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Links 25/6/2021: China's Space Programme Runs on GNU/Linux (Kylin), Ubuntu 21.10 Wallpaper Competition



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Server

      • No Silver Bullet for Kubernetes Multicluster Management

        The most recent Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) End User Technology Radar, focusing on multicluster management, finds that cluster management is complex with no clearly defined path to success. This announcement may come as no surprise to those involved, but the findings and methodology still shed light on the growth and development of the Kubernetes ecosystem.

        The CNCF Technology Radar, according to the website, acts as “an opinionated guide to a set of emerging technologies” and is intended for a technical audience that wants to know which cloud-native solutions end users use and recommend.

      • Enterprise databases deployed in Kubernetes? Proceed with caution, warns seasoned analyst

        A leading analyst has warned big, non-tech companies against database deployments in the Kubernetes, dubbing the approach as “emerging technology” for enterprises.

        While developers might want the flexibility and agility the stateless container orchestrator promised, Carl Olofson, research vice president, data management software, IDC urged caution with enterprise deployments.

        Speaking at the Postgres Vision 2021 conference this week, the seasoned database expert said: “You really need to make sure you're using functions that are well established. You want to be conservative. Kubernetes is open source, so the updates and the testing and all that, follows a rather slow formal process from the time that submission comes to the timer that goes out. Kubernetes is still rapidly evolving. Like any technology: if you're trying to commit your enterprise to functions that run on an emerging technology, then you are accepting some risks.”

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Learning Sed Is Beneficial For Linux Users

        sed is a stream editor. A stream editor is used to perform basic text transformations on an input stream (a file or input from a pipeline). The most common usage of sed involves substituting a pattern or string for another string.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux Kernel's BPF Fixed Up Against Spectre Vulnerability Bypass - Phoronix

        With the latest mainline Git kernel as well as the newest stable point releases as of Wednesday, a Spectre issue with the kernel's BPF subsystem has been addressed.

        Up until this week, the kernel's BPF subsystem protections around speculative execution could be bypassed. An unprivileged BPF program could leak the contents of arbitrary kernel memory via a side-channel attack.

      • Graphics/GPU

        • Another Test Drive With Crocus Gallium3D On Old Intel Hardware - Phoronix

          Since Crocus was merged into mainline Mesa last week we have been looking at benchmarks of this new open-source Intel Gallium3D driver designed exclusively for older Intel graphics hardware (i965 Gen4 through Haswell Gen7, plus Cherrvyiew and experimental Gen8 Broadwell) compared to the existing open-source i965 classic driver. Prior articles have looked at the quite good performance with Haswell while Sandy Bridge is in somewhat rough shape. Today's testing is going in the middle and looking at the Crocus vs. i965 OpenGL driver performance for Ivy Bridge with the once great Core i7 3770K.

        • NVIDIA TAO€ Transfer Learning Toolkit (TLT) 3.0 released with pre-trained models - CNX Software

          NVIDIA first introduced the TAO (Train, Adapt and Optimize) framework to eases AI model training on NVIDIA GPU’s as well as NVIDIA Jetson embedded platforms last April during GTC 2021.

          The company has now announced the release of the third version of the TAO Transfer Learning Toolkit (TLT 3.0) together with some new pre-trained models at CVPR 2021 (2021 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition).

    • Applications

      • DVD Authoring Tool DVDStyler 3.2 Released!

        Free cross-platform DVD authoring app DVDStyler 3.2 was released. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 21.04.

      • Seungha Yang: GStreamer Media Foundation Video Encoder Is Now Faster — Direct3D11 Awareness

        GStreamer MediaFoundation video encoders (H.264, HEVC, and VP9 if supported by GPU) gained the ability to accept Direct3D11 textures, which will bring noticeable performance improvements

        As of the GStreamer 1.18 release, hardware accelerated Direct3D11/DXVA video decoding and MediaFoundation based video encoding features were landed.

        Those native Windows video APIs can be very helpful for application development/deployment, since they are hardware platform-agnostic APIs for the Windows platform. The questions is if they are sufficiently competitive with hardware-specific APIs such as NVIDIA NVCODEC SDK or Intel Media SDK?

        Probably the answer is … “NO”

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 7 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of PHP 7.4 on CentOS 7. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP code is interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the resulting web page: PHP commands can be embedded directly into an HTML source document rather than calling an external file to process data.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple. I will show you the step-by-step installation of PHP 7.4 on the CentOS 7 Linux server.

      • Configure PXE Boot Server for Rocky Linux 8 Kickstart Installation

        We are using our existing PXE boot homelab server in this article.

        All commands to be run on the PXE boot server.

      • Pablo Iranzo Gómez: Redken machine learning for spam detection

        For some of the telegram groups I’m in, I’ve been detecting users that after some period of time, just publish spam messages of any topic.

        There are many bots for controlling when a user joins, by showing a CAPTCHA that user must resolve (either clicking a button, answering a mathematical operation, inputting a CAPTCHA image text, etc).

        Some time ago, a colleague was using Machine Learning and I wanted to have a look at it and it would make a good feature to implement.

        First thing I wanted, was to get rid of the spammers, so the first approach was to include a new command on redken_bot to mark with /spam when replying to a message to take some actions.

      • A quick-start guide to OpenZFS native encryption

        One of the many features OpenZFS brings to the table is ZFS native encryption. First introduced in OpenZFS 0.8, native encryption allows a system administrator to transparently encrypt data at rest within ZFS itself. This obviates the need for separate tools like LUKS, VeraCrypt, or BitLocker.

      • 4 Ways to Show all Drives (Mounted and Unmounted) on Linux

        The drives on any system can either be mounted or unmounted. The mounted drives are the ones that are ready to be accessed at any time whereas the data residing on the unmounted drives can only be accessed after these drives are mounted. In the proceeding section of this article, we want to share with you the different methods of displaying all available drives on Linux.

      • How To Password Protect Text Files Using Vim Editor In Linux

        Apart from creating and editing text files, we can also encrypt files using Vim editor. This brief guide shows you how to password protect text files using Vim editor in Linux and Unix-like operating systems.

      • Communicating over D-Bus using SELinux - Linux Concept

        The D-Bus daemon provides an inter-process communication channel between applications. Unlike traditional IPC methods, D-Bus is a higher-level communication channel that offers more than simple signaling or memory sharing. Applications that want to chat over D-Bus link with one of the many D-Bus-compatible libraries, such as those provided by the libdbus, sd-bus (part of systemd), GDBus, and QtDBus applications.

        The D-Bus daemon is part of the systemd application suite.

      • How to Check System Details and Hardware Information on Linux

        Knowledge of your system's hardware specifications is important because it determines whether your computer supports certain software programs and video games. If you would like to upgrade your PC, it's crucial to know what kind of hardware you currently have so that you can determine which parts to upgrade depending on your needs.

        This guide will show you some of the most important commands for viewing computer hardware specifications on your Linux system.

      • How to Install Mega.nz Cloud Drive on Ubuntu - Free 20GB Storage

        This tutorial is going to show you how to install MEGA.nz cloud drive on Ubuntu desktop and server. MEGA.nz is a cloud storage provider from New Zealand. It offers 20GB free storage upon registration and also allows you to get up to 50GB free space.

      • How to Install NetBeans IDE 12.4 in Ubuntu, Debian and Linux Mint - Unixcop

        The NetBeans (also known as Apache Netbeans) is an open-source and award-winning IDE (integrated development environment) application for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac. The NetBeans IDE provides a much powerful Java application framework platform that allows programmers to easily develop Java-based web applications, mobile applications, and desktops. It is one of the best IDEs for C/C++ programming, and also it provides vital tools for PHP programmers.

        The IDE is the only first editor, that provides support for many languages like PHP, C/C++, XML, HTML, Groovy, Grails, Ajax, Javadoc, JavaFX, and JSP, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails.

        The editor is feature-rich and provides an extensive range of tools, templates, and samples; and it’s highly extensible using community developed plugins, thus making it well suited for software development.

      • How to compress PNG files on Linux

        Are you looking to compress some PNG images on your Linux PC? Can’t figure out how to compress PNGs? We can help! In this guide, we’ll go over two great ways you can compress your PNG image files on Linux.

      • How to convert PNG to JPG on Linux

        Got some PNG image files you need to convert to JPG lying around on your Linux PC? Don’t know the first thing about converting image formats? We can help! Follow along with this guide as we go over how to convert PNG image files to JPG on Linux!

      • A technical introduction to the Snap Store Proxy | Ubuntu

        In the world of IoT, it is crucial to be fully in control of your devices. Over-the-air (OTA) updates are essential for a distributed set of devices. This must be carefully managed to ensure that an update is not pushed at a time where the device is active and operation should not be interrupted.

        To enable this level of control, we have developed the Snap Store Proxy, an on-premise edge proxy to the general Snap Store that can do more than simply managing updates. To demonstrate some of these features, we are hosting a webinar to introduce you to the Snap Store Proxy.

    • Games

      • Developing Games on Linux: An Interview with Little Red Dog GamesLittle Red Dog Games is an indie...

        Little Red Dog Games is an indie game developer that primarily uses Godot to create games such as Deep Sixed, Precipice, and their latest game, Rogue State Revolution. To learn more about their experience developing games in Linux, we sat down for an interview with CEO Ryan Hewer and Lead Programmer, Denis Comtesse.

        Tell us a little about Little Red Dog Games. How did you come into being as a company?

        Ryan: We’ve been around for the better part of a decade now—I’d say maybe 8 years. We’re based out of northern New York, and Denis resides in Germany. We started off as a hobby business making point-and-click adventure games and playing around with various tools that are out there. With every product we said, alright, well what if we take it a little bit further? What if we push ourselves a little bit more? Then we started taking on increasingly ambitious games.

      • Valve's Dota 2 Adds AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution - Phoronix

        Valve's Dota 2 game is the latest adding support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution and the first time having a Linux-native game support FSR for enhanced image upscaling.

        Wednesday's update to Dota 2 brings support for FidelityFX Super Resolution, which FSR launched this week as AMD's alternative to NVIDIA DLSS. Dota 2 FSR works when using the game's Direct3D 11 or Vulkan renderers -- basically no OpenGL, due to FSR itself only catering to these newer graphics APIs.

      • Steam on Chrome OS is so close I can taste it

        It has been well over a year since Google’s Director of Product Management, Kan Liu, tipped the news that Google and Valve were working together to bring a native Steam gaming experience to Chrome OS. In that time, a lot of work has been done in preparation for what we believe could see ‘Borealis‘ launching as early as Q3 of this year. In its current state, Steam will actually install and run just fine on most Linux-enabled Chromebooks but the gameplay is still a bit shoddy even on titles that aren’t very graphics intensive. Over the past few months, I have spent more time than I probably should have tinkering to see if I could get the Borealis app installed on various Chromebooks. This week, I made some headway, albeit minimal.

        After a few Developer Mode antics and some code acrobatics, I was able to get the Borealis app installed on my Chromebook and above, we finally have our first look at the initial installation screen for the Steam container. Sadly, as the second image denotes, the installation process throws an error for missing permissions. This wasn’t too much of a surprise considering the ongoing work being done on the project. Borealis has its own set of DLC(downloadable content) that is required for the setup process and my guess is that this content is still gated on the server-side. Then, there’s another missing piece that will be needed to make this experience fully viable on Chrome OS and that piece is Vulkan.

      • Planetary Annihilation: TITANS gets a new series of Fusion Updates

        For a while now the newer team who have kept Planetary Annihilation: TITANS alive have been gradually updating the game as part of the "Unicorn" series, which they say is now over and it's time for Fusion.

        The first update for the Fusion series is out now, adding in the Fusion Commander which will be available for everyone during the Steam Summer Sale 2021 and after you can buy it in-game if you wish to keep it (commanders are just cosmetic).

        A new unit was also added with the Stinger "the little bot that could". This is an anti-air bot unit with twin-mounted homing missile pods. There's also a major UI upgrade for lobbies so that the host of the game can drag, drop and swap players. Additionally, the lobby will not start generating a system right away as there's no default now "saving your CPU from generating something you were probably not going to use" and also asteroids can now be included in random generation systems.

      • The Steam Summer Sale 2021 is now live with thousands of savings and a mini-game | GamingOnLinux

        Have you been penny-pinching ready for the Steam Summer Sale 2021? Well it's live now so you can open those wallets up and build up another backlog of games.

        This year Valve has announced what they're calling Forge Your Fate, which are "fourteen themed pages featuring destiny-defining micro-adventures, each one leading to an animated sticker, and all culminating in a fate-forged badge and glory". Each of them brings you to a special store page with games that fit the theme picked, and allow you to continue a little story. Additionally, the Points Shop has been updated with for all-new Game Profiles featuring animated backgrounds, mini-profiles, avatars, and colour schemes.

      • Co-op spaceship command and exploration game PULSAR: Lost Colony is out now | GamingOnLinux

        In the co-op game PULSAR: Lost Colony you each form part of a spaceship's crew, each responsible for a major system as you go off and explore the galaxy. Quite a lot of fun actually and it's come a very long way over the past few years being in Early Access and turned into what a modern Star Trek: Bridge Crew could have been.

        You get to run around your ship, engage in tense space battles where you each command a station and even explore other planets and look for resources and more.

        [...]

        Currently it doesn't seem like the VR support is hooked up for the Linux build.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • Xfce participation in GSoC 2021

        I am a bit late with my blog post .. though I suppose better late than never :D

        This year Xfce applied to the Google Summer of Code program and I am happy to tell you that we accomplished to get 3 slots ! (That’s very good, since new organization usually only receive one or two slots)

        There was a lot of interest by students. In total 15 proposals were received for Xfce. So sadly we had to refuse several nice proposals. However the number of mentors as well was limited, so that this year Xfce anyhow would not be able to mentor more students.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Neon: Maliit Keyboard Now Available on Wayland

          We have updated the Maliit keyboard package to Maliit 2 and released it to Neon user edition. This gives a virtual keyboard which you can use, handy for convertible laptops with a removeable keyboard. It only runs when using Wayland so make sure to select that at login. There is a module in System Settings to select the keyboard and it should be intelligent enough to only run when you don’t have a physical keyboard plugged in.

        • AudioTube nightly builds available

          This is good news for all of you that have been asking for AudioTube binaries. A nightly flatpak build is now built regularly on KDE’s binary factory. The community wiki explains how to install from the nightly repository.

    • Distributions

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • OpenLogic by Perforce Announces Commercial Support for Rocky Linux, Other CentOS Alternatives
        • Red Hat Rewrites the Business Automation Playbook with End-to-End Kubernetes-Native Decision Management Capabilities

          Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced new end-to-end Kubernetes-native decision management capabilities as part of the latest release of Red Hat Process Automation. Based on the open source Kogito project, the new capabilities enable individual business decisions to be created and deployed as containerized microservices that are managed by Kubernetes alongside other containers in the application environment, reducing redundancy and the footprint of traditional decision management systems when deploying in cloud-native environments like Red Hat OpenShift.

        • Automakers Race to the IoT and Manufacturing Edge | IT Pro

          Thanks to increased demand for internet-connected cars, autos are driving the manufacturing edge with robotics-driven automation during assembly.

        • Open Data Hub: A Meta Project for AI/ML Work

          Open source software is a critical resource in data science today, but integrating the various open source products together can be a complex task. This is what drove Red Hat to develop Open Data Hub, which brings over two dozen commonly used tools together into a single cohesive framework that simplifies access to AI and machine learning capabilities for data professionals.

          Open Data Hub (ODH) originated about five years ago as an internal Red Hat project to simply store large amounts of data so that it was accessible for data scientists to build models, according to Will McGrath, a senior principal product marketing manager at Red Hat. In Red Hat’s case, the engineers chose Ceph, the S3-compatbile object storage system.

          After getting a handle on the storage aspect of the data, Red Hat’s team then brought a handful of tools into the equation, starting with Jupyter, Apache Spark, and TensorFlow. The system supported internal Red Hat use cases, such as analyzing log files from customer complaints or for searching the internal knowledgebase, McGrath says.

          Eventually, word of ODH’s existence leaked out to a handful of Red Hat customers, who expressed an interest in trying out the software, he says. In 2018, the company made the decision to turn ODH into a full-fledged open source project that could be downloaded and used by the general public, as well as contributed to from the open source community. You can see a short history of the product in this Red Hat video.

          Today, Red Hat bills ODH as “a blueprint for building an AI as a service platform.” It follows a general workflow that will be familiar to data professionals, starting with data storage and data ingestion; leading to data analysis, model building; and model training; followed by model validation, deployment, and model serving; with ongoing monitoring and optimization.

        • Red Hat shares roadmaps for OpenShift Application Services

          Red Hat OpenShift API Management is a hosted API management service for microservices-based applications. It has three main components: API Manager, API Gateway, and single sign-on based on Red Hat SSO. It is available today as an add-on to Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated as well as on the new Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, which became generally available in April. It achieved PCI compliance certification in May of this year.

          The planned roadmap for the next year includes additional compliance certifications such as ISO, SOC2, and FedRAMP, API monetization, an API registry for storing open API definitions, support for additional cloud providers including Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Google Cloud Platform, and IBM Cloud (ROKS). Self-managed service integration using Istio and Knative is in the cards, as is the addition of features for high throughput customers.

        • Upgraded LoRaWAN gateway adds Node-RED support

          ICP Germany has upgraded its “UG65” LoRaWAN gateway to add Node-RED support. The unit supports 8 simultaneous LoRa channels and more than 2,000 LoRaWAN nodes, along with Ethernet, Wi-Fi and cellular (optional) connectivity.

          We missed covering ICP Germany’s UG65 LoRaWAN gateway when it was first announced in mid-March. Now the company has upgraded the UG65 with new features. With the firmware update to version 60.0.0.35, the UG65 LoRaWAN gateway adds support for Node-RED and provides LoRa class updates.

          Developed by IBM, Node-RED is a programming interface that can be used to connect hardware, interfaces and services from the IoT. According to ICP, this feature makes the UG65 more attractive to developers of Smart applications. Target applications for the unit include IoT systems, Smart Infrastructure, sensor-to-cloud systems and Smart Agriculture.

        • 4 change management strategies for the hybrid work era

          In addition to expediting long-planned platform migrations and digital transformations, the pandemic forced most businesses to undergo involuntary changes, testing their abilities to deploy and manage these transitions quickly and effectively.

          As the world adjusts to the next normal in 2021, business leaders can anticipate more change as they accommodate hybrid work. According to PwC’s U.S. Remote Work Survey, 75 percent of executives expect half of their employees to return to the office by July of this year. These business leaders view the in-person experience as essential to maintaining company culture: Only 5 percent of respondents believe that culture can be maintained without employees in the office.

        • Application analysis in the DevSecOps life cycle

          June is application analysis month in the Red Hat’s monthly Security series! Beginning in March 2021, the Red Hat Security Ecosystem team has provided an introduction to a DevOps Security topic in a monthly fashion to help you learn how Red Hat weaves together DevOps and Security to master the force called DevSecOps. We explain how to assemble Red Hat products and our security ecosystem partners to aid in your journey to deploying a comprehensive DevSecOps solution.

        • New ecosystem opportunities at the service provider edge

          Edge computing, which locates services closer to consumers and data sources, can help enable applications and use cases in which real-time processing, low latency, and a corresponding boost in the Quality of Experience (QoE) are critical.

          In our previous post, Industry trends from the ever evolving service provider edge, we noted that service providers (SPs) are in an ideal situation to take advantage of the edge computing shift. Along with their traditional strengths in building networks, connectivity, physical location(s), and existing data consumption and management models, SPs are well positioned to develop partnerships and ecosystems to create new revenue streams.

        • Fedora Linux 34 Release Party videos available now – Fedora Community Blog

          The Fedora Project had a successful Fedora Linux 34 Release Party on April 30th & May 1st, 2021. The Release Party had nearly 500 registrations with a 78% turnout rate, which is above Hopin’s calculated industry average. As promised, the Mindshare Committee wrapped up the video editing: the recordings of the sessions are now up on Youtube as a playlist for your perusal. Feel free to share this series of videos on the latest and greatest in the Fedora community!

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Canonical and Blender Partner to Provide Support Options

          Blender has partnered with Canonical to provide enterprise-grade support to Blender users.

          Blender is an open source 3D animation tool that has been used in the film, TV, tech and science community for years. As an open source platform, however, Blender hasn’t always had the support options its commercial competitors can boast.

          That has changed, with Canonical providing enterprise-grade support. Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions. The company also provides support for other open source applications.

        • Blender 2.93.1

          Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. Through it's open architecture, Blender provides cross-platform interoperability, extensibility, an incredibly small footprint, and a tightly integrated workflow. Blender is one of the most popular Open Source 3D graphics application in the world.

        • Ubuntu 21.10 Wallpaper Competition

          We are incredibly proud to announce the beginning of the Impish Indri wallpaper competition! (That’s the code name for Ubuntu 21.10) You can submit your artwork and read the rules over on the Ubuntu discourse. Every new release of Ubuntu comes pre-loaded with new background images that users can select ‘out of the box’. For the Ubuntu Impish Indri release, we are running a competition for members of the community to get their artwork baked into an Ubuntu release, forever.

        • The Ubuntu Wallpaper Contest is Back After 2 Year Break

          After a two year break, the Ubuntu community team is reviving and refreshing this much-loved staple of the Ubuntu release cycle.

          Artists, graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, and anyone else with creative flair can contribute artwork for potential inclusion in the Ubuntu 21.10 “Impish Indri” release this autumn.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Top 10 best Raspberry pi projects

        The Raspberry Pi is arguably the most popular and most accessible of all nano-computers. Its attractive price, its flexibility of use and the infinite possibilities associated with it delight both makers of all kinds and awaken the sensitivity of the general public whose interest has increased in recent years.

        Mini-machine to (almost) everything par excellence, the Raspberry Pi has above all been thought out and designed for educational purposes to encourage anyone to learn about the joys of electronics, computers and of course programming. If the more experienced go on projects that are complex to implement (and sometimes completely unusual), requiring a minimum of hands-on, the famous “Raspi” can also be used for simple projects that are accessible to beginners.

        It is these affordable, useful and often educational projects that we will focus on today. We have tried to put together in this article a selection of the best ideas and projects to start or continue using your Raspberry Pi. You will no longer have any reason to let your Pi collect dust in the back of a drawer!

        You will find projects to be carried out with a small Raspberry Pi Zero as well as with more powerful models such as the Pi 3 A and B +, or even with the Raspberry Pi 4, the latest version of which includes a RAM module of 8 GB!

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Stanford researchers develop new software for designing sustainable cities | EurekAlert! Science News

        New technology could help cities around the world improve people's lives while saving billions of dollars. The free, open-source software developed by the Stanford Natural Capital Project creates maps to visualize the links between nature and human wellbeing. City planners and developers can use the software to visualize where investments in nature, such as parks and marshlands, can maximize benefits to people, like protection from flooding and improved health.

      • Time to Learn More About Open Source? | FTF News

        to the Fintech Open Source Foundation, also known as FINOS.

        FINOS is an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to speed up collaboration and innovation in financial services by way of “open source software, standards, and best practices,” according to its website.

        “The financial services industry has been a long-time consumer of open source software; however, many are struggling in contributing to, and publishing, open source software and standards, and adopting open source methodologies. A lack of understanding of how to build and deploy efficient tooling and governance models are often seen as a limiting factor,” according to FINOS.

      • Daniel Stenberg: Sending those stickers

        As suspected already from the start, I ran out of stickers really fast. I ordered more from my trusted sticker guy on the corner, and he could even deliver stickers put into pre-printed envelopes. Envelopes that even got a curl logo on them. Around two hundred recipients got stickers that way.

        It took me a while to complete this task. Getting all the addresses organized took time, getting all the materials restocked took time, packaging sticker of different sorts to almost a thousand people took time and then I also of course had to do occasional work in the mean time so I didn’t finish the delivery from my end until near the end of June.

        When I write this, I’ve just sent off the last few parcels. 978 recipients are now close(r) to get curl stickers.

      • Web Browsers

        • Chromium

          • chromium-ungoogled updated to 91.0.4472.101

            Chromium ungoogled is the Chromium Web Browser with Google hooks disabled or removed. If replacing your existing Chromium browser then please delete .config/chromium folder to start with a clean profile.

        • Mozilla

          • How WebAssembly Modules Safely Exchange Data

            The WebAssembly binary format (Wasm) has been developed to allow software written in any language to “compile once, run everywhere”, inside web browsers or stand-alone virtual machines (runtimes) available for any platform, almost as fast as code directly compiled for those platforms. Wasm modules can interact with any host environment in which they run in a really portable way, thanks to the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI).

            That is not enough, though. In order to be actually usable without surprises in as many scenarios as possible, Wasm executable files need at least two more things. One is the capability to interact directly not just with the operating system, but with any other program of the same kind. The way to do this with Wasm is called “module linking”, and will be the topic of the next article of this series. The other feature, that is a prerequisite for module linking to be useful, is the capability to exchange data structures of any kind, without misunderstandings or data loss.

          • New Firefox UI Fixed In A Few Easy Steps

            The new firefox UI is kind of controversial so how about we just go and change it back to what it used to be, turns out it's incredibly easy to do so and it's just as easy to go and make your own custom tweaks.

          • Mozilla Addons Blog: Review Articles on AMO and New Blog Name

            I’m very happy to announce a new feature that we’ve released on AMO (addons.mozilla.org). It’s a series of posts that review some of the best add-ons we have available on AMO.

            [...]

            Our goal with this new channel is to provide user-friendly guides into the add-ons world, focused on topics that are at the top of Firefox users’ minds. And, because we’re publishing directly on AMO, you can install the add-ons directly from the article pages.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • PostgreSQL 14 Beta 2 Released!

          The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the second beta release of PostgreSQL 14 is now available for download. This release contains previews of all features that will be available in the final release of PostgreSQL 14, though some details of the release could change before then.

          You can find information about all of the features and changes found in PostgreSQL 14 in the release notes:

          https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/release-14.html

          In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you to test the new features of PostgreSQL 14 in your systems to help us eliminate any bugs or other issues that may exist. While we do not advise you to run PostgreSQL 14 Beta 2 in your production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical application workloads against this beta release.

        • The 5 Best Free Replacements for MySQL Server

          In this article you’ll learn what are the best free RDBMS replacements for MySQL Server, what they have in common, how they’re different, and in which cases you should prefer one or the other.

          MySQL has become one of the world’s most popular database engine. It is also found and supported on the majority of web hosting providers around the globe as standard. But sometimes your first choice doesn’t always work out.

          These days there are plenty of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) in the market. Some focus on specific areas, others just aim to be a complete replacement. MySQL is probably the most popular choice, but it is only one of them.

          Relational databases remain at the heart of many different types of applications. In helping you make the right choice for your use-case, below we outlined 5 standout replacements for your MySQL Server.

      • FSF

        • Support the FSF tech team

          In some ways, the four-person Free Software Foundation (FSF) tech team is living the dream for any free software fanatic: who wouldn't want to get paid to do what you love? Every workday, our tech team tweaks and tailors software that obeys the four freedoms, and keeps the FSF chugging along. The tradeoff for the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from doing truly important work, though, is that it's a lot of work: maintaining, upgrading, and repairing the infrastructure that supports the FSF and the GNU Project certainly keeps the tech team busy. Plus, they're always trying to take the experience for our members and supporters to the next level (which, of course, would be much harder to do if we were hamstrung by the unjust limitations of proprietary software!).

          As such, their report for the upcoming issue of the Free Software Foundation Bulletin overflowed our print space as usual, and still doesn't include anywhere near all of the work they did in the last six months.

        • GNU Projects

          • Welcome to MyGNUHealth, the Libre Personal Health Record

            MyGNUHealth 1.0 us out! The GNU Health Libre Personal Health Record is now ready for prime time!

            This is great news. Great news because citizens around the world have now access to a Free/Libre application, focused on privacy, that puts them in control of their health.

            Health is personal, so is the health data. It’s been years since I got the idea of expanding the GNU Health ecosystem, not only to the health professionals and institutions, but making it personal, accessible to individuals. Now is a reality!

            Throughout these years, the mobile health (mHealth) has been governed by private companies that benefit from your health data. Private companies, private insurances, proprietary operating systems, proprietary health applications. Big business, no privacy.

      • Programming/Development

        • Google Proposes An Open-Source Vulnerability Interchange Schema

          As part of Google's latest work on trying to enhance open-source software security, months after starting their own open-source vulnerability database they are now looking to push an open-source vulnerability interchange schema to make it easier to exchange information on vulnerabilities and making it easier for automated analysis.

          Google hopes this will be adopted as a unified vulnerability schema used by open-source projects for relaying details about vulnerabilities. In large part the emphasis on this schema is to make it easier for automated analysis and processing while the JSON-based format can be converted into human-friendly output as well with ease.

        • Perl/Raku

          • vrurg: My Work Environment

            Just have noticed that normally I have 4 editors/IDEs running at the same time:

            Comma for modules and an in-house project Vim for scripts, blog and articles, and Perl [...]

          • gfldex: Typed filters

            The Discord Raku bot is now also an IRC -> Discord bridge. To handle the streams of messages I use a react-block with a few whenevers. I would like to handle filtering of debug output from API::Discord in there as well, without disrupting something simple like printing to the terminal.

            In my last post I showed how I can control the behaviour of a module with the use statement. The next step is to divert writes to $*ERR to a Supply.

        • Python

          • Why Python is Best for AI, ML, and Deep Learning - RTInsights

            Artificial intelligence projects are different from traditional software projects. The difference lies in the technology stack, the skills required for AI-based projects, and the need for in-depth research. To implement AI aspirations, you need to use a programming language that is stable, flexible, and has available tools. Python provides all of these, which is why we see many Python AI projects today.

            Python facilitates developers to increase the confidence and productivity about their developing software from development to deployment and maintenance. The benefits of making Python the perfect solution for machine learning and AI-driven projects include simplicity and consistency, flexibility, access to powerful AI and machine learning (ML) libraries and frameworks, platform independence, and large communities. These things increase the popularity of the language.

          • Create Basic Python C++ Extensions on Fedora Linux 34
          • Get started with Anaconda Python

            No question about it, Python is a crucial part of modern data science. Convenient and powerful, Python connects data scientists and developers with a whole galaxy of tools and functionality, in convenient and programmatic ways.

            Still, those tools sometimes come with a little—or a lot—of assembly required. Because Python is a general-purpose programming language, how it’s packaged and delivered doesn’t speak specifically to data scientists. But various folks have delivered Python to that audience in a way that’s prepackaged, with little to no assembly required—a project that regular Python users can benefit from, too.

        • Java

          • Jakarta EE 9.1 and the Road to Jakarta EE 10

            Five months after the release of Jakarta EE 9, the Jakarta EE Working Group has announced the release of the Platform and Web Profile specifications of Jakarta EE 9.1 and related TCKs. Since its debut in 2018, two major versions - Jakarta EE 8 in 2019 and Jakarta EE 9 in 2020 - were released. This is the first incremental point release in which developers may now: develop and deploy Jakarta EE 9.1 applications on JDK 11 and JDK 8; take advantage of new Java SE 11 features and new technologies added since Java SE 8; move existing Jakarta EE 9 applications to Java SE 11 without changes; and migrate existing Java EE and Jakarta EE 8 applications to Jakarta EE 9.1 using the same straightforward process available for migration to Jakarta EE 9.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • Producing hydrogen using less energy

        The way in which a compound inspired by nature produces hydrogen has now been described in detail for the first time by an international research team from the University of Jena, Germany and the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy. These findings are the foundation for the energy-efficient production of hydrogen as a sustainable energy source.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • COVID Origins and Gain of Function with Sam Husseini

        Journalist Sam Husseini joins the podcast to discuss the recent mainstream shift regarding the “lab leak” theory and Gain of Function in general and what the “newly allowed” mainstream coverage is leaving out and covering up. Originally published on Rokfin on June 21, 2021.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Security updates for Thursday

            Security updates have been issued by Mageia (apache-mod_auth_openidc, bind, bluez, cifs-utils, ffmpeg, gnome-autoar, guacd, kernel, kernel-linus, qtwebsockets5, slic3r, tunnel, wavpack, wireshark, and xscreensaver), openSUSE (apache2, cryptctl, go1.15, libnettle, python-rsa, salt, thunderbird, wireshark, libvirt, sbc, libqt5-qtmultimedia, xstream, and xterm), and SUSE (cryptctl, freeradius-server, libnettle, and libsolv).

          • Splunk Security Cloud Now Generally Available [Ed: But this is proprietary software]

            Splunk has announced the new Splunk Security Cloud, the data-centric modern security operations platform that delivers enterprise-grade advanced security analytics, automated security operations, and integrated threat intelligence with an open ecosystem.

          • Have a Dell desktop or laptop? You should upgrade your firmware now

            Even with Secure Boot enabled it seems it doesn't really help and affects at least 129 different models of Dell laptops, tablets, and desktops. Eclypsium estimate around 30 million devices will be affected by this. It doesn't specifically state it's an issue for Linux and does mention Windows explicitly but the point is the same, you'll be vulnerable if you don't ensure you're up to date. The series of issues allows a "privileged network attacker to gain arbitrary code execution within the BIOS of vulnerable machines".

          • Dell BIOS/UEFI Under Attack From New Vulnerabilities - Use FWUPD For The Latest Updates - Phoronix

            For those wondering about the recent skyrocketing in LVFS/FWUPD usage for Linux firmware updates, it appears to be attributed to Dell pushing out a massive number of updates with more than one hundred models impacted by newly-disclosed BIOS/UEFI vulnerabilities.

            [...]

            Dell has been publishing updated BIOS/UEFI for not only their Windows customers but also posting the new firmware to LVFS so it can be deployed quickly on Linux. Those with Dell desktops and laptops should run sudo fwupdmgr update as soon as possible.

          • Report picks holes in the Linux kernel release signing process

            A report looking into the security of the Linux kernel's release signing process has highlighted a range of areas for improvement, from failing to mandate the use of hardware security keys for authentication to use of static keys for SSH access.

            The Linux kernel is at the heart of a wealth of modern technology, from embedded gadgets and network equipment all the way up to supercomputers. Its broad deployment makes it a tempting target for ne'er-do-wells, as was made all-too-obvious in 2011 when attackers gained root access to key servers used in its development and distribution.

          • Atlassian Bugs Could Have Led to 1-Click Takeover | Threatpost

            A supply-chain attack could have siphoned sensitive information out of Jira, such as security issues on Atlassian cloud, Bitbucket and on-prem products.

            Atlassian, a platform used by 180,000 customers to engineer software and manage projects, could have been hijacked with a single click due to security flaws, researchers have disclosed.

          • You won't want that Linux bling if it comes from Pling: Marketplace platform has critical vulnerabilities [Ed: Why blame "Linux" for malware that has nothing to do with it and people need to foolishly install?]

            A Berlin startup has disclosed a remote-code-execution (RCE) vulnerability and a wormable cross-site-scripting (XSS) flaw in Pling, which is used by various Linux desktop theme marketplaces.

            Positive Security, which found the holes and is not to be confused with Russia’s Positive Technologies, said the bugs are still present in the Pling code and its maintainers have not responded to vulnerability reports.

          • Istio Flaw Patched

            • ISTIO-SECURITY-2021-007

              The Istio Gateway and DestinationRule can load private keys and certificates from Kubernetes secrets via the credentialName configuration. For Istio 1.8 and above, the secrets are conveyed from Istiod to gateways or workloads via the XDS API.

              In the above approach, a gateway or workload deployment should only be able to access credentials (TLS certificates and private keys) stored in the Kubernetes secrets within its namespace. However, a bug in Istiod permits an authorized client the ability to access and retrieve any TLS certificate and private key cached in Istiod.

            • Announcing Istio 1.9.6

              This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our June 24th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2021-007 as well as a few minor bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.9.5 and Istio 1.9.6.

            • Announcing Istio 1.10.2

              This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our June 24th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2021-007 as well as a few minor bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.10.1 and 1.10.2.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Blinken Warns That Nord Stream 2 Could Be 'Coercivie Tool' Against Europe

        U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reiterated warnings about the planned Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline during meetings in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on June 23.

        Blinken said he and Maas agreed that concrete steps are needed to "ensure that Russia cannot use energy as a coercive tool directed at Ukraine or anyone else in Europe."

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Biden is taking Trump’s argument against TikTok seriously

        Joe Biden is taking a close look at whether TikTok, the popular social video app, is a national security threat, a move that acknowledges the concerns behind Donald Trump’s failed attempt to ban the app last year. Biden appears to share his predecessor’s concern that the ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, poses a threat to America’s national security.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • The Internet is Us

        Before the Internet (yes, I’m that old) “going online” meant calling my friend Phil’s computer from my own. I’d put a phone handset (there were only what we now call “landlines” back then) into a special cradle with two rubber cups — one for the mouthpiece and another for the earpiece. Then I would manually dial the phone number, wait for his computer to pick up and make a tone, and hit a key on my computer to initiate the handshake.

        There wasn’t a lot to do. Phil had a few games on there. And there was a folder with my username on it that I could check for messages. Everyone who had an account on Phil’s computer could also access a bulletin board where we had conversations much like the ones on Twitter or Facebook today, except slow, and friendly, and smart.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Microsoft’s “Windows 11” is incompatible with many PCs, comes with more junk, and mandates Restricted Boot.

        Microsoft made the Windows 11 announcement today, and users should be horrified.

        Everything that the Free Software Foundation, Techrights, and I have said about “Secure” Boot one day becoming mandatory and leading to PCs that would only boot Microsoft-blessed operating systems has finally come to pass. According to Wikipedia, new computers will have no option to turn it off in the BIOS because the OS itself now requires it.

        As companies and individuals being attacked with malware has grown to be such a problem that the FBI considers it on par with the war on terrorism, due to the colonial pipeline and JBS meat processor attacks, to name but a couple, it’s clear that nothing Microsoft has implemented in the pretense of security is even getting in the way of “cyber” criminals.

        [...]

        Effectivelly, _all PCs_ older than a few years are stuck with Windows 10 now, which is in a grave yard mode for some time already, or users can migrate to the actively improved and thriving GNU/Linux OS. Which probably runs better anyway.

      • Apple exec: “Sideloading in this case is actually eliminating choice” | Ars Technica

        Facing legal actions, Apple argues on the basis of privacy, security.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Facebook Is Working on an Amazingly Hideous Augmented Reality Fedora /a>
        • Facebook’s new patent is a strange new look for AR [Ed: Facebook must be shunned before implementing a vision of the future where people spy on each other, even if there are no Facebook accounts]
        • Albright and counsel say WDTX standing orders ‘bolster fairness' [Ed: Crooked judges boosted by proponents of patent litigation because they're patent profiteers (or media funded by them). What does that say about the state of the media? PR for sale.]

          Attorneys explain how new standing orders on motions to transfer from the Western District of Texas could help move cases along

        • EPO Data Hub: explore patent filing trends with new free mobile app [Ed: "The #EPO continues to make this data available as downloadable Excel sheets" and the EPO is outsourced, illegally, to Microsoft]

          Today the EPO increases public access to its rich sources of patent statistics with a free mobile app to complement our annual Patent Index.

          Released today for both Android and iOS, the EPO Data Hub contains data covering the last five years (i.e. 2016-2020) for European patent applications and granted patents. In tables and charts it shows the data at global level and country level, showing % share and % growth as well as rankings for top applicants, top regions and even top cities. The built-in download function makes it easy to access the source data for sharing or further private analysis.

          [...]

          The EPO continues to make this data available as downloadable Excel sheets...

        • Software Patents

          • New frontier: WIPO AI chief explores impact of breakthrough tech [Ed: Buzzwords that are used or misused to grant illegal software patents and other fake patents. WIPO has been run by thugs and the law doesn't bother them.]

            Ulrike Till, director of the IP and frontiers technologies division, shares what she has learned from listening to WIPO’s conversation on AI and IP



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