KDevelop 5.3.3 released

We today provide a stabilization and bugfix release with version 5.3.3. This is a bugfix-only release, which introduces no new features and as such is a safe and recommended update for everyone currently using a previous version of KDevelop 5.3. You can find a Linux AppImage as well as the source code archives on our download page. Windows installers are no longer offered, we are looking for someone interested to take care of that.

Latte, Documentation and Reports...

First Latte beta release for v0.9.0 is getting ready and I am really happy about it :) . But today instead of talking for the beta release I am going to focus at two last minute "arrivals" for v0.9; that is Layouts Reports and Documentation. If you want to read first the previous article you can do so at Latte and "Flexible" settings...

Kaidan 0.4.1 released!

After some problems were encountered in Kaidan 0.4.1, we tried to fix the most urgent bugs.

Kees Cook: security things in Linux v5.2

Gustavo A. R. Silva is nearly done with marking (and fixing) all the implicit fall-through cases in the kernel. Based on the pull request from Gustavo, it looks very much like v5.3 will see -Wimplicit-fallthrough added to the global build flags and then this class of bug should stay extinct in the kernel. That’s it for now; let me know if you think I should add anything here. We’re almost to -rc1 for v5.3!

Security updates for Wednesday

Security updates have been issued by Debian (libreoffice), Red Hat (thunderbird), SUSE (ardana and crowbar, firefox, libgcrypt, and xrdp), and Ubuntu (nss, squid3, and wavpack).

Malicious Python libraries targeting Linux servers removed from PyPI [Ed: Python does not run only on Linux, but Microsoft-funded sites like ZDNet (CBS) look for ways to blame everything on "Linux", even malicious software that gets caught in the supply chain]

Malicious Python Libraries Discovered on PyPI, Offensive Security Launches the Kali NetHunter App Store, IBM Livestreaming a Panel with Original Apollo 11 Technicians Today, Azul Systems Announces OpenJSSE and Krita 4.2.3 Released

Offensive Security, the creators of open-source Kali Linux, has launched the Kali NetHunter App Store, "a new one stop shop for security relevant Android applications. Designed as an alternative to the Google Play store for Android devices, the NetHunter store is an installable catalogue of Android apps for pentesting and forensics". The press release also notes that the NetHunter store is a slightly modified version of F-Droid: "While F-Droid installs its clients with telemetry disabled and asks for consent before submitting crash reports, the NetHunter store goes a step further by removing the entire code to ensure that privacy cannot be accidentally compromised". See the Kali.org blog post for more details.

Fedora, GNOME Software, and snap

A question about the future of package distribution is at the heart of a disagreement about the snap plugin for the GNOME Software application in Fedora. In a Fedora devel mailing list thread, Richard Hughes raised multiple issues about the plugin and the direction that he sees Canonical taking with snaps for Ubuntu. He plans to remove support for the plugin for GNOME Software in Fedora 31. There are currently two major players for cross-distribution application bundles these days: snaps, which were developed by Canonical for Ubuntu and the Snap Store, and Flatpak, which was developed by Alexander Larsson of Red Hat as part of freedesktop.org. Both systems are available for multiple Linux distributions. They are meant to give an "app-like" experience, where users simply install an application, which comes with any dependencies it has that are not provided by the snap or Flatpak runtime. The GNOME Software application has a snap plugin that, when enabled, supports the distribution, installation, and management of snaps. The Fedora project currently provides the snap plugin as a package in Fedora 30, though it is not installed by default. Hughes is the Fedora maintainer for the plugin; he announced his intention to disable the plugin since, he says, he was told that Canonical was not going to be installing GNOME Software in the next Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) release.

Molly de Blanc: Meet Sriram Ramkrishna

Sriram Ramkrishna, frequently known as Sri, is perhaps GNOME’s oldest contributor. He’s been around the community for almost as long as it’s been around! [...] But more than that, GNOME was a project that if you think about it was audacious in its purpose. Building a desktop in 1997 around an operating system that was primitive in terms of user experience, tooling, and experience. I wanted to be part of that.

Recent fixes to reduce backlog on Android phones

Last week it seemed that all our limited resource machines were perpetually backlogged. I wrote yesterday to provide insight into what we run and some of our limitations. This post will be discussing the Android phones backlog last week specifically. The Android phones are hosted at Bitbar and we split them into pools (battery testing, unit testing, perf testing) with perf testing being the majority of the devices.

Q&A: Igniting imaginations and putting VR in the hands of students with Kai Frazier

When you were in school, you may have taken a trip to a museum or a local park, but you probably never got to see an active volcano or watch great whites hunt. As Virtual Reality grows, this could be the way your kids will learn — using headsets the way we use computers. When you were in school, you may have gone on a trip to the museum, but you probably never stood next to an erupting volcano, watching molten lava pouring down its sides. As Virtual Reality (VR) grows, learning by going into the educational experience could be the way children will learn — using VR headsets the way we use computers. This kind of technology holds huge potential in shaping young minds, but like with most technology, not all public schools get the same access. For those who come from underserved communities, the high costs to technology could widen an already existing gap in learning, and future incomes.

This Week in Rust 295 [Ed: Just delete GitHub , Mozila, And why you're at it, stop using proprietary software and imposing it on Rust contributors.]

This Week in Rust is openly developed on GitHub.

How to speed up the Rust compiler in 2019

libsyntax has three tables in a global data structure, called Globals, storing information about spans (code locations), symbols, and hygiene data (which relates to macro expansion). Accessing these tables is moderately expensive, so I found various ways to improve things.