today's leftovers

• 2019-12-05 | Linux Headlines

  Mozilla speeds up its open source speech-to-text engine, Disney+ is now available on Linux, and Amazon has a new AI-powered service for automated code review.

• Linux 5.5 Lands Broadcom BCM2711 / Raspberry Pi 4 Bits

  Following last week's Arm architecture updates for Linux 5.5, sent in via four pull requests on Thursday was all the new and improved hardware enablement for the SoCs and single-board computer platforms. The prominent ARM hardware support change with Linux 5.5 is mainlining the Broadcom BCM2711 SoC that is notably used by the Raspberry Pi 4 and also integrating the various RPi4 device tree additions. It's great seeing the Linux kernel finally beginning to get into shape for the modern Raspberry Pi 4.

• Krita Weekly #6

  I will just run through what are the folks did over the week. Dmitry is working on fixing the rendering of vector shapes. I gave it a try last day, though there are a few snitches here and there, but overall it was much faster than the current one. He also worked with a new contributor Fredrik and fixed the transform tool crash bug. Kai Uwe Broulik fixed almost year old regression which made the layer filter menu too narrow with the breeze theme. Tiar fixed a couple of bugs related to onion skins and selections along with her work on the implement tagging of resources in the new system. Also Wolthera can be seen working on the UI and resource models for the same. Ivan has finished his patch to accurately draw 1px lines. Amidst exams even I patched one of the bugs related to text tool, although I was the one who introduced that in the first place.

• elementary OS 5.1 "Hera" overview | The fast, open, and privacy-respecting replacement for Windows.

  In this video, I am going to show an overview of elementary OS 5.1 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• Zombies Ate Your Neighbors? Tell Everyone Through LoRa

  As popular as the post-apocalyptic Zombie genre is, there is a quite unrealistic component to most of the stories. Well, apart from the whole “the undead roaming the Earth” thing. But where are the nerds, and where is all the apocalypse-proof, solar-powered tech? Or is it exactly this lack of tech in those stories that serves as incentive to build it in the first place? Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be the end of the world to seek for ways to cope with a collapse of our modern communication infrastructure either. Just think of natural disasters — an earthquake or hurricane causing a long-term power outage for example. The folks at [sudomesh] tackle exactly this concern with their fully open source, off-grid, solar-powered, LoRa mesh network, Disaster Radio. The network itself is built from single nodes comprising of a battery-backed solar panel, a LoRa module, and either the ESP8266 or ESP32 for WiFi connectivity. The idea is to connect to the network with your mobile phone through WiFi, therefore eliminating any need for additional components to actually use the network, and have the nodes communicate with each other via LoRa. Admittedly, LoRa may not be your best choice for high data rates, but it is a good choice for long-range communication when cellular networks aren’t an option. And while you can built it all by yourself with everything available on [sudomesh]’s GitHub page, a TTGO ESP32 LoRa module will do as well.

• Jakub Steiner: Conferences

  This year I haven’t done any drone-related travelling. The sponsorship deal fell through and Rotorama didn’t participate in DCL. I admit I haven’t been practicing as much as I would need to to do any better in the local races either. So at least I got the world of FOSS to get out of the couch.

• A Major Step for Open Source in Europe

  As long-time supporters of Open Source, we had high expectations of last week’s European Commission ambitious workshop ‘Open Source Beyond 2020’. These expectations were exceeded. The event gathered an impressive group of representatives of the relevant stakeholder groups, spanning industry, research, advocacy, and policy-making. But what was particularly encouraging was the way the Commission actively sought fresh ideas on how the Open Source opportunity for Europe could be maximised.  It was helpful that DG CNECT and DIGIT jointly hosted the event, bringing together their experiences and initiatives. Two intensive days of insightful panels and discussions with practitioners from around Europe gave a strong feeling of pragmatism rather than rhetoric.  Contributing to the Workshop CEO Sachiko Muto spoke on the role of Open Source as innovation enabler and the role of Standards in Open Source, and our research director Sivan Pätsch shared his insights on digital skills for Open Source. But it was particularly pleasing to see many of the OpenForum Academy Fellows giving expert opinion. Open Source has reached global ubiquity within software development so it is fundamental that Europe understands how to maximise the potential impact for economic development, business and citizens. The European Commission employed a proactive approach when it came to listening to the broad community in planning and delivering the workshop. This holds high hopes for the future of digital openness in Europe and possibilities of cross-industry and cross-institutional cooperation. But to date much of the success has come from bottom up initiatives. Just what are the policy and leadership measures that the Commission could take that would positively affect the outcome? Are there any? Are they really needed?

• Google to stop indexing Flash for search

  Adobe laid out Flash's demise two years ago when it disclosed that it would stop updating and distributing Flash Player at the end of 2020. At the same time, browser makers revealed how they were going to sunset the player software and thus put an end to the multimedia format.

  [...]

  Shutting down Flash indexing will impact only a fraction of all websites: According to technology survey site W3Techs, only 3% of sites now utilize Flash code. That number climbs when more popular sites are polled; 8.4% of the top-1,000 sites, said W3Techs, contain Flash code.

• The 20 Best Ride Sharing Apps for Android Device in 2019

  Using a ride sharing app on your Android device now becomes very common. With the blessing, we call PlayStore, life in this era, has become easier than before. Those taxi apps for Android devices are such an issue that vanishes all the hassles of hiring a vehicle in a familiar and even in an unfamiliar place. However, PlayStore contains thousands of taxi apps. But all of them may not work well for you. Moreover, all those apps are not available everywhere. This is why I suggest you have an idea about some best ride sharing apps for Android before giving a try on some.

• New Vivaldi for Android Beta Adds More UI Improvements, Chromebook Support

  Vivaldi Technologies have released a new beta of their upcoming Vivaldi for Android web browser, which brings support for Chromebooks and many refinements to the user interface. After the great feedback on the first beta release, Vivaldi Technologies have been working hard to improve their Vivaldi for Android web browser, adding lots of goodies requested by the community, starting with new settings to allow users to swipe to close tabs and view scrollbars on internal pages. Another new setting added in Vivaldi for Android beta 2 is called "Always Show Desktop Site," which will display the desktop version of the current website when enabled. The UI has been refreshed as well to get rid of Bookmarks and Notes with a single tap using the new "Empty Trash" button at the bottom of the screen. "We want Vivaldi to be a great experience for our users on their mobile devices," says Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner. "And we are working towards packing more functionality into it based on their invaluable feedback."

• Intel Publishes oneAPI Level 0 Specification

  Back at SC19 Intel released a beta of their oneAPI Base Toolkit for software developers to work on performance-optimized, cross-device software. Complementing that initial software beta is now the oneAPI Level 0 Specification.  The oneAPI Level 0 Specification is self-described as "The objective of the ‘One API’ Level-Zero API is to provide direct-to-metal interfaces to offload accelerator devices. It is a programming interface that can be published at a cadence that better matches Intel hardware releases and can be tailored to any device needs. It can be adapted to support broader set of languages features, such as function pointers, virtual functions, unified memory, and I/O capabilities."  [...] While catering to Intel hardware releases, the specification itself is under the Creative Commons and the actual implementation of it under an MIT license, thus the ability for other ISVs and IHVs to embrace the oneAPI specification. Similarly, we've already heard of Codeplay working on oneAPI support for NVIDIA GPUs to be released in 2020. 

• Python libraries imitating ‘dateutil’ and ‘jellyfish’ caught stealing SSH and GPG keys

  Both of the malicious libraries were discovered earlier this month by Lukas Martini, a German software developer. The libraries were removed the same day as Martini notified the Python security team.

  Fortunately, thanks to Martini’s quick observation, the python3-dateutil library was only live for two days. jeIlyfish, however, was live for almost a year (since December 11, 2018).

• [Older] Making sense of a multi-cloud, hybrid world at KubeCon

  More than 12,000 attendees gathered this week in San Diego to discuss all things containers, Kubernetes and cloud-native at KubeCon. Kubernetes, the container orchestration tool, turned five this year, and the technology appears to be reaching a maturity phase where it accelerates beyond early adopters to reach a more mainstream group of larger business users. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of work to be done, or that most enterprise companies have completely bought in, but it’s clearly reached a point where containerization is on the table. If you think about it, the whole cloud-native ethos makes sense for the current state of computing and how large companies tend to operate.

• [Older] ‘Kubernetes’ Is the Future of Computing. What You Should Know About the New Trend.

  Nearly all major technology companies are saying the same thing. Kubernetes is the next big thing in computing. The Greek word for helmsman or pilot, Kubernetes is accelerating the transition away for legacy client-server technology by making cloud-native software development easier, better and faster. Last week, more than 12,000 developers and executives gathered in San Diego at the largest annual Kubernetes conference called KubeCon. That’s up from just 550 attendees four years ago. The conference goers are all looking for ways to take advantage of Kubernetes and its ability to automatically deploy, manage, and scale software workloads in the cloud. To understand the trend, let’s start with the changing dynamics of software in the cloud. Cloud apps increasingly run in aptly-named containers. The containers hold an application, its settings, and other related instructions. The trick is that these containers aren’t tied down to one piece of hardware and can run nearly anywhere—across different servers and clouds. It’s how Google manages to scale Gmail and Google Maps across a billion-plus users. Alphabet’s (ticker: GOOGL) Google long ago developed software called Borg to orchestrate its in-house containers—spinning them up and down as needed. In 2014, the search giant opted to make a version of Borg open source, calling it Kubernetes. Today, the major cloud providers all offer a Kubernetes option to customers.

Games: Tank Maniacs, Beyond a Steel Sky, Car Wars and More

• Offering up some intense multiplayer mayhem, Tank Maniacs is out now

  GAMELAB today released Tank Maniacs, a very intense multiplayer party game for up to four players. Your task is simple: eliminate the competition in any way possible and it's really quite hilarious. A game for when you want things to be a little less serious perhaps? Tank Maniacs would certainly slot into your gaming schedule nicely there I think. You don't need to have other players with you, thankfully, as the AI can be quite menacing I found during my time playing it. If you livestream games on Twitch, they also have a fancy Extension you can try which helps viewers get involved.

• Beyond a Steel Sky, the sequel to the classic Beneath a Steel Sky is coming to Linux next year

  Revolution Software today put out an announcement about Beyond a Steel Sky, the sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky, to give an update on the release date. Beyond a Steel Sky is a dramatic, humorous, cyberpunk thriller in which engaging puzzles drive a fast-paced narrative set in a dynamic game-world that responds to – and is subverted by – the player’s actions. It was quite a surprise when writing about it back in September as it popped up on Steam with Linux system requirements. We didn't manage to get full confirmation from the developer, until today! They confirmed to us on Twitter that Linux support is happening—awesome!

• Kickstarting a new edition of Steve Jackson Games's Car Wars

  Now, Steve Jackson Games (previously) is kickstarting a sixth edition of Car Wars, set in a fallen USA in 2069, dominated by "wilderness lawlessness, banditry, regional dictators, and of the men and women who combat them." The sixth edition includes rules, detailed miniature plastic model cars, player dashboards, and card-decks for internal damage. Stretch goals include custom six sided dice (a set of 20!), extra tokens, a new collision system and a 36"x36" playspace -- at higher levels, they're going to add more minis and extra rules.

• Stylish 2D action adventure Alwa's Legacy is successfully funded and coming to Linux

  Great news for fans of colourful retro-inspired action adventures, as Alwa's Legacy (the successor to Alwa's Awakening) has managed to get funding. After launching on Kickstarter last month, Elden Pixels managed to raise a total of around SEK 290,369 (approx £23,332). Just like the previous game, they're planning for full Linux support. Since it has been successful, it's another listed on our dedicated Crowdfunding Page.

• New Steam Client Beta upgrades the Linux Steam Runtime Container and Remote Play Together

  Valve have another freshly brewed Beta available for the Steam Client that was released yesterday ready for more testing. For Linux gamers, this Beta brings with it some upgrades to the Linux Steam Runtime and the Linux Steam Runtime Container with "improved graphics drivers diagnostics". Don't know what we mean by Container? Recently Steam gained a new feature to enable you to run Linux games inside a special Linux Runtime Container. I have some high hopes that this container feature will reduce further any QA testing issues game developers have when deploying for Linux.

• Creator of WebRTC now working on Google Stadia, Darksiders Genesis out plus more Stadia news

  We have more interesting news to share this morning about updates surrounding Google Stadia, the game streaming service. Firstly, engineer Justin Uberti who helped to created WebRTC and Google Duo has announced they've moved onto leading the Google Stadia engineering team. Google certainly need all the help they can get building their gaming platform, after such a rough launch. Uberti also mentioned that they will be hiring for Stadia in in Seattle/Kirkland (USA) so get in touch if working on cloud gaming sounds like your thing. Google have also finally put the Stadia store online in the browser, it's no longer totally locked to the mobile app. This was one of the pain points of the early launch, although you likely still need to actually have a Stadia account and a Chromium-based browser to even access it.

Android Leftovers

• Do AirPods Pro work with Android?

• Realme U1, Realme C1, Realme 1, and Realme 2 Will Not Receive Android 10 Update in India, Company Says

• Sony Xperia 1 and Xperia 5 pick up Android 10 updates

• Fourth Galaxy Note 10 Android 10 beta update rolling out now

• Nokia 2.3 is official with Android One, dual rear cameras, and 4000mAh battery