• The future of Python: Concurrency devoured, Node.js next on menu

  The PyBay 2017 conference, held in San Francisco over the weekend, began with a keynote about concurrency.

  Though hardly a draw for a general interest audience, the topic – an examination of multithreaded and multiprocess programming techniques – turns out to be central to the future of Python.

  Since 2008, the Python community has tried to reconcile incompatibility between Python 2 and newly introduced Python 3.

  For years, adoption of Python 3 was slow and some even dared to suggest Python didn't have a future. As late as last year, Zed Shaw, an accomplished developer and author of the popular Learn Python the Hard Way, even ventured to opine, "There is a high probability that Python 3 is such a failure it will kill Python."

  Despite these unsubstantiated odds, Shaw – a polarizing figure for some Pythonistas – this year released a version of his book for Python 3.

• When not to use a regex

   

  A regex is useful for validating simple patterns and for finding patterns in text. For anything beyond that it’s almost certainly a terrible choice.

• Navigating Cloud Foundry

  This open source platform-as-a-service cloud platform bridges the gap between legacy applications and cloud services.

  For all the talk about the cloud, many applications continue to run on traditional servers. Hybrid architectures are sometimes the right option, but if you want to move corporate applications onto the Internet, you don’t want to start from scratch. Cloud Foundry, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud platform, enables enterprises to move older software to the cloud and build new cloud-centric programs using familiar tools and programming languages.

• HMM Revised Its 25th Time, Seeking Inclusion In Linux 4.14

  Jerome Glisse of Red Hat has published his 25th revision to the Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) patch series. HMM is about allowing a process address space to be mirrored and for system memory to be transparently used by any device process.

  With HMM v25, there are more code comments and documentations, fixes to the code, merging the HMM-CDM patches into this patch series, and other improvements.

• Radeon X.Org Driver Gets Fixed Up To Always Allow Page-Flipping With TearFree

  It's fairly rare these days seeing improvements to the xf86-video-ati DDX: the driver for those running a pre-AMDGPU (GCN 1.2) graphics card with this driver paired with Radeon DRM and not using the generic xf86-video-modesetting driver instead. But if you are using xf86-video-ati and use the "TearFree" feature to try to avoid screen tearing, a number of patches landed today.

  Michel Dänzer of AMD landed a handful of patches to the xf86-video-ati Git repository today for the Radeon DDX. Notably the patches make for always allowing DRI2 page-flipping to be used with TearFree and the same goes for DRI Present page-flipping with the TearFree option. Long story short, page-flipping should now always work in the TearFree mode.

• NVIDIA Releases Vulkan 381.26.13 Beta Linux Driver

  NVIDIA's driver team has today released new Vulkan beta drivers for both Windows and Linux.

  The new NVIDIA Linux Vulkan beta is versioned at 381.26.13, so still not yet re-based to the current 384 series, but these changes should end up being merged for their next feature series to mainline.

• Krita 3.2.0 Released

  Later than planned, here’s Krita 3.2.0! With the new G’Mic-qt plugin integration, the smart patch tool, finger painting on touch screens, new brush presets and a lot of bug fixes. Read the full release notes for more information!. Here’s GDQuest’s video introducing 3.2.0:

• Krita 3.2 Released For Leading Open-Source Digital Painting

  The Krita project has today announced version 3.2 is ready of their open-source, cross-platform digital painting program.

  Krita 3.2 features new G'Mic-qt plugin integration, a smart patch tool, finger painting on touch screens, new brush presets, a variety of fixes, and other minor improvements.

• Hackers {sic} can shut down critical security features in most modern cars: report

  Researchers have determined a weakness in some cars' internal networking system that could allow an attacker with physical access to knock components offline, including critical safety features.

• Alert (ICS-ALERT-17-209-01) CAN Bus Standard Vulnerability

  The severity of the attack varies depending on how the CAN is implemented on a system and how easily an input port (typically OBD-II) can be accessed by a potential attacker. This attack differs from previously reported frame-based attacks, which are typically detected by IDS/IPS systems. The exploit focuses on recessive and dominant bits to cause malfunctions in CAN nodes rather than complete frames.

• Researcher finds Marcus Hutchins' code that was used in malware

  A security researcher says code has been discovered that was written by British hacker Marcus Hutchins that was apparently "borrowed" by the creator of the banking trojan Kronos.

• Maersk says Windows ransomware attack may cost it US$300m

  The container shipping company A.P. Moller–Maersk Group expects that a Windows ransomware attack it suffered in June will cost it between US$200 million and US$300 million.

• How My Instagram Hacker Changed My Life

• Stable kernel updates

  Stable kernels 4.12.8, 4.9.44, 4.4.83, and 3.18.66 have been released. Each contains important fixes throughout the tree and users should upgrade.

• Linux 4.12.8

• Linux 4.9.44

• Linux 4.4.83

• Linux 3.18.66

In the past decade, adoption of open source software at the enterprise level has flourished, as more businesses discover the considerable advantages open source solutions hold over their proprietary counterparts, and as the enterprise mentality around open source continues to shift.

Enterprises looking to make smart use of open source software will find plenty of great reasons to do so. Here are just some of them.

We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 4.4 RC!

For the details on what is new in Qt Creator 4.4, please refer to the Beta blog post. As usual we have been busy with bug fixes and improvements since then, and now would be a good time for you to go get it, and provide final feedback.

Also: Qt Creator 4.4 Advances To Release Candidate Stage

Do you spend a lot of time thinking about Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons? Unless you run a retail store, probably not. But if you do run a store (or stores) along with an e-commerce operation, BLE is a hot new thing you are either using already or thinking about using before long.

Why? Because the graffiti is on the wall, and it says, “Sales in physical stores are going down every year, and most retailers aren’t seeing enough online sales gains to take up the slack.” BLE may help stop the retail sales slide or at least slow it down. It’s cheap enough, especially with open source beacons, that it’s certainly worth a try.

• Qualcomm Unveils 'First Depth Sensing Camera Technology' for Android Devices

• The Nexus 6 is getting Android 7.1.1 Nougat again

• Gmail for Android: 6 awesome features you probably aren't using

• [VaporWear] Misfit is now saying the Vapor Android Wear watch doesn't have standalone GPS

• Android Wear now belongs to fashion brands, not gadget nerds

• iOS 11 versus Android O on a tablet? It's not even close

• New Nokia 8 Android Smartphone Officially Revealed

• Google Maps just added a Q&A feature for Android users

• Schlage adds Android support for its Bluetooth smart lock

• The Galaxy Note 8 will ship with a version of Android we've never seen before

Ubuntu 17.10, the next major release of the widely-used Ubuntu Linux OS, will be transitioning to the GNOME Shell user interface by default instead of the Unity desktop environment that was used until now.

Steam will continue to support Linux as we’ve seen on previous occasions, but other hardware companies should also lend a helping hand. This will include the likes of Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and others which control the driver stack.

If it took decades for Linux to improve heavily, then we should not ruin your expectations a tad bit because it will take several more years to further reduce that performance gap between Windows 10 and the latter. However, the fact that Linux is getting there should mean that Microsoft has something to worry.

The folks behind postmarketOS want to go even further: they’re developing a Linux-based alternative to Android with the goal of providing up to 10 years of support for old smartphones.

That’s the goal anyway. Right now the developers have only taken the first steps.

Earlier this month, on August 3, Canonical published multiple security advisories to inform Ubuntu users about the availability of new kernel releases for all supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems.

Also:
GCC 7 Now Default Compiler in Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark), Qt 5.9 Coming Soon

The second UbuCon Europe event, a conference dedicated to the European Ubuntu community, is taking place next month, between September 8 and September 10, in Paris, France.

Third, there is a belief that Linux apps are still too primitive to get anything productive done. Besides (whiny voice), “I tried Linux in 2005, and it was just too ha-r-r-d.”

Sorry. A lot of those objections are no longer valid. Linux is solid, stable, free for the most part and has become as easy to navigate as Windows. And those old apps are all grown up now.

You may have skipped over previous Linux articles we’ve run, but don’t skip this one. We’re not going to crow about Linux like it’s something brand new, because we both know it has been on your radar screen for 20+ years. This time, we’d rather you read about what you can do with it at your station — and primarily in your production studio — right now.

The Dutch National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has published its Privacy Enhanced Filter (PEF) as open source software. The PEF tool is a research prototype that removes privacy-sensitive information from captured internet traffic as much as possible, allowing for threat detection and prevention without compromising privacy. It was developed in collaboration with the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) and the NCTV (National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism) Safety Through Innovation Program.

• For Fun and Profit: A New Book on the History of Linux and Open Source

  Sure, you can explain Linux’s popularity today in terms of factors that exist in the present — its technical features, the dynamism of the open source community, the corporate backing that Linux enjoys today, and so on.

  But, to understand what really launched Linux into the position it enjoys today, however, you need to know the history of Linux — as well as the history of the larger free and open source software universe.

• Solus 3 released

• Happy 24th Birthday, Debian!

  Today, August 16, 2017, Debian, the universal, Unix-like computer operating system powered by the Linux kernel turns 24 years of existence since the late Ian Murdock first announced the Debian Project back in 1993.

  Since then, the Debian Project decided to set the day of August 16 as the Debian Day, to celebrate the project's anniversary each year with organized social gatherings in various parts of the world.

• Docker Announces New Release of Docker Enterprise Edition to Modernize Windows, Linux and Mainframe Applications in Hybrid IT Environments

• Docker Enterprise now runs Windows and Linux in one cluster

  With the newest Docker Enterprise Edition, you can now have Docker clusters composed of nodes running different operating systems.

  Three of the key OSes supported by Docker—Windows, Linux, and IBM System Z—can run applications side by side in the same cluster, all orchestrated by a common mechanism.

• How to explain microservices in plain English

• ARK: Survival Evolved updated with the latest 'Unreal Rendering code', still terrible on Linux

  ARK: Survival Evolved [Steam] has a big update, this time finally updating their Unreal Engine code, but the Linux version is still quite broken graphically.

• We Happy Few to launch on April 13th 2018, Linux release will be 'on or shortly after'

• Intel ANV Vulkan Driver Now Supports External Semaphores

  Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver has picked up support for the VK_KHR_external_semaphore extensions.

• More AMDGPU DRM Updates Sent In For Linux 4.14 DRM-Next

  Alex Deucher sent in more Radeon/AMDGPU feature material today for DRM-Next of new code that in turn is being queued up for the Linux 4.14 kernel cycle.

  At the end of July was the first AMDGPU feature updates for in turn targeting the Linux 4.14 kernel. That included reducing the internal GART, initial support for 2MB huge pages, a rework of the buffer object migration logic, improvements/fixes around Vega support, PowerPlay fixes, SR-IOV improvements, and more.

• Trying amd-staging-drm-next With The Radeon RX Vega

  With my Radeon RX Vega benchmarks so far this week I have been using the amd-staging-4.12 tree that contains the DC display code and Vega support. Though even with fresher code is amd-staging-drm-next, so here are some benchmarks.

• Vega Performance Counters Now Exposed For RadeonSI

  The latest Mesa patches provide support for the GFX9 performance counters of Radeon RX Vega GPUs for those wishing to profile the driver or games/applications on these newest AMD GPUs.

• RADV Vulkan Driver Begins Seeing Fixes For Vega

  David Airlie has begun fixing up the open-source "RADV" Radeon Vulkan driver so it can properly work with the newest Radeon RX Vega graphics cards.