November 2019
Android Leftovers
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 10:37:50 PM Filed under
-
Convenience: Android comes with something the iPhone doesn’t
-
Android’s Ambient Mode will soon come to ‘select devices’
-
Pocophone F1/Poco F1 Android 10 update in the works, head of POCOPHONE Global confirms
-
ZTE's unveils and details MiFavor 10 OS, based on Android 10
-
5 best train simulator games for Android!
-
11 new and notable Android apps from the last two weeks including Facebook Viewpoints, Milkshake — Website Builder, and Breaker—The social podcast app (11/16/19 - 11/30/19)
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 2960 reads
PDF version
Android Leftovers
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 07:28:32 PM Filed under
-
Best note-taking apps for Android in 2020
-
How to download movies from Google Play on your Android, iPhone, or iPad
-
LG's latest Android skin kinda looks like Samsung's One UI
-
Apple TV Plus should be available on Android and SMART TVs
-
Samsung indirectly confirms Galaxy S8 and Note 8 won’t get Android 10
-
LG G8 ThinQ receiving stable Android 10 update
-
New Android Text Messaging Update ‘Exposes Most Users To Hacking’
-
MobiKin Assistant for Android: All in one Android Device Management Software
-
Pop quiz: Match the feature to the Android version
-
This week’s top stories: Pixel 4 re-reviewed, Android 10 for OnePlus 6, Moment fisheye lens, more
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 3003 reads
PDF version
Proprietary Software and Digital Jails
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 05:26:39 PM Filed under

-
checkra1n on Linux nearing release, Apple TV DFU helper coming too
Despite being a closed ecosystem, iDevice users enjoy an advanced level of control over the OS through jailbreaking. But, not many opt for it because the Cupertino tech giant denies warranty claims for jailbroken gadgets.
Moreover, one has to choose the jailbreaking tool so carefully that an incompatible selection will make your iPhone/iPad a fiasco. Owing to the frequent vulnerability fixes released by Apple, we can’t use a single tool for every iOS iteration.
-
Jony Ive is no longer on Apple's leadership page
His new firm is called LoveForm, which sounds an awful lot like LoveFilm - right down to the fact that both will score you 16 in a Scrabble match, assuming you're competing without someone that plays fast and loose with the ‘no brand names' rule. That's where the similarities end though: it's more focused on design than posting DVDs to people.
Unlike most people starting their own business, Ive won't have to hustle for new clients right away. Apple led the press release announcing Ive's exit by saying it would be one of LoveForm's clients, which is kind of like writing a blank cheque. But, hey, if anybody can write a blank cheque and not worry about the consequences then it's Cook & Co.
-
Security firm Prosegur hit by Windows Ryuk ransomware
Well-known British security researcher Kevin Beaumont was one of the first to point to a statement on on the Spain-based company's website in which it said that there had been "a security information incident on its telecommunications platforms".
Prosegur is the largest security firm in Spain and listed on Madrid Stock Exchange in 1987.
- 5 comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 5050 reads
PDF version
Entrapment in Microsoft GitHub
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 05:25:20 PM Filed under
-
Alibaba Cloud makes available its self-developed algorithm via open source on Github [Ed: Outsourcing one's code to a proprietary spying and censorship platform of a foreign firm and foreign regime]
Launched in 2009 and headquartered in Singapore, the cloud subsidiary of Alibaba Group offers cloud computing services to enterprises.
-
Alibaba Publishes AI Algorithms on Github [Ed: Alibaba gives its code to Microsoft to further facilitate surveillance]
-
GitHub Seeks Security Dominance With Developers [Ed: GitHub is proprietary software in NSA PRISM, so assume back doors. Ignore these Forbes puff pieces of Microsoft (lots of them).]
-
Rav1e Picks Up More Speed Optimizations For Rust-Written AV1 Encoding [Ed: Still stuck inside GitHub]
The Rust-based "rav1e" AV1 video encoder continues picking up performance optimizations.
During the month of November we've seen SSE4.1 and various x86 Assembly optimizations, other CPU performance optimizations, and also happening recently was the initial tagged release of rav1e (v0.1).
-
Daniel Stenberg: curl: 25000 commits [Ed: Unhealthy dependence on GitHub]
The first ever public release of curl was uploaded on March 20, 1998. 7924 days ago.
3.15 commits per day on average since inception.
These 25000 commits have been authored by 751 different persons.
Through the years, 47 of these 751 authors have ever authored 10 commits or more within a single year. In fact, the largest number of people that did 10 commits or more within a single year is 13 that happened in both 2014 and 2017.
19 of the 751 authors did ten or more changes in more than one calendar year. 5 of the authors have done ten or more changes during ten or more years.
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 3965 reads
PDF version
Openwashing by Microsoft and the US Air Force
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 05:24:28 PM Filed under
-
Microsoft Teams spurs open source in Aussie channel [Ed: Gross case of openwashing. How on Earth did Microsoft manage to have proprietary software that's mass surveillance inside businesses framed as "open source"?
Qbot is the brainchild of UNSW senior lecturer David Kellermann. Antares helped bring Qbot to life and, as it is the bot's primary developer, supports the code.
-
US Air Force says they are developing an Open Source Jet Engine
The Responsive Open Source Engine (ROSE) is designed to be cheap enough that it can be disposable, which has obvious military applications for the Air Force such as small jet-powered drones or even missiles. But even for the pacifists in the audience, it’s hard not to get excited about the idea of a low-cost open source turbine. Obviously an engine this small would have limited use to commercial aviation, but hackers and makers have always been obsessed with small jet engines, and getting one fired up and self-sustaining has traditionally been something of a badge of honor.
The economies of scale generally dictate that anything produced in large enough numbers will eventually become cheap. But despite the fact that a few thousand of them are tearing across the sky above our heads at any given moment, turbine jet engines are still expensive to produce compared to other forms of propulsion. The United States Air Force Research Laboratory is hoping to change that by developing their own in-house, open source turbine engine that they believe could reduce costs by as much as 75%.
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 3899 reads
PDF version
Red Hat, IBM and SUSE
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 05:22:15 PM Filed under

-
Raytheon Leans on Red Hat to Advance DevSecOps
Jon Check, senior director for cyber protection solutions for Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, said Raytheon has developed a set of DevSecOps practices for organizations building applications deployed in highly secure environments, involving government contracts.
Raytheon and these customers have been challenged by a chronic shortage of IT professionals with the appropriate level of clearance to work on these classified projects. To overcome that issue, Check said Raytheon developed what it describes as a “code low, deploy high” approach to DevSecOps. Developers who lack security clearances can still build applications; however, those applications can only be deployed by IT professionals having the appropriate security clearance.
In addition, Check said Raytheon has developed integrations between its DevSecOps framework and various IT tools based on the ITIL framework, which so many IT operations teams depend on to foster collaboration across the application development and deployment process. For example, he said, whenever code gets checked into a repository, an alert can be sent to an IT service management application from ServiceNow.
-
[Older] IBM: ‘Mac users are happier and more productive’ [iophk: duh]
IBM CIO Fletcher Previn talked up fresh IBM findings that show those of its employees who use Macs are more likely to stay with IBM and exceed performance expectations compared to [Windows] users.
-
[Older] IBM: Mac users perform better at work and close larger high-value sales compared to [Windows] users
Today, IBM announced some major news showing the benefits of using a Mac over a [Windows machine] at work. According to IBM research, there are 22% more macOS users who exceed expectations in performance reviews compared to Windows users. High-value sales deals also tend to be 16% higher for Mac users compared to [Windows] users.
-
[Older] IBM: Our Mac-Using Employees Outperform Windows Users in Every Way
According to IBM, one staff member can support 5,400 Mac users, while the company needed one staff member per 242 [Windows] users. Only 5 percent of Mac users called the help desk for assistance, compared with 40 percent of [Windows] users. This Mac-IBM love affair has been ongoing for a few years, and the same IBM PR points out that in 2016, IBM CIO Fletcher Previn declared that IBM saves anywhere from $273 to $543 when its end users choose Mac over [Windows].
-
Centiq receives highest SUSE Solution Partner certification to bolster best-in-class enterprise cloud application migration and implementation expertise for SAP projects
-
Noop now named none
Lately more and more people approached me with saptune warnings regarding ‘noop’ being an invalid scheduler.
With new Servie Packs we see a transition from non-multiqueue schedulers (noop, cfq, deadline) to multiqueue schedulers (none, mq-deadline, bfq, kyber).
This transition will be finished with kernel 5.x (SLES 15 SP2). Only multiqueue schedulers will remain.
Even if you do not have upgraded lately, new hardware like NVMe’s can come with multiqueue support only.
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 3946 reads
PDF version
Games and Programming: Epic Games, Godot, Haskell and Python
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 05:19:55 PM Filed under

-
Epic Games have awarded the FOSS game manager Lutris with an Epic MegaGrant
The Lutris team announced yesterday that Epic Games have now awarded them a sum of money from the Epic MegaGrants pot.
In the Patreon post, the Lutris team announced they've been awarded $25,000. While this might be quite a surprise to some, Tim Sweeney the CEO of Epic Games, did actually suggest they apply for it which we covered here back in April. To see it actually happen though, that's seriously awesome for the team building this free and open source game manager.
-
Play-ing with Godot
I’ve finally come to a point where I have a project that is useful, and at a good enough quality (anyone with graphics skills who wants to help?) to be shared with the broader world: Mattemonster. What I’m trying to say is that I just went through the process of publishing a Godot app to the Google Play store.
There is already good documentation for how you export a Godot app for Android, and detailed guides how to publish to Google Play. This blog is not a step by step tutorial, but instead mentioning some of the things I learned or noticed.
First of all, when setting up the Android tooling, you usually have an android-tools package for your distro. This way, you don’t have to install Android Studio provided by Google.
The configuration settings that you use to export your app goes into the export_presets.cfg file. Once you put the details for your release key in, you should avoid storing this file in a public git, as it contains sensitive data. But even before then, it contains paths that are local to your machine, so I would recommend not storing it in a public git anyway, as it makes merging with others painful.
-
Haskell
-
Python 3.7.5 : Script install and import python packages.
This script will try to import Python packages from a list.
If these packages are not installed then will be installed on system.
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 4104 reads
PDF version
Security: Updates, Ken Thompson's Chess Secret, Healthcare Breaches Spike in October, "Private Internet Access Sold Out!" and Undercover Mode for the Fedora Security Lab
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 04:55:13 PM Filed under
-
Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (libvpx and vino), Fedora (grub2 and nss), and SUSE (cloud-init, libarchive, libtomcrypt, ncurses, and ucode-intel).
-
Friday Fluff: Chess password cracked after four decades
A good password paired with strong encryption protects data against unexpected loss. No password is unbreakable, but some can last for quote a long time. After 39 years, recently a few old Unix passwords were cracked. Computer pioneer Ken Thompson had hidden his access behind a chess opening.
-
ThreatList: Healthcare Breaches Spike in October
October experienced a 44.44 percent month-over-month increase in healthcare data breaches, resulting in 661,830 healthcare records exposed or stolen during the month.
That’s according to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights’ monthly report reported via HIPAA Journal. The department said that hospitals and other healthcare organizations reported 52 breaches to HHS during the month. Year-to-date, the total number of breached healthcare records stands at 38 million, affecting 11.64 percent of the population of the United States.
-
Private Internet Access Sold Out! | Choosing A New VPN
This video goes over the purchase of Private Internet Access and Choosing a new VPN. I also layout the 3 points you NEED when choosing a new VPN.
-
Undercover mode for the Fedora Security Lab
Every time when there is a new release of Kali Linux it doesn’t take long till people start to ask when a feature or tool will be added to the Fedora Security Lab.
This time the most asked feature is the “undercover mode”.
To make it short: Never.
The reason is that the Fedora Security Lab live media doesn’t need this. We are running Xfce (in the meantime for several years now) with the default Fedora wallpaper and a default theme. It pretty hard to tell (reading impossible if you don’t have the menu open) for a person who only get a quick look at your desktop that you have a lot of specialized tools at your disposal.
You are even stealthier if you only add the Fedora Security Lab toolset to your default Fedora installation. This make the Fedora Security Lab the perfect tool to perform security-related tasks in an office environment at customer’s sites.
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 3538 reads
PDF version
today's howtos
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 04:52:34 PM Filed under
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 3386 reads
PDF version
Debian and Canonical/Ubuntu: Debian's Outreachy Interns, Debian LTS and Mir/Ubuntu Core Promotion
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 30th of November 2019 04:25:28 PM Filed under

-
Debian welcomes its new Outreachy interns
Debian continues participating in Outreachy, and we'd like to welcome our new Outreachy interns for this round, lasting from December 2019 to March 2020.
Anisa Kuci will work on Improving the DebConf fundraising processes, mentored by Karina Ture and Daniel Lange.
Sakshi Sangwan will work on Packaging GitLab's JS Modules, mentored by Utkarsh Gupta, Sruthi Chandran and Pirate Praveen.
Congratulations, Anisa and Sakshi! Welcome!
-
Mike Gabriel: My Work on Debian LTS/ELTS (November 2019)
In November 2019, I have worked on the Debian LTS project for 15 hours (of 15 hours planned) and on the Debian ELTS project for 5 hours (of 5 hours planned) as a paid contributor.
For LTS, I, in fact, pulled over 1.7 hours from October, so I realy only did 13.3 hours for LTS in November.
(This is only half-true, I worked a considerable amount of hours on this libvncserver code bundle audit, but I am just not invoicing all of it).
-
Build smart display devices with Mir: fast to production, secure, open-source
Mir is a library for writing graphical shells for Linux and similar operating systems. Compared to traditional display servers, it offers numerous benefits that are important for IoT devices: efficiency, speed of development, security, performance, and flexibility. All are required by the devices of today, and even more so for the devices of tomorrow. In this whitepaper we’ll explain how Mir, alongside Ubuntu Core and Snapcraft, lets developers build devices that are ready for the future of IoT, while offering stable, secure and performant solutions to the problems the industry faces today.
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- Read more
- 3395 reads
PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
AMD Schedutil vs. Performance Governor Benchmarks On Linux 5.11 Shows More Upside Potential
With a pending patch, the Linux 5.11 AMD Zen 2 / Zen 3 performance is looking very good as far as the out-of-the-box performance is concerned when using Schedutil as is becoming the increasingly default CPU frequency scaling governor on more distributions / default kernels. With the previously noted Linux 5.11 regression addressed from when the AMD CPU frequency invariance support was first introduced, the Schedutil performance from small Ryzen systems up through big EPYC hardware is looking quite good. But how much upside is left in relation to the optimal CPU frequency scaling performance with the "performance" governor? Here is a look at those benchmarks on Ryzen and EPYC for Schedutil vs. Performance on a patched Linux 5.11 kernel.
| today's howtos
|
10 Best Linux Distros for Developers
While Linux might not be the favored operating system for casual users, it’s the go-to choice for most developers and programmers. Linux is a more practical OS that was explicitly designed with programming and developers in mind.
There are over 600 Linux distros to choose from, so even experienced users may seldom struggle to find their current project's ideal flavor. Linux distributions can vary hugely from one another, even though they are based on the same source. And if you’re looking to learn more about Linux distros, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best Linux distros for developers.
| Puppy Linux Review and its Status Quo in the Linux CommunityIf we had 30 seconds to describe Puppy Linux bluntly, we would classify it as an OS under the light-weight Linux distro family with a functional objective of creating a smooth and easy user experience while simultaneously minimizing the memory footprint usage as much as possible. In this context, the memory footprint refers to the RAM, or Main Memory is used while software like an Operating System is active or operational.
This 30-second assumptive description on Puppy Linux characterizes it as a Linux distro suitable for personal or home-user computers. If we are to assign it a birth year, then it would be 2003, and its creator being Barry Kauler.
Puppy Linux stands out in the Linux community despite its name not being hailed on regular occasions as other Linux distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, Centos, and Kali Linux. The respect it has in these user communities is due to its outstanding positive attributes on display.
|
Recent comments
47 min 1 sec ago
48 min 42 sec ago
6 hours 54 min ago
12 hours 51 min ago
14 hours 39 min ago
14 hours 45 min ago
14 hours 51 min ago
14 hours 53 min ago
22 hours 53 min ago
22 hours 56 min ago