● 04.14.21

● Links 14/4/2021: Alpine Releases and X.Org Server 1.20.11 Release (Security)

Posted in News Roundup at 3:09 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ The Linux Setup – Göktuğ Kayaalp, Student

• Linux is my main operating system these days. My workstation computer has been running GNU/Linux almost uninterruptedly since 2012, save for a year I—quite happily—used FreeBSD as my main operating system. I originally started playing with Linux as a kid, mostly out of curiosity, but what captivated me and made me a permanent user was how free and open source systems were way more stable and configurable compared to other operating systems, and readily receptive of my (or anyone else’s, for that matter) peculiar use cases and workflows.

Server

=> ↺ Blog: kube-state-metrics goes v2.0

• kube-state-metrics, a project under the Kubernetes organization, generates Prometheus format metrics based on the current state of the Kubernetes native resources. It does this by listening to the Kubernetes API and gathering information about resources and objects, e.g. Deployments, Pods, Services, and StatefulSets. A full list of resources is available in the documentation of kube-state-metrics.

=> ↺ Local Storage: Storage Capacity Tracking, Distributed Provisioning and Generic Ephemeral Volumes hit Beta

• The “generic ephemeral volumes” and “storage capacity tracking” features in Kubernetes are getting promoted to beta in Kubernetes 1.21. Together with the distributed provisioning support in the CSI external-provisioner, development and deployment of Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers which manage storage locally on a node become a lot easier.

• This blog post explains how such drivers worked before and how these features can be used to make drivers simpler.

• [...]

• The first problem is volume provisioning: it is handled through the Kubernetes control plane. Some component must react to PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) and create volumes. Usually, that is handled by a central deployment of the CSI external-provisioner and a CSI driver component that then connects to the storage backplane. But for local storage, there is no such backplane.

• TopoLVM solved this by having its different components communicate with each other through the Kubernetes API server by creating and reacting to custom resources. So although TopoLVM is based on CSI, a standard that is independent of a particular container orchestrator, TopoLVM only works on Kubernetes.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Netrunner 21.01 overview Promo #Shorts

Kernel Space

=> ↺ You can finally run Windows 10 along with Ubuntu Linux on Apple M1 Mac computers

• When Apple switched from Intel to its own ARM-based processors for new Mac computers, some people were dubious that the transition would go smoothly. Well, guess what? Apple did it, folks. The company moved to a new chip type without any major negative issues. In fact, Apple’s M1 chip has been universally praised as being both fast and energy efficient.

• Earlier this year, some people got Linux-based Ubuntu running on the M1 hardware, and that process is getting better all the time. Sadly, owners of M1 Mac computers have been unable to run Windows 10 like they could on older Intel-based Mac machines. Until now, that is. Yes, you can finally run Windows 10 on Apple M1 Mac computers — sort of.

• Why do I say “sort of?” Well, while it is Windows 10, it is the ARM variant, which means it is more limited than the normal x86_64 version. Also, Windows 10 on ARM is not running natively, but using Parallels Desktop 16.5. With that said, Parallels promises the performance to be the same as if it was native.

=> ↺ Linux 5.11.14

=> ↺ Linux 5.10.30

=> ↺ Linux 5.4.112

=> ↺ Linux 4.19.187

=> ↺ 30 Years of Tux Earns You 30% Discount on all Linux Foundation Training Programs

=> ↺ Linux 5.13 To Allow For OpenBMC Development With A Lower-Cost ASRock Rack Motherboard – Phoronix

• The Linux Foundation’s OpenBMC project to provide an open-source BMC firmware stack is quite exciting for freeing this low-level aspect of servers, but finding a supported motherboard that works well with OpenBMC can be a challenge at this stage. Fortunately, Linux 5.13 is set to support a lower-cost motherboard option in hopes of boosting OpenBMC development/usage.

• Queued into the SoC “for-next” Git tree is support for the baseboard management controller on the ASRock Rack E3C246D4I motherboard.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ ROCm AOMP 13.0 Released For OpenMP Offloading To Radeon GPUs – Phoronix

• AOMP 13.0 is out today as the first update to AMD’s Radeon OpenMP offloading compiler since AOMP 11.0 last December.

• AOMP is part of the Radeon Open eCosystem (ROCm) for offloading OpenMP work to AMD GPUs. AOMP is a downstream of the LLVM Clang compiler stack. AMD engineers have been working to upstream their OpenMP offloading patches albeit is a work-in-progress and they churn out new patches faster than what it takes to get reviewed and upstreamed. AOMP is not to be confused with AOCC as AMD’s other LLVM Clang downstream focused on providing the latest CPU compiler optimizations/support.

=> ↺ X.Org Server 1.20.11 Released Due To New Security Advisory – Phoronix

• Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative has uncovered another security issue with the X.Org Server.

• Trend Micro security researchers found that shortcomings in the X.Org Server’s X Input extension input validation could ultimately lead to privilege escalation for authorized clients.

• CVE-2021-3472 involves insufficient checks on the lengths of an X Input request could lead to out-of-bounds memory accesses in the X.Org Server. If the X.Org Server is running with privileged rights, this could lead to privilege escalation for authorized X11 clients.

=> ↺ xorg-server 1.20.11

=> ↺ Mesa 21.1 Squeezes In Improvements For Direct3D 9 (Gallium Nine) – Phoronix

• The feature freeze and code branching for Mesa 21.1 is imminent but last minute feature work continues to pour in. Hitting Mesa Git this morning as the latest activity were some fixes and improvements in Gallium Nine for providing Direct3D 9 support atop Gallium3D drivers to Wine/Windows programs.

• Gallium Nine lead developer Axel Davy saw his various fixes and improvements to this state tracker merged in time for Mesa 21.1. There are various fixes made as a result of running the Address Sanitizer over the code as well as from test compiles using LLVM’s Clang. There are also various game fixes included as part of this broad merge request too. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the games that should be working again with Gallium Nine.

=> ↺ Mesa’s Virgl Straps On A Simple Disk Cache – Phoronix

• The “Virgl” virtual 3D GPU project for providing OpenGL (and work-in-progress VirtIO-GPU Vulkan) acceleration within guest virtual machines continues to mature for improving the open-source Linux desktop virtualization stack.

• The latest Virgl addition worth mentioning on the Mesa side is the introduction of a simple disk cache. Stéphane Marchesin of Google has created a simple front-end disk cache for Virgl.

=> ↺ NVIDIA 465.24.02 stable driver rolls out for Linux

• Get ready to upgrade your NVIDIA drivers once again, as NVIDIA has today rolled out the 465.24.02 stable driver.

• This is not to be confused with the Vulkan Beta 455.50.12 that rolled out yesterday that’s aimed at developers and serious enthusiasts. This is a stable driver release that you should be okay to upgrade with. Most of this 465.24.02 driver is following on from the 465.19.01 Beta that was released back in March.

=> ↺ NVIDIA 465.24.02 Linux Driver Released As Stable

• At the end of March NVIDIA released the 465 beta Linux driver while today has been promoted to stable in the form of the 465.24.02 release.

• The NVIDIA 465.24.02 driver is available today with the NVIDIA RTX A4000/A5000 series support, various new Vulkan extensions now supported, power management improvements, and a variety of bug fixes.

Applications

=> ↺ Ventoy Bootable USB Creator Adds Persistence Support For Arch Linux And Fedora

• Ventoy, a tool to create a bootable USB drive by simply copying the ISO to the USB, has been updated to version 1.0.40, bringing support for creating persistent USB drives for Fedora and Arch Linux (including ArchMan, ArchBang, BlackArch, etc.).

• Ventoy is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux, and it can create bootable USB drives containing Linux and Windows ISO files.

• You need to install Ventoy to a USB drive, then every time you want to create a bootable USB drive, all you have to do is copy the ISO to the USB. There’s no need to format the USB drive. You can copy as many ISO files as you wish (even combined Windows and Linux ISOs), and when booting from the USB, Ventoy shows a list of available ISO files, allowing you to boot from the one you select.

• What’s more, since you don’t need to format the USB drive, you can continue to use it for other purposes. So you can copy other files to the USB, and it won’t interfere with Ventoy.

=> ↺ Display Keystrokes And Mouse Clicks In Screencasts Using KmCaster

• KmCaster is a Java tool for showing the keyboard and mouse events on the screen, useful for teaching / screencasts. Using it, every keystroke and mouse click is shown on the screen, so you don’t have to mention what you’re typing when creating a screencast or when teaching students.

• For now, the application only works on X11. Getting it to work on Wayland depends on the JNativeKeyHook library, which is used by KmCaster, getting Wayland support. You can track this here. If you’re looking for an application that shows your keystrokes on the screen which works with Wayland, check out Show Me The Key.

• KmCaster comes with a user interface similar to Key-mon, which hasn’t been updated since 2015. The GUI doesn’t have any options – you just run KmCaster, and you can start using it to show what keyboard keys and mouse buttons you’re pressing. There are various command line options available though (details further down this article).

• There are also plans to add a configuration file, from where you’ll be able to specify the font face and color, on-screen location, and more.

=> ↺ 9 Best Email Client Apps for Linux distros such as Ubuntu in 2021

• We already have instant chat applications to run in a browser, however, still, email is the indispensable medium of communication. And that’s why Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, and other such services are so popular. However, the one thing that is common between most email service providers is they all provide a web-based client to let users use their services with the help of the internet and browser. Hence, you cannot surf your email offline until you are not using some Email client that fetches and store emails for offline view. Furthermore, organizations that are using their in-house or cloud-based mail server, their employees, or users also require mail client software to access emails such as Outlook and Thunderbird which are common ones.

• Another thing why Email clients are still the best choice because when it comes to managing email across multiple accounts popular mail service provider’s webmail clients running in the browser usually only support a single email account and do not allow the management of mail accounts from other providers.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Remove unused Flatpak Runtimes from Linux

• Flatpak does not remove dependencies such as runtime components after a certain program is removed, this means if the program has been uninstalled the runtime libraries do not uninstall with it.

• This can over time cause massive disk space usage, if you heavily rely on it.

• Step 1. Removing runtime dependencies using the unused flag while running uninstall command.

=> ↺ Adam Young: Custom RPMS and meta-rpm

• We are trying to enable the graphics hardware subsystem on the Raspberry Pi 4. This driver lives in mesa. The current Centos mesa.spec file does not enable the V3D Driver we need. Here are the steps I am going through to build the driver and integrate it into the meta-rpm build.

=> ↺ Jekyll on Fedora

• Jekyll is a free and open-source static site generator written in Ruby. It is popularly known for being used to power the GitHub Pages service.

• I switched my testing machine to Fedora 34, to test Gnome 40 and to work on some web development projects. In that process I discovered that setting up Jekyll requires more steps to get working on Fedora.

• Step 1. We need to get the dependencies required to get Jekyll working.

=> ↺ 6 options for tcpdump you need to know | Enable Sysadmin

• This article is part two in a series covering the great tcpdump utility. You can use this utility to capture network traffic for troubleshooting and analysis (and eavesdropping). Here in part two, I demonstrate capturing and viewing data.

=> ↺ What is a Zombie process in Linux?

• You may come across a message that states, “There is 1 zombie process.”.

• You might come across this when logging into your Ubuntu Server via SSH. If you see such a message you don’t have to panic or worry, it is just notifying you. I will explain in depth what this means.

=> ↺ Three Linux Commands You Should Never Use – LateWeb.Info

• In this article we are going to cover three commands you should know, but you should never use. Yes Linux is a great tool and gives you great power, but with that great power comes great responsibility. So without further ado lets start.

=> ↺ Install Kitty (Terminal Emulator) on Ubuntu

• Kitty is a free and open-source feature rich GPU based terminal emulator developed by Kovid Goyal, the project is being actively maintained with over 130+ contributors.

=> ↺ How to use Ansible to send an email using Gmail

• Here’s a brief introductory article that describes how to configure Gmail with Ansible.

• A lot of people use Gmail daily to send and receive mail. The estimated number of global users in 2020 was 1.8 billion. Gmail works on the SMTP protocol over port number 587. In this article, I demonstrate how to configure your SMTP web server and send mail automatically from Ansible and using ansible-vault to secure passwords.

=> ↺ How to Create New Files on Linux Using touch

• Every now and then, Linux users feel the need to create a new file on their system. Whether it be for taking notes, writing some code, or simply for file validation during programming, the touch command is the only file creation utility you need.

• Creating files and managing timestamps on Linux is a snap with the touch command. Here in this article, we will discuss the touch command in detail, along with the various functions that can be performed using the tool.

=> ↺ How To Install Varnish on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Varnish on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator that can be used as a proxy to your Apache webserver. The open-source software sits in front of your webserver to serve web traffic very fast. If you are running multiple servers, Varnish Cache can also be used as a load balancer. It makes your website really fast and accelerates your website performance up to 300 – 1000x (means 80% or more).

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Varnish HTTP accelerator on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

=> ↺ How To Install Snap Package Manager in Linux Distributions

• If you’re a newbie on Linux, there is a chance that you had faced dependency and repository issues while installing a package on your system. It was hard to find one convenient method to install a package on every major Linux distribution without facing any issues. In the beginning, Canonical started building Snap for only Ubuntu. Later, Snap Package Manager is used widely on other Linux distributions too. You can get compiled versions of applications through Snaps. This provides both CLI and pre-compiled packages for Linux.

=> ↺ FreeBSD Install and Review CMatrix Terminal Wallpaper – LateWeb.Info

• CMatrix is a simple command-line utility that shows a scrolling ‘Matrix‘ like screen in a Linux terminal.

=> ↺ FreeBSD Install and Review Browsh Terminal Browser – LateWeb.Info

• Browsh is a fully-modern text-based browser. It renders anything that a modern browser can; HTML5, CSS3, JS, video and even WebGL. Its main purpose is to be run on a remote server and accessed via SSH/Mosh or the in-browser HTML service in order to significantly reduce bandwidth and thus both increase browsing speeds and decrease bandwidth costs.

Games

=> ↺ Release candidate: Godot 3.3 RC 9

• In case you missed the recent news, we decided to change our versioning for Godot 3.x and rename the upcoming version 3.2.4 to Godot 3.3, thereby starting a new stable branch. Check the dedicated blog post for details.

• Here’s another Release Candidate for Godot 3.3! Keeping this post short as there wasn’t much change, just a handful of fixes – refer to the 3.3 RC 7 post for details on new features.

• We’re pretty confident about this candidate (Famous Last Words™) so if no new regression is found, the next build should hopefully be the stable release (yes, we said that for RC8 too)! If you haven’t tried 3.3 RC builds yet, now would be a great time to do it to help us ensure everything upgrades smoothly from 3.2.3 to 3.3.

• As usual, you can try it live with the online version of the Godot editor updated for this release.

=> ↺ Relaxed narrative-adventure about a struggling writer Forgotten Fields is out now

• Forgotten Fields from Frostwood Interactive and Dino Digital, a casual and quite relaxing adventure about a struggling writer is out now with Linux support. In Forgotten Fields you assume the role of Sid, as you travel towards your childhood home to say goodbye and try to beat writers block at the same time while working against a deadline.

=> ↺ Shell Shuffle offers a different take on tile-matching from the dev of The Caribbean Sail | GamingOnLinux

• Victorian Clambake, developer of the clever The Caribbean Sail has recently released Shell Shuffle into Early Access. A tile-matching puzzle game that does things a little differently. Note: key provided by the developer.

• Like most similar matching puzzle games, the idea is to line up everything how you want it by moving things around. In Shell Shuffle though, you’re not swapping two tiles. Instead, you’re moving entire rows and columns to slot things into place to remove an entire line. When you wipe a line you get a pearl and if you wipe a line of pearls, you get given special power-ups.

=> ↺ Metro Exodus from 4A and Deep Silver has officially released for Linux

• While it was playable with the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer, 4A Games and Deep Silver have today officially released Metro Exodus for Linux.

• “Metro Exodus is an epic, story-driven first person shooter from 4A Games that blends deadly combat and stealth with exploration and survival horror in one of the most immersive game worlds ever created. Explore the Russian wilderness across vast, non-linear levels and follow a thrilling story-line that spans an entire year through spring, summer and autumn to the depths of nuclear winter.”

=> ↺ Metro Exodus Is Out Now on Steam for Linux

• Metro Exodus is the third installment in the Metro video game trilogy based on Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novels. It was initially released on February 15th, 2019, only for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Later in 2019, the game was also ported to Google’s Stadia, and a year after on the Amazon Luna cloud gaming service.

• Fast forward to 2021, as of today, April 14th, the game is now playable on Linux and macOS platforms. Users can download and install it right now from Steam, and if you already own it even better because you don’t have to buy it again, it will just appear in your Steam for Linux library like magic.

=> ↺ Time-looping narrative adventure Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood is out now | GamingOnLinux

• From Devespresso Games, the team behind The Coma series and Vambrace: Cold Soul plus publisher Headup, Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood is their latest game out now. It’s something of a time-looping adventure, starting off in modern times as your band tries to hit it big that turns into a weird mash-up of The Wizard of Oz, Brothers Grimm and Groundhog Day.

• [...]

• For anyone who has played The Coma or Vambrace, the overall feel is very similar. They’ve kept the same style and mechanics throughout, with it being another side-scrolling adventure. It’s very much like playing a point and click adventure. As a smaller title, sadly there’s no full voice-over which would have helped pull me in. Even so, that was one of the only downsides of what was an otherwise satisfying and thoroughly weird adventure.

• [...]

• Based in Seoul, South Korea and San Francisco, USA – this is the fourth full title to come from Devespresso Games to Linux so it’s wonderful to see the continued support again as their games are always wonderfully unique.

=> ↺ Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion improves further in the open source re-implementation OpenLoco | GamingOnLinux

• OpenLoco continues advancing and bringing Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion another step further to being as great as OpenTTD for Transport Tycoon Deluxe with a new OpenLoco 21.04 release out now.

• While it might be small in number features with the 21.04 release, it does bring a major enhancements with the ability to unlock the FPS by detaching game logic and rendering. This should serve as a good base for improving the performance over time. Additionally there’s now an FPS counter and a tile inspector included.

=> ↺ Free Game Wednesday: take a look at the great twin-stick Cecconoid

• Cecconoid, a fantastic twin-stick shooter with small cramped environments where the screen flicks between each section actually released the source code and now you can play free. The source code snapshot on GitHub is a snapshot of the DRM free version of Cecconoid, so it’s unsupported but gives you another great free game to play.

• “The starship Equinox is under attack from Stormlord and his robotic minions, the Exolons! You’re the crew’s only hope. Take your Samurai-1 fighter, find Captain Solomon’s Key, clear the decks of evil robots, and save the Equinox from certain destruction! Cecconoid is an 8-bit inspired, flick-screen, twin-stick-shooter, set in an alternate dimension where the pixels are still chunky, and the bad guys are black and white.”

=> ↺ Klabater drops Linux and macOS support for Crossroads Inn | GamingOnLinux

• Crossroads Inn and later Crossroads Inn Anniversary Edition from developer Klabater was crowdfunded in March 2019 and later released in October 2019 and now Klabater are leaving Linux and macOS behind.

• This is one title that’s had a bit of a rough history. At release it was a complete mess, so much so that they later rebranded it to Crossroads Inn Anniversary Edition and it didn’t exactly get much better from there. On Steam it has a Mixed overall score from users, on GOG it’s a low 2.3 / 5 stars and across Metacritic it also has a rather low 59.

=> ↺ Spirit Swap is an incredible looking narrative-driven match-3 with seriously good beats | GamingOnLinux

• Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To (the actual full title – what a mouthful!) is an upcoming action-puzzle game set in a lush, narrative-driven world of witchy demons.

=> ↺ Solus Has Resolved Issues with Recent Proton Builds

• A little while ago I pointed that Solus users (at least several, myself included) were experiencing issues to run modern versions of Proton following Proton 5.13 (and the introduction of the new vessel technology with Soldier). In other words, no games actually launched with 5.13 versions of Proton on Solus – you had to manually select an earlier version of Proton in order to keep running the games you wanted. This issue lasted for several months.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Desktop Icons NG – Get some icons onto your Gnome desktop

• Desktop Icons NG is a handy tool. It’s versatile, it comes with a lot of nice options, and it allows people to be efficient. Compared to the original versions, it definitely has more features. A useful, even necessary addition to the Gnome desktop. Ironically, these various third-party bits and pieces actually help Gnome, because without them, I really would have zero reason in using it.

• The extension can benefit from some small improvements, though. It would be nice to save the default layout, so if one changes too much, they can easily go back. Icons spacing is another feature. Icons sorting? Yes please. Finally, I wonder if this extension could allow the creation of new files (of any type) so it’s aligned to what Files does, now that the desktop is a usable workspace. Anyway, not bad at all. I can’t imagine Picard saying not bad at all, so instead here’s a tug on the uniform and a gruff hmm. We’re done. WARP 9.

Distributions

=> ↺ Makulu LinDoz makes its case that Linux can successfully resemble Windows

• “If you build it, they will come.” That’s been the idea behind every Linux distribution that tries to mimic Windows. Create a distribution that looks like Windows and people will want to use it. The problem with that theory is that Linux is not Windows, and the second end-users attempt to use that operating system, they’ll know it.

• Repeat after me: Linux isn’t Windows. That’s a good thing.

• Linux shouldn’t attempt to be Windows. Linux should be what it is: a flexible, powerful, user-friendly operating system that stands on its own to be something other operating systems cannot be—free and untethered from how a single company believes an operating system should function.

New Releases

=> ↺ Alpine 3.13.5 released

• The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.13.5 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

• This release includes a fix for apk-tools CVE-2021-30139.

=> ↺ Alpine 3.10.9, 3.11.11 and 3.12.7 released

• The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.10.9, 3.11.11 and 3.12.7 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

• Those releases include fixes for apk-tools CVE-2021-30139.

BSD

=> ↺ FreeBSD 13 released: Here is how to upgrade FreeBSD 12 to 13

• The FreeBSD project released FreeBSD version 13. The new version comes with updated software and features for a wild variety of architectures. The latest release provides performance improvements and better support for FreeBSD. One can benefit greatly using an upgraded version of FreeBSD. Let us see what’s new and quickly update FreeBSD 12 to 13 using the CLI.The post FreeBSD 13 released: Here is how to upgrade FreeBSD 12 to 13 appeared first on nixCraft.

=> ↺ FreeBSD 13 Released With OpenZFS Support and Performance Boost

• The 13th stable release of FreeBSD is here, with major upgrades including the transition to a new OpenZFS filesystem as well as an upgraded toolchain that aims to unify FreeBSD across all architectures.

• Here, I will be discussing the key highlights of the release but me briefly introduce you to FreeBSD if you do not know about it.

• [...]

• One of its key advantages over Linux is the fact that it is licensed under the BSD license, which is much more permissive than the more commonly used GPL license.

• The BSD license allows modified versions of the OS to be licensed under any license the developer wants, including a proprietary license. This has made it very popular for many large companies to base their software on, with well-known products and services such as OPNsense firewall, Netflix, and Sony’s PS3 and PS4 Operating Systems being based on FreeBSD.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ SUSE Update Infrastructure Setup Guide for Cloud Service Providers

• Not too long ago, my colleagues Jona Apelbaum (CSP Cloud Architect) and Mike Friesenegger (Solution Architect) published a new SUSE Best Practices document targeting Cloud Service Providers.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Kevin Fenzi: Ansible and Fedora/EPEL packaging status

• Just thought I would post a current status on ansible packaging in Fedora/EPEL

• ansible 2.9.x (aka, “ansible classic”) continues to be available in EPEL7/EPEL8 and all supported Fedora releases. Odds are most people are just still using this. It does still get security and some small bugfixes, but no big changes or fixes.

• ansible 3.x (aka, “ansible-base 2.10.x + community collections”). I had packaged ansible-base in rawhide/f34, but due to the naming changing and lack of time, I have dropped it. ansible-base is retired now in Fedora and likely never will land there.

• ansible 4.x (aka, “ansible-core 2.11 + community collections”). I have renamed ansible-base to ansible-core in rawhide. Unfortunately, a dep was added on python-packaging, so there’s 6 or so packages to finish packaging up and getting reviewed. The collections are a bit all over the place as people have been submitting them and getting them in. You can find the ansible collections via ‘dnf list ansible-collection*’. After I get ansible-core in shape, I am going to look at packaging up at least the rest of the collections for 4.x. At that point we could look at dropping ansible-classic (or moving it to ‘ansible-classic’ and shipping ansible-core + community collections as ‘ansible’ 4.x. Note that collections work with both ansible-classic and ansible 4.x.

=> ↺ David Rheinsberg: Locating D-Bus Resource Leaks

• With dbus-broker we have introduced the resource-accounting of bus1 into the D-Bus world. We believe it greatly improves and strengthens the resource distribution of the D-Bus messages bus, and we have already found a handful of resource leaks that way. However, it can be a daunting task to solve resource exhaustion bugs, so I decided to describe the steps we took to resolve a recent resource-leak in the openQA package.

=> ↺ Enabling modern IT service management actions for ServiceNow with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

• Adopting modern IT service management practices is an important part of a digital transformation strategy. Many businesses depend on ServiceNow to implement modern workflows, and with the Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow, they can help improve speed, efficiency and consistency.

=> ↺ IBM joins Eclipse Adoptium and offers free certified JDKs with Eclipse OpenJ9 – IBM Developer

• IBM is pleased to announce that we are joining the Eclipse Adoptium working group as an enterprise member. IBM is a founding and active member of the AdoptOpenJDK community, which is moving under the stewardship of the Eclipse Foundation to form the Adoptium working group.

• In news this week, Adoptium announced that they will build their own binary called Eclipse Temurin and market and promote a wide variety of JDK releases that are produced by working group members, are certified by the Java SE TCK test suite, and meet its own AQAvit quality criteria. As part of our continuing commitment to Eclipse Adoptium and the Eclipse OpenJ9 Java Virtual Machine, IBM will build and publish Java SE TCK-certified JDK binaries with OpenJ9 at no cost.

• [...]

• As the AdoptOpenJDK community project moves under the stewardship of the Eclipse Foundation to form the Adoptium working group, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with that same community to build JDKs and to help advance the quality for all JDK releases that use the Adoptium infrastructure.

• IBM has already contributed a huge number of our own release tests to the AdoptOpenJDK project, and we are excited by the opportunity to work with others to continue raising the quality of Java release binaries, including the Adoptium project’s new OpenJDK binary called Eclipse Temurin.

=> ↺ Fedora Workstation 34 feature focus: Btrfs transparent compression

• The release of Fedora 34 grows ever closer, and with that, some fun new features! A previous feature focus talked about some changes coming to GNOME version 40. This article is going to go a little further under the hood and talk about data compression and transparent compression in btrfs. A term like that may sound scary at first, but less technical users need not be wary. This change is simple to grasp, and will help many Workstation users in several key areas.

=> ↺ Is picking the right container base image really that hard?

• Picking the right container base image feels hard for a lot of people. Every major Linux distribution offers a base image. Open source projects for programming languages like Python, Ruby, and Node.js offer their own base images. Many open source projects and vendors also provide their own images for services like MariaDB, Redis, Elastic, and MySQL. While programming languages and services are not technically base images, most people perceive them as such and include them in their analysis when choosing standardized base images.

=> ↺ Mandrel: A specialized distribution of GraalVM for Quarkus

• When we first announced Mandrel, we explained why Red Hat needed a downstream distribution of GraalVM. We were most interested in GraalVM’s native image capability, specifically in the context of Quarkus. In this article, we explain what Mandrel is and what it’s not. We’ll introduce some of Mandrel’s technical features and offer a short demonstration of using Mandrel with Quarkus.

=> ↺ Using a custom devfile registry and C++ with Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces

• Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces provides teams with predefined workspaces to streamline application development. Out of the box, CodeReady Workspaces supports numerous languages and plugins. However, many organizations want to customize a workspace and make it available to developers across the organization as a standard. In this article, I show you how to use a custom devfile registry to customize a workspace for C++ development. Once that’s done, we will deploy an example application using Docker.

=> ↺ OpenStack’s history, community, and 7 of its core projects | Enable Sysadmin

• In this post, I discuss what OpenStack is by examining its history, community, and a few of the core projects that are most frequently installed. I’m not diving into things too deeply as the intent is to do more in-depth articles on each of the services (projects) mentioned here in the future.

• The simplest way to describe OpenStack is that it is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering that’s used for both public and private clouds to manage compute resources. In this article, I review the history behind OpenStack and review some of the larger projects (services) that make it up.

=> ↺ How AI helps Overwatch League process 410M data points to build power rankings

• Overwatch is an intense 6v6, network-based, action game that is played by millions of gamers in over 190 countries. The game challenges teams to capture more objectives than their opponents against the backdrop of fantasy cityscapes, using an array of tools and characters. In 2018, Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Overwatch, launched the inaugural season of the Overwatch League, an esports league of professional gamers that represents city-based teams around the world who compete for millions in prize money and Overwatch League supremacy. The simple question we all want answered is, “Who is the best player?” The speed, strategy, and mechanics of the game create complex data combinations that challenge traditional player rankings.

• In 2020, IBM became the official cloud, AI, machine learning, and analytics partner for the Overwatch League. Throughout this multiyear partnership, IBM will engage a global audience in novel ways by bringing AI-based solutions and insights to the league. This same technology can be used within enterprise applications such as banking and healthcare.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ What’s New in Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo? Installation and Impressions

• Ubuntu, the popular Debian-based Linux distribution, is about to unveil its latest release on April 22, 2021. Codenamed Hirsute Hippo, the 21.04 version is expected to launch with multiple enhancements to the previous version.

• While the stable release is a few weeks away, Canonical has provided the public beta ISOs for enthusiasts to get their hands on the latest Ubuntu software prior to the final stable build. Here’s a guide on how you could run Ubuntu 21.04 on your own machine and discover what’s new.

=> ↺ Taking control of your Ubuntu desktop

• You may have a lot more control over your Ubuntu desktop than you know. In this post, we’ll look into what you should expect to see by default and how you can change that.

• Most Linux desktops start out charmingly uncluttered. They display a handful of icons on an attractive background. These include shortcuts for launching applications, generally along the left side or bottom of the screen, and maybe another icon or two in the otherwise open area.

• The uncluttered desktop is generally a good thing. You can open folders using your file manager and move around to any group of files that you need to use or update. By changing a setting on Ubuntu (and related distributions), however, you can also set up your system to open with a specified set of files in view – and you don’t have to move them into your Desktop folder to do so.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Blog: From lightweight to featherweight: MicroK8s memory optimisation

• If you’re a developer, a DevOps engineer or just a person fascinated by the unprecedented growth of Kubernetes, you’ve probably scratched your head about how to get started. MicroK8s is the simplest way to do so. Canonical’s lightweight Kubernetes distribution started back in 2018 as a quick and simple way for people to consume K8s services and essential tools. In a little over two years, it has matured into a robust tool favoured by developers for efficient workflows, as well as delivering production-grade features for companies building Kubernetes edge and IoT production environments. Optimising Kubernetes for these use cases requires, among other things, some problem-solving around memory consumption for affordable devices of small form factors.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Blog: DISA has released the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS STIG benchmark

• The Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG) are developed by the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) for the U.S. Department of Defense. They are configuration guidelines for hardening systems to improve security. They contain technical guidance which when implemented, locks down software and systems to mitigate malicious attacks.

=> ↺ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 678

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 678 for the week of April 4 – 10, 2021.

Devices/Embedded

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Arducam Pico4ML Board – TinyML on Raspberry Pi RP2040 with QVGA Camera & Display

• A few months ago, ArduCAM demonstrated person detection on Raspberry Pi Pico with Arducam camera using TensorFlow Lite, and later we noted more work was being performed to bring machine learning to RP2040 platforms, notably with the development of Arducam Pico4ML board with a built-in camera and display.

=> ↺ Finger Bend is a DIY textile flex sensor | Arduino Blog

• You can turn on an LED with a button or switch, but what about by bending your finger? Willpower Studios’ textile flex sensor, dubbed Finger Bend, presents a method for such an interface.

• Inside the custom sleeve is a piece of piezoresistive stretch fabric, which is attached by copper threads to an Arduino Nano’s analog input pin. When a finger is curled, the light is then turned on and turned off again when straightened.

=> ↺ This auto-adjusting PVC system lifts hand sanitizer to the perfect height | Arduino Blog

• You’ve probably seen hand sanitizer stations popping up all over the place. While this seems to be a good thing, if you’re not exactly average height-wise, it’s likely they weren’t exactly designed for you. As a way to help both tall and short, and especially kids whose height varies considerably, Jegatheesan Soundarapandian has come up with an auto-adjustable stand.

• The device, which is made from PVC pipe, measures your size using an ultrasonic sensor. A platform is then pulled into position via a stepper motor and string, under the control of an Arduino Uno and CNC shield. This presents you with hand sanitizer (or whatever else is needed) at a level customized just for you.

=> ↺ A splendid steampunk tea maker | Arduino Blog

• Prolific project maker and Arduino lover Alain Mauer has made a rather splendid tea maker project with a steampunk twist. Despite Mauer being based in Luxemburg, we’d have to say this feels like a very British Arduino application.

• Crumpets or Battenburg, anyone?

=> ↺ The Arduino Forum is now completely renovated (and it’s so nice)

• It was a long Monday with the Arduino forum closed for maintenance, wasn’t it? Many people had to hold back their Arduino-related questions for an entire day… panic! But before getting mad at us, read on and you’ll understand it was for an extremely good cause.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi CM3+ based gateway combines BACnet and LoRaWAN

• Innovelec’s “Dingo LoRaWAN BACnet” gateway runs a Linux-based Dingo stack on an RPi CM3+ and can control up to 2,000 LoRaWAN end nodes as virtual BACnet building control devices.

• UK-based Innovelec has announced a Dingo LoRaWAN BACnet Advanced Gateway/Server that combines a LoRaWAN gateway with local I/O features compatible with the BACnet building automation standard. The 2-station gateway runs Innovelec’s BACnet-compatible Dingo Stack along with its Dingo Stack LoRaWAN Server software on a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+. The gateway can integrate LoRaWAN equipped edge nodes into a BACnet network as virtual BACnet devices and supports applications ranging from building and campus management systems to smart agriculture to environmental monitoring.

=> ↺ SiFive RISC-V Proven in 5nm Silicon

• Today, I am pleased to see OpenFive, a SiFive business unit that is the leading provider of customizable, silicon-focused solutions with differentiated IP, is continuing to make progress with AI design solutions with the creation of a reference design chiplet architecture using OpenFive Die-to-Die interface, OpenFive HBM3 IP subsystem, and SiFive 7-Series processor IP, for 2.5D-based SoCs. More details on the full announcement can be found on OpenFive’s announcement here, but today I want to call out the SiFive milestone of our first RISC-V processor core in 5nm.

=> ↺ SiFive Tapes Out Their First 5nm RISC-V Processor Core

• SiFive’s OpenFive business unit announced today they have completed their first tape out of a RISC-V processor core using TSMC’s 5nm process.

• This 5nm RISC-V SoC will be for “advanced AI/HPC” solutions using a chiplet architecture with SiFive 7-Series processor IP and OpenFive HBM3 IP subsystem.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android sending double or duplicate text messages? You’re not alone

=> ↺ Micromax IN Note 1 Android 11 Early Access program announced

=> ↺ OPPO A5 2020, OPPO A9 2020 ColorOS 11 (Android 11) Beta registrations go live

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy A60 gets the Android 11 update

=> ↺ T-Mobile OnePlus 7 Pro and OnePlus 7T finally get the Android 11 update with OxygenOS 11

=> ↺ LG reveals list of phones to get up to Android 13 update

=> ↺ Sony’s immersive 360 Reality Audio format could be coming to Android | What Hi-Fi?

=> ↺ POCO’s next budget Android phone could be a rebadged Redmi Note 10 5G | Android Central

=> ↺ Free Fire OB27 World Series update for Android: APK download link

=> ↺ Get this 10-inch 1080P tablet with the latest Android OS for under $110

=> ↺ The Best Android Games Of 2021

=> ↺ Best Nintendo 3DS Emulators for Android: Play all the classics right from your phone | Android Central

=> ↺ The 10 Best New and Updated Android Apps in 2021 (So Far)

=> ↺ Google Sony join forces to bring 360 Reality Audio to Android phones – Android Community

=> ↺ TCL 20 Pro 5G leads eye-catching affordable Android expansion – SlashGear

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Daniel Stenberg: curl 7.76.1 – h2 works again

• I’m happy to once again present a new curl release to the world. This time we decided to cut the release cycle short and do a quick patch release only two weeks since the previous release. The primary reason was the rather annoying and embarrassing HTTP/2 bug. See below for all the details.

=> ↺ Daniel Stenberg: talking curl on changelog again

• We have almost a tradition now, me and the duo Jerod and Adam of the Changelog podcast. We talk curl and related stuff every three years. Back in 2015 we started out in episode 153 and we did the second one in episode 299 in 2018.

=> ↺ Develop a Linux command-line Tool to Track and Plot Covid-19 Stats

• It’s been over a year and we are still fighting with the pandemic at almost every aspect of our life. Thanks to technology, various tools and mechanisms to track Covid-19 related metrics. This introductory-level tutorial discusses developing one such tool at just Linux command-line, from scratch.

• We will start with introducing the most important parts of the tool – the APIs and the commands. We will be using 2 APIs for our tool – COVID19 API and Quickchart API and 2 key commands – curl and jq. In simple terms, curl command is used for data transfer and jq command to process JSON data.

FSF

GNU Projects

=> ↺ FSF India Board Statement

• The recent statement by some members of the wider free software and open source community to RMS re-joining the board of FSF as a member have led to some unnecessary friction in the community. Unfortunately many of the arguments made against him were based on misunderstanding and half truths. More dangerous is concerted attack on RMS vilifying him and trying to isolate him. FSF India condemns this action. There is no freedom more important than freedom of thought and expression.

• We welcome and encourage the efforts of FSF to improve their governance process and hope that the larger free software community will also support them in this process.

• FSF India is an independent and autonomous non-profit organisation. It continues to stand and work for the cause of free software. It is committed to making all its forums and programs inclusive and promoting diversity while standing firm on the ideals set out by the GNU project.

=> ↺ FSF India Board Statement On RMS Re-joining The FSF Board

• The Free Software Foundation of India has released a statement in support of Richard Stallman and his return to the FSF’s board. They call the recent attempts at vilifying Richard Stallman “dangerous”.

=> ↺ GNU Guix: New Supported Platform: powerpc64le-linux

• This is important because it means that GNU Guix now works on the Talos II, Talos II Lite, and Blackbird mainboards sold by Raptor Computing Systems. This modern, performant hardware uses IBM POWER9 processors, and it is designed to respect your freedom. The Talos II and Talos II Lite have recently received Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification from the FSF, and Raptor Computing Systems is currently pursuing RYF certification for the more affordable Blackbird, too. All of this hardware can run without any non-free code, even the bootloader and firmware. In other words, this is a freedom-friendly hardware platform that aligns well with GNU Guix’s commitment to software freedom.

• How is this any different from existing RYF hardware, you might ask? One reason is performance. The existing RYF laptops, mainboards, and workstations can only really be used with Intel Core Duo or AMD Opteron processors. Those processors were released over 15 years ago. Since then, processor performance has increased drastically. People should not have to choose between performance and freedom, but for many years that is exactly what we were forced to do. However, the POWER9 machines sold by Raptor Computing Systems have changed this: the free software community now has an RYF-certified option that can compete with the performance of modern Intel and AMD systems.

• Although the performance of POWER9 processors is competitive with modern Intel and AMD processors, the real advantage of the Talos II, Talos II Lite, and Blackbird is that they were designed from the start to respect your freedom. Modern processors from both Intel and AMD include back doors over which you are given no control. Even though the back doors can be removed with significant effort on older hardware in some cases, this is an obstacle that nobody should have to overcome just to control their own computer. Many of the existing RYF-certified options (e.g., the venerable Lenovo x200) use hardware that can only be considered RYF-certified after someone has gone through the extra effort of removing those back doors. No such obstacles exist when using the Talos II, Talos II Lite, or Blackbird. In fact, although Intel and AMD both go out of their way to keep you from understanding what is going on in your own computer, Raptor Computing Systems releases all of the software and firmware used in their boards as free software. They even include circuit diagrams when they ship you the machine!

• Compared to the existing options, the Talos II, Talos II Lite, and Blackbird are a breath of fresh air that the free software community really deserves. Raptor Computing Systems’ commitment to software freedom and owner control is an inspiring reminder that it is possible to ship a great product while still respecting the freedom of your customers. And going forward, the future looks bright for the open, royalty-free Power ISA stewarded by the OpenPOWER Foundation, which is now a Linux Foundation project (see also: the same announcement from the OpenPOWER Foundation.

• In the rest of this blog post, we will discuss the steps we took to port Guix to powerpc64le-linux, the issues we encountered, and the steps we can take going forward to further solidify support for this exciting new platform.

• [...]

• Very early in the porting process, there were some other problems that stymied our work.

• First, we actually thought we would try to port to powerpc64-linux (big-endian). However, this did not prove to be any easier than the little-endian port. In addition, other distributions (e.g., Debian and Fedora) have recently dropped their big-endian powerpc64 ports, so the little-endian variant is more likely to be tested and supported in the community. For these reasons, we decided to focus our efforts on the little-endian variant, and so far we haven’t looked back.

• In both the big-endian and little-endian case, we were saddened to discover that the bootstrap binaries are not entirely reproducible. This fact is documented in bug 41669, along with our extensive investigations.

• In short, if you build the bootstrap binaries on two separate machines without using any substitutes, you will find that the derivation which cross-compiles %gcc-static (the bootstrap GCC, version 5.5.0) produces different output on the two systems. However, if you build %gcc-static twice on the same system, it builds reproducibly. This suggests that something in the transitive closure of inputs of %gcc-static is perhaps contributing to its non-reproducibility.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ 4 tips for context switching in Git

• Anyone who spends a lot of time working with Git will eventually need to do some form of context switching. Sometimes this adds very little overhead to your workflow, but other times, it can be a real pain.

• [...]

• Like with most other Git commands, you need to be inside a repository when issuing this command. Once the worktrees are created, you have isolated work environments. The Git repository tracks where the worktrees live on disk. If Git hooks are already set up in the parent repository, they will also be available in the worktrees.

• Don’t overlook that each worktree uses only a fraction of the parent repository’s disk space. In this case, the worktree requires about one-third of the original’s disk space. This can scale very well. Once your repositories are measured in the gigabytes, you’ll really come to appreciate these savings.

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.10.4.0.0 on CRAN: New Upstream ‘Plus’

• Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 852 other packages on CRAN.

• This new release brings us the just release Armadillo 10.4.0. Upstream moves at a speed that is a little faster than the cadence CRAN likes. We release RcppArmadillo 0.10.2.2.0 on March 9; and upstream 10.3.0 came out shortly thereafter. We aim to accomodate CRAN with (roughly) monthly (or less frequent) releases) so by the time we were ready 10.4.0 had just come out.

=> ↺ Qt Installer Framework 4.1 Released

• Qt Installer Framework (IFW) 4.1 has been released today. We have also released Qt Online Installer 4.1 and Qt Maintenance Tool 4.1, which now use the new IFW.

=> ↺ The Qt Company expands offering into quality assurance tools with acquisition of froglogic GmbH

• We are excited to announce that The Qt Company has acquired a long time Qt partner froglogic. froglogic GmbH is a global leader in the software test automation market, providing state-of-the-art solutions to enhance software quality in any industry context. They have been a cornerstone in the Qt ecosystem for a long time, and we are happy to join forces with them and welcome their team in Hamburg & globally joining the Qt team!

=> ↺ Qt Creator 4.15 RC1 released

• We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 4.15 RC1 !

• Please have a look at the Beta blog post and our change log for a summary of what is new and improved in Qt Creator 4.15.

=> ↺ 10 Essential Skills For DevOps Engineers To Have A Successful Career

• DevOps is a mixture of cultural philosophies, processes, and resources that improve an organization’s ability to produce high-volume applications and services. Evolving and raising products at a quicker pace is what DevOps does. Organizations’ ancient package development and infrastructure management processes are mainstream now. The speed provided by DevOps permits companies to serve their customers well and compete with other companies effectively in the market. However, to do well in DevOps’ competitive world, you need to have some special skills. These DevOps skills will help you to boost up your career and become successful in this field.

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ Reimagining perl5-porters email list for 2021 and beyond

• Let’s examine if in 2021 an email redistribution list, i.e. perl5-porters@ (p5p) is still the best model for collaborating on the perl language. This is a discussion so comment below!

=> ↺ Key Perl Core developer quits, says he was bullied for daring to suggest programming language contained ‘cruft’

• On Monday, the Perl Core developer known as Sawyer X announced his intention to leave the three-person Perl Steering Committee, or Council, and the Perl Core group because of what he described as community hostility.

• Sawyer X, who became “pumpking” – manager of the core Perl 5 language – in 2016 when he took over that role from Ricardo Signes, explained his rationale for departing in a post to a Perl discussion list.

• “Due to the continuous abusive behavior by prominent Perl community members and just about anyone else who also feels entitled to harass me (and unfortunately, other Core developers), I am stepping down from the Steering Council, from the Perl security list, and from the Perl Core,” Sawyer said, adding that he is stepping down from the Perl Foundation’s Grants Committee and that he will not be speaking at or attending the next Perl conference.

Python

=> ↺ Kushal Das: Workshop on writing Python modules in Rust April 2020

• I am conducting 2 repeat sessions for a workshop on “Writing Python modules in Rust”.

• The first session is on 16th April, 1500 UTC onwards, and the repeat session will be on 18th April 0900 UTC. More details can be found in this issue.

Rust

=> ↺ The Rust Programming Language Blog: Brainstorming Async Rust’s Shiny Future

• On March 18th, we announced the start of the Async Vision Doc process. Since then, we’ve landed 24 “status quo” stories and we have 4 more stories in open PRs; Ryan Levick and I have also hosted more than ten collaborative writing sessions over the course of the last few weeks, and we have more scheduled for this week.

• [...]

• When writing “shiny future” stories, the goal is to focus on the experience of Rust’s users first and foremost, and not so much on the specific technical details. In fact, you don’t even have to know exactly how the experience will be achieved. We have a few years to figure that out, after all.

=> ↺ Using Web Assembly Written in Rust on the Server-Side

• WebAssembly allows you to write code in a low-level programming language such as Rust, that gets compiled into a transportable binary. That binary can then be run on the client-side in the WebAssembly virtual machine that is standard in today’s web browsers. Or, the binary can be used on the server-side, as a component consumed by another programming framework — such as Node.js or Deno.

• WebAssembly combines the efficiency inherent in low-level code programming with the ease of component transportability typically found in Linux containers. The result is a development paradigm specifically geared toward doing computationally intensive work at scale — for example, artificial intelligence and complex machine learning tasks.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ True Death Toll In South Africa May Be Closer To Double The Deaths Its Reported

• South Africa has officially reported 53,000 deaths from COVID-19, but scientists believe the real death toll might easily surpass 100,000.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ The Linux Foundation launches research division to explore open source ecosystems and impact

=> ↺ Linux Foundation is all marketing

• The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced Linux Foundation Research, a new division that will broaden the understanding of open source projects, ecosystem dynamics, and impact, with never before seen insights on the efficacy of open source collaboration as a means to solve many of the world’s pressing problems. Through a series of research projects and related content, Linux Foundation Research will leverage the Linux Foundation’s vast repository of data, tools, and communities across industry verticals and technology horizontals. The methodology will apply quantitative and qualitative techniques to create an unprecedented knowledge network to benefit the global open source community, academia, and industry.

=> ↺ The Linux Foundation launches research division to explore open source ecosystems and impact

=> ↺ Interview with Hilary Carter, VP of Linux Foundation Research

Security

=> ↺ Apache SpamAssassin 3.4.6 Release Fixes Two Potentially Aggravating Bugs

• Apache SpamAssassin is a mature, widely-deployed open-source project that serves as a mail filter to identify spam. SpamAssassin leverages a combination of mail header and text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases. SpamAssassin’s flexible modular architecture makes the framework compatible with a wide array of other technologies

=> ↺ Security updates for Wednesday

• Security updates have been issued by CentOS (screen), Debian (clamav, courier-authlib, and tomcat9), Red Hat (thunderbird), SUSE (clamav, glibc, kernel, open-iscsi, opensc, spamassassin, thunderbird, wpa_supplicant, and xorg-x11-server), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-dell300x, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-5.8, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux-oem-5.10, linux-oem-5.6, nettle, and xorg-server, xorg-server-hwe-16.04, xorg-server-hwe-18.04).

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Senators Ask President to Prioritize Appointment of IP Officials

=> ↺ again

• In a letter sent to President Joseph Biden at the end of March, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, asked the President to “prioritize the appointment of intellectual property officials within the Executive Branch over the coming weeks.”

=> ↺ EPO BoA report shows successful 2020, despite COVID impact

=> ↺ illegalities and corruption

=> ↺ James Mellor: “Anti-suit injunctions require judicial restraint”

=> ↺ JUVE

• JUVE Patent: How did the coronavirus pandemic impact your last few months as an IP barrister? James Mellor: Apart from changing how we did trials and hearings, there was very little change to the work. Very early on in the first lockdown, Richard Hacon (presiding judge of the Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court) adjourned one trial, but that was due to the witnesses in that case.

• But as soon as that had happened, Colin Birss made it really clear that IP cases were going to continue and that we were going to do everything online. I did a trademark trial in the summer and that was fully-remote. I did the Amazon trial in November/December, and that was fully remote. So while the remote working was a big change, we were very lucky that everything in our jurisdiction just continued.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Counsel welcome ‘brand-friendly’ strides in China

• As a Chinese court hands down another favourable ruling to a Western brand, counsel speculate on whether the future is looking brighter

=> ↺ Bad faith, intent of parodic use and trade marks – Swatch successfully appeals ‘ONE MORE THING’ opposition by Apple

• From I-Watch to I-Swatch, ‘Think different’ to ‘Tick Different’, Apple and Swatch have previously clashed over their trade mark applications. This time, Swatch’s international application for ‘ONE MORE THING’ came to appear in the England and Wales High Court (EWHC), where Swatch was able to successfully appeal a so-called “bad faith” opposition filed by Apple.

• This case was unusual in many ways – it didn’t proceed on the ‘conventional’ basis of a bad faith opposition (AKA, submitting that the application had been made by Swatch to ‘block’ Apple from using the mark). Instead, it considered whether intent of parodic use of the mark by Swatch could be found, and if so, whether it would be sufficient to amount to bad faith.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.