Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 11/12/2019: Huawei Lobbied by Microsoft (Because of GNU/Linux) and Microsoft Still Googlebombs Linux to Promote 'Teams'



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • The OS Wars Continue

        Chuckle. While attempting to protect “intellectual property” and enhance security, the Trumpists ban Huawei and slap on tariffs. China is now banning some of that intellectual property including TOOS and hardware from several USAian manufacturers. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

        I have mixed feelings. On the one hand this will reduce the GOP’s hold on USAian politics as manufacturing and the GDP suffer under this crap but on the other Free Software may actually get a boost in China. Go GNU/Linux!

      • Huawei New MateBook D Series Laptop Lineup Comes With Multiple Configuration Choices Incl. Windows Or Linux OS, AMD or Intel And Discreet NVIDIA Graphics

        Huawei announced its latest line of MateBook laptops that feature a unique privacy-focused webcam design. The powerful, sleek and versatile portable computing devices come in multiple configurations. Interestingly, Huawei is also offering a choice between Windows and Linux operating systems. A while ago the company had apparently ditched Microsoft Windows 10 for Deepin OS completely, but the relaxation of the US-China trade war appears to have had an impact.

        The latest Huawei MateBook D14 and D15 laptops are quite versatile in terms of hardware as well as software. Huawei is offering multiple configurations that allow buyers to choose either an Intel or AMD processor that can be paired with a discrete NVIDIA GPU. Interestingly, besides the hardware customization, the latest Huawei MateBook laptops could ship with either Windows 10 or a Linux OS installed on certain SKUs.

    • Server

      • IBM

        • MicroProfile 3.2 is now available on Open Liberty in Red Hat Runtimes

          Open Liberty 19.0.0.12 provides support for MicroProfile 3.2, allowing users to provide their own health check procedures and monitor microservice applications easily with metrics. Additionally, updates allow trust to be established using the JDK’s default truststore or a certificate through an environment variable.

          [...]

          Open Liberty has added support for Jaeger in MicroProfile OpenTracing. A sample tracer is available for using Zipkin as a tracing backend. With the addition of Jaeger support, developers can also use Jaeger as a tracing backend.

        • Working with Linux containers on RHEL 8 with Podman, image builder and web console

          Podman was released with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 and 8.0 as the next generation of Linux container tools, is designed to allow faster experimentation and development of features.

          Podman features include rootless, kube generate, and kube play (see: "Podman can now ease the transition to Kubernetes and CRI-O"). Podman is also compatible with the Open Containers Initiative (OCI), Runtime, Image, and Distribution specifications, so customers can build container images that run on OpenShift (which uses CRI-O) or other 3rd-party OCI compliant container engines, and vice versa.

          As can be seen in Figure 1, CRI-O, in Red Hat OpenShift, shares many of its underlying components with Podman. This allows Red Hat engineers to leverage knowledge gained in experiments conducted in Podman for new capabilities in OpenShift.

        • Red Hat Software Collections 3.4, Red Hat Developer Toolset 9 now generally available

          Building the next generation of enterprise applications requires the latest and greatest developer tools paired with production-grade stability. To help meet these twin needs, we’re pleased to deliver the latest version of Red Hat’s curated collection of the latest open source runtime languages, databases, compilers and related developer tools: Red Hat Software Collections 3.4.

        • Celebrating 20 years of enterprise Java: Innovation

          Twenty years ago this week, enterprise Java was born. The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) launched as version 1.2 on Dec. 12, 1999. It built upon many years of work previously in the enterprise distributed systems arena, such as the common object request broker architecture (CORBA) and distributed computing environment (DCE), and its birth marked the beginning of a technology that would become a powerhouse in the world of enterprise application development.

          Building on the "write once, run anywhere" promise of the Java programming language, the enterprise Java platform extends this neutrality and portability with a set of specifications that are well-suited for building large scale applications. As a result, enterprise Java has been able to offer an appealing option for developers that enables them to take advantage of the reliability, speed, efficiency and ease-of-use needed for enterprise-grade development.

        • Keycloak: Core concepts of open source identity and access management

          Keycloak provides the flexibility to export and import configurations easily, using a single view to manage everything. Together, these technologies let you integrate front-end, mobile, and monolithic applications into a microservice architecture. In this article, we discuss the core concepts and features of Keycloak and its application integration mechanisms. You will find links to implementation details near the end.

        • What 5 new innovations will open source yield in the 2020s?

          When I look back to where technology was in 2010, it’s astounding to think about how much has changed — and how so many of those advancements were fueled by open source.

          Ten years ago, AI was not a part of our everyday lives, most developers hadn’t even heard of containers or microservices, blockchain was little more than an idea, and serverless was a far-off dream. Now these technologies, built on open source projects and the communities that surround them, are shaping how developers do their jobs and how people interact with technology on a daily basis.

          In this blog post, I talk about some of the trends that have shaped the past decade as we look forward to what 2020 — and the next decade — has in store for us.

        • Open and Innovative: others don’t have a patch on SUSE

          It’s not just general purpose and large x86_64 systems that feel the benefit of fixing vulnerable systems without waiting for a planned maintenance window. We see so many customers in the SUSE world that run critical applications or large database instances on IBM POWER. In many cases these systems do not have the same levels of flexibility built into general purpose systems, and so every minute of downtime hurts. SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching has supported live patching on the POWER systems for almost 2 years now. This is just another example of SUSE always listening to the user community and delivering to them what the users really need and when they need. Customers know and depend on SUSE to be the first to deliver the right technology at the right time.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Talk Python to Me: Episode #242: Your education will be live-streamed

        Online education has certainly gone mainstream. Developers and companies have finally gotten comfortable taking online courses. Sometimes these are recorded, self-paced courses like we have at Talk Python Training. Other times, they are more like live events in webcast format.

        In this episode, you'll meet two guys who are taking the interactivity of online learning up a notch. Brian Clark and Cecil Philip run a weekly event on Twitch where they are live-streaming an interactive Python course. They take questions from 100's of students and dig into the diversions more mainstream online learning simply cannot.

      • [Krita artist] Production report: episode 31

        Slowly but surely and in the background of the book-publishing project I've been working on a future episode of Pepper&Carrot. Here is a report about that with many screenshots:

      • mintCast 323.5 – Traveling Networker Problem

        In our Innards section, we talk more about Linux Mint and Clem’s comments.

    • Kernel Space

      • Improving the security model of the LVFS

        There are lots of layers of security in the LVFS and fwupd design, including restricted account modes, 2FA, and server side AppStream namespaces. The most powerful one is the so-called vendor-id that the vendors cannot assign themselves, and is assigned by me when creating the vendor account on the LVFS. The way this works is that all firmware from the vendor is tagged with a vendor-id string like USB:0x056A which in this case matches the USB consortium vendor assigned ID. Client side, the vendor-id from the signed metadata is checked against the physical device and the firmware is updated only if the ID matches. This ensures that malicious or careless users on the LVFS can never ship firmware updates for other vendors hardware. About 90% of the vendors on the LVFS are locked down with this mechanism.

        Some vendors have to have IDs that they don’t actually own, a good example here is for a DFU device like the 8bitdo controllers. In runtime mode they use the USB-assigned 8bitdo VID, but in bootloader mode they use a generic VID which is assigned to the chip supplier as they are using the reference bootloader. This is obviously fine, and both vendor IDs are assigned to 8bitdo on the LVFS for this reason. Another example is where Lenovo is responsible for updating Lenovo-specific NVMe firmware, but where the NVMe vendor isn’t always Lenovo’s PCI ID.

      • Graphics Stack

        • NVIDIA 440.44 Linux Driver Brings Fixes, __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE Honored With Vulkan

          Out today is NVIDIA 440.44 as the latest stable Linux driver update in their new long-lived driver series.

          Succeeding the 440.36 and 440.31 stable drivers, the 440.44 release isn't too exciting but at least NVIDIA should be introducing a new beta series shortly.

        • Intel's OpenSWR OpenGL Software Rasterizer Pulls In Tessellator From Microsoft Direct3D Code

          OpenSWR is Intel's performance-minded software rasterizer for purposes like workstation visualizations and is where it outperforms the likes of LLVMpipe. This CPU-based OpenGL implementation can make use of not only AVX/AVX2 but also AVX-512 and other optimizations to support speedy CPU-based GL operations from laptops to Xeon Scalable hardware. Like LLVMpipe, OpenSWR does leverage LLVM in part. Those unfamiliar with this long-standing Intel open-source project can learn more at OpenSWR.org.

    • Applications

      • Annotate screenshots on Linux with Ksnip

        I recently switched from MacOS to Elementary OS, a Linux distribution focused on ease of use and privacy. As a user-experience designer and a free software supporter, I take screenshots and annotate them all the time. After trying out several different tools, the one I enjoy the most by far is Ksnip, an open source tool licensed under GPLv2.

      • Daniel Stenberg: BearSSL is curl’s 14th TLS backend

        curl supports more TLS libraries than any other software I know of. The current count stops at 14 different ones that can be used to power curl’s TLS-based protocols (HTTPS primarily, but also FTPS, SMTPS, POP3S, IMAPS and so on).

        The beginning

        The very first curl release didn’t have any TLS support, but already in June 1998 we shipped the first version that supported HTTPS. Back in those days the protocol was still really SSL. The library we used then was called SSLeay. (No, I never understood how that’s supposed to be pronounced)

        The SSLeay library became OpenSSL very soon after but the API was brought along so curl supported it from the start.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Hellpoint, the dark sci-fi action RPG from Cradle Games now launching in 2020 with new details

        Cradle Games recently put out some fresh exciting details for Hellpoint, their upcoming crowdfunded dark sci-fi action RPG.

        Firstly, it seems the release has been pushed back a while. They were aiming for this year but they're just not going to hit it. They've been going through console certification, along with doing regular updates to the PC Beta and they're now saying it's going to be sometime in "Q1 2020" for Hellpoint's release.

      • Get Wasteland 2 Director's Cut FREE in the GOG Winter Sale, lots of Linux games going cheaps

        Is there seriously another big sale going on already? Yep! This time it comes with a FREE game too. GOG are offering Wasteland 2 Director's Cut at no cost.

        Firstly then, the Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Digital Classic Edition going FREE on GOG which also comes with Wasteland 1: The Original Classic so you're getting two games for nothing here. That should keep you busy enough through the colder Winter nights.

      • Action-RPG platform shooter Bite the Bullet is going to have some really crazy weapons

        Mega Cat Studios previously showed how eating enemies in Bite the Bullet would power you up, now they're talking about the varied weapons you get to play with.

        As a huge fan of Broforce and other such crazy action platformers, Bite the Bullet is high up on my list of games coming out next year. We shouldn't be waiting too long on it, with it due in the first quarter of 2020. To show it off a little more, Mega Cat Studios have a new video talking about all the weapons and some of them are pretty crazy.

      • Another Steam Beta is out, updates the Linux Runtime to help Steam Play Proton

        Quite a small update to the Steam Beta recently, but for some Linux gamers using Steam Play Proton it might be a rather helpful one.

        The new Library got tweaked a little again, now allowing for Family Sharing of tools, Valve also fixed new categories created in small mode or Big Picture mode not being properly saved when switching to normal mode and recently played but disallowed by Family View games not appearing in the Recent Games shelf when Family View is enabled on startup.

      • Enable your Python game player to run forward and backward

        In previous entries in this series about creating video games in Python 3 using the Pygame module, you designed your level-design layout, but some portion of your level probably extended past your viewable screen. The ubiquitous solution to that problem in platformer games is, as the term "side-scroller" suggests, scrolling.

        The key to scrolling is to make the platforms around the player sprite move when the player sprite gets close to the edge of the screen. This provides the illusion that the screen is a "camera" panning across the game world.

        This scrolling trick requires two dead zones at either edge of the screen, at which point your avatar stands still while the world scrolls by.

      • Survival Mode in The Long Dark just got a lot bigger with the ERRANT PILGRIM update

        As promised, Hinterland Studio have released a huge update to the Survival Mode side of The Long Dark named ERRANT PILGRIM.

        It brings in a whole new region to explore, Bleak Inlet. Once a home to a thriving industrial Cannery, seismic activity cut-off Bleak Inlet from the rest of the Great Bear mainland. Exploring is not for the faint of heart, being Timberwolf territory but the treasures contained in the industrial complex may just be enough to warrant the journey.

      • DXVK To Enter Maintenance Mode Because Of Fragility And Unreliability

        It looks like DXVK, the Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 11 and 10, is entering maintenance mode. That's not because it's considered feature complete and bug-free, like it's usually the case when software enters maintenance mode, but because the main developer considers that DXVK has become a "fragile, unreliable and frustrating maintenance nightmare".

      • DXVK Reportedly Going Into "Maintenance Mode" Due To State Of Code-Base

        While DXVK tends to be much-loved by Linux gamers for allowing more Direct3D 10/11 Windows games to run nicely on Linux with Wine or Proton (Steam Play) thanks to its fairly complete translation of D3D10/D3D11 API calls to Vulkan, it looks like Philip Rebohle is at least contemplating shifting it just into maintenance-mode.

        The DXVK lead developer recently commented that DXVK is "entering maintenance mode" and he doesn't want to make any significant changes or additions to the code.

      • Shovel Knight: King of Cards and Shovel Knight Showdown are out, completing the series

        Starting off with a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign back in 2013 and growing into a massive multi-part 8-bit inspired world, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove now finally finished. Note: Keys provided by GOG.com to us.

        Originally having a goal of $75,000 and a Linux/macOS stretch goal at $130,000 it proved to be popular ending on $311,491. It's taken six years for Yacht Club Games to get here starting with Shovel of Hope, followed by Plague of Shadows in 2015, Specter of Torment in 2017, and now King of Cards and Shovel Knight Showdown in 2019.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • Revamp your old Linux desktop with Joe's Window Manager

        Joe's Window Manager (JWM for short) is a lightweight window manager for X11. It's written in C, minimally using Xlib. Because it's so small and simple, JWM makes a great window manager for slow or old computers. The Raspberry Pi barely registers that JWM is running, leaving precious system resources for more important tasks than the desktop.

        JWM follows in the footsteps of environments like FVWM, Window Maker, and Fluxbox. It provides an application menu, window decoration, and a panel with an application menu, taskbar, and clock.

    • Distributions

      • Reviews

        • Fedora 31 Workstation review - The color of winter

          Last week, we talked about MX Linux MX-19. This week, let's have a look at Fedora 31. Now, some of you may already start grumbling and complaining. Because I will focus a lot of my energy on the Gnome desktop and what it doesn't do, and all that. But then, Fedora is the pioneer child (not in the communist sense) of the Gnome world, showcasing the latest fixes and features the environment offers. Therein lies my hope and my expected but hopefully proven wrong disappointment.

          Looking back to the past two years or so, I found Fedora to have improved a little in the performance area, has become more consistent, gained stability in major areas side by side with bugs and problems in others, and still isn't user-friendly enough for immediate consumption. Y'know, proprietary stuff, window buttons, desktop icons, stuff like that. Fedora 30 is a good melting pot of all these observations. I wasn't happy, but then, it's time to rewind the clock, reset my emotions, and boldly charge head first into the wall of open-source.

      • New Releases

      • Debian Family

        • How to Install ElkArte Forum with Apache and Let's Encrypt on Debian 10

          ElkArte is a free, open-source and powerful forum software that allows you to create your own online forum community. In this tutorial, we will explain how to install ElkArte on Debian 10 server.

        • My Free Software Activities in November 2019



          Welcome to gambaru.de. Here is my monthly report that covers what I have been doing for Debian. If you’re interested in Java, Games and LTS topics, this might be interesting for you.

        • Debian GNU/Linux riscv64 port -- Sponsors and Build machines

          In previous posts about the riscv64 port there were mentions about history, progress and other details, but in this one I want to address the topic of sponsors and build machines, which even if there are mentions from time to time (e.g. in talks and slides posted here), it has not been covered in a comprehensive manner.

          And it's only fair that we acknowledge people and orgs sponsoring and contributing resources... and about time too. They will appear roughly in chronological order.

        • Ian Jackson: Debian GR on init systems - Ballot paper format

          You are allowed to reorder the choices on your ballot paper, and this is effective. That is, you can take the ballot paper in the CFV and edit the lines in it into your preferred order with cut and paste. You can look at the letters, or the Secretary's summary lines, when you do that.

          It's important to use a proper text editor and not linewrap things while you do this.

          After, that you can simply write numbers 1 to 8 into the boxes down the left hand side.

          Rank all the options. That way when you get your vote ack back, any parse failure will show up as a blank space in the ack.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • 10 Reasons to Use Linux Mint in 2019

          In the past, we have published articles listing the reasons to use a handful of Linux distros such as 10 Reasons to Use Arch Linux, 10 Reasons to Use Manjaro Linux, The 10 Best Reasons to Use Fedora Linux and today, we have a shift in our focus as this time around, our subject matter is Linux Mint.

          Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution with a major focus on making open-source goodies freely available and easily accessible in a modern, elegant, powerful, and convenient operating system. It is developed based on Ubuntu, uses dpkg package manager, and is available for x86-64 and arm64 architectures.

          Linux Mint has been hailed by many as the better operating system to use when compared to its parent distro and has also managed to maintain its position on distrowatch as the OS with the 3rd most popular hits in the past 1 year.

        • Juju 2.7: Enhanced k8s experience, improved networking and more

          Canonical is proud to announce the availability of Juju 2.7. This new release introduces a range of exciting features and several improvements which enhance Juju across various areas.

          To learn more about Juju, visit our page.

          Kubernetes extensions

          Juju is becoming the simplest way to deploy and manage your container-centric workloads. This release was aimed at bringing more Juju features to k8s charms and more k8s features to Juju.

          K8s charms can now define actions, introspect agents, and communicate back to Juju via the addition of juju-run within the pod’s PATH environmental variable. Experienced k8s operators will feel more at home with the ability to set secrets, administer service accounts, and other k8s-native features from their charms directly.

        • How using Charmed OSM helps telcos to accelerate their NFV transformation
    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Frédéric Wang: Review of my year 2019 at Igalia

        In 2016, I was among the new software engineers who joined Igalia. Three years later I applied to become co-owner of the company and the legal paperwork was completed in April. As my colleague Andy explained on his blog, this does not change a lot of things in practice because most of the decisions are taken within the assembly. However, I’m still very happy and proud of having achieved this step

        One of my new duty has been to be the “mentor” of Miyoung Shin since February and to help with her integration at Igalia. Shin has been instrumental in Igalia’s project to improve Chromium’s Code Health with an impressive number of ~500 commits. You can watch the video of her BlinkOn lightning talk on YouTube. In addition to her excellent technical contribution she has also invested her energy in company’s life, helping with the organization of social activities during our summits, something which has really been appreciated by her colleagues. I’m really glad that she has recently entered the assembly and will be able to take a more active role in the company’s decisions!

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Announcing Version 2.7 of the Mozilla Root Store Policy

            After many months of discussion on the mozilla.dev.security.policy mailing list, our Root Store Policy governing Certificate Authorities (CAs) that are trusted in Mozilla products has been updated. Version 2.7 has an effective date of January 1st, 2020.

          • Week notes - 2019 w49 - worklog - The Weak Notes

            A week with a bad cold makes it more difficult to write week notes. So here my weak notes. Everything seems heavier to type, to push.

            This last week-end I was at JSConf JP. I wrote down some notes about it.

            The week starts with two days of fulltime diagnosis (Monday, Tuesday). Let's get to it: 69 open bugs for Gecko. We try to distribute our work across the team so we are sure that at least someone is on duty for each day of the week. When we have finished our shift, we can add ourselves for more days. That doesn't prevent us for working on bugs the rest of the week. Some of the bugs take longer.

          • Problematic monetization in security products, Avira edition

            A while back we’ve seen how Avast monetizes their users. Today we have a much smaller fish to fry, largely because the Avira’s extensions in question aren’t installed by default and require explicit user action for the additional “protection.” So these have far fewer users, currently 400 thousands on Firefox and slightly above a million on Chrome according to official add-on store numbers. It doesn’t make their functionality any less problematic however.

            That’s especially the case for Avira Browser Safety extension that Avira offers for Firefox and Opera. While the vendor’s homepage lists “Find the best deals on items you’re shopping for” as last feature in the list, the extension description in the add-on stores “forgets” to mention this monetization strategy. I’m not sure why the identical Chrome extension is called “Avira Safe Shopping” but at least here the users get some transparency.

            [...]

            The Avira Browser Safety extension is identical to Avira Safe Shopping and monetizes by offering “best shopping deals” to the users. This functionality is underdocumented, particularly in Avira’s privacy policy. It is also risky however, as Avira chose to implement it in such a way that it will execute JavaScript code from Avira’s servers on arbitrary websites as well as in the context of the extension itself. In theory, this allows Avira or anybody with control of this particular server to target individual users, spy on them or mess with their browsing experience in almost arbitrary ways.

            In addition to that, the security part of the extension is implemented in a suboptimal way and will upload the entire browsing history of the users to Avira’s servers without even removing potentially sensitive data first. Again, Avira’s privacy policy is severely lacking and won’t make any clear statements as to what happens with this data.

      • BSD

        • NomadBSD 1.3 Released To Offer A Pleasant FreeBSD 12.1 Based Desktop Experience

          Along similar aims to GhostBSD and MidnightBSD, GhostBSD is another one of the BSD distributions focused on providing a nice out-of-the-box experience. NomadBSD 1.3 is now available that is in turn based on the recent FreeBSD 12.1.

          NomadBSD 1.3 is based on FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE, adds ZFS file-system support to its desktop installer, auto-configuration support for running within Oracle VirtualBox, bundles the NVIDIA 440 proprietary graphics driver, adds nomadbsd-dmconfig and nomadbsd-adduser Qt tools for further configuring the desktop OS, better X.Org driver detection for newer Intel graphics, Audacity and Orage have been added to the default application list, Thunderbird and Palemoon have been bumped from the default application list, and a variety of other desktop application defaults have changed.

      • Programming/Development

        • Qt Shader Tools Looks To Become Official Qt6 Module

          The currently-experimental Qt Shader Tools allows for graphics/compute shader conditioning and used by the in-development Qt graphics abstraction layer for supporting Vulkan / Metal / Direct3D / OpenGL APIs.

          Qt Shader Tools offers various shader features in preparing them for consumption by different graphics APIs. Qt Shader Tools is currently used ahead of time for QtGUI with Qt 5.14+. But for Qt 6.0, Qt Shader Tools is going through the appropriate steps for becoming a formal Qt 6 module for compiling and translating shaders between interfaces.

        • Vim

        • Python

          • Python Positional-only parameters

            I have downloaded Python 3.8 and start to play around with those latest python functions. In this article, we will look at the Positional-only parameter syntax which is a function parameter syntax / to indicate that some function parameters must be specified positionally and cannot be used as keyword arguments which means after the / syntax we may specify a value for each parameter within that function.

          • For Loop in Python Explained With Practical Examples

            If you are just getting started to learn Python, you must be in search of something to explore for loop in Python.

            Of course, our list of free python resources should help you learn about it quickly.

            In either case, we shall help you learn more about the ‘for‘ loop in python using a couple of important examples.

          • Data Engineer Interview Questions With Python

            Going to interviews can be a time-consuming and tiring process, and technical interviews can be even more stressful! This tutorial is aimed to prepare you for some common questions you’ll encounter during your data engineer interview. You’ll learn how to answer questions about databases, Python, and SQL.

          • 8 AI Predictions for 2020: Business Leaders & Researchers Weigh In

            The first industrial revolution was powered by coal, the second by oil and gas, and the third by nuclear power. The fourth — AI — is fueled by an abundance of data and breakthroughs in compute power. While this abundance has allowed us to make significant progress in recent years, there is still much to be done for AI to be the positive life-changing force that many hope it will be. We asked thought leaders at the forefront of AI and machine learning technology to contribute some insight into what they think will transpire in 2020. Their predictions center around hardware, the human impact of AI, the public’s understanding of AI, and its limitations.

          • The easiest way to deploy Django application

            Heroku is a cloud application platform, it facilitate the deployement of a web application.

            They support several programming languages, include Python.

          • Encoding and Decoding Base64 Strings in Python

            Have you ever received a PDF or an image file from someone via email, only to see strange characters when you open it? This can happen if your email server was only designed to handle text data. Files with binary data, bytes that represent non-text information like images, can be easily corrupted when being transferred and processed to text-only systems.

            Base64 encoding allows us to convert bytes containing binary or text data to ASCII characters. By encoding our data, we improve the chances of it being processed correctly by various systems.

            In this tutorial, we would learn how Base64 encoding and decoding works, and how it can be used. We will then use Python to Base64 encode and decode both text and binary data.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Microsoft Teams for Linux available in preview
        • Microsoft announces the release of Teams on Linux
        • Microsoft Teams comes to Linux
        • Microsoft Teams is now available for Linux
        • Microsoft's Teams goes to bat for the other team with preview on Linux
        • Microsoft Teams Is Now Officially Available For Linux

          Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaborative platform that allows you to keep your teams chats, meetings, files and apps together in one place. If your company has a team of developers who uses Linux desktop, they can now use Microsoft Teams natively on their Linux desktops. Microsoft Teams clients are available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Android and iOS. It also available as web app, so we can use it on any Internet-enabled devices, regardless of the operating system.

        • Windows Subsystem For Linux Performance At The End Of 2019

          Recently I wrapped up some benchmarks looking at the performance of Ubuntu on Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux comparing WSL on Windows 10 Build 18362 (May 2019 Update) and then both WSL and WSL2 performance using the Windows 10 Build 19008 Insider's Preview (what will come as Windows 10 20H1 update) for looking at where the WSL performance is heading. Additionally, looking at the bare metal performance of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for which the WSL instances were based plus Ubuntu 19.10. As well, for the Windows-compatible tests also looking at how the Windows performance itself was outside of WSL/WSL2.

        • Security

          • Security updates for Wednesday

            Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (crypto++ and thunderbird), Debian (cacti, freeimage, git, and jackson-databind), Fedora (nss), openSUSE (clamav, dnsmasq, munge, opencv, permissions, and shadowsocks-libev), Red Hat (nss, nss-softokn, nss-util, rh-maven35-jackson-databind, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (nss, nss-softokn, nss-util, nss-softokn, and thunderbird), SUSE (caasp-openstack-heat-templates, crowbar-core, crowbar-openstack, crowbar-ui, etcd, flannel, galera-3, mariadb, mariadb-connector-c, openstack-dashboard-theme-SUSE, openstack-heat-templates, openstack-neutron, openstack-nova, openstack-quickstart, patterns-cloud, python-oslo.messaging, python-oslo.utils, python-pysaml2, libssh, and strongswan), and Ubuntu (git, libpcap, libssh, and thunderbird).

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Ad industry groups ask that the CCPA keep its mitts off their cookies

              Five ad industry groups have asked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to change stipulations about cookie-blocking in the state’s impending, far-reaching, almost-GDPR-but-not-quite privacy law, which goes into effect in the new year.

              It’s for the sake of consumer choice, they said.

              Initially, the language in their letter seemed to be requesting a ban on privacy tools such as extensions that block ads and tracking scripts, but the comments turned out to be asking for something a bit more nuanced than that: MediaPost reporter Wendy Davis later said that the groups clarified, saying that they only want the AG to prohibit browsers from blocking the industry’s opt-out cookies – AdChoices – as opposed to all cookies.

    • Monopolies

      • Trademarks

        • Federal Court in Australia Grants Injunction Restraining Unlawful Use of Scotch Whisky

          On 15 November 2019, a Federal Court in Melbourne, Australia, granted a series of permanent injunctions restraining Rex D’Aquino (principal director, D’Aquino Bros Pty Ltd) and D’Aquino Bros Pty Ltd (Australian based liquor company) from infringing and unlawfully using the Australian certification trade mark for Scotch Whisky. The Scotch Whisky Association(SWA) instituted the Federal Court action following an ABC investigation which revealed D’Aquino Bros Pty Ltd allegedly sold whisky produced in Orange, New South Wales, Australia as Scotch Whisky produced in Scotland, in breach of Australian trade mark law. The brands of contested whisky included “The Black Scot”, “The Clansmen” and “J.B.R Scotch Whisky.” These brands fail to meet the established requirements for Scotch Whisky.

Recent Techrights' Posts

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It cannot be trivially denied that sponsorship in the form of "advertising" impacts where publishers go (or don't go, won't go)
Terrible Year for Microsoft Windows in Cyprus
down from 86% to 72% since January
 
Links 25/12/2024: Hong Kong Attacks Activists During Holidays, Xerox to Buy Lexmark
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 24, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Gemini Links 25/12/2024: Open Source Social and No Search
Links for the day
Brittany Day Connects Windows Ransomware to "Linux" Using Microsoft LLMs (FUD Galore, Zero Effort, No Accountability)
FUD and misinformation made by Microsoft LLMs again?
Links 24/12/2024: Labour Strikes and TikTok Scrambling to Prop Up Radical Politicians That Would Protect TikTok
Links for the day
Where the Population is Controlled by Skinnerboxes Inside People's Pockets (or Purses)
A very small fraction of mobile users practise or exercise freedom/control over the skinnerbox
[Meme] Coin-Operated Publishers (Gaming the Message, Buying the Narrative)
Advertise (sponsor) to 'play'
[Meme] How to Kill Unions (Staff on Shoestring Budget Cannot Afford Lawyers)
What next for the EPO? "Gig economy"?
The EPO's Staff Union (SUEPO) Takes Legal Action to Rectify the Decrease in Wages (Lessening of Purchasing Power)
here is what the union published
Gemini Links 24/12/2024: Deedum Gemini Client Gets Colour Support, Advent of Code 2024
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Slides to New Lows in Colombia
Now Windows is at an all-time low
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 23, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, December 23, 2024
A Strong and Positive Closing for the Year's Last Week
In a lot of ways this year was a good one for Free software
Feels Too Warm for Christmas
Christmas is here, no snow in sight
Links 23/12/2024: 'Negative Time' and US Arms Taiwan Again
Links for the day
Links 23/12/2024: The Book of Uncommon Beings, Squirrels, and Slop Ruining Workplaces
Links for the day
Links 23/12/2024: North Korean Death Toll in Russia at ~1,100, Oligarch Who Illegally Migrated/Stayed (Musk) Shuts Down US Government
Links for the day
The World's 'Richest Country' Chooses GNU/Linux
This has gone on for quite some time
Richard Stallman on Love
Richard Stallman's personal website includes a section that lists three essays on the subject of love
Apple's LLM Slop Told Us Luigi Mangione Had Shot Himself, BetaNews Used LLMs to Talk About a Dead Linus Torvalds
They can blame it on some bot
Microsoft, Give Me LLM Slop About "Linux" and "Santa", I Need Some Fake Article...
BetaNews is basically an LLM slop site
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 22, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, December 22, 2024