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● 07.05.21


● Links 5/7/2021: Audacity Fork, Jupiter Nano With Linux and XiangShan With Free Design


Posted in News Roundup at 11:38 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux


Desktop/Laptop


↺ Linux Weekly Roundup #137


We had a full week in the world of Linux releases with MakuluLinux 2021.06.29 Flash, Pop!_OS 21.04, KaOS 2021.06, deepin 20.2.2, Q4OS 3.15, and Nitrux OS 2021.06.29.


May you have a safe and wonderful week. I will be on vacation for the next two weeks, so I won’t be making distro run-through tutorials in these coming weeks, but I still plan to write weekly Linux Roundups.


Server


↺ Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites in June 2021


Rackspace had the most reliable hosting company site in June 2021, and has come either first or second in the ranking for six consecutive months. The top four sites each had no failed requests, but an average connection time of 9ms gives Rackspace the edge. Rackspace offers a variety of cloud hosting solutions from 40 data centres across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia.


In second place this month, Bigstep had an average connection time of 62ms. Bigstep offers “bare metal” cloud hosting, to provide the flexibility of cloud hosting without the associated overhead and performance reductions of virtualization.


Hyve Managed Hosting and Pair Networks round out the top four in June. Hyve is a fully managed UK-based hosting provider, with facilities in 35 locations around the world.


Audiocasts/Shows


↺ WP Briefing: Episode 12: WordPress – In Person!


In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy talks about WordPress – In Person! The WordPress events that provide the dark matter of connection that helps sustain the open source project.


Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.


↺ Destination Linux 233: It’s Time Pipewire Faces The Music & Jill’s Treasure Hunt


This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to make Pipewire Face the Music, which by that we mean we’re going to discuss whether or not Pipewire is ready for the masses. Later in the show, we’re bringing back a fan favorite segment. That’s right. Jill is going to pull out another gem from her computer vault in Jill’s Treasure Hunt. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.


Kernel Space


↺ New Linux 5.14 Tracer To Help With Measuring Operating System Noise – Phoronix


The tracing subsystem within the Linux kernel is seeing some exciting improvements with Linux 5.14 to help with low-latency analysis and also measuring operating system noise.


Linux 5.14 brings a new “osnoise” tracer for measuring noise attributed to the operating system and hardware when it comes to isolated applications. The OSNoise tracer keeps track of noise by monitoring entry points for NMIs / IRQs / SoftIRQs / threads in determining if the noise is coming from the OS or rather than hardware. There are also tracepoints setup for helping to further debug sources of noise.


↺ Linux 5.14′s Perf Tooling Makes Preparations For Intel Alder Lake – Phoronix


The Linux kernel’s tooling around the perf subsystem is the latest area seeing a lot of work for Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake processors with a mix of high performance and low power processor cores.


The perf tooling updates for this new kernel cycle bring various hybrid processor handling improvements in working towards Intel’s Alder Lake processors. This includes new perf.data file header additions around hybrid topology as well as supporting PMU prefixes for hybrid CPUs, among other changes for Alder Lake and future Intel hybrid processors.


↺ Linux 5.14 Works Around Compatibility With Some Digital Camera exFAT File-Systems – Phoronix


Merged back in Linux 5.4 in late 2019 was the exFAT file-system driver that has proven to be quite mature at this stage with the work led by Samsung under the blessing of Microsoft. There hasn’t been much in the way of exFAT file-system driver changes in recent kernel releases given its maturity. Even with Linux 5.14 there are just two exFAT patches but end up being notable at least for some users due to fixing file-system compatibility with some digital cameras.


Linux 5.14′s exFAT brings improved compatibility with the exFAT file-systems from some digital cameras. In particular, when mounting an exFAT file-system from select digital cameras under Linux, in some cases not all of the files would show up under Linux.


Applications


↺ darktable 3.6: Summer Release 2021


The darktable team is proud to announce our second summer feature release, darktable 3.6. Merry (summer) Christmas!


This is the first of two releases this year and, from here on, we intend to issue two new feature releases each year, around the summer and winter solstices.


Thanks to countless hours of work of very dedicated contributors, all of the new features are fully documented in time in the user manual, which is now available in epub format along with the existing online and pdf versions. Help links within darktable have been updated to point to the new manual and the old version will now be officially discontinued. The user manual is still English-only for the moment, but translations are in progress (here) and we expect other languages to be available in time for darktable 3.8.


This time we are also launching a new version of the lua documentation, here.


↺ Audacity is SPYING on You! What the alternative!!


For anyone looking to create videos for a website or a business, being able to record and edit audio, like a voiceover, is an important skill to have.


As you might think and we will be using a free audio editor and recorder called Audacity.


In my opinion, audacity is one of the best sound recording apps on windows before this news.


This open-source sound recording project has a new owner that has now can sell your data to law enforcement and various other potential buyers such as the FBI, Adv, and more.


That means they can selling anything from your diagnostic data to lateral access to your microphone.


DarkAudacity is the best alternative. It is a customized version of Audacity.


↺ Calls to Help Creating an Audacity Fork


Ever since the last controversy about Audacity, people have been calling to fork the program under a new umbrella so that the community can finally end this discussion and move forward. The frustration is huge because Audacity has been an excellent audio editor since the 2000s, and it is sad to see it taken by corporate interest.


However, forking a software like Audacity is no easy task.


A fellow developer, “Cookie Engineer” took the effort of creating an initial fork of Audacity which is stripped of all tracking code and telemetry functionality.


↺ darktable 3.6: Summer Release 2021


The darktable team is proud to announce our second summer feature release, darktable 3.6. Merry (summer) Christmas!


This is the first of two releases this year and, from here on, we intend to issue two new feature releases each year, around the summer and winter solstices.


↺ Darktable 3.6 released


Version 3.6 of the Darktable raw photo editor has been released.


Instructionals/Technical


↺ How to install Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux – Linux Shout


Thinkorswim is an online trading platform developed by TD Ameritrade to allow users to trade in various stock, options, futures, and equities. Apart from the web-based trading platform, the company also provides a dedicated desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux to trade efficiently with advanced tools, screeners, and charts.


The application is available free of cost and can be used with TD Ameritrade and few others. Well, once the installation of Thinkorswim is completed on your Linux Desktop you will have free real-time quotes, hundreds of chart studies, options risk graphs, and more.


Although the interface of this trading platform is complex and meant for advanced users still beginners or less active traders can also use it to invest.


↺ How to install and use vnStat on Ubuntu 21.04 – Unixcop


vnStat is a console-based network traffic monitor for Linux and BSD that keeps a log of network traffic for the selected interface(s). It uses the network interface statistics provided by the kernel as information source. This means that vnStat won’t actually be sniffing any traffic and also ensures light use of system resources regardless of network traffic rate.


Therefore this tool quite well known within the community and among sysadmins. It is quite simple to use and as you will see below it is easy to install.


↺ Converseen Adds Support for Batch Converting JFIF files to JPEG / PNG | UbuntuHandbook


Batch image converting and scaling app Converseen released version 0.9.9.1, features JFIF file format support.


Converseen is a free open-source tool based on Qt5 framework. It provides a lightweight and easy to use interface to convert single or multiple photo images.


Thanks to Magick++, it supports 100+ supported file formats, including the most popular DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. And, it supports for converting PDF to image, and/or image to PDF.


↺ Kushal Das: Reproducible wheel buidling failure on CircleCI container


At SecureDrop project we have Python wheels built for Python 3.7 on Buster in a reproducible way. We use the same wheels inside of the Debian packages. The whole process has checks to verify the sha256sums based on gpg signatures, and at the end we point pip to a local directory to find all the dependencies.


↺ Three is the lucky number? Fedora 33 on IdeaPad 3


The result of this review depends on where you start collecting impressions – before or after my customization. In its default form, I find no use or value for Fedora 33 or any distro that hides the basic functionality away. Therefore, the changes I made are a must for efficient, intuitive desktop usage. Or rather, without them, there’s no point to any of this. In a way, you can’t really ignore them from the overall review, so there’s that.


All that said, Fedora did okay in quite a few areas – network speed, consistency, font scaling, stability, general performance and battery usage. It didn’t do well in boot speed, frequent hangs when using Activities, memory utilization, poor default ergonomics and software selection, or the lack of proper HD scaling. Not bad, but ultimately, not that good. Average. Other distros do more with less, other operating systems offer more. In isolation, Fedora 33 does its thing, but it has few if any killer features for the common user. Anyway, the testing today went okay, but for me, the best Fedora releases remain 24-25. This is just coasting on inertia.


↺ How To Install TaskBoard on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot


In this tutorial, we will show you how to install TaskBoard on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, TaskBoard is a free and open-source scheduling platform that allows users to keep track of their important tasks. TaskBoard uses SQLite for the purpose of storing databases. In TaskBoard, unlimited boards can be created and you can customize the columns within the boards.


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 TaskBoard 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 I avoid breaking functionality when modifying legacy code | Opensource.com


Allow me a bit of introspection. I’ve been working in the software engineering field for 31 years. During those 31 years, I’ve modified a lot of legacy software.


Over time, I’ve formed certain habits when working with legacy code. Because on most projects I get paid to deliver working software that is easy to maintain, I cannot afford the luxury of taking my sweet time trying to fully understand the legacy code I am about to modify. So, I tend to skim. Skimming the code helps me quickly identify relevant portions in the repo. It is a race against time, and I don’t have cycles at my disposal to dwell on less-relevant minutia. I’m always going for the most relevant area in the code. Once I find it, I slow down and start analyzing it.


↺ How to add the snap-windows-to-corners feature to Ubuntu – Techzim


One great feature that Windows 11 has finally embraced is the snap Windows to corners feature. In fact, the new OS comes with several variations of it that are a definite improvement to what we are used to in Ubuntu. When the feature was announced, I was under the mistaken belief that you could show four windows simultaneously in Ubuntu. Turns out it’s not true, only regular snap two windows to corners feature at work it’s almost second nature to me.


↺ How to install GulpJS on Ubuntu 21.04 – Unixcop


Gulp is a tool to automate tasks, mostly on the front-end layer. It is developed in javascript and works on NodeJS so it can run on any system.


You can apply many transformations to your files while in memory before anything is written to the disk—significantly speeding up your build process.


↺ How to install Jetbrains DataGrip 2021 on a Chromebook


Today we are looking at how to install Jetbrains DataGrip 2021 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.


Please take note that it comes with a 30-day free trial and afterward it is paid.


↺ File encryption and decryption with ccrypt | Enable Sysadmin


The ccrypt utility is a security tool that encrypts and decrypts files and streams on demand. It uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is considered very secure. For the moment, it’s considered to be unbreakable and is a government standard. When you encrypt a file using ccrypt, a password is required. It is best if you continue to use complex passwords for ccrypt encryption because someone might still try.


Using ccrypt is easy enough for encrypting, decrypting, and viewing an encrypted file’s contents. I found the rpm on Sourceforge. Be sure to get the 1.11 or later package. Install the ccrypt-1.11 package in the usual way.


↺ Things to do after installing Fedora 34 Workstation – Fedora Magazine


Using a new operating system can be a lot of fun. But it often becomes confusing when we first use it, especially for new users who are not very familiar with computer systems. For those of you who are using Fedora for the first time and have successfully installed Fedora 34 Workstation, this article can be an initial guide. I’m sure that you want to feel more at home with your new fresh Fedora. These are several things to do after installing your Fedora 34 Workstation.


Games


↺ 12 years ago we appeared online, Happy Birthday to GamingOnLinux


12 years ago on July 5, the GamingOnLinux website was created. Who would have thought it would still be going this long, in the face of overwhelming odds. Happy Birthday to us! It’s been a thrilling ride, one we hope to keep enjoying for many years to come.


The next year or so should be thoroughly interesting, with the rumours on the SteamPal coming up. We’re quite excited to see how that will change Linux gaming and hope to be at the forefront of reporting on it for all Linux gaming fans. Of course though, our overall mission remains the same: to cover any and all types of Linux gaming from news about native games, development on emulators, open source, Wine & Proton and so much more.


↺ Comedy physics-based heist game The Greatest Penguin Heist of All Time is out now | GamingOnLinux


Available now in Early Access is the rather long-named The Greatest Penguin Heist of All Time, a heist game with Penguin characters and some dubious looking physics but apparently it’s quite amusing. Might be one of the weirdest games that’s been sent out way, although we’ve seen a lot over the years (hi Goat Simulator).


“The Greatest Penguin Heist of All Time is the one and only 4 player CO-OP physics-based heist game featuring a bunch of kleptomanic penguins. You’ll experience a blend of physics-based platforming with stealth and strategy, with full freedom to achieve the missions in your own way.”


↺ DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging both had new releases lately


Running DOS classics? Well, there’s plenty of ways to choose from with multiple projects looking to speed up the development on DOSBox with both DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging seeing new releases.


The two projects do differ a fair bit in what they wish to accomplish. DOSBox Staging for example, aims to focus solely on DOS, while DOSBox-X is trying to be an all-in-one solution for DOS and Windows 3.x, 9x and ME.


DOSBox-X was released July 1 which includes some Windows improvements, support for DOS/V (native Chinese/Japanese/Korean support), new special DOS functions to communicate with DOSBox-X, better translation support, the ability to auto-convert paths when launching host system applications when enabled and much more.


↺ Game manager Lutris 0.5.8.4 out as a small fix-up before the next major release


The free and open source game manager Lutris has a fresh release up, although it’s mostly a fix-up release as work is ongoing for the next major release due soon.


For readers who haven’t used Lutris or never heard of it: the application is designed to help you manage your games — all of them. It helps bring together games from Steam, GOG, Humble Store, Emulators, compatibility layers to run Windows games through, web games and much more. There’s no store, as it’s just an easier way to see everything together.


↺ Minesweeper inspired game DemonCrawl gets an auto-sweeping online Arena mode | GamingOnLinux


It’s Minesweeper, but not as you know it. DemonCrawl was already unique with the roguelite dungeon-crawling styled placed on top of the classic Minesweeper gameplay and now it’s got a brand new mode.


With the Arena mode, it plays out a bit like Dota Underlords and other auto-battle games. You sit back and watch as the AI explores for you, while you pick up coins, chests for items and more. Although you can select to do it manually too. It’s quite peculiar and also terribly addictive.


↺ Nightdive Studios show off new System Shock footage | GamingOnLinux


The Kickstarter managed to raise around $1,350,700 back in 2016, with Linux support being confirmed after they hit the $1.1 million stretch-goal.


[...]


Sadly, they’ve been pretty quiet on what’s going on with the Linux version. However, the official website still clearly has the Linux icon and their direct pre-orders using BackerKit still very clearly mention it too so hopefully they won’t go back on it since they’re still taking money for it.


↺ RimWorld 1.3 now in Beta, Ideology expansion announced | GamingOnLinux


Some huge things are coming to RimWorld and soon too, with Ludeon Studios announcing the major RimWorld 1.3 update is now available in a Beta and a big new Ideology expansion was announced.


Distributions


↺ QNAP QTS 5 .0 beta now available with Linux Kernel 5.10


A beta version of the QNAP QTS 5 .0 network attached storage (NAS) operating system has been released this week bringing with it a new Linux Kernel 5.10 together with improved security, WireGuard VPN support, and enhanced NVMe SSD cache performance. The DA Drive Analyzer within the latest QTS 5 .0 beta release is powered by a cloud AI engine, and has been designed to help users predict the expected life of their storage drives.” The new QuFTP app helps fulfill personal and business file transfer needs. QNAP now welcomes users to join the Beta Program and provide their feedback so QNAP can further improve QTS and provide a more comprehensive and secure user experience” explains QNAP in their press release.


Screenshots/Screencasts


↺ MakuluLinux Flash 2021


Today we are looking at MakuluLinux Flash 2021. It uses Linux Kernel 5.11, a Hybrid Debian base, Gnome 3.38 (modified), and uses about 1.2GB of ram when idling. I am truly impressed!


↺ MakuluLinux Flash 2021 Run Through


In this video, we are looking at MakuluLinux Flash 2021.


IBM/Red Hat/Fedora


↺ Review: Bedrock Linux 0.7.20


Bedrock is one of the more intriguing projects I have had the pleasure to use recently. It not only provides one heck of a toolbox for making distributions work together without requiring virtual machines or Docker, it does so quickly and with a minimal amount of knowledge required by the user. In short, we have a very easy way to run multiple distributions as if they were one operating system with almost no extra overhead in terms of CPU or memory usage. We do use a little extra disk space, but running Void, two versions of Ubuntu, and one copy of Arch only consumed around 7GB of disk space – about the same amount of disk consumption some large mainstream distributions use.


I also like how Bedrock essentially reverses distribution fragmentation. If you’re tired of needing to run different distributions to gain access to a specific program or package manager, then you can run Bedrock and gain access to just about everything and use it seamlessly as one operating system. It’s really quite a remarkable bit of engineering and, once I got used to how the different strata fit together, I encountered virtually no problems with it. There was the drawback that I couldn’t use SELinux or Btrfs with Bedrock, but Bedrock’s strata copying capabilities provide a sort of snapshot and there are other access controls people can use in place of SELinux. All in all, I’m quite happy with Bedrock.


↺ Digital transformation: 7 signs you’re making progress


“Go-to-market strategies, customer interactions, and workforce enablement are all examples of activities that are being transformed by technology,” says Seth Robinson, senior director of technology analysis at technology association CompTIA, “and companies must embrace new mindsets around tech adoption and investment in order to remain competitive.”


↺ Big Blue’s big email blues signal terminal decline – unless it learns to migrate itself


A fun evening’s entertainment pre-COVID was to find a pub near a large corporation’s IT HQ, look for the customers with the haunted, desperate eyes, and ask them gently how “the migration” was going. Didn’t matter which company or what migration. They’re hard. They go wrong.


Not all migration misery is equal. Imagine you are a global IT brand, trading on the days when you were the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, selling other enterprises services and systems based on your unquestioned competence. Imagine further your internal email system has broken so badly that your employees can keep quiet no longer, and have gone public in frustration and despair. Imagine you are IBM.


IBM’s internal email failure is of Shakespearian richness. Tragedy, comedy, pomposity pricked, the decline of a great house, yet greater disaster foreshadowed. We don’t know the details, because the company has merely acknowledged problems without commenting on nature, scale, or prognosis. We don’t know, but the spilled beans form a pattern.


In 2017, IBM offloaded the email systems it owned – Notes and Verse, which sounds like a column in a 1950s literary magazine – to Indian company HCL.


IBM used those products itself, as you’re supposed to if you’re a global IT company selling email. But after a bit it got uncomfortable with all its corporate emails living away from home. So IBM decided to build its own infrastructure, take back control. And at the moment of migration, the 18-month-old project failed. Oops.


Devices/Embedded


↺ Jupiter Nano tiny Cortex-A5 board runs Linux or NuttX RTOS (Crowdfunding)


Jupiter Nano looks like one of those small MCU boards, but instead of a microcontroller, it packs a 500 MHz Microchip SAMA5 Cortex-A5 processor with 128MB RAM capable of running Linux or NuttX operating systems.


The board reminds me of the Adafruit Feather compatible Giant Board made by Groboards, with the same system-in-package, but Juniper Nano offers more I/Os via 48 through holes, and its size is said to be similar to Teensy 4.1 board (but not quite).


↺ Jupiter Nano Is a Tiny Microcontroller That Runs Linux


It seems the folks behind the Jupiter Nano open source hardware development board think the Arduino Due microcontroller board is overdue for an upgrade. The board, which is set to start crowdfunding via Crowd Supply, runs a version of Linux and is said to feature a processor that is 10x more powerful than the one found in Arduino’s Due from 2012.


That additional power is largely a function of time. Arduino released the Due in 2012 with the Microchip AT91SAM3X8E, a 32-bit microcontroller based on Arm’s Cortex M3 clocked at up to 84 MHz. The Microchip SAMA5D27C-LD1G inside the Jupiter Nano, meanwhile, is based on the Cortex A5 and capable of running at up to 500 MHz. Technically the Raspberry Pi Zero W is more powerful, but the Jupiter Nano is more of a precision tool compared to “one size fits all” approach of the Raspberry Pi.


As for the rest of the Jupiter Nano: Its creators say the board features 128MB of memory—which is 1,280x more than is available in the Arduino Due—on a 48-pin form factor that measures approximately 1.125 x 2.5 inches (63.2 x 28.6 mm). It boots from an SD card, features several USB 2.0 ports, and can be programmed via a JTAG interface.


↺ XiangShan open-source 64-bit RISC-V processor to rival Arm Cortex-A76


SiFive Performance P550 was supposed to be the most powerful RISC-V core to date, capable of outperforming Arm’s Cortex-A75 core in raw performance, but especially in terms of efficiency, with three times the performance per mm2.


But there may be an even more powerful RISC-V processor, albeit developed as a research project, with the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS)’s XiangShan open-source processor presented at the recent RISC-V World Conference China 2021 with the goal of matching Cortex-A76 performance.


↺ Index PnP – An open-source pick-and-place machine for mid-scale manufacturing


We’ve previously written about one open-source pick-and-place machine, SimplePNP aiming to provide a low-cost solution for several hundred dollars and relying on OpenPnP open-source control software.


But Stephen Hawes found out this type of solution did not cut it for mid-scale manufacturing (100 to 5000 units per year), so he decided to build his own. Meet Index PnP, an open-source pick-and-place machine designed for mass-production volumes typical of crowdfunding projects.


Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications


↺ 10 Best Meme Maker Apps for Android | Make Funny Meme Instantly


↺ 5 best games like Pokemon GO for Android devices in July 2021


↺ Top 10 “highly-rated” Android smartphones for June 2021 – Meizu dominates the list -


↺ Video: Best Free Android Apps for July 2021: Track E-Commerce Prices, Two-Player Offline Games and More | NDTV Gadgets 360


↺ One of the best Android phones may get a ‘Master Edition’… that removes its best bits | TechRadar


↺ OnePlus flagships will now get 3 major Android updates


↺ Better Performing Android Chromebook Games? Google Is Working On That


↺ Google to offer iMessage features to more Android phone users | Laptop Mag


↺ Xiaomi Android 12 update list includes over 70 Mi, Redmi, POCO, and Black Shark smartphones but there’s bad news for Mi 9T and Redmi K20 Pro owners – NotebookCheck.net News


↺ Lenovo’s Xiaoxin Pad Pro gets Android 11 via ZUI 12.5 update


↺ The road to better Android games will have to leave some phones behind | Android Central


↺ Nokia G20 with two years of guaranteed major Android OS updates, up to 3-day battery life launched in India – The Financial Express


↺ Here’s the Google Photos homescreen widget on Android – 9to5Google


↺ How can remote play be used to play GTA 5 on Android devices?


↺ 9 apps with 6M installs stole Facebook logins of Android users


↺ 5 best Android games like COD Mobile with PvP multiplayer modes


↺ Realme C15 Qualcomm Edition starts receiving Android 11 update in India – Times of India


↺ [Update: July 05] Xiaomi Android 11 update bugs & issues tracker: Here’s the current status


↺ Samsung Galaxy Tab Active3 review: A solid, rugged Android tablet


↺ iphone 13: This charging feature from premium Android phones may come to iPhone 13 – Times of India


↺ Is Virtual RAM in Android really useful? Should you increase Virtual RAM?


↺ OnePlus could put out an Android tablet in the near future | TechRadar


↺ After Apple Tightens Tracking Rules, Advertisers Shift Spending Toward Android Devices


Free, Libre, and Open Source Software


↺ Philip Withnall: Don’t (generally) put documentation license in appdata


This is generally an attempt to list the license of the code and of the documentation. However, the resulting SPDX expression means to apply the most restrictive interpretation of both licenses. As a result, the expression as a whole is considered not free software (CC-BY-SA-3.0 is not a free software license as per the FSF or OSI lists).


↺ Daniel Stenberg: curl user survey 2021


It is time to once again tell you that people responded very similarly to how they did last year…


Events


↺ USENIX LISA2021 Computing Performance: On the Horizon


It’s an exciting time for developments in computer performance, not just for the BPF technology (which I often write about) but also for processors with 3D stacking and cloud vendor CPUs (e.g., AWS Graviton2); for memory with the arrival of DDR5 and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) on-processor; for storage including new uses for 3D Xpoint as a 3D NAND accelerator; for networking with the rise of QUIC and eXpress Data Path (XDP); and so on. I summarized these topics and more as a plenary conference talk, including my own predictions (as a senior performance engineer) for the future of computing performance, with a focus on back-end servers.


Web Browsers


↺ How to Open a Magnet Link in Any Browser – Make Tech Easier


For a long time now magnet links have been a mainstay of all the major web browsers, making life a little easier for people downloading torrent files. But what exactly are magnet links? How do you set them up and open them? And how do you change the program that they link to? We reveal all here.


SaaS/Back End/Databases


↺ Datasentinel Version 2021.05 released


Datasentinel is pleased to announce the availability of Datasentinel for PostgreSQL version 2021.05


↺ Ora2Pg v22.0 and 22.1 released


Version 22.0 of Ora2Pg, a free and reliable tool used to migrate an Oracle database to PostgreSQL, has been officially released and is publicly available for download.


This release fix several issues reported since past three months and adds some new features and improvements. Release 22.1 is a maintenance release to extend the feature of data export through the oracle_fdw PostgreSQL extension to migration that use the public schema and do not preserve case.


↺ PostgreSQL Weekly News – July 4, 2021


Congratulations to the new PostgreSQL committers, Daniel Gustafsson and John Naylor!


↺ PostgreSQL Weekly News – June 27, 2021


The 12th PostgreSQL Conference Cuba (PostgresqlCUBA, @PgCuba) will take place on November 18-19, 2021, at the Hotel Habana Libre. This event is part of the TECNOGET conference, and we will host one track dedicated to PostgreSQL related talks. For more details, reach out to cu AT postgresql DOT org.


Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra


↺ Community Member Monday: Tim Brennan Jr.


I am a son and grandson of American missionaries who moved to Brazil in 1952. Since my mother was born here (my father was a seven month old baby), I was born automatically a Brazilian citizen – even though I was born in the USA. Being brought up in Brazil, I learned both American English in the home, and learned Brazilian Portuguese in parallel. I am fluent in both languages. Computers came into my life as my dad saw the importance and value of them in the eighties. Watching him hack an Apple IIe and a daisy wheel printer to get the tilde accent over the letter “y” was an adventure in and of itself.


Since I was homeschooled, the value and importance of open source software became very clear to me as soon as I heard about it around 1999. As soon as I heard of Linux, I got hooked. Then, I heard of StarOffice which later became OpenOffice, which forked into LibreOffice and saw the birth of The Document Foundation.


I have been on a learning journey for most of my life. Everything I have learned is self-taught, including LibreOffice. My main activity in life is teaching in general. Teaching software to newbies such as the elderly, the underprivileged and young people is a passion I have. LibreOffice is an excellent starting point as it has virtually all the basic areas: text, images, markup languages, programming logic on a very simple scale with macros, databases etc., and much, much, more.


GSoC


↺ Week #3 – #4 – GSoC Weekly Report – 100 Paper Cuts


Writer can group Drawing objects. For example shapes(rectangles, circles), text boxes and draw images can be grouped together to drag & drop.


However, when copy/paste or drag&drop an image into the writer document canvas, (raster/bitmap)images are handled as Frame objects (holding images/bitmaps), not Drawing objects. Drawing objects have the group feature, but this feature is not implemented for Graphics(Frame objects/bitmap). This is why Writer can’t group raster images.


↺ Week #2 – GSoC Weekly Report – 100 Paper Cuts | Bayram Çiçek’s website


In Impress, when editing a text on a slide, CTRL+SHIFT+(HOME/END/ArrowUP/ArrowDOWN) shortcuts doesn’t select the text in the slide, but move the slide to the end of the slide stack.


Solution is simple: Disable slide sorter shortcuts when in text edit mode.


↺ Google Summer of Code 2021: IBus Customize


For people unfamiliar with non-Latin languages, IME (Input Method) may be a completely new concept since they will find all the characters present on the keyboard when typing. However, for the majority of people in Asia, typing in their language would be impossible if without IME. For example, if you want to type Chinese, there are thousands of Chinese characters in total, and a keyboard is just too small to put them all onto it. But with the help of IME, you can choose to use pinyin or other kinds of input schemas like Wubi. Then a standard US keyboard will be sufficient for typing all the Chinese characters.


IBus is an input method framework for developing input methods providing unified user interfaces. A lot of popular input methods are based on IBus, and IBus is also the default input method framework on GNOME. Even if you don’t use non-Latin languages, you may also find IBus useful with IBus Typing Booster installed.


Programming/Development


↺ Josef Strzibny: How I earn over $750 a month from my unfinished book


While I knew that selling sooner is a good tactic, I wasn’t comfortable to put just about anything out there. I sit down and thought hard what would be the the first public version. In the end, it was actually a small book on its own because it went all the way from networking to deploying static websites. So, if this is a book on just deploying static websites, it would have a good ending. After this release, I was adding a chapter or two from time to time, and notifying my waiting list about the changes.


All of that went on for three months starting in April and it was probably the best decision I made so far for this product. I got new feedback, more validation, and even earn some first dollars. Wondering why I didn’t start sooner? Why I couldn’t go chapter by chapter from the beginning? I was only comfortable selling something once I saw the light at the end. I didn’t want for people to wait too long for the final version.


Perl/Raku


↺ Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.27 For Messing Up


Jo Christian Oterhals has returned with a nice blog post on How to mess up for loops in Raku, inspired by a tweet of Joelle Maslak (/r/rakulang comments). The blog post explores the ways you can call a piece of code repeatedly in the Raku Programming Language. Including ways you probably shouldn’t. Learning by bad example!


↺ TWC 119: Les Nybb and the Arrhythmic Trio


In which Raku solutions give shape to Perl solutions, and vice versa, and then Raku does what Raku does best.


Task 1: Swap Nibbles – basic and extended solutions in Raku and Perl.


Task 2: Sequence of symbols 123 without adjacent 1’s. Solutions in Raku and Perl, then a radically different approach that I would have never discovered in anything but Raku.


Special thanks to TheYeti of CodeFights (now CodeSignal), who invited me to start participating in the Weekly Challenge way back in October 2019. That site no longer has messaging or forums, and I don’t know how to let them know directly, but this week is my response to their invitation. Thank you!


Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh


↺ Case Statements in Bash: Examples Explained


When writing Bash scripts, it is common to check a string against a variable, and then do something based on what was specified.


Standards/Consortia


↺ Vulkan 1.2.184 Includes NVIDIA Extension For RDMA Usage


Last year I wrote about NVIDIA working on Vulkan support for RDMA memory. That work around RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) memory usage in the Vulkan context is now available with today’s Vulkan 1.2.184 specification update.


While RDMA is used for zero-copy networking with high throughput and low latency, it’s usually more associated with cluster computing and heavy data center needs rather than for working with a graphics API. However, NVIDIA has been preparing such and the new VK_NV_external_memory_rdma extension has arrived with this week’s Vulkan spec update.


Leftovers


↺ Can’t Get You Out of My Head


AC: I think the problem you have with me is that there isn’t any consistency. I’m a journalist who changes responses on the stuff I find out. You see my point. Whereas, if I were a political writer or a polemicist, I’d be arguing one point. Why I chose journalism I always like the fact that it allows me to reshape how I think about the world. So I’m reporting on the same things. By now, I think the paranoia about us being manipulated by social media has become overblown hysteria – which is different than what I’ve said before. And I report on that. And in that sense, I was turning against some of the people who would probably be my natural audience. Because I was challenging them, saying no, the idea that … gave you Donald Trump has as much to do with you as it does with reality. That’s new, that’s different. Yeah, I’m reporting on the internet. If you look at what I’m doing, I’m adjusting to how the reality is changing now – which is what I think journalism should do. The sort of political writing I don’t like is the one that says the same thing again and again because it just gets boring. If I were to criticize myself, I’d say I don’t have any consistency. I’m a social responder. To read this article, log in or or Subscribe. In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.


Education


↺ Anti-CRT Laws Seek to Divide Teachers’ Unions and the Struggle for Black Lives


Integrity/Availability


Proprietary


Security


↺ Microsoft urges PowerShell users to upgrade to protect against critical vulnerability


Microsoft has issued a warning to users of PowerShell 7.0 and 7.1 to update their software to protect against a .NET Core remote code execution vulnerability.


Tracked as CVE-2021-26701, the vulnerability is described as critical and could affect Windows, macOS and Linux. The security issue has been known about for a little while, but Microsoft is only now urging users to install updates to ensure that they are protected.


↺ Enter invisible passwords using this Python module | Opensource.com


Passwords are particularly problematic for programmers. You’re not supposed to store them without encrypting them, and you’re not supposed to reveal what’s been typed when your user enters one. This became particularly important to me when I decided I wanted to boost security on my laptop. I encrypt my home directory—but once I log in, any password stored as plain text in a configuration file is potentially exposed to prying eyes.


Specifically, I use an application called Mutt as my email client. It lets me read and compose emails in my Linux terminal, but normally it expects a password in its configuration file. I restricted permissions on my Mutt config file so that only I can see it, but I’m the only user of my laptop, so I’m not really concerned about authenticated users inadvertently looking at my configs. Instead, I wanted to protect myself from absent-mindedly posting my config online, either for bragging rights or version control, with my password exposed. In addition, although I have no expectations of unwelcome guests on my system, I did want to ensure that an intruder couldn’t obtain my password just by running cat on my config.


↺ Russell Coker: Servers and Lockdown


OS security features and server class systems are things that surely belong together. If a program is important enough to buy expensive servers to run it then it’s important enough that you want to have all the OS security features enabled. For such an important program you will also want to have all possible monitoring systems running so you can predict hardware failures etc. Therefore you would expect that you could buy a server, setup the vendor’s management software, configure your Linux kernel with security features such as “lockdown” (a LSM that restricts access to /dev/mem, the iopl() system call, and other dangerous things [1]), and have it run nicely! You will be disappointed if you try doing that on a HP or Dell server though.


↺ Security updates for Monday


Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (electron11, electron12, istio, jenkins, libtpms, mediawiki, mruby, opera, puppet, and python-fastapi), Debian (djvulibre and openexr), Fedora (dovecot, libtpms, nginx, and php-league-flysystem), Gentoo (corosync, freeimage, graphviz, and libqb), Mageia (busybox, file-roller, live, networkmanager, and php), openSUSE (clamav-database, lua53, and roundcubemail), Oracle (389-ds:1.4, kernel, libxml2, python38:3.8 and python38-devel:3.8, and ruby:2.5), and SUSE (crmsh, djvulibre, python-py, and python-rsa).


Privacy/Surveillance


↺ Regulating e-commerce should not involve spying on consumers


Defence/Aggression


↺ Why Is Biden’s Foreign Policy So… Conventional?


On the domestic front, Joe Biden is flirting with transformational policies around energy, environment, and infrastructure. It’s not a revolution, but it’s considerably less timid than what Barack Obama offered in that pre-Trump, pre-pandemic era.


Environment


↺ The Heat Wave Shows Climate Change Is a Workers’ Rights Issue


The end of June saw temperatures soar all around the United States, with historic heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest and excessive heat advisories, watches and warnings elsewhere. The heat is not just uncomfortable, it’s deadly, buckling roads and melting bridges, with temperatures climbing over 120 degrees in Death Valley, California and British Columbia.


Energy


↺ ‘Triumph for Environmental Justice’: Oil Companies Scrap Pipeline Plans Amid Grassroots Pressure


Community activists in Memphis, Tennessee and northwest Mississippi celebrated a grassroots victory on Saturday after two oil companies canceled plans to build a pipeline that would have run through wetlands and several low-income, majority-Black neighborhoods.


Valero and Plains All American Pipeline had long planned to construct the Byhalia Connection pipeline, which would have been 49 miles long and linked two pipelines that transport crude oil to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.


↺ Pipeline Fire in Gulf of Mexico Shows Need for Action on Climate, Advocates Say


Wildlife/Nature


↺ Straight to Bechtel


Although the privately-owned company doesn’t disclose its profits, Bechtel did announce that its income was soaring to new heights not seen since the 1960s when the company was damming some of the world’s most glorious canyons, building some of the most dangerous nuclear plants and constructing military bases for the staging of the war on Vietnam. To read this article, log in or or Subscribe. In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.


Finance


↺ Historic Relief for American Families Is On Its Way to Your Bank Account


Did you hear the good news?


↺ One Company Received the Maximum Possible PPP Loan, Then Moved Jobs to Mexico


AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics


↺ It’s Time to Stop Trying to Redeem Patriotism


↺ Public Health Officials Urge Continued Caution as White House Hosts Fourth of July Gathering


The White House went through with plans to host nearly 1,000 guests at its Fourth of July gathering on Sunday, but public health officials warned that with more than 200 people still dying each day from Covid-19, the highly contagious Delta variant now detected in all 50 states, and millions of Americans still unvaccinated, the government should be cautious not to send the message that the coronavirus pandemic is over.


A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday showed that while 54.9% of Americans have had at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccines and 47.4% are fully vaccinated, tens of millions of people who haven’t been vaccinated have no plans to change their status despite warnings about the Delta variant.


↺ Real Patriotism on this July 4th


But that’s not what real patriotism is.


↺ July 4 Glorifies the US Military — a Force With White Supremacy at Its Core


↺ On Independence Day, Here’s to My Friend Irving


Happy Birthday, America. And Happy Birthday, Irving.


Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press


↺ Silence From Corporate Media as Key Assange Witness Recants


A key witness in the Department of Justice’s case against Julian Assange has admitted that his entire testimony is false, a revelation that could be the death knell for US attempts to prosecute the Wikileaks founder.


Monopolies


↺ Gurman: Apple rapidly expanding outside of Silicon Valley as it struggles to recruit and retain talent – 9to5Mac


↺ July 4th special: trade secrets and family recipes


Some say that good stories don’t necessarily have to be true. By example, my grandmother was from Corsica and absolutely abhorred American cuisine to the extent that the very notion of a deep fryer would probably send her straight to the confessional booth. But like many women in South Carolina, she did have a subscription to lifestyle magazine Southern Living and on every July 4th would humour her American grandchildren with home-made fried chicken.


For the purposes of this exercise I will create a narrative around my family recipe that begins in a Charleston kitchen with chicken that was so good that everyone at church picnics absolutely begged my grandmother for the recipe. Nobody need know that she took it from a magazine.


Patents


↺ UK: G1/21 Hearing At The EPO – July


↺ still an ongoing circus


G1/21 hearing continues on 2nd July 2021. Follow this page for updates from HGF Partner Douglas Drysdale and Patent Director Ellie Purnell, who will be reporting all the key moments throughout the day. We will also provide a round up after the hearing both in English and German.


↺ Double trouble: EBA finds legal justification for the prohibition of double patenting (G4/19)


The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) has issued its decision in G4/19, the last referral pending from 2019. The referral related to the legal justification for the prohibition of double patenting. This prohibition prevents the grant of more than one European patent application having the same filing date and applicant, and directed to the same subject matter. In its decision, the EBA reinforced previous case law prohibiting double patenting and found legal justification for the prohibition in the intention of the legislators (as evidenced in the travaux preparatoires). The full EBA decision in G4/19 can be read here.


Background: Double patenting and legitimate interest


The issue of double patenting had previously been considered by the EBA in G 1/05 and G 1/06. These decisions established in obiter a prohibition of double patenting in view of the fact that an applicant “had no legitimate interest in proceedings that gave rise to the grant of a second patent in respect of the same subject-matter for which he already held a patent” (G 1/05, r. 13.4).


↺ Beetle Rip-Off ORA Punk Cat Is Now Patent-Protected


In April this year, at the 2021 edition of Shanghai Auto, Great Wall Motors’ EV division ORA unveiled a new electric vehicle that would come to market later this year: Punk Cat. It was the first chapter in an ongoing saga whose end might still be out of sight.


↺ Compulsory Licensing Australia


In Australia, the law with respect to compulsory licenses is framed to prevent useful inventions from remaining unworked in Australia. A person who wishes to exploit a patented invention may apply to the Federal Court for an order requiring the patentee to grant the applicant a license. Such an application can only be made if more than 3 years have elapsed since the patent was granted.


↺ UK Supreme Court rules in favour of Servier in NHS patent lawsuit


The UK Supreme Court has unanimously ruled in favour of French pharma company Servier over a decade-long patent case filed by the NHS regarding the hypertension drug Coversyl.


The NHS alleged that in obtaining, defending and enforcing its patent for Coversyl (perindopril), Servier blocked sales of generic versions of the drug, meaning the health service had to pay higher prices.


Although the patent on Coversyl expired in 2001, the first generic version of the drug only entered the market in 2007. In its lawsuit, the NHS said that it would have saved millions if it could have accessed cheaper, generic versions of the drug, which it alleged it could not do as a direct result of Servier’s actions.


The focus of the lawsuit is a patent granted in 2004 relating to the alpha crystalline form of perindopril arginine – in 2007, it was ruled that the patent lacked novelty after Servier obtained a court injunction to prevent generic sales of the drug in the UK. The patent was then revoked in 2009.


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