There I was, thoughtfully drafting an article titled "3 Things Canonical Can Do To Improve The Snap Ecosystem," when I jumped on the phone with Evan Dandrea, an Engineering Manager who just so happens to be responsible for the Snapcraft ecosystem at Canonical. As it turns out, that headline will need a slight edit. One less number. That's because I've just learned Canonical has some ambitious plans for the future of the Snap Store.

With the GCC 9 compiler due to be officially released as stable in the next month or two, we've been running benchmarks of this near-final state to the GNU Compiler Collection on a diverse range of processors. In recent weeks that has included extensive compiler benchmarks on a dozen x86_64 systems, POWER9 compiler testing on the Talos II, and also the AArch64 compiler performance on recent releases of GCC and LLVM Clang. In this latest installment of our GCC 9 compiler benchmarking is an extensive look at the AMD EPYC Znver1 performance on various releases of the GCC compiler as well as looking at various optimization levels under this new compiler on the Znver1 processor.

We are pleased to announce that the 1st bugfix release of Plasma 5.15, 5.15.1, is now available in our backports PPA for Cosmic 18.10.

The release announcement detailing the new features and improvements in Plasma 5.15 can be found here, while the full 5.15.1 bugfix changelog can be found here.

Released along with this new version of Plasma is an update to KDE Frameworks 5.54. (5.55 is currently in testing in Disco 19.04 and may follow in the next few weeks.)

• Linux 4.20.11

  I'm announcing the release of the 4.20.11 kernel.

  All users of the 4.20 kernel series must upgrade.

  The updated 4.20.y git tree can be found at:
  git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.20.y
  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
  http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st...

• Linux 4.19.24

• Linux 4.14.102

• Linux 4.9.159

• Linux 4.4.175

• Linux 3.18.135

ANoise aka Ambient Noise is an utility which plays various noises such as Rains, Fountains, thunderstorms, fire, sea, night etc. This constant and repeating sound helps general users, students to be more productive and concentrate on their work.

• How to Install pgAdmin4 on Ubuntu

• How to Install Netbeans on Ubuntu 18.04

• Install and Configure Seesaw Load Balancer

• Integrating libext2fs with a Filesystem Framework

• Faster vlan(4) forwarding?

  Two years ago we observed that vlan(4) performances suffered from the locks added to the queueing API. At that time, the use of SRP was also pointed out as a possible responsible for the regression. Since dlg@ recently reworked if_enqueue() to allow pseudo-drivers to bypass the use of queues, and their associated locks, let's dive into vlan(4) performances again.

• How to Install ImageMagick 7 on Debian and Ubuntu

• Set up two-factor authentication for SSH on Fedora

• OpenJDK

  OpenJDK is a free, open-source version of the Java Development Kit for the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE). OpenJDK, which stands for Open Java Development Kit, originated from an effort initiated by Sun Microsystems in 2006 and is now sponsored and led by Oracle. The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) version 2 with a linking exception. Without the linking exception, components that linked to the Java class library would be subject to the terms of the GPL license.

  Since the release of Java SE version 7, OpenJDK has been the official reference implementation. A few notable components that fall under the OpenJDK project include the Java class library, the Java compiler, the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and the Java virtual machine (JVM). Unlike other JDK release projects, which focused on releasing one feature at a time before terminating, OpenJDK is a long-term, ongoing project. OpenJDK follows a strict, time-based model that is split into development branches and will release new features every six months.

• Pandas Tutorial in Python

  According to the Pandas homepage: pandas is an open source, BSD-licensed library providing high-performance, easy-to-use data structures and data analysis tools for the Python programming language.

  One of the coolest things about Pandas is that it makes reading data from common data formats like CSV, SQL etc. very easy which makes it equally usable in production grade applications or just some demo applications.

• New Course: Learn Data Cleaning with Python and Pandas

• Adjust the boy sprite animation

  Hello, and welcome back, we are almost done coding the player animation mechanism after we have finished the player boundary detection mechanism in the last article but before we can go to the next stage we need to tidy up the player animation mechanism first by introducing the standstill image of the boy when the boy is not moving and that image will either face left or right or up or down based on the direction of the boy at the time he stops moving. In order to achieve this we only need to edit two files.

  The first file we need to edit is the main file where we will include the keyup event so we can set the x different or y different to zero when the boy who is moving in either x or y-direction suddenly stop moving.

As you can see, here you can change the homeserver. The idea of riot as was shared before is to have de-centralized chat services, without foregoing the simplicity that centralized services offer. For those who want to run their own homeservers, you need the new matrix-syanpse 0.99.1.1 reference homeserver.

You can find an unofficial list of matrix homeservers listed here although it’s far from complete.

• Samsung's Android browser gets major updates, OneUI design flair

• Qualcomm QM215 to challenge MediaTek in Android Go market

• Qualcomm's new X55 modem will make 5G phones thinner and more widely available... in 2020

• Qualcomm Testing Budget Chipset For Android Go Phones: Report

• Vivo iQOO Android smartphone to be packed with 44W fast-charging and more

• Xiaomi Mi 9 specs: Snapdragon 855, 20W wireless charging, 48MP camera

• Why Android Go still needs to evolve

• Why Android Enforcement Action Is Potentially Counterproductive and Unlikely to Succeed

• Hands-on: Razer Phone 2 gets Android 9 Pie starting next week, here’s a sneak peek

• Nokia 6 (TA-1003) started receiving the Android 9 Pie update

• Hands-on: YouTube Music on Android Auto offers easy in-car access w/ excellent ‘Recommended’ screen

• You can now use YouTube Music with Android Auto

• How to speed up your Android

• PUBG Mobile 0.11.0 update released (Download Android APK and iOS file)

• Popular Android apps track users and violate Google's policies

• New Android apps to check out this week (FEB 19, 2019)

• [Update: Widely available] Gmail for Android revamped with Google Material Theme

• This new Android phone might last a week on a single charge

• Revealed: quirks and habits that split Android users from iPhone users

• Dark mode in Chrome for Android and WebView will also darken web pages

• Mobile Mentor joins the Android Enterprise Recommended Program for Managed Service Providers

Some people say Linux distributions no longer matter with containers. Alternative approaches, like distroless and scratch containers, seem to be all the rage. It appears we are considering and making technology decisions based more on fashion sense and immediate emotional gratification than thinking through the secondary effects of our choices. We should be asking questions like: How will these choices affect maintenance six months down the road? What are the engineering tradeoffs? How does this paradigm shift affect our build systems at scale?

It's frustrating to watch. If we forget that engineering is a zero-sum game with measurable tradeoffs—advantages and disadvantages, with costs and benefits of different approaches— we do ourselves a disservice, we do our employers a disservice, and we do our colleagues who will eventually maintain our code a disservice. Finally, we do all of the maintainers (hail the maintainers!) a disservice by not appreciating the work they do.

• How to speed up the Rust compiler in 2018

  18 months ago I wrote about some work I did to speed up the Rust compiler (rustc). I’ve recently taken this work up again. Also, in the meantime rustc’s build system has been replaced and its benchmark suite has been overhauled. So it’s a good time for an update.

• TenFourFox FPR13b1 available (now with WebP and AppleScript)

  TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 13 beta 1 is now available (downloads, hashes, release notes). I took a different tack on this release because I still don't have good solutions for the missing JavaScript features currently affecting Citibank, Github and a few other sites, so I've chosen to push out some side projects I've been working on in order not to make this a wasted release. Those features are support for WebP images and support for AppleScript automation.

  WebP images are an up-and-coming format based on the WebM VP8 codec, another way Google will consume the Web from the inside out, but they do have image size advantages and Firefox now supports them in Firefox 65. Google has two demonstration WebP galleries you can use to view some samples, and there are colour-managed examples in the Skia test suite. TenFourFox's WebP support currently can display lossy, lossless, transparent and colour-managed images, and will properly use any embedded colour profile. However, it is not currently AltiVec-accelerated (we do have some AltiVec VP8 code, so this should be possible at some point), and it does not yet support animated WebP images, which will appear blank. For this reason we don't pass an Accept: header indicating we accept WebP images like mainline Firefox and certain other browsers, though we will naturally try to display it if we get one. If you encounter issues related to WebP, you can try setting image.webp.enabled to false, but I'm planning to ship this support in FPR13 final, so it defaults to true.

• Mozilla Future Releases Blog: Keeping Add-Ons Safe for our Users

  We’ve seen many changes in the tech landscape since we launched addons.mozilla.org (AMO) in 2005. A few add-ons have millions of users, while there are many add-ons that have smaller audiences with specific needs. One add-on I really like is AddToAny, which lets me share on social networks. It is similar to a feature we used to have in Firefox that we removed due to lack of use, and I’m sure the 5,000 Firefox users of AddToAny are happy to have it. Unfortunately, the same system that allows privacy and security extensions to work can also make people vulnerable to data mining and malicious activity. While our users love how they can make Firefox theirs, they also look to us to maintain their safety and privacy on the web.

  Now more than ever, we need to deliver on the trust our users place in us and the expectations we place on our users to understand the choices they make with regards to the software they install. In many ways, we’ve mitigated risks by adopting WebExtensions as our means for extending Firefox, but as more and more functionality migrates to the cloud, policing this ecosystem through code review and policy is impractical.

• Millions of Swedish Health Hotline Calls Exposed Online in a Massive Case of Data Breach [Ed: When the state puts back doors in everything, as a matter of law]

  Data breach is becoming quite a nightmare for a lot of people with new breaches coming every now and then. In a recent data breach, millions of calls that were made by the Swedish residents have been exposed online. The Swedes were seeking medical advice through a national health telephone service in order to know more about symptoms and medications.

  According to reports, about 2.7 million conversations amounting to more than 170,000 hours are available online. The data in the conversation is extremely private with people talking about their diseases, symptoms, illness, and giving out their social security numbers. This breach has left the Swedish authorities bewildered as they investigate the whole thing.

  Data of the calls dates back to 2013 and is available for anyone to download and listen. Security expert Mikko Hypponen says that the audio calls were saved as Wav files. These files were left open on an unsecured server. This allowed any person to listen or download the 2.7 million conversations of the Swedish people. No encryption or authentication was required to crack the data making it easily available on the internet.

• How Easy Is It To Spy On Armies Using Social Media? Uh, Very

  Recently, a NATO research group published a study on just how easy it is to target soldiers online and squeeze them for military intelligence. Posing as the enemy, the group was tasked with finding out as much as they could about an upcoming military exercise using nothing more than social media. Posting targeted Facebook ads as bait, they managed to lure dozens of soldiers into fake Facebook groups.

  While impostor accounts squeezed them for info, other researchers simply used Facebook's "Suggest Friends" feature to get information on their entire units. Having their names and details, the group could track them over other social platforms and mine for dirt -- like how one soldier was happily married on Facebook, but single and ready to mingle on several dating apps.

• The Internet of Dongs remains a security dumpster-fire -- UPDATED

  Update: Internet of Dongs has produced its own supplementary assessments that delve into more nuance on these devices, they make a good case that Mozilla's criteria are too coarse to assess smart sex toys.

• Don’t Get Your Valentine an Internet-Connected Sex Toy

  “At the end of the day, this can be serious,” Caltrider says. “These [devices] exist in the world, they're likely to be gifts, and so we wanted to get people to sit back and think, What are the privacy implications?”

• Aadhaar data leak: Gas company Indane leaves data of 6.7mn customers exposed on its website

  The exposed data was brought to notice by a security expert who wants to remain anonymous. French security researcher Robert Baptiste who goes by the Twitter handle Elliot Alderson used a custom-built Python script to scrape this database and was able to customer data for 11,000 dealers. This data included the name and addresses of customers as well as their Aadhaar numbers. According to Baptiste, he was able to get details of 5.7 mn Indane customers before his script was blocked.

• RadeonSI Gets NIR Improvements, Enabled By Default For Civilization VI

  The RadeonSI NIR back-end as an alternative to its longstanding TGSI usage continues to be improved upon as a prerequisite for supporting OpenGL 4.6 with SPIR-V ingestion. A fresh batch of RadeonSI NIR work was merged today, including to enable it by default for one Linux game.

  Several developers landed the latest NIR code into Mesa 19.1 Git on Monday, including Marek Olšák who added a radeonsi_enable_nir option to DriConf for allowing the NIR usage to be flipped on a per-game/per-executable basis. Up to now users had to manually set R600_DEBUG=nir (or now, AMD_DEBUG=nir as the other syntax now supported in recent days with Mesa 19.1). But now with this DriConf option, it can "whitelist" games as needed.

• mesa 19.0.0-rc5

  Hi List,

  Hot off the press is mesa 19.0-rc5. Due to a number of still opened bugs in the
  release tracker this will not be the final release, and I predict at least one
  more release candidate before the final release happens.

  Just an FYI, I will not be working Thursday or Friday this week, so if I don't
  respond to nominations after tommorrow don't be surprised

  Anyway, in the rc5 release we have a little bit of everything, but not too much
  of any one thing:

  - nir
  - radv
  - v3d
  - intel
  - swr
  - anv
  - spirv
  - meson
  - radeonsi

  Dylan

• Mesa 19.0-RC5 Released As The Cycle Drags Into Overtime

  Mesa 19.0-RC5 was issued a short time ago as the latest release candidate for Mesa 19.0. Due to blocker bugs remaining, at least one more release candidate is likely next week before seeing the official release.

  The 19.0 bug tracker still shows more than a half dozen bugs blocking the release. These blocker bugs range from 1~2% performance regressions in Unigine benchmarks with Skylake graphics to other random performance regressions and also some test case failures on the Intel side.

The Nintendo Switch is Nintendo’s latest console/handheld, and it’s doing really well for itself in terms of sales and appeal. It also marks a change in attitude from Nintendo as well, as the device is not only powered by an Nvidia Tegra system-on-chip, but the company even reportedly wanted to employ the now-defunct Cyanogen Inc. to develop their operating system. Since the discovery of the Fusée Gelée vulnerability, Switch modding has really taken off in the community. Users have theorized for a long time now whether it would be possible to port Android to the Switch. After all, Linux has been ported to it and the device uses the Tegra X1 SoC for which there is documentation to refer to. All that’s left is the blood, sweat, and tears of developers interested enough in porting Android. One developer by the name of ByLaws is taking the challenge of turning a Nintendo Switch into an Android tablet.

In order to enable people to set up color management I decided to start with the frontend. In theory you can already get a working setup in Xfce by relying on cupsd (for printers), saned (for scanners) and xiccd (for displays) and handling colord through the colormgr commandline tool.

What we managed at FOSDEM was still pretty rough but I took a few days (read: nights) and polished the dialog so it became more and more user friendly and the final product can be seen in the screenshot above.

It’s been a year since I first started working on zchunk, and I’m excited that we’ve finally managed to get it fully integrated into Fedora’s metadata. I’d like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Daniel Mach, Jaroslav Mracek and the rest of the DNF team for reviewing and merging my (quite invasive) patches, Michael Schroeder for extensive critiques and improvements on the zchunk format, Igor Gnatenko for help early on, and, finally, Neal Gompa for working behind the scenes to keep things moving.

Also: Bodhi 3.13.2 released

• Going Linux #363 · Listener Feedback

  We reveal the new application for our Community. Our listeners commend on Mint, Slint, and print. We receive greetings, gratitude, and Google. Even more.

• Full Circle Magazine: Full Circle Weekly News #122

Solectrix is prepping an “SX Mobile Device Kit” for developing handhelds with Debian and Yocto Linux BSPs, an i.MX8M Mini SoC, an optional 5-inch touchscreen, WiFi, BT, GNSS, and mini-PCIe, and features for prototyping CSI-2 camera sensors.

These days we rarely cover mobile computers, most of which are rugged field-service handhelds that run Android, such as Two Technologies’ N5Print. Yet, Solectrix’s SX Mobile Device Kit (MDK) seemed of particular interest since it’s a development kit with Linux BSPs and NXP’s new i.MX8M Mini SoC.

In addition, a Solectrix GmbH rep informed us that optional features like GbE and USB Type-A host and GbE ports enable the MDK to be used as a general-purpose embedded development board. Purchase options range from buying the 125 x 78mm PCB by itself all the way up to a fully equipped handheld with a 5-inch screen. Yocto Project and Debian Linux BSPs are available, and the board also supports Android 9 Pie.

Also: i.MX8M and Snapdragon 820E SBCs run Linux and Android

• How to Install Cachet Status Page System on Fedora 29

• How to Install PHP 7.3 on Debian 9

• How to unrar a rar file in Linux Mint 19.1

• AWS Sandbox Environments On Demand with Playground

• What is Dnsmasq? (Domain Name System (DNS) forwarder)

• How To Set Up a $40 Printer Server for Virtual Desktops

Call it the Wayback Machine of code: a searchable open archive of software source code across iterations; from buggy beta versions, to sophisticated contemporary release.

Software Heritage is a non-profit initiative developed and hosted by the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation.

Officially created in 2015, the project has been growing over the years. It now spans 5.6 billion source files from more than 88 million projects.

Software Heritage is itself built on open-source code. It gathers source files by trawling through repositories that developers uses to create and share code, such as Github, Gitlab, GoogleCode, Debian, GNU and the Python Package Index, with users able to trace detailed revision history of all the codebase versions that it stores.