MA7 (COM Express Mini Type 10) and Conga-TCA7 (Compact Type-6) modules farther below.

      • Open Hardware/Modding

        • Arduino Blog €» This remote-controlled storytelling apparatus is made up of Arduino-driven toy animatronics

          As an exhibit at the Phaneo Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany, Niklas Roy and Felix Figus created a remotely-operated storytelling apparatus dubbed “Smart Fairy Tale.”

          When initiated, a little red ball rolls down the installation’s transparent tubing, triggering different interactions based on the interruption of light sensors along its path. 25 Arduino Nanos are used to control each individual animatronic part of the “story,” making the code manageable and allowing the overall machine to still work if there’s a malfunction in one section.

        • Pine64's PINECIL RISC-V soldering iron launched for $25

          We’ve previously mentioned PINECIL RISC-V soldering iron during Pine64’s release of PineCube open-source IP camera development kit, and the good news is the soldering iron is now available for $24.99 on Pine64 store together with optional sets of gross or fine soldering tips compatible with the one used with TS100 model The soldering iron is powered by GigaDevice GD32VF103TB 32-bit RISC-V general-purpose microcontroller and features a small display and two buttons for user interaction, as well as changeable tips.

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Daniel Stenberg: The curl web infrastructure

        The purpose of the curl web site is to inform the world about what curl and libcurl are and provide as much information as possible about the project, the products and everything related to that.

        The web site has existed in some form for as long as the project has, but it has of course developed and changed over time.

      • DOSEMU2

        Since I have the original DOSEMU working, I'm not going to attempt to install DOSEMU2 at this time. (Especially as I'd have to build from source; precompiled packages for Debian are not provided.) But I'm glad to hear that someone has "forked" the DOSEMU project and is continuing maintenance and development, since the original DOSEMU seems to have been frozen in mid-2013.

      • Generous Match Challenge from Individual Conservancy Supporters for Annual Fundraiser

        We are pleased to launch our annual fundraiser today with a match challenge of $111,029. This match is extremely exciting (not only because it is a prime number for the second year but also) because the pledges comes entirely from individuals (not companies!) who care deeply about software freedom. The bulk of this match challenge was provided by one very generous donor who prefers to remain anonymous. Their amount was augmented by six Conservancy Supporters (listed alphabetically) who came together to increase the match even more: Jeremy Allison, Kevin P. Fleming, Roan Kattouw, Jim McDonough, Allison Randal and Daniel Vetter. You'll be hearing more about why they joined this year's match donation in interviews on our blog in the coming weeks.

      • BookStack:Collaboratively Create and editor books with your team

        When writing or editing a complex project like a book collaboratively with a team, there are many problems that start from selecting the best tools. The main problem here is there are many tools to choose from and most of them require a time to learn and setup for all team members.

        Many teams tend to use several tools at once which may conflict with their workflow and takes time to jump from here to there with notes, revisions and content.

        The best option is to keep the collaborative writing and editing workflow in one place to manage book sections, comments, revisions, images, sorting, search and exports.

        Wiki engines and collaborative writing tools usually require customization for book editing. Also, it's good to consider the technical knowledge of writers and editors and the time needed to learn how to use the system.

      • Hantro H1 hardware accelerated video encoding support in mainline Linux

        With the increasing need for video encoding, there are some breakthrough developments in hardware-accelerated video encoding for Linux. Bootlin has been working on the implementation of Hantro H1 hardware accelerated video encoding to support H.264 encoding on Linux which follows the company’s work on the previously-released open-source VPU driver for Allwinner processors.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • LibreOffice 7.1 Beta1 is available for testing

          The LibreOffice Quality Assurance ( QA ) Team is happy to announce LibreOffice 7.1 Beta1 is available for testing!

          LibreOffice 7.1 will be released as final at the beginning of February, 2021 ( Check the Release Plan for more information ) being LibreOffice 7.1 Beta1 the second pre-release since the development of version 7.1 started at the end of May, 2020. Since the previous release, LibreOffice 7.1 Alpha1, 1131 commits have been submitted to the code repository and 245 issues got fixed. Check the release notes to find the new features included in this version of LibreOffice.

      • Programming/Development

        • DOM Recording For Web Application Demos

          To show off the power of our Pernosco debugger, we wanted many short demo videos of the application interface. Regular videos are relatively heavyweight and lossy; we wanted something more like Asciinema, but for our Web application, not just a terminal. So we created DOMRec, a DOM recorder.

        • The 20 Best Kotlin Books for Beginner and Expert Developers

          Here you will find the top Kotlin books that will make it very interesting and almost effortless for you to learn Kotlin.

          Kotlin is a statically composed, universally useful programming language with type deduction. It is also a cross-platform language. Kotlin is intended to engage completely with Java, and Kotlin’s standard library’s JVM variant relies upon the Java Class Library. However, Kotlin’s type of derivation permits its syntax to be more compact and precise. Therefore, it has become quite crucial to learn Kotlin these days. But to learn it in the shortest number of days, a perfect set of Kotlin books is indecipherably important.

          Whether or not to pick Kotlin or Java for new advancement has been coming up a ton in the Android people group since the Google I/O declaration. The short answer is that Kotlin code is more secure and more succinct than Java code and that Kotlin and Java records can coincide in Android applications, so Kotlin isn’t just valuable for new applications but also for growing existing Java applications as well.

        • JS

        • Rust

          • What the Error Handling Project Group is Working On

            The Rust community takes its error handling seriously. There’s already a strong culture in place for emphasizing helpful error handling and reporting, with multiple libraries each offering their own take (see Jane Lusby’s thorough survey of Rust error handling/reporting libraries).

            But there’s still room for improvement. The main focus of the group is carrying on error handling-related work that was in progress before the group's formation. To that end, we're working on systematically addressing error handling-related issues, as well as eliminating blockers that are holding up stalled RFCs.

            Our first few meetings saw us setting a number of short- and long-term goals. These goals fall into one of three themes: making the Error trait more universally accessible, improving error handling ergonomics, and authoring additional learning resources.

          • How to collect Rust source-based code coverage

            Source-based code coverage was recently introduced in Rust. It is more precise than the gcov-based coverage, with fewer workarounds needed. Its only drawback is that it makes the profiled program slower than with gcov-based coverage.

            In this post, I will show you a simple example on how to set up source-based coverage on a Rust project, and how to generate a report using grcov (in a readable format or in a JSON format which can be parsed to generate custom reports or upload results to Coveralls/Codecov).

  • Leftovers

    • Health/Nutrition

      • The New Humanitarian | Community aid and growing needs in Chile

        Up and down the length of Chile, people are turning to soup kitchens for their hunger needs as the coronavirus pandemic broadens inequality after lockdown measures shuttered the informal economy for months. Food insecurity in Chile has risen dramatically over the course of the pandemic, and its impacts have been particularly acute among already marginalised urban populations. Despite some government subsidies and the efforts of local aid groups, hunger remains: Chile is considered an upper-middle-income country, so the international humanitarian aid sector is unlikely to step in, regardless of inequalities and growing poverty. Since its return to democracy 30 years ago following a brutal military dictatorship, Chile has been considered a beacon of economic growth and stability in South America – a continent often convulsed by political and social turmoil. “In the midst of this troubled Latin America, our country is a true oasis, with a stable democracy,” Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said in a television interview in October 2019.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • Communication by example: Which methods do high-performing open source communities use?

                Although effective communication is an essential life skill, it is the most critical element in any business [2]. Lack of accurate communication is the common cause of any organization’s issues, causing conflicts, reducing client relationships, team effectiveness, and profitability [2]. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), ineffective communication is the main contributor to project failure one-third of the time. It has a negative impact on project success more than half of the time [1].

                In open source projects where there is a diverse and world spread community, effective communication is the key to projects’ success. Using the right technology is crucial for that. So, which tools do open source communities use for communication?

              • ONAP Certification Launches to Help Close Talent Gap with Growth of Network Automation, 5G and Edge Computing

                The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and LF Networking (LFN), which facilitates collaboration and operational excellence across open source networking projects, today announced the Certified ONAP Professional (COP) exam, previously announced to be in development, is now generally available.

              • CNCF Announces Graduation Of etcd

                The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has announced the graduation of etcd. The project was created at CoreOS in 2013 and joined CNCF in December 2018 as an incubating project.

                To move from the maturity level of incubation to graduation, etcd has demonstrated growing adoption, an open governance process, feature maturity, and a strong commitment to community, sustainability, and inclusivity.

              • CNCF Survey Shows Continued Increase in Container Use

                The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) published the results of its 2020 Cloud Native Survey. Of the 1,324 respondents, 54 percent are part of the CNCF End User Community.

              • etcd recognized as a well-matured, production-ready project at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation – IBM Developer

                etcd is an open source distributed key-value store that plays a crucial role in scaling Kubernetes clusters. The etcd project has been on an impressive journey to maturity under the guidance of the CNCF.

                Two short years ago at KubeCon North America 2018, etcd was accepted as an incubation project at the CNCF. Today, we’re celebrating another milestone for the etcd project: Graduating from incubation within the CNCF.

        • Security

          • Critical Unpatched VMware Flaw Affects Multiple Corporates Products

            VMware has released temporary workarounds to address a critical vulnerability in its products that could be exploited by an attacker to take control of an affected system.

            "A malicious actor with network access to the administrative configurator on port 8443 and a valid password for the configurator admin account can execute commands with unrestricted privileges on the underlying operating system," the virtualization software and services firm noted in its advisory.

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Fedora (chromium, microcode_ctl, and seamonkey), Mageia (f2fs-tools, italc, python-cryptography, python-pillow, tcpreplay, and vino), Oracle (thunderbird), Red Hat (bind, kernel, microcode_ctl, net-snmp, and Red Hat Virtualization), Scientific Linux (net-snmp and thunderbird), SUSE (kernel and mariadb), and Ubuntu (atftp, libextractor, pdfresurrect, and pulseaudio).

          • Syxsense Announces New Support for AWS Linux Devices

            Syxsense, a global leader in SaaS IT and security management solutions, extends support of its cloud-native, real-time architecture to Amazon Web Service (AWS) Linux devices. AWS Linux assets are protected with a single lightweight agent allowing real-time patching and management from the Syxsense Management Cloud.

          • Syxsense Announces New Support for Amazon Web Service (AWS) Linux Devices
          • WireGuard For Windows Updated With Improved Installer, ARM/ARM64 Support [Ed: Can we take VPN software seriously when it’s ported to platforms with NSA back doors?]
          • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

            • Stantinko Botnet Now Targeting Linux Servers to Hide Behind Proxies [Ed: They say almost nothing about the fact that you actually need to sabotage your GNU/Linux setup and have malware installed on it for this to become a risk. Microsoft propaganda at ZDNet set off this "Linux" FUD.]

              According to a new analysis published by Intezer today and shared with The Hacker News, the trojan masquerades as HTTPd, a commonly used program on Linux servers, and is a new version of the malware belonging to a threat actor tracked as Stantinko.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Platform exclusivity, DRM, and independent authors: A cautionary tale

        Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you wrote a book. You've worked on it for years, and you want to share it with the world. You want to reach as many people as possible, but it would be nice to be compensated for your hard work. How many weekends did you spend at home, polishing your manuscript instead of going out with friends? How many sleepless nights have you spent staring at a blank page, looking for inspiration?

        While researching the best way to publish, you hear horror stories about authors finding their books sold on counterfeit Web sites or distributed gratis without the author's consent. You read stories about authors feeling violated as their hard work is stolen in such a way.

        As you read about these activities, you also see mentions of companies that claim that they would protect your work against it. Should you publish your book through them, your book would only be available through their application. People could only access it through their store, and they wouldn't even be able to open the file on a device that isn't vetted by the company. The app is very popular, so most people use it anyway, and authors do not have to worry about a lack of interest. Only dealing with one store would also make things easier on your end. You won't have to manage different things. They'll even format your book for you. Sounds easy enough, so you take the deal.

        Weeks pass, and you make a few sales. It's by no mean a huge success, but you got a few positive reviews, mostly from family and friends. You keep mentioning your project to everyone you know, and find some limited interest.

        One day, a friend you hadn't talked to in a while asks about your book. They say that they don't like the app your book requires, and they don't want to buy it through the one store you signed an exclusivity deal with. They explain that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) restricts their freedom to read the book on their device of choice, and won't even let them make backups of the file. They tell you how they once used a similar app, but were locked out of all the books they purchased after moving away from said application.

        After hearing your friend's story, you decide to give them a DRM-free copy of your book. After all, you wrote it so people would enjoy it first and foremost, and you want your friend to see the fruit of your labor.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Obviousness: Claim Construction (Q.of.Law) vs. Interpretation of the Prior Art (Q.of.Fact)

          The basic question in this ex parte appeal is whether the asserted references teach the layering of aerogels as required by the insulation materials claim pending before the USPTO. The pending APN 14/446,663 was filed in 2014, but claims a chain of priority stretching back to a 2005 provisional patent application. The basic idea here is that aerogel is a great insulator, but is fragile, so the claim requires fiber-reinforcement. The claim particularly requires two plys of fiber-reinforced aerogel — and that the fibers in the plys are interlaced with one-another.

          [...]

          But, the issue is that Stepanian stacks the fibers and then pours in the areogel over the layers of fibers. The PTAB made the factual conclusion that Stepanian disclosed “plys” of fiber-aerogel, even with the pour-over approach, and the appellate panel found substantial evidence for that conclusion.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
GNOME GUADEC 2022 & Debian Albanian women trafficked to Mexico?
Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
Sainsbury's: It Takes Us Up to Two Days to Respond to Customers Upon Escalation (and Sometimes Even More Than Two Days)
It not only does groceries but also many other things, even banking
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day