This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2017/06/21/new-debian-being-studied/.

● 06.21.17

● Links 21/6/2017: Red Hat’s Numbers Are Up, New Debian Being Studied

Posted in News Roundup at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ Thinking of Buying the Chuwi Lapbook 12.3? Watch This Video First

• Are you looking for a Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 review to help you decide whether this cheap n’ cheerful Chinese laptop is for you? Well, look no further. A reader recently shared the following Chuwi 12.3 video review in the comments section.

Server

=> ↺ Cloud Native Apps and Security: The Case for CoreOS Rkt and Xen

• CoreOS’s rkt started at the beginning of 2014 as a security-focused alternative to Docker. The project aimed to create a signature verification of cloud-native apps by default; the intention was to guarantee the integrity of the apps. It also stepped away from the central-daemon design of Docker, which requires root privileges for all operations. By contrast, the rkt process is short-lived, limiting the chances of being exploited, and some of rkt commands can be executed as unprivileged user.

=> ↺ U.S. Slips in New Top500 Supercomputer Ranking

• Tapwrit was the second favorite at Belmont, and Sunway TaihuLight was the clear pick for the number-one position on TOP500 list, it having enjoyed that first-place ranking since June of 2016 when it beat out another Chinese supercomputer, Tianhe-2. The TaihuLight, capable of some 93 petaflops in this year’s benchmark tests, was designed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC) and is located at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China. Tianhe-2, capable of almost 34 petaflops, was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), is deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, and still enjoys the number-two position on the list.

=> ↺ Linux vs. Windows Server OS Comparison

=> ↺ The evolution of scalable microservices

• Today’s enterprise applications are deployed to everything from mobile devices to cloud-based clusters running thousands of multi-core processors. Users have come to expect millisecond response times and close to 100% uptime. And by “user” I mean both humans and machines. Traditional architectures, tools and products simply won’t cut it anymore. To paraphrase Henry Ford’s classic quote: we can’t make the horse any faster, we need cars for where we are going.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Using Kdump for examining Linux Kernel crashes

• The kexec mechanism has components in the kernel as well as in user space. The kernel provides few system calls for kexec reboot functionality. A user space tool called kexec-tools uses those calls and provides an executable to load and boot the second kernel. Sometimes a distribution also adds wrappers on top of kexec-tools, which helps capture and save the dump for various dump target configurations. In this article, I will use the name distro-kexec-tools to avoid confusion between upstream kexec-tools and distro-specific kexec-tools code. My example will use the Fedora Linux distribution.

=> ↺ China Is Driving To 5G And IoT Through Global Collaboration

• OPNFV is an initiative from the Linux Foundation that is working on the interoperability and integration of these virtual components, referred to as virtual network functions (VNFs), into a platform called network function virtualization (NFV).

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Intel KVMGT/XenGT GVT-g Updated For 2017-Q2

• Intel developers have issued their quarterly official update to their GVT-g graphics virtualization technology stack for Linux KVM and Xen virtualization.

=> ↺ Radeon Instinct Accelerators Get Ready To Ship

• Not only is AMD getting ready to take on Intel in the server space with their just-launched EPYC 7000 series, they are looking to battle NVIDIA now in the GPU server arena. Following their announcement at the end of last year, Radeon Instinct accelerators for GPU compute servers are getting ready to ship.

=> ↺ Intel Preps Another Batch Of Graphics Driver Updates For Linux 4.13

• Intel has queued up another round of feature changes slated for the Linux 4.13 kernel.

• Intel open-source developers had already queued up a fair amount of work already this cycle in DRM-Next while today’s pull request will likely be their last batch of real feature work with the DRM-Next window closing around this week.

=> ↺ OpenCL-Over-Vulkan Could Be Here Soon

• Khronos members have been working on code that could allow OpenCL code to be converted for execution by Vulkan drivers.

Applications

=> ↺ Shotwell 0.27.0

=> ↺ GNOME’s Shotwell 0.27 Debuts New Features

• GNOME’s Shotwell photo manager is out today with a new testing release as it ushers in the v0.27 development series.

• Shotwell 0.27 drops support for the F-Spot importing tool. F-Spot for the forgetful was a GNOME image manager/organizer written in C# but was succeeded by Shotwell since around 2010.

=> ↺ Shotwell, GNOME’s Open-Source Image Viewer and Organizer, Gets Important Update

• The Shotwell open-source image viewer and organizer that is installed by default in various GNU/Linux distributions has been recently updated to version 0.27, a major release that adds numerous improvements and fixes annoying bugs.

• Shotwell 0.27 is now the latest stable release of the application, and some of the best new features included are faster color transformations, a configurable image background, –fullscreen/-f command-line option for the viewer, as well as histogram and thumbnailer improvements.

=> ↺ Shotwell Photo Manager Updated, Here’s How To Upgrade on Ubuntu

• A new unstable release of photo manager Shotwell is now available. Shotwell 0.27 introduces a small set of new features and improvements, as well fixes for a number of bugs. Notably, Shotwell 0.27 no longer has F-Spot import support, a feature that the photo management and editing app added way back in 2010.

=> ↺ VIM Normalization

• Linux users–including the ones at the Hackaday underground bunker–tend to fall into two groups: those that use vi and those that use emacs. We aren’t going to open that debate up again, but we couldn’t help but notice a new item on GitHub that potentially negates one of the biggest complaints non-vi users have, at least for vim which is the most common variant of vi in use on most modern systems. The vim keybinding makes vim behave like a “normal” editor (and to forestall flames, that’s a quote from the project page).

=> ↺ Make Rhythmbox Look Better with this Alternative Toolbar Plugin

• Rhythmbox Alternative Toolbar is a Rhythmbox plugin that improves the look and layout of the music player by rearranging elements and using CSD.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Analytics Engines: Elasticsearch 5.4 on Ubuntu 16.04

=> ↺ How to keep Linux from hanging up on you

=> ↺ Using hashcat to recover your passwords

=> ↺ How to Setup a VPN with OpenVPN on Debian 9 Stretch Linux

=> ↺ How To Patch and Protect Linux Kernel Stack Clash Vulnerability CVE-2017-1000364 [ 19/June/2017 ]

=> ↺ How to install a Debian 9 (Stretch) Minimal Server

=> ↺ The Perfect Server – Debian 9 (Stretch) with Apache, BIND, Dovecot, PureFTPD and ISPConfig 3.1

=> ↺ Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB or MySQL and PHP) Stack on Debian 9

=> ↺ Limit CPU Usage of a Process in Linux with CPULimit Tool

=> ↺ Set up the arcanist for Koko

=> ↺ A beginner’s guide to collecting and mapping Twitter data using R

=> ↺ How to Run remote ssh command in Linux to Show result locally.

=> ↺ How to get Docker Shipyard up and running with a single command

=> ↺ How to Setup Linux Version of MS SQL Server on Docker Container

=> ↺ How To Install Packages From A Specific Repository In Linux

=> ↺ Hello Whale: Getting Started with Docker & Flask

=> ↺ Set Up CI/CD for a Distributed Crossword Puzzle App on Kubernetes (Part 4)

=> ↺ Constructor Dependency Injection in Go

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Mesa Git Should Now Work With Intel/RADV Vulkan For Doom Under Wine

• Running the Doom (2016) game under Wine with Vulkan may now yield better success if using the Intel ANV or Radeon RADV Vulkan drivers due to a fix in Mesa’s SPIR-V common code.

• The code commit to Mesa 17.2-dev that was merged just minutes ago explained, “Doom shipped with a broken version of GLSLang which handles samplers as function arguments in a way that isn’t spec-compliant. In particular, it creates a temporary local sampler variable and copies the sampler into it. While Dave has had a hack patch out for a while that gets it working, we’ve never landed it because we’ve been hoping that a game update would come out with fixed shaders. Unfortunately, no game update appears on to be on the horizon and I’ve found this issue in yet another application so I think we’re stuck working around it. Hopefully, we can delete this code one day.”

Games

=> ↺ Revisit Colossal Cave with Open Adventure

• In the history of computer games, very few are as influential as Colossal Cave Adventure. Initially developed in 1976 by Will Crowther and expanded by Don Woods in 1977, Adventure was the first interactive fiction game and inspired countless other computer games. Adventure directly or indirectly led to the entire corpus of text-based adventure games, and by extension, graphical adventure games.

=> ↺ Planetary Annihilation: TITANS updated and still alive, adds new free commanders and more

=> ↺ Black Mesa ‘Xen’ update delayed, screenshots looks beautiful

=> ↺ Cryptark, the 2D sci-fi roguelike shooter is now officially out with a sale

• Cryptark [Steam, Official Site], the excellent 2D roguelike shooter has officially launched with a sale and boy is it good.

=> ↺ Take a look at ‘The Assassin’ from XCOM 2′s War of the Chosen expansion

=> ↺ Cossacks 3 finally in open beta for all Linux users

• Promised many times and repeatedly delayed, Cossacks 3 [Steam] is now officially in open beta for all Linux gamers.

• The great news is that the online gameplay is compatible with Windows!

• The game seemed to work pretty well when I last tried it during the closed beta on Nvidia. On AMD it’s possible it may have issues, as editor BTRE has been unable to run it.

=> ↺ Serious Sam’s Bogus Detour released with day-1 Linux support, some quick thoughts

• Serious Sam’s Bogus Detour [Steam, Official Site] is a new top-down action game from Hammerwatch developer Crackshell. The developer was kind enough to send me a key, so here’s some quick notes on it.

=> ↺ The developers of Sombrero: Spaghetti Western Mayhem are looking for Linux testers

• Sombrero: Spaghetti Western Mayhem [Steam, Official Site], a frantic looking party game for 2-4 players is coming to Linux and the developer needs some Linux testers.

=> ↺ HITMAN will have the first location available completely free later today

• Io-Interactive’s first change to HITMAN as an independent company comes into effect today, as they set the first location in HITMAN [Steam] free of charge. That includes Linux too, of course, as it’s a simple change on how the game is packaged for purchase on Steam.

=> ↺ Rocket League Is Almost Fixed Up For RadeonSI Gallium3D Driver

• Marek Olšák has posted a set of five patches for fixing up one of the remaining rendering issues affecting RadeonSI and the other Gallium3D drivers in being able to correctly render the popular Rocket League game on Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KTechLab is coming back

• KTechLab, the IDE for microcontrollers and electronics has joined KDE. Below I’m summarizing its current status and plans.

=> ↺ KDE KTechLab Is Being Revived After Nearly A Decade Hiatus

• The KTechLab integrated development environment focused on micro-controller circuit design and simulation is back to being under development after not seeing a major release since 2009.

• KTechLab has been stalled for the better part of a decade: at the time of its last release, it was working to transition from Qt3 to Qt4. The good news though is development on this IDE for microcontrollers and electronics has been rebooted and is now officially a KDE project.

=> ↺ Calamares Testing

• My project for Blue Systems is maintaining Calamares, the distro-independent installer framework. Not surprisingly, working on it means installing lots of Linux distro’s. Here’s my physical-hardware testing setup, which is two identical older HP desktop machines and a stack of physical DVDs. Very old-school. Often I use Virtual Box, but sometimes the hum of a DVD is just what I need to calm down. There’s a KDE Neon, a Manjaro and a Netrunner DVD there, but the machine labeled Ubuntu is running Kannolo and sporting an openSUSE Geeko.

=> ↺ FOSSASIA SUMMIT 2017 and KDE

• I got an opportunity to represent KDE in FOSSASIA 2017 held in mid-March at Science Center, Singapore. There were many communities showcasing their hardware, designs, graphics, and software.

=> ↺ GSoC’17 : First Blog

• I’m glad to share this opportunity to be selected 2 times for Google Summer of Code project under KDE. It’s my second consecutive year working with DigiKam team.

• DigiKam is an advanced digital photo management application which enables user to view, manage, edit, organise, tag and share photographs under Linux systems. DigiKam has a feature to search items by similarity. This require to compute image fingerprints stored in main database. These data can take space on disk especially with huge collection and bloat the main database a lots and increase complexity to backup main database which include all main information for each item registered, as tags, label, comments, etc.

=> ↺ A tale of 2 curves

• As my first subject for this animation blog series, we will be taking a look at Animation curves.

• Curves, or better, easing curves, is one of the first concepts we are exposed to when dealing with the subject of animation in the QML space.

=> ↺ Pimping KRuler

• KRuler, in case you don’t know it, is a simple software ruler to measure lengths on your desktop. It is one of the oldest KDE tools, its first commit dating from November 4th, 2000. Yes, it’s almost old enough to vote.

• I am a long time KRuler user. It gets the job done, but I have often found myself saying “one day I’ll fix this or that”. And never doing it.

• Hidpi screen really hurt the poor app, so I finally decided to do something and spend some time during my daily commute on it.

=> ↺ Adding API dox QCH files generation to KDE Frameworks builds

• Things seemed to work okay on first tests, so last September a pull request was made to add some respective macro module to Extra-CMake-Modules to get things going and a blog post “Adding API dox generation to the build by CMake macros” was written.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Internationalization, part one

• The first part of internationalizing a Greek application, is, of course, translating all the Greek text to English. I already knew how to open a user interface (.ui) file with Glade and how to translate/save it from there, and mail the result to the developers.

• If only it was that simple! I learned that the code of most open source software is kept on version control systems, which fortunately are a bit similar to Wikis, which I was familiar with, so I didn’t have a lot of trouble understanding the concepts. Thanks to a very brief git crash course from my mentors, I was able to quickly start translating, committing, and even pushing back the updated files.

=> ↺ [Old] GNOME (et al): Rotting In Threes

• In the rush for Linux to become ‘popular’ and ‘make it into the desktop market’, maybe there is an unintended consequence. Not only are Windows users moving to Linux, but Windows devs seem to be arriving as well, bringing their diseases with them – corporate ‘kill off the competition’ mentalities that don’t serve Linux, merely exploit it.

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ Debian-Based Univention Corporate Server 4.2 Linux OS Gets First Point Release

• Univention GmbH’s Maren Abatielos is today informing us about the release and immediate availability for download of the first point release to the Debian-based Univention Corporate Server 4.2 server-oriented operating system.

• Being the first to be rebased on the Debian GNU/Linux 8 “Jessie” operating system series, Univention Corporate Server 4.2 launched in early April this year with increased binary compatibility with Debian, systemd as default init system for new installations, MBD3 support for the Univention Directory listener, and a new configurable web portal.

=> ↺ First point release of UCS 4.2 published

• With UCS 4.2-1 the first point release for Univention Corporate Server 4.2 is now available.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ A proud scion of name: OpenMandriva Lx 3.02 release

• After several months of hard work we are very proud and excited to announce OpenMandriva Lx 3.02 release today. We hope you will enjoy this release of OpenMandriva Lx, its range of cutting edge features, quick to boot, fast in use and which brings you all the latest software.

=> ↺ OpenMandriva Lx 3.02 Released

• OpenMandriva Lx 3.02 is now available as the latest version of this Mandriva/Mandrake-derived Linux distribution.

• OpenMandriva Lx 3.02 comes packing the Linux 4.11 kernel, systemd 233, KDE Frameworks 5.33 + Plasma 5.9.5 + Qt 5.8, X.Org Server 1.19.3 / Wayland 1.12, and Mesa 17.1.1 as offering a range of updated packages compared to its prior release.

=> ↺ OpenMandriva Lx 3.02 Released with Updated Wayland and X.Org Infrastructures

• OpenMandriva announced today the release and immediate availability of the second point release to the stable OpenMandriva Lx 3 series of the open-source computer operating system.

• After more than six months in development, OpenMandriva Lx 3.02 is finally here to update users to the most recent GNU/Linux and Open Source technologies. The release comes with the latest KDE software, including KDE Plasma 5.9.5 desktop environment, KDE Applications 17.04 software suite, and KDE Frameworks 5.35.0.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Why open source is increasingly key to government innovation

• Open source is at the heart of much of the innovation transforming the global economy and society today. OpenGov spoke to Mr. Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen (above), Senior vice president and General Manager, Asia Pacific at Red Hat Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, to learn about how governments are leveraging open source to deliver services at the high standards expected by citizens.

=> ↺ As Open Source and Cloud Converge, Red Hat Expands Partnerships and Training

• As open source and cloud computing converge, Red Hat is ramping up the scope of its cloud and DevOps initiatives, including building out its training offerings. If you still think of the company as primarily focused on enterprise Linux, think again. Through partnerships, such as its work with IBM, and acquisitions, such as its intent to purchase Codenvy, the cloud represents a particularly promising frontier for Red Hat. Meanwhile, the company is calling out skills gaps in the DevOps arena.

=> ↺ Red Hat and AWS extend strategic alliance

• Red Hat, Inc and Amazon Web Services, Inc (AWS), an Amazon.com company, have announced an extended strategic alliance to natively integrate access to AWS services into Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

=> ↺ QCT Collaborates with Red Hat to Deliver OpenStack Reference Architecture for Private and Hybrid Clouds

• QxStack with Red Hat OpenStack Platform combines Red Hat’s production-ready OpenStack offering, QxStack Auto-Deployment Tool, and QCT hardware to give enterprises and service providers a highly available OpenStack cloud that’s easy to deploy, manage and scale.

Finance

=> ↺ Target Price for Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) now above close for Monday

=> ↺ Red Hat jumps to highest price levels since dot-com boom

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc. Q1 Profit Climbs 10%

=> ↺ What to Expect From Red Hat Earnings

=> ↺ Stock Under Review: Checking in on Volatility Levels for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Red Hat Q1 adjusted non-GAAP earnings per share $0.56

=> ↺ Red Hat Surges 11%: FYQ1 Beats, Q2 View Beats, Raises Year View

=> ↺ Red Hat FYQ1 On Tap: Up Against Some Tough Comps, Says Jefferies

=> ↺ PayPal Holdings, Red Hat, Varonis Systems

=> ↺ Red Hat Consistently Adds to Earnings-Driven Post-Market Moves in Next Day’s Regular Session

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) is above on it’s 50 DMA

=> ↺ Chevron, PayPal, Red Hat, Varonis Systems

=> ↺ Red Hat (RHT) Beats Q1 Earnings, Shares up on Positive View

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Price Target Raised to $107.00

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Releases Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.03 EPS

=> ↺ BUZZ-U.S. STOCKS ON THE MOVE-La-Z-Boy, Red Hat, Moleculin, AMD, Adobe and gold stocks

=> ↺ U.S. STOCKS ON THE MOVE-La-Z-Boy, Red Hat, Moleculin, Sangamo and gold stocks

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc: Set for 17-yr high after strong Q1 report

Fedora

=> ↺ FEDORA WORKSTATION 26 AND BEYOND

• Felt it been to long since I did another Fedora Workstation update. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how we can best spend our resources to produce the best desktop possible for our users, because even though Red Hat invests more into the Linux desktop than any other company by quite a margin, our resources are still far from limitless. So we have a continuous effort of asking ourselves if each of the areas we are investing in are the right ones that give our users the things they need the most, so below is a sampling of the things we are working on.

=> ↺ Fedora Continues Working On Better NVIDIA Support, PipeWire Could Replace PulseAudio

• Christian Schaller of Red Hat has provided an update on some of the feature work that’s coming around the corner with Fedora Workstation 26 and other work to land in the future.

=> ↺ Running CDK 3.0 on Fedora 25

• Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK) provides a Container Development Environment (CDE) that allows users to build a virtualized environment for OpenShift. This environment is similar to the user’s production environment and does not need other hardware or a physical cluster. CDK is designed to work on a single user’s desktop computer.

=> ↺ Bodhi: 2.8.0

Debian Family

=> ↺ Upgrading to Debian Stretch

• I’ve done it. Our server and all but one of our clients have been dist-upgraded to Debian Stretch. The dist-upgrade went smoothly on all clients. The server was another matter. Oh, the dist-upgrade was smooth but web-applications were ripped by the migration from PHP 5 to PHP 7. It was trivial to convert my recipe application to PHP 7, just a handful of MySQL calls needed changing. phpBB, OTOH, does not support PHP 7 and since we rarely use it, I will just remove it. It was useful when I taught in schools but I don’t need it now in the era of smartphones in every pocket. People use FB or e-mail or “messaging” and carry on. Coppermine Photo Gallery has a double whammy. It’s no longer supported by anyone and so will not be upgraded by the FLOSS community, most likely. I have invested quite a bit of work annotating photos in the database so I don’t want to abandon CPG. I can put it in a virtual machine running Jessie forever. It’s on the LAN so security is not much of an issue. My local library of Gutenberg texts is another matter. The CGI script was written in PASCAL, so that’s not a problem but the SWISH-e PHP interface does not build against PHP 7. The SWISH-e plugin is ancient, about 2012, so it’s not clear whether it will ever work with PHP 7. I just don’t want to dig that deep. SWISH-e still works so I could rewrite everything in PASCAL and carry on, but I could also move this web-application to a virtual machine running PHP 5. This library also was very valuable when I taught in northern schools with shaky Internet connections but it’s less important now. I can also use SWISH-e from the commandline if necessary. phpMyAdmin worked smoothly. It’s from Debian’s repository, of course.

=> ↺ So, Stretch happened…

• Things mostly went very well, and we’ve released Debian 9 this weekend past. Many many people worked together to make this possible, and I’d like to extend my own thanks to all of them.

• As a project, we decided to dedicate Stretch to our late founder Ian Murdock. He did much of the early work to get Debian going, and inspired many more to help him. I had the good fortune to meet up with Ian years ago at a meetup attached to a Usenix conference, and I remember clearly he was a genuinely nice guy with good ideas. We’ll miss him.

• For my part in the release process, again I was responsible for producing our official installation and live images. Release day itself went OK, but as is typical the process ran late into Saturday night / early Sunday morning. We made and tested lots of different images, although numbers were down from previous releases as we’ve stopped making the full CD sets now.

=> ↺ Why I will not write a full-feature review of Debian 9

• Its codename is Stretch, which is yet another character from the Toy Story animated film.

• It is available for download in both Install and Live versions, and Live version is available in many flavours: GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, LXDE and so on.

• I hope you will read the review of Debian 9 somewhere else, but I will not feature it on my blog.

=> ↺ Debian 9 “Stretch” Download Links & Release Info

Derivatives

=> ↺ Re: [DNG] I have a question about libsystemd0 in devuan ascii

• As I see it, GNOME/Freedesktop.org/Red Hat/etc. are moving toward an Android model where everything else is all but officially excluded except for apps written specifically for their environment.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ My Ubuntu for mobile devices post mortem analysis

• Now that Ubuntu phones and tablets are gone, I would like to offer my thoughts on why I personally think the project failed and what one may learn from it.

• To recapitulate my involvement in the project: I had been using Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 7 on an on-and-off-basis between its announcement in 2013 and December 2014, started working on Click apps in December 2014, started writing the 15-part “Hacking Ubuntu Touch” blog post series about system internals in January 2015, became an Ubuntu Phone Insider, got a Meizu MX4 from Canonical, organized and sponsored the UbuContest app development contest, worked on bug reports and apps until about April 2016, and then sold off/converted all my remaining devices in mid-2016. So I think I can offer some thoughts about the project, its challenges and where we could have done better.

• Please note that this post does not apply to the UBPorts project, which continues to work on the phone operating system, Unity 8 and other components.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Is Finally Looking At Shipping Accelerated Video Playback Support

• It’s 2017 and Ubuntu is finally looking at shipping GPU-accelerated video playback support out-of-the-box on the Ubuntu desktop.

• Various forms of video acceleration have been available if installing them from the archive on Ubuntu, but nothing has been available by default… But it’s looking like that may change, though their direction is a bit peculiar.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 17.10 To Fully Use Netplan By Default For Network Configuration

• One year after Ubuntu developers announced their Netplan project for consolidated networking configuration across platforms, they are now planning to use Netplan by default in Ubuntu 17.10 across all editions.

• Netplan has picked up many features in the year it’s been under development as a replacement to ifupdown. Netplan aims to handle all network configuration use-cases and can in turn generate configuration files for use by NetworkManager and systemd-networkd.

=> ↺ Netplan by default in 17.10

• Friday, I uploaded an updated nplan package (version 0.24) to change its Priority: field to important, as well as an update of ubuntu-meta (following a seeds update), to replace ifupdown with nplan in the minimal seed.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 17.10 Continues Aiming For The Linux 4.13 Kernel

• Mentioned in the weekly Ubuntu Kernel Newsletter are the developers reiterating their plans to ship Ubuntu 17.10 “Artful Aardvark” with the Linux 4.13 kernel.

• They’ve previously expressed plans for shipping Ubuntu 17.10 Artful with Linux 4.13 and this week’s newsletter repeats those claims.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 17.10 Is Finally Unifying and Cleaning Up the Networking Configuration

• Last year in August, Canonical’s Martin Pitt, the systemd maintainer for the Ubuntu Linux operating system at that time, announced the company’s plans to unify and clean up the networking configuration in Ubuntu Linux.

• They introduced netplan, a project that promised to centralize the network configuration for all Ubuntu Linux operating system versions, including Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core (Snappy) under a single file (e.g. /etc/netplan/*.yaml) instead of using /etc/network/interfaces files.

=> ↺ Former Ubuntu Phone Insider Shares His Thoughts on Why the Project Failed

• Former Ubuntu Phone developer, Simon Raffeiner, which many of you know as sturmflut, has written a detailed article on his blog to share his thoughts on why he thinks the Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Touch projects failed.

• Simon Raffeiner worked on the Ubuntu Touch operating system since its official announcement back in 2013, believing in the project’s goals and objectives. He worked for about three years, up until mid-2016, on various Ubuntu Phone-related things, including but not limited to Click apps, bug reports, and tutorials for others to start hacking on Ubuntu Touch.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Escuelas Linux 5.4 Educational Distribution Officially Released, Based on Bodhi

• If you can’t get enough educational-oriented GNU/Linux distributions, here’s another one for you, Escuelas Linux 5.4, an open-source computer operating system based on Bodhi Linux and designed for deployment in schools.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Hacker Board Survey Results: More Raspberry Pi, Please

• The results are in for the 2017 Hacker Board survey. A total of 1,705 Linux.com and LinuxGizmos readers voted for their favorite Linux-driven, community-backed SBCs under $200 out of a catalog of 98. As with last year’s jointly sponsored survey, as well as the 2015 and 2014 polls, a Raspberry Pi single board computer came out on top.

• What was remarkable this time around was the huge 4-to-1 gap between the Raspberry Pi 3 and the nearest competitor, which for the first time was also a Raspberry Pi: the Raspberry Pi Zero W. Third place went to the revamped, Cortex-A53 based Raspberry Pi 2.

=> ↺ Latest quad-core Banana Pi offers SATA support for $32

• SinoVoiP’s open-spec, Linux- and Android-ready “Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry” SBC has a Raspberry Pi-like layout, WiFi, BT, GbE, HDMI, 4x USB, CSI, and SATA.

• SinoVoip’s Banana Pi project has introduced a variation on its $40 Banana Pi M2 Ultra hacker SBC with a smaller, Raspberry Pi like, 85 x 56mm footprint instead of the Ultra’s 92 x 60mm. The quad-core Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry offers fairly similar features as the Ultra, which is also somewhat like to that of the older, 92 x 60mm Banana Pi M2. The main difference compared to the M2 is that the Berry and the Ultra models add SATA support, and not just the under-powered USB variety.

=> ↺ ARM-Android open source platform for Linaro

• Huawei is backing an initiative for an AOSP (Android open source project) using ARM-based hardware and the Linaro open source collaborative engineering organization to develop the software. Their common aim: an ARM ecosystem.

• The new HiKey 960 dev platform from Huawei is now listed on the 96Boards website and will become available through global distribution channels. It is expected to be of interest to mobile developers and product design for markets like digital signage, point of sale (POS) and robotics.

=> ↺ Intel pulls the plug on its Joule, Edison, and Galileo boards

• Intel is discontinuing its Linux-ready, Atom-based Intel Joule and Intel Edison COMs, its Quark-based Galileo Gen 2 SBC, and its Recon Jet sports eyewear.

=> ↺ 3 reasons to turn your Raspberry Pi into a DNS server with dnsmasq

• By making DNS requests from a local Raspberry Pi instead of a remote server, you can realize a few advantages. Fetching any kind of data from a local area network will always be faster than fetching something from the Internet.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ OnePlus 5 review—The best sub-$500 phone you can buy

• Smartphone companies don’t seem to care about cultivating a true “lineup” of phones. If you aren’t spending at least $650, most companies will offer you anonymous, second-rate devices that seem like they’ve had no thought put into them. With the death of the Nexus line and with Lenovo’s continued bungling of Motorola, the “good but not $650″ market is slimmer than ever. Enter the OnePlus 5, which continues the company’s tradition of offering an all-business, high-end smartphone for a great price.

=> ↺ Sony Xperia Touch Android projector Review

• The sunk cost fallacy dictates that the more someone has invested in a given thing, the less likely they are to give up on it, even when all rational thought would suggest otherwise. And while one would think a big corporation such as Sony wouldn’t fall victim to this phenomenon, what I have in front of me is a whizzing and buzzing proof this isn’t entirely the case.

• The Sony Xperia Touch is, by all accounts, a device that shouldn’t have seen the light of day: it feels like a poorly thought-out, unfinished prototype, and its purpose seems to be unclear even to Sony itself. So the most likely answer to the question of why this device exists is that someone at the company thought: “We’ve poured that much money in this thing, might as well release it.”

=> ↺ This is the latest phone from the company Android fans can’t get enough of

• OnePlus announced the OnePlus 5 on Tuesday, and we’ve been trying it out for the last couple of weeks.

• You might not have heard of OnePlus before. It’s a company that hardcore Android enthusiasts love, because it sells high-end Android smartphones that cost hundreds of dollars less than phones like the Galaxy S8.

• We think this phone has enough appeal to continue that momentum. Is it going to take considerable market share from Apple or Samsung? No, but this is a special phone for people who only want OnePlus products.

=> ↺ Watch the OnePlus 5 launch live right here

=> ↺ All about Android O’s Notification Channels

=> ↺ One kind of Android smartphone ransomware is behind a massive rise in malicious software

=> ↺ How to download YouTube to Android

=> ↺ Firefox Focus is out on Android for ad-free browsing

=> ↺ The OnePlus 5 Is the New Android iPhone Ripoff—in a Very Good Way

=> ↺ Kodak is selling boring Android tablets in Europe

=> ↺ How cybercriminals are using Android security bulletins to plan attacks

=> ↺ Google to end Android Market support for Android 2.1 Eclair and below

=> ↺ More Android apps from dangerous Ztorg family sneak into Google Play

=> ↺ Korean media: Galaxy Note 8 to launch on August 26 in New York

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Tips on Scaling Open Source in the Cloud

• I can summarize that in three points for application developers: a shorter learning curve, better security with less hassle, and more resources with increased agility.

• First is the shortened learning curve. Developers just want to develop applications when they use open source. They want to focus on their particular application logic and they want to decide what features to develop. They do not want to spend time and effort on managing the physical infrastructure, an aggravation cloud computing eliminates.

=> ↺ Third Week of GSoC

• Another week is has passed and the first evaluation phase slowly approaches. While I already fulfilled my goals (Jingle File Transfer using InBandBytestreams and SOCKS5Bytestreams), I still have a lot of work to do. The first working implementation I did is only so much – working. Barely. Now its time to learn from mistakes I made while I constructed my prototype and find better ways to do it in the next iteration. This is what I was up to in the past week and what will keep me from my usual sleep cycle for the coming week(s).

=> ↺ Commercial Dependencies and Sustainable Open Source Ecosystems

• Every day, we see developer communities work on and contribute code to open source projects. They’re out there working to build the best solutions possible for their particular objectives – and they’re doing it collaboratively.

=> ↺ What is GraphQL and why should you care? The future of APIs

• GraphQL is an open source technology created by Facebook that is getting a fair bit of attention of late. It is set to make a major impact on how APIs are designed.

=> ↺ Introducing casync

• In the past months I have been working on a new project: casync. casync takes inspiration from the popular rsync file synchronization tool as well as the probably even more popular git revision control system. It combines the idea of the rsync algorithm with the idea of git-style content-addressable file systems, and creates a new system for efficiently storing and delivering file system images, optimized for high-frequency update cycles over the Internet. Its current focus is on delivering IoT, container, VM, application, portable service or OS images, but I hope to extend it later in a generic fashion to become useful for backups and home directory synchronization as well (but more about that later).

=> ↺ Lennart Poettering Announces New Project: casync

• Following his work on PulseAudio, Avahi, and systemd, Lennart Poettering has a new project to announce: casync.

=> ↺ EDDR Software Releases gdsFileParser as Open Source Tool for Verifying and Parsing Design Data from GDSII Files

=> ↺ Open-source variety is a blessing and a curse to enterprises, says Qubole

• Instead of hobbling together open-source projects, why don’t failing enterprise big data teams just buy a proprietary product guaranteed to deliver the results they seek?

• “In the big data space, it’s hard to avoid going down the open-source path,” said David Hsieh (pictured), chief marketing officer of Qubole Inc., a cloud-native big data platform.

• Open-source projects have obvious advantages over prefab products from traditional vendors, Hsieh said during an interview at DataWorks Summit in San Jose, California.

=> ↺ Google makes it easier to train deep learning AI models with Tensor2Tensor

• The Google Brain team wants to help data scientists get their deep learning projects off the ground more easily with the release into open source today of a new software code library called Tensor2Tensor.

=> ↺ Google Tensor2Tensor to speed up deep learning research

• “T2T facilitates the creation of state-of-the art models for a variety of ML applications, such as translation, parsing, image captioning, and more,” said Google.

=> ↺ ‘One machine learning model to rule them all’: Google open-sources tools for simpler AI

=> ↺ Google launches open source system to make training deep learning models faster and easier

=> ↺ Google can turn an ordinary PC into a deep learning machine

=> ↺ Google’s Tensor2Tensor makes it easier to conduct deep learning experiments

=> ↺ Why aren’t more researchers using open source?

• Academic researchers depend on a variety of highly specialized software to power their studies. The commercial software options in common use are expensive; either investigators must purchase a large number of licenses for common applications like data analysis tools, or they have to buy costly single licenses for specialized software, such as an application for a specific laboratory device.

• It’s surprising, then, that so few researchers are using open source instead of expensive commercial software. Not only does open source produce cost savings over commercial options—money that can be invested back into research—it also provides researchers the opportunity to develop software for their own specific needs, then share it with others doing similar work.

=> ↺ Opus 1.2 Released

=> ↺ Opus 1.2 Audio Codec Officially Released

• Following the earlier development releases, Opus 1.2 is now official.

• Opus 1.2 remains compatible with the RFC 6716 specification but now offers improvements for music quality, varable bit-rate improvements down to 32kb/s, speech quality improvements, and a range of speed optimizations around the Opus code.

=> ↺ Opus Open-Source Lossless Audio Codec Sees Major Update with Many Improvements

• Opus, the open standard lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation has recently been updated to version 1.2, a major release that adds lots of quality improvements, several new features, and dozens of bug fixes.

• Opus 1.2 is a stable release that comes about three and a half years after the 1.1 series of the codec, adding exciting changes like music and speech quality enhancements in the 32-48 kb/s and 12-20 kbit/s range respectively, much better VBR encoding for the hybrid mode, as well as SSE CELT and generic optimizations.

=> ↺ Open19: The Vendor-Friendly Open Source Data Center Project

• In case you missed it, LinkedIn last month teamed up with GE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and a host of other companies serving the data center market to launch a foundation to govern its open source data center technology effort. The Open19 Foundation now administers the Open19 Project, which in many ways is similar to the Open Compute Project, started by Facebook, but also stands distinctly apart thanks to several key differences.

=> ↺ What to know before you open source your project

• Before your company makes a project open source, make sure you’re ready for all your new responsibilities to the community that forms around it.

=> ↺ 10 with A10: 10 Open-Source Trends for 2017

• Open source has become an integral piece of every developer’s arsenal. The power of the community, the wisdom of many, and the ability to hook into various systems and solutions make open-source incredibly powerful.

• At A10, we contribute to and embrace open-source solutions and provide APIs to empower developers to integrate their tools into our systems.

• We keep our finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the open-source community. As 2017 gathers steam, we decided to identify 10 trends that will impact open-source this year.

=> ↺ OpenFin adds former Goldman Sachs tech co-head Paul Walker to board

=> ↺ Former Goldman Sachs CTO Joins The Board Of The Fintech Company That’s Open-Sourcing Banks

=> ↺ Goldman vet joins board of open-source trading systems startup

=> ↺ A former cohead of tech at Goldman Sachs has joined a startup that wants to be the iOS of Wall Street

=> ↺ MOVES-Ex-Goldman Sachs tech executive Walker joins OpenFin board

Events

=> ↺ OpenStack and Containers live Q&A session

• OpenStack and Containers Office Hours are online Q&A sessions held on an ongoing basis. Their aim is to help community members and customers deploy, manage and scale their Ubuntu-based cloud infrastructure.

=> ↺ ‘Meeting for Good’ – Schedule Meetings in Multiple Time Zones

• One of the great joys of open source is that it can unite geographically dispersed people to work together on software and other projects. This often happens asynchronously, via email and other tools. However, sometimes there are real benefits to having a live meeting. When that happens, keeping track of people’s availability in different time zones becomes a challenge.

=> ↺ MongoDB World 2017: keynote noteworthies

• MongoDB staged its 2017 user, developer, customer and partner showcase convention in the US city of Chicago this June.

• Essentially open source at the backbone, MongoDB is a database company built upon a document-oriented data model.

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Giving Qutebrowser a go – a fantastic keyboard-focused browser

• Years ago, I was introduce to touch typing. I knew immediately that it was a skill I must learn. I remember spending hours playing with gtypist trying to improve my typing efficiency. I’m not too bad nowadays. I can mostly type without looking at the keyboard at all, and with few errors.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Google, Mozilla both say they sped up the web today. One by blocking ads. One with ads

• Mozilla’s announced that its “Firefox Focus” ad-busting browser has made it to Android.

• Focus has been available on iOS since late 2016. The browser’s lead feature is hiding traces of web searches so that ads can’t follow you around the web. Mozilla feels doing so enhances privacy and speeds up surfing as you won’t be downloading all the background ad-serving cruft built into web pages.

• Now it’s released the browser for Android, and fair enough too given that iOS’ market share now trails that of Google’s mobile OS.

=> ↺ Firefox Focus for Android Promises to Block Annoying Ads, Protect Users’ Privacy

• Mozilla announced today that the Firefox Focus web browser that the Open Source company launched last year for iPhone and iPad devices is now also available for Android.

• Designed from the ground up to be simple, fast, and always private, the Firefox Focus mobile app for Android doesn’t feature tabs and it’s free of any visual clutter that might get in your way when surfing the Internet from your mobile device. It comes built-in with an ad blocker that promises to block annoying ads.

=> ↺ A $2 Million Prize to Decentralize the Web. Apply Today

• Mozilla and the National Science Foundation are offering a $2 million prize for big ideas that decentralize the web. And we’re accepting applications starting today.

• Mozilla believes the Internet is a global public resource that must be open and accessible to all. In the 21st century, a lack of Internet access is far more than an inconvenience — it’s a staggering disadvantage. Without access, individuals miss out on substantial economic and educational opportunities, government services and the ability to communicate with friends, family and peers.

• Currently, 34 million people in the U.S. — 10% of the country’s population — lack access to high-quality Internet connectivity. This number jumps to 39% in rural communities and 41% on Tribal lands. And when disasters strike, millions more can lose vital connectivity right when it’s needed most.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ Growing The Community

• How can you grow an open source community? Two blog posts from The Document Foundation (TDF) illustrate a proven double-ended strategy to sustain an existing community.

• Since it was established in 2010, the LibreOffice project has steadily grown under the guidance of The Document Foundation (TDF) where I’ve been a volunteer — most lately as a member of its Board. Starting from a complex political situation with a legacy codebase suffering extensive technical debt, TDF has been able to cultivate both individual contributors and company-sponsored contributors and move beyond the issues to stability and effectiveness.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ Innovating With Open Source: Microsoft’s Story

=> ↺ Microsoft Expands Linux Container Support in Windows Server

=> ↺ Krita and Inkscape arrive on the Windows Store

=> ↺ Two Open source apps now available for download in Windows Store

=> ↺ Pogo Linux Atlas Server Line Supports Disruptive New AMD EPYC Processors for Both Server and Storage Deployments

• Today Pogo Linux, a leading supplier of rack mount server and storage products, announced the launch of their refreshed, cost-effective Atlas server line, based on the new AMD EPYC series of processors. These new x86 processors are a significant step forward from AMD’s previous release, and puts them at performance parity with the best offerings currently on the market. In addition, the new AMD platform enables all 128 PCIe lanes with only a single processor, providing significant cost benefits to customers deploying applications that are I/O intensive but not CPU-bound.

=> ↺ Alibaba Cloud Joins Cloud Native Computing Foundation Announces as Gold Member

=> ↺ How SAP, T-Mobile, and Intel Use Cloud Foundry’s Open Source Platform

• As enterprises shift to digital business models, “every company becomes a software-driven company,” said Bjoern Goerke, CTO of SAP in his keynote address at last week’s Cloud Foundry Summit Silicon Valley.

• He’s referring to the much-discussed digital transformation, which sees companies moving their workloads to the cloud and communicating with customers via digital platforms. It’s been a favorite buzz-phrase at recent industry events, and this was the case at the Cloud Foundry Summit, too.

NSA

=> ↺ National Security Agency has now a Github account

=> ↺ The NSA launches GitHub account

=> ↺ Now NSA has a GitHub account, and it just open-sourced 32 internal projects

=> ↺ NSA’s GitHub Account Has 32 Open Source Projects For People

=> ↺ The NSA is sharing 32 open source projects on GitHub

=> ↺ NSA had NFI about opsec: 2016 audit found laughably bad security

=> ↺ DoD Inspector General: NSA Lacks Detailed Strategy to Implement ‘Secure-the-Net’ Efforts

=> ↺ NSA Fails to Protect from Insider Threats, Gets a GitHub Account

=> ↺ NSA shares 32 open source projects on GitHub

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ Aimed at Bringing Open-Source Farming to Consumers, Cool Idea! Award Grant Helps FarmBot Maintain Momentum

• Production grant empowered company to move beyond crowdfunding stage

• In this age of non-GMO, home-grown and fully traceable produce, backyard food gardening is on the rise.

=> ↺ Kaleida launches The Attention Index, an open-source algorithm to measure the impact of stories

• How does the prominence editors and news organisations assign to stories on the homepage compare to what readers actually pay attention to and engage with?

• To find out, media research company Kaleida is launching The Attention Index today (21 June), an open-source algorithm aimed at measuring the impact and quality of news articles.

• The Attention Index uses data collected by Kaleida using the company’s own content analysis tools as well as third party platforms, such as APIs from Google which help identify the subject of an article, and information from a service called Aylien which performs sentiment analysis on stories.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Open source desktop bot is aimed at makers young and old

• Barcelona-based robotics company Thecorpora has launched an Indiegogo campaign to get the successor to its Q.bo robot from 2012 into the hands of kids, educators, developers and robot enthusiasts. Unlike the earlier model, the Q.bo One – which is described as easy to build, simple to program and easy to hack – isn’t mobile but sits in a cradle on a desktop.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ D Language Support Cleared For Being Added To GCC

• The GCC Steering Committee has approved of allowing the D language front-end and runtime to be included as part of the GNU Compiler Collection.

=> ↺ Intel Posts Control-Flow Enforcement Support For GCC

• Last year Intel published a research whitepaper for Control-Flow Enforcement Technology (CET) while they have now posted a set of GCC patches for implementing this safeguard within the GCC compiler.

=> ↺ ARM’s Cortex A55/A75 Get Tuned Up In GCC

• ARM’s Cortex A55 and A75 processors have received their initial tuning support within the GCC 8 compiler code.

=> ↺ Mikeal Rogers: Node.js Will Overtake Java Within a Year

• Mikeal Rogers has been with the Node.js Foundation since day one. His job as community manager for the foundation involved hands-on oversight of operations, from communications and marketing to conference planning, to running board meetings. Rogers’ main contribution, though, is organization and coordination within the Node.js open source community — particularly in scaling governance and processes as the project has accelerated from a dozen early contributors to many hundreds.

Leftovers

=> ↺ [Older] What was it like to be at Xerox PARC when Steve Jobs visited?

• A second important fact about the 1979 demo to Steve, was that he missed most of what we showed him. More than 15 years later he admits this in this interview:How Steve Jobs got the ideas of GUI from XEROX where he says that we showed him three things but he was so blinded by the first one (the GUI) that he missed both networking and real object-oriented systems programming.

=> ↺ Productivity or Efficiency: What Really Matters?

• “There’s a big difference between being busy and being productive,” warns Stephen Dubner in Freakonomics.

• Companies may be zeroing in on the wrong thing. Instead of looking at efficiency, corporate workers should be looking at productivity, writes Michael Mankin in the Harvard Business Review. The best companies are more than 40 percent more productive than the rest, which results in higher profits — operating margins 30–50 percent higher than industry peers — and faster growth.

• “Efficiency is about doing the same with less,” Mankin writes. “Companies most often improve labor efficiency by finding ways to reduce the number of labor hours required to produce the same level of output. This translates into savings because the company spends less on wages and other labor-related costs. Efficiency, then, is about shrinking the denominator — inputs (headcount, labor hours) — in an effort to improve profitability.”

=> ↺ Colorado dad gives sons smartphones, regrets it, now wants to ban preteen use

• Last year, Colorado father-of-five Tim Farnum gave his two youngest sons smartphones—and immediately regretted it. But he didn’t just take the phones away; he took the extra steps of forming a nonprofit called “Parents Against Underage Smartphones,” or PAUS, and drafting the nation’s first proposed measure that would ban smartphone use among preteens.

• The proposed measure, ballot initiative No. 29, would make it illegal in Colorado for mobile-phone retailers to sell smartphones to children under the age of 13 or to any person who intends to provide the phone (wholly or partially) to someone under the age of 13. Phone retailers would have to submit monthly reports to the Colorado Department of Revenue showing compliance. Those who fail to adhere would face a warning, then a $500 fine, if the proposal passes.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ McCain: No American has seen healthcare bill, but I’m sure Russia has

• Both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have complained that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has crafted the bill largely behind closed doors and without the input of his fellow lawmakers.

=> ↺ GOP Health Bill Kept Secret From Senators Assigned to Write It

• One of the Senate Republicans charged with negotiating an Obamacare replacement expressed frustration Tuesday with the secret process, saying that even he hasn’t seen the proposal set to be released in two days for a possible floor vote next week.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Tuesday

=> ↺ Never Trust Yellow Fruit

• You’ve probably heard about the WiFi Pineapple from Hak5. It’s a fascinating device that allows you to do some creepy pen testing. It’s the sort of tool that could be used for evil, but it’s also incredibly useful for securing networks.

• The hardware is fairly basic and resembles an off-the-shelf router. The multiple network interfaces really shine, however, when paired with the operating system. The WiFi Pineapple software creates a rogue, hidden access point that purposefully tricks clients into connecting to it instead of the AP they’re usually connected to.

=> ↺ Time to Patch: ‘Stack Clash’ Vulnerability Affects Wide Range of Unix-like OSes

=> ↺ Stack Clash Vulnerability Exploits Linux Stack Guard

=> ↺ What capabilities do I really need in my container?

• A few years ago the SELinux team realized that more and more applications were getting EPERM returns when a syscall requested some access. Most operators understood EPERM (Permission Denied) inside of a log file to mean something was wrong with the Ownership of a process of the contents it was trying to access or the permission flags on the object were wrong. This type of Access Control is called DAC (Discretionary Access Control) and under certain conditions SELinux also caused the kernel to return EPERM. This caused Operators to get confused and is one of the reasons that Operators did not like SELinux. They would ask, why didn’t httpd report that Permission denied because of SELinux? We realized that there was a growing list of other tools besides regular DAC and SELinux which could cause EPERM. Things like SECCOMP, Dropped Capabilities, other LSM … The problem was that the processes getting the EPERM had no way to know why they got EPERM. The only one that knew was the kernel and in a lot of cases the kernel was not even logging the fact that it denied access. At least SELinux denials usually show up in the audit log (AVCs). The goal of Friendly EPERM was to allow the processes to figure out why they got EPERM and make it easier for admin to diagnose.

=> ↺ Erebus Resurfaces as Linux Ransomware

=> ↺ Stack Clash vulnerability tears a hole in Linux and Unix OSes

=> ↺ Stack clash and OpenBSD

• On a related note; Does anyone know where can I order my Stack Clash t-shirts and mugs? I’m also really disappointed there is no clever flashy logo :-(.

=> ↺ 5.5 Million Devices Operating with WannaCry Port Open

• With all of the press the WannaCry ransomware exploit received last month, you might be excused for thinking that by now everyone would have battened down the hatches and locked down potentially dangerous ports — at least those that are vulnerable to this exploit. According to two separate reports, that’s not the case. And while it’s true that many of the vulnerable devices are in the hands of consumers who don’t know any better, it’s a good bet that the majority are servers running in data centers, under the care of sysadmins who should know better.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Secret Government Report: Chelsea Manning Leaks Caused No Real Harm

• In the seven years since WikiLeaks published the largest leak of classified documents in history, the federal government has said they caused enormous damage to national security.

• But a secret, 107-page report, prepared by a Department of Defense task force and newly obtained by BuzzFeed News, tells a starkly different story: It says the disclosures were largely insignificant and did not cause any real harm to US interests.

• Regarding the hundreds of thousands of Iraq-related military documents and State Department cables provided by the Army private Chelsea Manning, the report assessed “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq.”

=> ↺ From WikiLeaks, a Glimpse Into Ram Nath Kovind’s Views on Discrimination Against Dalits

• Where does Ram Nath Kovind stand on issues related to prevalent caste discrimination against Dalits? This is a question that many have asked since the Dalit leader, a former parliamentarian and the current governor of Bihar, was nominated by the BJP as its presidential candidate.

• A report by US embassy interlocutors titled Socioeconomic future of Indian dalits remains bleak, published by WikiLeaks, which analyses the issues of discrimination on the basis of various theories, makes Kovind’s positions clear.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ 6 Places Around The World Where All Your Old Crap Ends Up

=> ↺ Rick Perry says carbon dioxide is not a primary driver of climate change

• In an interview with CNBC on Monday, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said that carbon dioxide emissions from human activities aren’t the primary driver of climate change. Instead, the former Texas governor responded that “most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”

• It’s unclear how Perry envisions this “control knob” and how it works; a generous analysis of his answer would be that he misunderstood the question. Ocean waters absorb carbon dioxide and are changing, much like climate, because of it. And the oceans have short-term cycles that influence equally short-term temperature trends. But those cycles can’t drive the ever-upward trend in temperature.

=> ↺ Engineered algae puts half of its carbon into fats for biofuels

• There’s an inherent tension in convincing organisms to produce fuel for us. To grow and thrive, the organism has to direct its energy into a variety of chemicals—proteins, fats, DNA, and more. But for biofuels, we’re mostly interested in fats, which are long-chain hydrocarbons that already look a lot like our liquid fuels. Fat is easy to convert into biodiesel, for example.

• So how do we convince an organism to do what we want, rather than what it needs? There have been two approaches to this so far. One is to take an organism that we understand well and engage in genetic engineering to direct its metabolism toward fuel production. The second approach is to search for organisms that naturally produce lots of the chemicals we’re interested in.

=> ↺ Sweden commits to becoming carbon neutral by 2045 with new law

• Sweden has committed to cutting its net carbon emissions to zero by 2045, becoming the first country to significantly upgrade its carbon ambitions since the Paris accord in 2015.

• The law was drawn up by a cross-party committee and passed with an overwhelming majority in parliament by 254 votes to 41.

• The legislation establishes an independent Climate Policy Council and requires an action plan to be updated every four years.

• Sweden had previously committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. It already gets 83 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy and hydropower, having met its 2020 target of 50 per cent renewable energy eight years ahead of schedule.

Finance

=> ↺ Zuckerberg or Gates? Billionaires Try Opposites Paths for Online Education in India

• Dozens of companies have rushed in.

=> ↺ Allen AI Joins Microsoft, Baidu to Help Empower Academic Searches

• Paul Allen’s artificial intelligence institute is putting together a coalition including Microsoft Corp., Google, Baidu Inc. and the Gates Foundation to share technology and ideas to help {sic} scientific researchers and academics find and take advantage of the latest discoveries and information.

=> ↺ Broadband ISP CenturyLink Accused Of Wells-Fargo-Esque Scam That Bilked Millions From Customers

• If there’s any real creativity in the broadband sector, it often has little to do with the actual products and services offered. More often than not, the real creativity in the sector involves finding ingenious new ways to bilk consumers out of additional money, or charge them significantly more money for the exact-same service. Whether talking about hidden below the line fees or arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps, the lack of real broadband competition has resulted in a gold rush — at least when it comes to creatively-misleading charges.

=> ↺ How to keep Amazon from eating your business, too

• It has become a truism that software is eating the world. Perhaps that now extends to Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods. This purchase is surely funded in part by the astronomical growth of Amazon Web Services, which is estimated to have made $14 billion in revenue last year — just slightly more than the purchase price for the grocer.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Trump Is Playing Into the Hands of the Saudi Regime

• Trump, who clearly knew nothing about the subject, accepted the Saudi move with alacrity and at face value. In his normal fashion, he even tried to take credit for it [...]

=> ↺ Are Millennials losing faith in democracy?

• This spring surveys suggested that young people are ambivalent towards freedom of speech. [...] Now, similar signals are reaching us when it comes to democracy as such.

=> ↺ Brazil: police claim to have evidence president Michel Temer received bribes

• The attorney general, Rodrigo Janot, said last month there were enough preliminary indications of wrongdoing for Temer to be investigated for corruption and obstruction of justice.

• The president is being investigated for three alleged crimes: corruption, obstruction of justice and being member of a criminal organization.

=> ↺ This Is How the Trump Administration Will Privatize Our Infrastructure

• Privatization backers, who use the more politically palatable phrase “public-private partnerships” (or P3s), counter that these arrangements operate more efficiently, saving taxpayers money. But even if that were true, privatization contracts can lock cities and states into inflexible long-term deals, straining local budgets and eating away at democratic control.

=> ↺ Donald Trump calls for ‘sweeping transformation’ of gov IT in meeting with tech CEOs

• Among the attendees was the leaders of Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Adobe, Qualcomm, VMware, Accenture and Akamai, as well as leading investors from Silicon Valley at the White House.

=> ↺ New Finnish government survives first confidence vote

• The reconstituted coalition government led by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä survived its first confidence vote in Parliament Tuesday afternoon. The coalition — which now comprises Sipilä’s Centre Party, the National Coalition Party led by Finance Minister Petteri Orpo and the breakaway Finns Party faction Blue Reform — won the support of 104 MPs, while 85 opposed it.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ SLAPP Threats And The Grenfell Fire: Why We Must Stop Attacks On Free Speech

• You’ve probably heard about the horrific tragedy in the UK of the Grenfell Tower fire that killed many people. There are all sorts of awful stories related to the tragedy, but there is one that hits close to home: the use of SLAPP threats to silence residents who warned about fire dangers in the building.

• [...]

• Yikes. There are many more similar blog posts as well. And apparently, the building management — the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) — decided years ago that the best way to deal with the blogging tenants… was to threaten them with a lawsuit if they kept blogging. In a letter posted to Twitter by a bunch of people (not sure who posted it first), back in 2013, the KCTMO threatened the bloggers with defamation lawsuits if they kept it up:

=> ↺ Coal CEO Threatens John Oliver With A SLAPP Suit

• This past weekend on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, he took on the issue of “coal” and some politicians’ obsession with coal jobs as the only true “American” jobs. The whole segment is interesting, but obviously not the kind of thing we’d normally write up. What we do frequently write about, however, is censorious threats, often from wealthy execs, designed to try to silence people from commenting on issues regarding those doing the threatening. And, it appears that’s exactly what happened with coal exec Bob Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, when he found out that John Oliver was doing a segment that included some bits about Murray.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Oversight Report Shows NSA Failed To Secure Its Systems Following The Snowden Leaks

• It appears the NSA hasn’t learned much since Ed Snowden left with several thousands of its super-secret documents. Agency officials were quick to claim the leaks would cause untold amounts of damage, but behind the scenes, not much was being done to make sure it didn’t happen again.

=> ↺ Leading European politicians call for “state-of-the-art” end-to-end encryption – and no backdoors

• It is not yet certain that the LIBE committee’s amendments will be accepted. Indeed, there is likely to be fierce lobbying against them by European governments, who will want exceptions for the usual things like national security and tackling serious crimes. But it is nonetheless significant that at least some politicians understand that it is not possible to undermine an encrypted communication channel without undermining the security and privacy of its users. That’s progress. It’s up to us to support these moves in an attempt to get across to governments around the world that weakening crypto is not the answer, and not an option.

=> ↺ Euro MPs back end-to-end encryption for all citizens

• A European Parliament committee is proposing that end-to-end encryption be enforced on all forms of digital communications to protect citizens.

• The draft legislation seeks to protect sensitive personal data from hacking and government surveillance.

• EU citizens are entitled to personal privacy and this extends to online communications, the proposal argues.

=> ↺ Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families

• Mexico’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists have been targeted by advanced spyware sold to the Mexican government on the condition that it be used only to investigate criminals and terrorists.

• The targets include lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 students, a highly respected academic who helped write anti-corruption legislation, two of Mexico’s most influential journalists and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by the police. The spying even swept up family members, including a teenage boy.

=> ↺ Before You Hit ‘Submit,’ This Company Has Already Logged Your Personal Data

• During a recent investigation into how a drug-trial recruitment company called Acurian Health tracks down people who look online for information about their medical conditions, we discovered NaviStone’s code on sites run by Acurian, Quicken Loans, a continuing education center, a clothing store for plus-sized women, and a host of other retailers. Using Javascript, those sites were transmitting information from people as soon as they typed or auto-filled it into an online form. That way, the company would have it even if those people immediately changed their minds and closed the page. (It’s yet another way auto-fill can compromise your privacy.)

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Ten years in jail and 1,000 lashes: why we must defend Saudi blogger Raif Badawi

• It is, of course, the Saudi regime that is chiefly responsible for his suffering, and that has the power to release him, but the case also suggests how hollow are western commitments to so-called western values. Badawi believes in democracy, rationalism and freedom of speech. These are all ideas we are supposed to promote and applaud, but in places where their exercise is costly we are mostly silent.

=> ↺ [Older] Saudi Arabia: Release blogger Raif Badawi, still behind bars after five years

• “Blogging is not a crime. The harsh punishment of Raif Badawi shows the Saudi Arabian authorities’ blatant contempt for freedom of expression and the extent to which they are willing to go to crush all forms of dissent.”

=> ↺ Putin Accuses Russia’s Foes Of ‘Excessive Demonization’ Of Stalin

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the “excessive demonization” of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin “is one means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia.”

• Putin made the comments in the last of four installments of a series of interviews that he gave to U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, which was aired on June 15.

• Putin said Russia’s critics use Stalin’s legacy “to show that today’s Russia carries on itself some kind of birthmarks of Stalinism.”

• The Russian president did not elaborate on what he considered to be “excessive” criticism of Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953 and who was responsible for the deaths of 15 million to 30 million Soviet citizens through executions, labor camps, and avoidable famines.

=> ↺ Supreme Court Makes It Even More Difficult To Sue Federal Officials Over Rights Violations

• If you wanted even more leeway for government officials to bypass accountability, you’ve got it. Courtesy of the US Supreme Court, the immunity for federal officials has just been expanded. On a day when the court handed down two significant First Amendment victories, the court has dialed back an avenue of redress for people whose rights have been violated by federal employees.

• This case has its origins in the 2001 Twin Towers attack. In the wake of the attack, the government engaged in some questionable behavior (not unlike some of its World War II actions), rounding up undocumented Arab immigrants and detaining them under harsh conditions.

=> ↺ Supreme Court Says You Can’t Ban People From The Internet, No Matter What They’ve Done

• Going all the way back to 2002 (and many times after that), we’ve talked about courts struggling with whether or not it’s okay to ban people from the internet after they’ve committed a crime. The question comes up in many different cases, but most prevalently in cases involving child predators. While courts have struggled with this issue for so long, it’s only now that the Supreme Court has weighed in and said you cannot ban someone from the internet, even if they’re convicted of horrific crimes — in this case, sex crimes against a minor. The case is Packingham v. North Carolina, and the Supreme Court had to determine if it violated the First Amendment’s free speech clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause, to make it a felony for convicted sex offenders to visit social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, as was the case under a North Carolina law.

=> ↺ Case file in Philando Castile shooting released, dashcam video shows shooting

=> ↺ Dashcam video shows killing of Philando Castile

• Yanez shot him seven times in front of his wife and child, later claiming that the smell of marijuana, and his inability to see what Castile was reaching for, justified the killing.

DRM

=> ↺ New technology is eroding your right to tinker with things you own

=> ↺ End of Laches Might Increase Declaratory Judgment Actions

=> ↺ Significant Change in Patent Exhaustion From the Supreme Court

=> ↺ Supreme Court Clarifies Venue Rules for Patent Infringement Suits

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Amazon granted patent to restrict the open internet at in-store public WiFi hotspots

• Jeff Bezos’s Amazon has been granted a patent for a tool called “Physical Store Online Shopping Control,” which helps brick and mortar locations control users’ online shopping experience when they are at the store and on the store’s WiFi network. If a customer searches for a product or competitor, Amazon would be able to “control” that online experience by redirecting, blocking, or otherwise tampering with your internet traffic.

=> ↺ Apple Alleges ‘Mounting Evidence’ Against Qualcomm

• Apple found “continuing — and mounting — evidence of Qualcomm’s perpetuation of an illegal business model that burdens innovation,” according to the filing. It claims some of the patents that Qualcomm wants to get paid for are invalid and that Qualcomm hasn’t fulfilled its obligation to charge fair and reasonable rates on patents related to industry standards.

=> ↺ What Patents Reveal About Who’s Behind Clean-Technology Innovation

• Mark Muro (@markmuro1) is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Everybody knows the auto industry is a huge source of U.S. manufacturing employment. Now here’s a less-known fact: The auto sector is today also a prime driver of U.S. clean-tech development. Research my group at Brookings recently released shows that the focus of clean-energy innovation […]

Trademarks

=> ↺ Small Irish Craft Beer Joint Has Actually Original Trademark Opposed By Holder Of A Purely Geographic Mark

• It seems like not a week can go by without some silly trademark dispute in the alcohol industries. This latest example comes to us from Ireland and provides a vivid demonstration for why trademarks ought to only be granted on unique and original names and not, say, on a mark based on common geography.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Copyright Law Shouldn’t Pick Winners

• When looking at a proposed policy regulating Internet businesses, here’s a good question to ask yourself: would this bar new companies from competing with the current big players? Google will probably be fine, but what about the next Google? In the past few years, some large movie studios and record labels have been promoting a proposal that would effectively require user-generated media platforms to use copyright bots similar to YouTube’s infamous Content ID system. Today’s YouTube will have no trouble complying, but imagine if such requirements had been in place when YouTube was a three-person company. If copyright bots become the law, the barrier to entry for new social media companies will get a lot higher.

=> ↺ Internet Provider Refutes RIAA’s Piracy Allegations

• Grande says that if they acted on these notices without additional proof, its subscribers could lose their Internet access even though they are using it for legal purposes.

=> ↺ US Embassy Threatens to Close Domain Registry Over ‘Pirate Bay’ Domain

• The US Embassy in Costa Rica has threatened to have the country’s domain registry shut down unless it suspends ThePirateBay.cr. The registry says it won’t comply without a court order and has written to the ICANN organization to complain about harassment and personal insults.

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