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Links 21/8/2020: Diffoscope 157 and GNU Health 3.6.5



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • 2020-08-21 | Linux Headlines

        Microsoft backports WSL2 to earlier Windows 10 releases, Blender meets its funding goal with a key new patron, the Open Technology Fund sues the US Agency for Global Media, and the Open Source Initiative announces its new Interim General Manager.

      • Destination Linux 187: The Future of Computing with Jill Bryant Ryniker

        On this week’s episode of Destination Linux, the number ONE video-centric Linux podcast on the planet. We’re going to talk about the future of interacting with your computer with some dream hardware discussion. We have a very special guest this week, Jill has returned to guest host and she’s going to show off one of her amazing computers from her tech vault. We’re also going to discuss some unfortunate news from the Mozilla team. We’re going to CS:GO for it in the Gaming section, then we’ve got our popular tips, tricks and software picks. Also if you’ve not heard yet, we’re having a DLN Game Fest on Sunday August 30th, go to https://destinationlinux.network/gamefest for more info. We’ve got all this and so much more, on this week’s Destination Linux podcast.

    • Kernel Space

      • Now That The Linux Kernel Can Be Zstd-Compressed, The Next Step Is The Firmware

        With Linux 5.9 comes the ability to compress the Linux kernel image / initrd with Zstd for yielding faster boot speeds but at a compression ratio between Gzip and XZ/LZMA. Being proposed next with the widespread adoption of Facebook's Zstd is compressing the kernel microcode/firmware files.

        A patch was sent out today to allow supporting Zstd-compressed firmware files by the Linux kernel. This in turn would basically allow the Zstandard compression algorithm to be used not only for kernel/initrd image compression but also for the many firmware files found on the system.

      • Linux 5.8.3
        I'm announcing the release of the 5.8.3 kernel.

        All users of the 5.8 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.8.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.8.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

      • Linux 5.7.17
      • Linux 5.4.60
      • Linux 4.19.141
      • Linux 4.14.194
      • Linux 4.9.233
      • Linux 4.4.233
      • LPC 2020 Is Sold Out

        LPC 2020 is sold out. No more tickets are available. We have reached the maximum capacity for our server infrastructure.

        Please be considerate, there is no need to contact us asking for tickets, as we are very busy finalizing all the details of the virtual conference.

      • Paragon Sends Out Updated NTFS Driver They Want To Mainline For The Linux Kernel

        Coming as a surprise last week was word of Paragon Software wanting to mainline their NTFS read-write driver as a significant improvement over the existing NTFS Linux kernel driver. An updated patch series for that much improved NTFS Linux kernel driver is now available.

        As explained last week, the existing NTFS kernel driver for Linux is primarily read-only and lacks much functionality. There is also the NTFS-3G driver that is more common for Linux users needing NTFS support, but that is FUSE-based. Paragon meanwhile is looking to mainline "ntfs3" as their previously commercial NTFS kernel driver.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Nvidia's GeForce Now is now available for Chromebooks



          On the 18th of August 2020, Nvidia released very exciting news and that is that GeForce Now is now available for Chromebooks!

          [...]

          So, as you most probably know GeForce Now, is a cloud gaming platform, so for Chromebooks, a person simply creates an account and log in, they have a free account with limitations, or a paid Founders Membership account.

          The good thing about it is that you play the games on their hardware so your Chromebook doesn't have to be too powerful to run it, the minimum requirements are that you have a Chromebook with 4GB of ram.

        • Panfrost performance counters with Perfetto

          Linux system information is available in several scattered forms. We can query kernel events, CPU counters, and memory counters through ftrace, procfs and sysfs, but historically we've lacked a holistic view of the system - including graphics performance counters - to target optimization. But we have now integrated Mali GPU hardware counters supported by Panfrost with Perfetto's tracing SDK, unlocking all-in-one graphics-aware profiling on Panfrost systems!

        • AMDVLK 2020.Q3.4 Released With Image Robustness Support, Fixes

          AMDVLK 2020.Q3.4 is the new release and is updated for the Vulkan API version 1.2.150 while the newest extension supported by the driver is VK_EXT_image_robustness. The image robustness extension has been around since last month with Vulkan 1.2.148 and deals with the handling of out-of-bounds reads from images. VK_EXT_image_robustness provides a subset of the guarantees provided by the larger VK_EXT_robustness2 extension.

    • Applications

      • [Kubernetes] Moving Forward From Beta

        In Kubernetes, features follow a defined lifecycle. First, as the twinkle of an eye in an interested developer. Maybe, then, sketched in online discussions, drawn on the online equivalent of a cafe napkin. This rough work typically becomes a Kubernetes Enhancement Proposal (KEP), and from there it usually turns into code.

        For Kubernetes v1.20 and onwards, we're focusing on helping that code graduate into stable features.

      • Kaidan – Modern XMPP Chat Client for Linux

        Kaidan features: supported XEPs / RFCs and planned XEPs. The latest release so far is Kaidan 0.5 that contains QR code scanning and generation, message search, and more.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Wine or Emulation

      • The Best Emulators for Playing Retro Games on Modern Devices

        Every year, hundreds of retro video games are rendered unplayable as old consoles—from Super NES to PlayStation 1—stop working.

        Many older games are available via PlayStation Now and Nintendo Switch Online, but what happens when a subscription service is no longer supported and companies stop storing games on their servers? Unless you have a DRM-free copy of a game, and a way to play it, you're at the mercy of game distributors and their bottom lines.

        Enter emulators, which allow you to play game ROMs on modern platforms. There are emulators for every retro game console—some even support multiple systems—and a variety of operating systems. There are legal gray areas surrounding ownership of ROM files, while some emulators require complex setups, but they're one of your best options for a hit of old-school gaming nostalgia.

    • Games

      • Airships: Conquer the Skies hits 100K sales, new update live too plus interview

        One man band David Stark has managed to hit quite a milestone, with their game Airships: Conquer the Skies hitting over 100K sales.

        It’s taken quite a while to get there though, with it arriving on Steam in Early Access back in 2015 and going onto a full release in 2018. Still, for a sole developer of a pixel art game about constructing steampunk styled airships it’s certainly impressive. Just recently, Stark put out an update that added in some fun new toys including guided missiles, kinetic bombs and more modules to attach to your creations.

      • Fantastic 2D action-RPG 'Chronicon' has now released

        Chronicon is an example of pure dedication, as Subworld developed this excellent 2D action RPG over the course of over five years and it's now left Early Access.

        A game that won me over from the first time I loaded it up too, with the heavy atmosphere and intense action that really does give you a classic Diablo feel wrapped up in some nice pixel art with great lighting and effects. It has a curious story too, as you're in a world that appears to have been save already. You're granted the honour of using the Chronicon, a device that allows you to open portals to re-live old tales.

        [...]

        We helped the developer sort out their Linux dependencies in a previous release (volunteered help), so it should continue working nicely across various Linux distributions.

      • The Long Dark will not see Episode 4 until next year

        Hinterland Studio have given an update on the progress of the next episode of the single-player story for the survival game The Long Dark.

        Like with a lot of studios, COVID19 has caused all sorts of issues. Hinterland's studio lead, Raphael van Lierop, said in an announcement they're all doing well but they did shut down their physical studio back in March, so they've been in lockdown since then. Working from home (as I would know), increases your distractions many times and when you need to work as a studio, it can end up consuming even more time to communicate on simple things.

      • Commandos 2 - HD Remaster due for Linux PC support 'this Winter'

        Like a lot of things across this year, the actual Linux PC version of Commandos 2 - HD Remaster has been pushed back to this Winter.

        Commandos 2 - HD Remaster is a revamp of the original and much loved 2002 strategy game from Pyro Studios and Eidos Interactive. Kalypso Media now own the rights, so with Yippee! Entertainment they worked to produce an updated version with higher resolution art, reworked controls, a fresh UI and a new tutorial.

        The Linux (and macOS/Switch) version was originally due in the Spring after the whole game was delayed from 2019 to 2020, then they pushed it back to the Fall and now they've confirmed on Twitter that it will be happening this Winter. No reason given at any point but with the COVID19 outbreak all sorts of delays are to be expected across the industry.

      • For the People is a political management visual novel out now

        Mixing up the visual novel genre with a little management and plenty of politics, For the People from Brezg Studio is out now with Linux PC support.

        [...]

        Very much a visual novel, one to get if you like a bit of political mystery and revolutions. That's mixed in with some reasonably light decision-based mechanics, where you need to weigh up various choices against your funding and how the political party feels about you. Don't expect a lot of depth to any of the management parts of the game, they're all quite light and don't seem to have a lot of meaning, it's more about going through the story. Quite short too, can be finished within single digit hours.

      • Chunky pixel first-person dungeon crawler Delver is now up on itch.io

        Something for the weekend perhaps, as the excellent first-person dungeon crawler Delver has been released DRM-free on the indie game store itch.io. What can serve as a great reminder for a game you might have missed, more options on where to pick up games absolutely a good thing.

      • Heliborne - Enhanced Edition is out now and it's been really badly received

        After buying the rights to the combat flight sim Heliborne from JetCatGames, the team at Klabater have updated Heliborne into an Enhanced Edition that's out now.

        This new upgrade is free to existing owners and bundles all the DLC together into the game, along with a bump to the price of the game which now has no DLC as it's just one single edition and purchase.

      • Domino House is an upcoming slightly creepy escape room puzzler

        Releasing later this year in October, Domino House is a 2D escape-room styled point and click puzzler with a somewhat creepy feel to it. Developed by Canadian indie developer Ludivine Cormier of Purple Cable, their focus is on retro-style 2D games with Domino House being their first commercial title.

        Trapped in a strange house filled with mysterious dominoes, creatures, and other interactive objects your only task is to escape. So it's a bit of a hidden object point and click puzzle game all blended together, along with different mini-games each with their own rules that you can find throughout the house.

      • Slimesphere is a sweet turn-based strategy that feels like each level is a puzzle

        Slimesphere, the first release from Matheus Reis is a streamlined turn-based strategy game about warring slimes, where each level feels like a puzzle.

        The idea here is that you're given small levels, with limited turns to complete them along with pretty simple rules to follow. There's no randomization here either, it's deterministic mechanics makes sure that it's predictable so you can beat it by following logical tactics.

        A short and sweet strategy game, with 12 levels included that might now seem like might but don't let the little included level count fool you, it becomes quite the challenge as you progress. It throws in new classes of slime, requiring you to work around them and choose your positioning carefully. For what's there, it's quite clever with it. I do wish it came with more though, as I absolute adore the style to it.

      • Release candidate: Godot 3.2.3 RC 4

        Godot 3.2.2 was released on June 26 with over 3 months' worth of development, including many bugfixes and a handful of features. Some regressions were noticed after the release though, so we decided that Godot 3.2.3 would focus mainly on fixing those new bugs to ensure that all Godot users can have the most stable experience possible.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • LXDE Review: Light as a Feather

        LXDE is made up of a lot of separate components, and many of those are interchangeable. As such, it can feel a little disjointed. However, there’s a really important part about LXDE that I want to drive home: it’s so fast. Even in a virtual machine it feels like I’m using a bare metal system. There are so many LXDE distros that aim toward older machines that it makes total sense why they’re able to do that. Additionally, many LXDE distros are quite beautiful, which can really revitalize an older system.

        [...]

        Anybody looking for a no-frills desktop environment that’s highly moldable to your preferences and needs should look at LXDE. It’s a step above a tiling window manager in terms of user-friendly features and weight, but not by much, and it gives you a huge amount of flexibility.

        Additionally, anybody who has some particularly old hardware will benefit from LXDE as their desktop environment.

        After reading this LXDE review, make sure to check out some other desktop environments, like GNOME, KDE, and Pantheon, and learn about some ways to customize LXDE like app launchers and themes.

    • Distributions

      • New Releases

        • Parrot OS 4.10 MATE Home Edition

          Today we are looking at Parrot OS 4.10 MATE Home Edition. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.7, MATE 1.24, based on Debian 11 Testing, and uses about 800 MB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

        • Freespire 6.0.3

          Today we are looking at Freespire 6.0.3. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.4, XFCE 4.14, based on Ubuntu 18.04, and uses about 600MB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

        • Sparky Linux 2020.0

          Today we are looking at Sparky Linux 2020.08. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.7, XFCE 4.14, based on Debian Bullseye, and uses about 1GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Allowing cc/c++ To Be More Easily Changed Out Has Been Deferred To Fedora 34

          Proposed last year for Fedora 32 was aiming to make it easier to swap out GCC for other alternate compilers (like Clang) by using the update-alternatives functionality on Fedora for handling the /usr/bin/cc and /usr/bin/c++ symbolic links. That work was deferred to Fedora 33 as it wasn't completed in time while now it's been deferred yet again to Fedora 34 next year.

        • Fedora Community Outreach Revamp: Update!

          The Mindshare Comittee [sic] approved the Community Outreach Revamp proposal after incorporating input from the Fedora community. Mindshare nominated four contributors for potential co-leads for the Temporary Task Force (TTF). Two of the four nominees have capacity for the initiative: Sumantro Mukherjee and Mariana Balla. They will be leading the TTF over the course of the revamp.

          Sumantro and Mariana’s primary efforts will be to help organize the multitude of tasks and communications that need to occur for the revamp to be a success. They are meeting weekly along with Marie Nordin, Fedora’s Community Action and Impact Coordinator (FCAIC). Currently, the co-leads are diving into each area of the revamp plan and adding in more concrete tasks, blockers, and taking a look at how to implement the plan strategically.

        • Get schooled on UX: learning the design thinking process at Red Hat

          How does a good designer operate? How can they understand users, challenge their own beliefs, and redefine problems to create effective prototypes?

          This is what Bekah Diring, an interaction designer for Red Hat’s User Experience Design (UXD) team, asked a group of high school students. She and fellow designer Gina Doyle helped lead the first meeting of a UX workshop series for Boston Public School students run by visual designer Mary Shakshober. For years, Red Hat’s Boston office has collaborated with the Boston Private Industry Council to engage students with the tech industry through internships and mentoring programs. After participating as an intern mentor, Shakshober wanted to continue working with the program in a larger capacity.

          She created this workshop series to share the importance of design thinking with students. "The design thinking process is a good way to kick off really any introduction to UX," Shakshober said. "It helps practitioners of UX to think holistically about a process, rather than associating it just with design. Design thinking also helps to build problem solving and communication skills too."

        • Improved configuration and more in Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces 2.3

          Based on Eclipse Che, Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces (CRW) is a Red Hat OpenShift-native developer environment that supports cloud-native development. CodeReady Workspaces 2.3 is now available. For this release, we focused on improving CRW’s configuration options, updating to the latest versions of IDE plugins, and adding new devfiles.

        • OpenShift Virtualization 2.4: A declarative coexistence of virtual machines and containers

          Virtual machines (VMs) on one platform and containers on another, technically, are a relic of bygone times. How about having both on the same platform? In addition, what if that comes with proven open source technologies from the leader itself? Hear me out: dream, no more! All out there who are living in the modern world of 2020 and are fans of Kubernetes and the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform might be already hearing about OpenShift Virtualization 2.4. If yes, that is so rightly so.

          It is brand new with general availability announced on 17 August 2020, and IT professionals at all levels have extreme appetites for it. The curiosity is all about the declarative coexistence of VMs and containers on OpenShift, which is made possible through the smart engineering put into OpenShift Virtualization 2.4, all for good profitable business reasons. Here, declarative means fully automated deployment through operators with a full lifecycle management maturity level.

          Note that KubeVirt (one of the backbone components), its adjacent capabilities (for example, containerized data importer (CDI) and network add-ons), and its technical preview features have been out for a long time. You can now run Windows guest VMs, Linux guest VMs, containers, and serverless all together, yet leveraging a whole common converged ecosystem of OpenShift through its certified, conformant Kubernetes platform capabilities. Yes, you heard me right.

        • The Rise of the Virtual Meetup

          In a galaxy far, far away, there was a planet plagued by a virus. This virus swept across its population, causing entire countries to lock down and whole industries to stop. But in the midst of all this chaos, came the rise of the virtual meetup…

          This period of lock-down and quarantine has been longer than many of us ever assumed it would be. We were confident that events scheduled in April would be able to happen in September. However now, four months since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we have come to realize the extent to which we will most likely need to extend our lock-down and remain in some form of isolation longer than initially anticipated.

        • Kubernetes-native Apache Kafka with Strimzi, Debezium, and Apache Camel (Kafka Summit 2020)

          Apache Kafka has become the leading platform for building real-time data pipelines. Today, Kafka is heavily used for developing event-driven applications, where it lets services communicate with each other through events. Using Kubernetes for this type of workload requires adding specialized components such as Kubernetes Operators and connectors to bridge the rest of your systems and applications to the Kafka ecosystem.

          In this article, we’ll look at how the open source projects Strimzi, Debezium, and Apache Camel integrate with Kafka to speed up critical areas of Kubernetes-native development.

        • Call for Code Daily: Problem solvers are fighting back and how you can get involved, too

          The power of Call for Code€® is in the global community that we have built around this major #TechforGood initiative. Whether it is the deployments that are underway across pivotal projects, developers leveraging the starter kits in the cloud, or ecosystem partners joining the fight, everyone has a story to tell. Call for Code Daily highlights all the amazing #TechforGood stories taking place around the world. Every day, you can count on us to share these stories with you. Check out the stories from the week of August 17th:

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Ubuntu Touch Q&A 82
        • Ubuntu Touch Working On Better PinePhone, PineTab Support

          The UBports' Ubuntu Touch crew has been focusing a lot lately on improving their support for the popular, budget-friendly PineTab tablet and PinePhone smartphone. The next OTA release will bring more improvements for fans of these PINE Allwinner-powered devices.

          The UBports team relayed a number of PINE improvements they have been working on including:

          - Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 will bring working OpenGL rendering support on the PinePhone. At the moment Ubuntu Touch on this Allwinner budget smartphone is using software acceleration, which is brutal, but now will have a working OpenGL renderer with the next release.

        • Memory Comparison of Ubuntu 20.04, Latest Linux Mint and Fedora

          Expanding my previous memory comparisons, now I present you Ubuntu Focal Fossa, Mint Ulyana, and Fedora 32 the three most famous operating systems which are always in top ten Distrowatch rank and released just recently in 2020. In the same time I compare respectively two desktop environments loved by the community namely GNOME and Cinnamon. All pictures above are in full size so simply click one to view it bigger. I hope this helps everyone choosing right distro and right desktop environment from many choices of GNU/Linux. Enjoy!

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • An Update on MDN Web Docs

            Last week, Mozilla announced some general changes in our investments and we would like to outline how they will impact our MDN platform efforts moving forward. It hurts to make these cuts, and it’s important that we be candid on what’s changing and why.

            First we want to be clear, MDN is not going away. The core engineering team will continue to run the MDN site and Mozilla will continue to develop the platform.

            However, because of Mozilla’s restructuring, we have had to scale back our overall investment in developer outreach, including MDN. Our Co-Founder and CEO Mitchell Baker outlines the reasons why here. As a result, we will be pausing support for DevRel sponsorship, Hacks blog and Tech Speakers. The other areas we have had to scale back on staffing and programs include: Mozilla developer programs, developer events and advocacy, and our MDN tech writing.

            We recognize that our tech writing staff drive a great deal of value to MDN users, as do partner contributions to the content. So we are working on a plan to keep the content up to date. We are continuing our planned platform improvements, including a GitHub-based submission system for contributors.

          • Facebook Container Tab in Firefox

            An unfortunate reality to life online today is that some popular sites do not respect your privacy at all. The issue is not the data that you knowingly and freely give them. The issue is that they collect data on you without explicit consent. Oh, sure, you do agree to their “terms of service” that are written in legalese and all the important bits are buried in the depths of it. Facebook is quite possibly one of the worst offenders to stalking you around the internet. It’s one thing to be “watched” when using the Facebook properties as it only makes sense that they are monitoring what you do, what you post and so forth, it’s another thing for them to track you when you go to other sites. That is stalking and although legal, it is not at all ethical. The solution, using Facebook Container Tab in Firefox.

            The purpose of this article is to give you a layer of protection against being stalked by Facebook. If this is all the information you need to convince yourself of the benefits. Install Firefox, if you haven’t already been using it then install the Facebook Container tab.

            This is the first of what will be many security and privacy tips that I hope average folks can use. Although most of what I write targets Linux and specifically openSUSE Linux; I am straying just a bit. This article also assumes that you have some idea how to install software on your particular operating system.

          • Karl Dubost: Khmer Line Breaking

            I'm not an expert in Khmer language, it's just me stumbling on a webcompat issue and trying to make sense of it.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • LibreOffice on Pardus now in 53,000 Classrooms in Turkey

          Pardus is a GNU/Linux distribution jointly developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÃœBÄ°TAK) and National Academic Network and Information Centre (ULAKBÄ°M). It started its life as a Gentoo-based project before developing its own unique identity. Since late 2012, the distribution is based on Debian.

          [...]

          Pardus has open-source subprojects that meet institutional needs for easy dissemination in public institutions and organizations and SMEs. Leader Ahenk Central Management System, Viper Identity Management System, Octopus Integrated Cyber Security System, Interactive Board Interface Project (ETAP), ULAKBÃœS Integrated University System are the main ones.

        • Implementing Vulkan-capable LibreOffice user interface using the Skia library

          LibreOffice 7.0, just released, includes a new drawing backend based on the Skia library, which allows LibreOffice to use the modern Vulkan API to graphics operations. This Visual Class Library (VCL) backend is the default on the Windows platform, superseding the OpenGL-based backend.

          [...]

          The VCL library is responsible for widgets (buttons, controls, etc.) and basic rendering. It does not implement the drawing directly, but it provides an internal API, which is implemented by various backends that implement the actual graphics operations. These backends usually adapt LibreOffice to each platform , for example the ‘win’ backend is used on Windows, the ‘kf5’ and ‘gtk3’ backends are for Unix-like platforms using the KDE Frameworks and the Gtk3 graphics toolkit respectively and there is a ‘headless’ backend used by tests that does not render to the screen.

          Each VCL backend uses an underlying graphics API available on the platform to perform the graphics operations.

      • CMS

        • WordPress says Apple has blocked it from updating its iOS app

          It appears that Apple may be blocking another major developer from submitting updates and bug fixes to its app.

          Matt Mullenweg, one of the founders of WordPress, has reported today that the company has not been able to release updates to the WordPress app on iOS because their ability to do so has been blocked by Apple. According to the developer, Apple is requiring WordPress to support in-app purchases for .com plans.

      • Education

        • Discover Kolibri: A Free Open-source Offline-First and Peer-to-Peer Complete Education System

          Utilizing the revolutionary technologies we have right now in education is an ongoing process. We have dozens of open-source and commercial education systems available in all shapes with a wide variety of options.

          For our topic's today, We have discovered something truly unique: Kolibri, It's different than others in its approach, features, and options.

          Here in this post, we will explain why Kolibri is different and why we recommend it.

      • Programming/Development

        • Intel oneAPI DPC++ Compiler 2020-08 Released With Explicit SIMD Extension

          Along with this week marking the release of oneAPI Level Zero 1.0, the oneAPI Data Parallel C++ compiler has seen its newest tagged release.

          The Intel oneAPI DPC++ Compiler is the company's LLVM-based compiler around their Data Parallel C++ initiative for oneAPI built atop Khronos' SYCL single source programming standard and ISO C++. With the oneAPI DPC++ Compiler 2020-08 release one of the most significant additions is the introduction of the Intel Explicit SIMD extension for low-level GPU performance optimization tuning. This Explicit SIMD extension is for those developers trying to write their own hand-optimized code as opposed to hoping the compiler will optimize most effectively. The Explicit SIMD mode allows for manual vectorization of device code not contingent upon the compiler's optimization abilities and also providing new low-level APIs that map very well for Intel's Gen graphics hardware.

        • Solving the AIOps, DevOps, and ITSM conundrum

          Artificial intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) brings together artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, and machine learning (ML) to automate the identification and remediation of IT operations issues.

          An AIOps system learns from your data and adapts how your application works. These systems won't do the same thing each time. AIOps systems can also run through all workable solutions to a problem, including solutions that some developers may miss in their human analysis of an infrastructure issue. However, we aren't at a place where AIOps systems—open source or proprietary—can replace experienced systems administrators and other operations team members.

        • GCC "-fparallel-jobs" Sent Out For Compiling Individual Files In Parallel - Up To ~1.9x Speedup

          For the past two summers student developer Giuliano Belinassi has been working under Google Summer of Code in working to address GCC parallelization bottlenecks and ultimately a goal of allowing single source files to be split up for compilation in parallel by GCC. In particular, being able to split the compilation of large source files across multiple CPU cores. The latest patches on this "-fparallel-jobs=" was sent out today as we approach the end of GSoC 2020.

          The GCC parallelization effort has been a success and shown much promise even going back to the end of last year. This summer he's been working more on allowing more of the GCC work to happen in parallel for large source files and culminated this week with sending out the "-fparallel-jobs=" patches.

        • LLVM Backend In Development For China's C-SKY Embedded CPUs

          The Chinese-developed C-SKY CPU architecture for 32-bit SoCs and embedded processors could soon see an LLVM back-end to complement the C-SKY support found since GCC 9.

          C-SKY aims to be a "high-performance low-power" 32-bit processor design geared for embedded systems. Initial C-SKY support for the Linux kernel was upstreamed back in Linux 4.20.

        • Top 10 Languages That Paid Highest Salaries Worldwide In 2020
        • Python

          • Mike Driscoll: Python 101 – Boolean Operators and None (Video)

            In this video tutorial, you will learn how Python’s Boolean operators work. You will also learn about Python’s None keyword

          • List of EPS Board Candidates for 2020/2021

            At this year’s EuroPython Society General Assembly (GA), on September 20th, we will vote in a new board of the EuroPython Society for the term 2020/2021.

          • It's the Weekend, Let's Code a Python Project!
          • The Real Python Podcast – Episode #23: Python Wheels and Pass by Reference in Python

            Have you wondered what are Python wheels? How are they used to package Python code? Does Python use pass by value or pass by reference? This week on the show, David Amos is here to help answer these questions, and he has brought another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

            We talk about an article called “What are Python Wheels, and Why Should You Care.” David talks about a Real Python article about pass by reference in Python. We cover several other articles and projects from the Python community including: transcribing speech to text, 4 powerful features Python is still missing, 10 awesome pythonic one-liners, and even more options for packaging your Python code.

          • 15+ practical Python projects for beginners

            If you're learning to code, sometimes it can be more fun to work through practical end-to-end projects than to learn the theory.

            [...]

            Learn the basics of the Repl.it IDE. Why use an online IDE and what are all those different panes? Build a simple program to solve your maths homework.

          • There is More Than One Way to Solve a Bite Exercise

            According to the Zen of Python, "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." It's a good principle for designing a program: the more ways there are of doing something, the more confusing the software becomes, along with a host of other problems. In reality, though, there almost always is more than one way to accomplish something. The quotation even displays this fact: it places the dash in two different ways, neither of which are the obvious way.

            Scroll through a few Bite threads on PyBites, and you'll quickly see that for some Bites, no two solutions are exactly the same. Some might be easier to understand, some might be faster, or use less memory, or fewer lines of code. Typically, there are tradeoffs involved. Understanding those tradeoffs and how they apply to the requirements for our code is an important part of programming.

            I encourage you to, after solving a Bite, think carefully about the other solutions in the Bite thread. How do they differ from yours? Do they run faster? Use less memory? Are they more readable? Why? Asking yourself these questions will give you the tools to evaluate code and decide whether it works for your requirements.

          • Moshe Zadka: Universal Binary

            I have written before about my Inbox Zero methodology. This is still what I practice, but there is a lot more that helps me.

            The concept behind "Universal Binary" is that the only numbers that make sense asymptotically are zero, one, and infinity. Therefore, in order to prevent things from going off into infinity, there needs to be processes that keep everything to either zero or one.

          • Introducing Versioned HDF5

            The problem of storing and manipulating large amounts of data is a challenge in many scientific computing and industry applications. One of the standard data models for this is HDF5, an open technology that implements a hierarchical structure (similar to a file-system structure) for storing large amounts of possibly heterogeneous data within a single file. Data in an HDF5 file is organized into groups and datasets; you can think about these as the folders and files in your local file system, respectively. You can also optionally store metadata associated with each item in a file, which makes this a self-describing and powerful data storage model.

          • The Binary Search Algorithm in Python

            The Binary Search Algorithm is fundamental in Computer Science. It is a very clever algorithm which reduces the time needed to search for items in large datasets dramatically compared to less efficient approaches.

            It is important to note that in order to use binary search, your data must be sorted. Some people get mixed up with sorting algorithms and searching algorithms, grouping them together in their thinking, but it is well worth taking a moment to organise your "algorithm toolkit" a little and make sure that searching and sorting each have their own section.

          • Get ready for Montréal-Python #79: Quadratic Judo!

            Next Monday at 5:30pm (Montréal time) on our Youtube channel, Pierre-Paul Lefebvre the Canadian Digital Service's new COVID-19 portal and Noël Rignon will tell us about privilege management for a REST API. Yamlal Gotame will also present our next coding sprint. We bring back the yoga break with John Noël in a shorter format. After the event, we invite you all on Online Town for a social time. You will also have the chance to do more yoga with John during the social time.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Bad IT planning got in the way of pandemic payments

          Earlier this year, the CARES Act provided billions of dollars in new unemployment payments to Americans whose jobs were affected by the pandemic. But it also created a huge IT challenge for state unemployment agencies who had to quickly retrofit their systems to administer the pandemic payments.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Openwashing

            • Being open to open values

              In this installment of our "Managing with Open Values" series, I chat with Braxton, Director of Pricing for a nationwide U.S. insurance company and people manager.

              In June 2018, Braxton reached out to Red Hatters in the Open Organization community. He wanted to learn more about how both he and his team could work differently, using open values. We were happy to help. So I helped organize a workshop on open organization principles for Braxton and his team—and kept in touch afterward, so I could learn about his adventure in becoming more open.

            • Open source has a people problem [Ed: Mac Asay, whose employer pays IDG to syndicate his FUD, says "Open source has a people problem" as if proprietary software is any better (it's worse in that regard)]

              Much of the “open source sustainability” discussion has focused on the one thing that really needs no help being sustained: software. As Tobie Langel rightly points out, “Open source code isn’t a scarce resource. It’s the exact opposite, actually: It’s infinitely reproducible at zero cost to the user and to the ecosystem.” Nor is sustainability really a matter of funding, though this gets closer to the truth.

        • Security

          • Security updates for Friday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (ghostscript), Fedora (curl and mod_http2), Mageia (ngircd), openSUSE (kernel), SUSE (libreoffice), and Ubuntu (curl).

          • IBM Db2 shared memory vulnerability opens to the door to attackers

            Users of IBM Db2 data management software are being warned of a shared-memory vulnerability that could allow an attacker to gain read and write access and perform unauthorized actions on a targeted system.

            Discovered by security researcher Martin Rakhmanov at Trustwave, who revealed the details today, the issue affects IBM Db2 versions for Linux, Unix and Windows (9.7, 10.1, 10.5, 11.1, 11.5). The vulnerability stems from the platform’s developers forgetting to put explicit memory protections around the shared memory used by the Db2 trace facility.

          • Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 157 released

            The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 157. This version includes the following changes:

            [ Chris Lamb ]
            
            

            * Try obsensibly "data" files named .pgp against pgpdump to determine whether they are PGP files. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#211) * Don't raise an exception when we encounter XML files with "<!ENTITY>" declarations inside the DTD, or when a DTD or entity references an external resource. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#212) * Temporarily drop gnumeric from Build-Depends as it has been removed from testing due to Python 2.x deprecation. (Closes: #968742) * Codebase changes: - Add support for multiple file extension matching; we previously supported only a single extension to match. - Move generation of debian/tests/control.tmp to an external script. - Move to our assert_diff helper entirely in the PGP tests. - Drop some unnecessary control flow, unnecessary dictionary comprehensions and some unused imports found via pylint. * Include the filename in the "... not identified by any comparator" logging message.

          • Container video series: Rootless containers, process separation, and OpenSCAP

            Have you heard about rootless containers, but don't really know what they are? Do you wonder what prevents processes in one container from interacting with processes in another container? Would you like to learn how to scan container images with OpenSCAP?

            If you answered yes to any of these questions, I've recently published a series of videos on containers and Podman that might help.

          • SUSE Manager and openSCAP: 200 security rules made for you

            OpenSCAP is an opensource tool to test and verify security compliance against a set of rules. Did you know that SUSE provides more than 200 rules in its own SCAP Security Guide?

          • GNU Health HMIS patchset 3.6.5 released

            GNU Health 3.6.5 patchset has been released ! Priority: High

          • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Celebrations dedicated to 75th anniversary of nuclear industry begins in Russia [Ed: Celebrations?!]

        The celebration of the 75th anniversary of the nuclear industry has started in Russia and within 75 days, ROSATOM will hold more than 100 events across the nation dedicated to the industry.

        The slogan of the celebration is “75 years: ahead of the times”.

        August 20, 1945 became the starting point in the history of Russian nuclear industry, which has been defending the country, providing people with energy, developing science and new technologies far beyond the nuclear field, for 75 years, said a media release.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Webinar Materials - PTAB Amendment Data and Practice

          Our speakers from Finnegan and Unified Patents gave a comprehensive review of recent trends in IPR amendments and the best strategies in responding to motions to amend. Discussions were had about recent precedential opinions from the PTAB and the Federal Circuit regarding amendments and provided our listeners with a breakdown of the data from cases handling amendments under the new pilot program. As patent owners work to use amendments to circumnavigate the prior art, practitioners must keep themselves up to date on the best way to respond.

        • Software Patents

          • Ortiz & Associates patent held unpatentable

            On August 20, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,971,914 unpatentable. The ‘914 patent, directed to controlling a multimedia video device to play video data through the operation of a wireless device, has been asserted against Google and Roku.

          • American Patents patent held unpatentable

            On August 13, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. American Patents, LLC holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,373,655 unpatentable. The ’655 patent, directed to a method for control of access to network resources, has been asserted in multiple district court cases against such companies as TCL, LG, Samsung, Sharp, Acer, Huawei and others.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Girlfriends, Sex, Prostitution & Debian at DebConf22, Prizren, Kosovo
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Martina Ferrari & Debian, DebConf room list: who sleeps with who?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Europe Won't be Safe From Russia Until the Last Windows PC is Turned Off (or Switched to BSDs and GNU/Linux)
Lives are at stake
Links 23/04/2024: US Doubles Down on Patent Obviousness, North Korea Practices Nuclear Conflict
Links for the day
Stardust Nightclub Tragedy, Unlawful killing, Censorship & Debian Scapegoating
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
Links 24/04/2024: Layoffs and Shutdowns at Microsoft, Apple Sales in China Have Collapsed
Links for the day
Sexism processing travel reimbursement
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Microsoft is Shutting Down Offices and Studios (Microsoft Layoffs Every Month This Year, Media Barely Mentions These)
Microsoft shutting down more offices (there have been layoffs every month this year)
Balkan women & Debian sexism, WeBoob leaks
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Links 24/04/2024: Advances in TikTok Ban, Microsoft Lacks Security Incentives (It Profits From Breaches)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/04/2024: People Returning to Gemlogs, Stateless Workstations
Links for the day
Meike Reichle & Debian Dating
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 23, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 23, 2024
[Meme] EPO: Breaking the Law as a Business Model
Total disregard for the EPO to sell more monopolies in Europe (to companies that are seldom European and in need of monopoly)
The EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) on New Ways of Working (NWoW) and “Bringing Teams Together” (BTT)
The latest publication from the Central Staff Committee (CSC)
Volunteers wanted: Unknown Suspects team
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Debian trademark: where does the value come from?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Detecting suspicious transactions in the Wikimedia grants process
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gunnar Wolf & Debian Modern Slavery punishments
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
On DebConf and Debian 'Bedroom Nepotism' (Connected to Canonical, Red Hat, and Google)
Why the public must know suppressed facts (which women themselves are voicing concerns about; some men muzzle them to save face)
Several Years After Vista 11 Came Out Few People in Africa Use It, Its Relative Share Declines (People Delete It and Move to BSD/GNU/Linux?)
These trends are worth discussing
Canonical, Ubuntu & Debian DebConf19 Diversity Girls email
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Links 23/04/2024: Escalations Around Poland, Microsoft Shares Dumped
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/04/2024: Offline PSP Media Player and OpenBSD on ThinkPad
Links for the day
Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, Holger Levsen & Debian DebConf6 fight
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
DebConf8: who slept with who? Rooming list leaked
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Bruce Perens & Debian: swiping the Open Source trademark
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Ean Schuessler & Debian SPI OSI trademark disputes
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Windows in Sudan: From 99.15% to 2.12%
With conflict in Sudan, plus the occasional escalation/s, buying a laptop with Vista 11 isn't a high priority
Anatomy of a Cancel Mob Campaign
how they go about
[Meme] The 'Cancel Culture' and Its 'Hit List'
organisers are being contacted by the 'cancel mob'
Richard Stallman's Next Public Talk is on Friday, 17:30 in Córdoba (Spain), FSF Cannot Mention It
Any attempt to marginalise founders isn't unprecedented as a strategy
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 22, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, April 22, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Don't trust me. Trust the voters.
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Chris Lamb & Debian demanded Ubuntu censor my blog
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Ean Schuessler, Branden Robinson & Debian SPI accounting crisis
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
William Lee Irwin III, Michael Schultheiss & Debian, Oracle, Russian kernel scandal
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Microsoft's Windows Down to 8% in Afghanistan According to statCounter Data
in Vietnam Windows is at 8%, in Iraq 4.9%, Syria 3.7%, and Yemen 2.2%
[Meme] Only Criminals Would Want to Use Printers?
The EPO's war on paper
EPO: We and Microsoft Will Spy on Everything (No Physical Copies)
The letter is dated last Thursday
Links 22/04/2024: Windows Getting Worse, Oligarch-Owned Media Attacking Assange Again
Links for the day
Links 21/04/2024: LINUX Unplugged and 'Screen Time' as the New Tobacco
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/04/2024: Health Issues and Online Documentation
Links for the day
What Fake News or Botspew From Microsoft Looks Like... (Also: Techrights to Invest 500 Billion in Datacentres by 2050!)
Sededin Dedovic (if that's a real name) does Microsoft stenography
Stefano Maffulli's (and Microsoft's) Openwashing Slant Initiative (OSI) Report Was Finalised a Few Months Ago, Revealing Only 3% of the Money Comes From Members/People
Microsoft's role remains prominent (for OSI to help the attack on the GPL and constantly engage in promotion of proprietary GitHub)
[Meme] Master Engineer, But Only They Can Say It
One can conclude that "inclusive language" is a community-hostile trolling campaign
[Meme] It Takes Three to Grant a Monopoly, Or... Injunction Against Staff Representatives
Quality control
[Video] EPO's "Heart of Staff Rep" Has a Heartless New Rant
The wordplay is just for fun
An Unfortunate Miscalculation Of Capital
Reprinted with permission from Andy Farnell
[Video] Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Started GNU/Linux is Denied Public Speaking (and Why FSF Cannot Mention His Speeches)
So basically the attack on RMS did not stop; even when he's ill with cancer the cancel culture will try to cancel him, preventing him from talking (or be heard) about what he started in 1983
Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Made Nix Leaves Nix for Not Censoring People 'Enough'
Trying to 'nix' the founder over alleged "safety" of so-called 'minorities'
[Video] Inauthentic Sites and Our Upcoming Publications
In the future, at least in the short term, we'll continue to highlight Debian issues
List of Debian Suicides & Accidents
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Jens Schmalzing & Debian: rooftop fall, inaccurately described as accident
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
[Teaser] EPO Leaks About EPO Leaks
Yo dawg!
On Wednesday IBM Announces 'Results' (Partial; Bad Parts Offloaded Later) and Red Hat Has Layoffs Anniversary
There's still expectation that Red Hat will make more staff cuts
IBM: We Are No Longer Pro-Nazi (Not Anymore)
Historically, IBM has had a nazi problem
Bad faith: attacking a volunteer at a time of grief, disrespect for the sanctity of human life
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Bad faith: how many Debian Developers really committed suicide?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 21, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, April 21, 2024
A History of Frivolous Filings and Heavy Drug Use
So the militant was psychotic due to copious amounts of marijuana
Bad faith: suicide, stigma and tarnishing
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
UDRP Legitimate interests: EU whistleblower directive, workplace health & safety concerns
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock