• LiveBoot 1.7 adds Android Pie and Magisk support

• Pop quiz: Which Android skin do these features belong to?

• Digital Wellbeing exits beta, available now for Pixel and Android One phones

• Huawei to introduce quad rear camera phones next year, eschew Android One in favor of EMUI

• 55 Android Apps Everyone Should Own

• SHAREit for Android updated with some optimisation and UI enhancements

• Gboard now works in Chrome OS dev channel (v72) with Android 9 Pie support

• Amazon Has Discounted Several Great Android Smartphones for Black Friday 2018 [Limited Time Only]

• Itel A44 Power Android Go smartphone launched in India: Price, specifications, features

• Asus Zenfone 5Z to receive Android Pie update in January 2019

• Reduce Android battery drain on Wi-Fi

• Unlocking the bootloader no longer breaks the camera on Sony Xperia devices running Android Pie

• Realme 2 Pro OTA Update With Front Camera Optimisation, November Android Security Patch to Roll Out This Week

• Instagram Is Down & Won't Load for iPhone & Android Users

• Black Friday brings a $100 price drop to the OnePlus 6

• Nubia Red Magic 2 gets spotted on Geekbench with Android 9 Pie and Snapdragon 845

• These paid Android icon packs are free for a limited time, grab them now!

• Google’s ADT-2 Android TV dongle will arrive in the ‘coming weeks’ for developers

• Google rolls out Digital Wellbeing tools for Android

• Final Android Pie Emulator for Wear OS lets you test your app on the new design

Hardkernel launched its Odroid-H2 SBC starting at $111 without RAM or flash. The open spec SBC runs Ubuntu 18.10 on Intel Gemini Lake, and offers 2x SATA 3.0, 2x GbE, HDMI and DP, 4x USB, and an M.2 slot for NVMe.

Last month when Hardkernel announced its Intel Gemini Lake based Odroid-H2 SBC with an estimated price of “higher than $100,” we predicted it would be closer to a $150 price. The world’s first open-sepc Gemini Lake hacker board is now on sale for $111, but that’s without RAM (up to 32GB) or eMMC.

Usually, when I get review hardware in, it's not a big deal. It's like working in a candy shop. At first, it seems great ("All the candy I can eat!"). Then, you quickly get sick of dealing with the extra equipment.

But, every now and again, I get a really fine machine, like Dell's latest XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop. And I get excited again.

• How Software Is Helping Big Companies Dominate

  Antitrust deserves the attention it’s getting, and the tech platforms raise important questions. But the rise of big companies — and the resulting concentration of industries, profits, and wages — goes well beyond tech firms and is about far more than antitrust policy.

  In fact, research suggests that big firms are dominating through their use of software. In 2011, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared that “software is eating the world.” Its appetizer seems to have been smaller companies.

  [...]

  This model, where proprietary software pairs with other strengths to form competitive advantage, is only becoming more common. Years ago, one of us (James) started a company that sold publishing software. The business model was to write the software and then sell licenses to publishers. That model still exists, including in online publishing where companies like Automattic, maker of the open source content management system WordPress, sell hosting and related services to publishers. One-off licenses have given way to monthly software-as-a-service subscriptions, but this model still fits with Carr’s original thesis: software companies make technology that other companies pay for, but from which they seldom derive unique advantage.

  That’s not how Vox Media does it. Vox is a digital publishing company known, in part, for its proprietary content management system. Vox does license its software to some other companies (so far, mostly non-competitors), but it is itself a publisher. Its primary business model is to create content and sell ads. It pairs proprietary publishing software with quality editorial to create competitive advantage.

  Venture capitalist Chris Dixon has called this approach the “full-stack startup.” “The old approach startups took was to sell or license their new technology to incumbents,” says Dixon. “The new, ‘full stack’ approach is to build a complete, end-to-end product or service that bypasses incumbents and other competitors.” Vox is one example of the full-stack model.

  The switch from the software vendor model to the full-stack model is seen in government statistics. Since 1998, the share of firm spending on software that goes to pre-packaged software (the vendor model) has been declining. Over 70% of the firms’ software budgets goes to code developed in-house or under custom contracts. And the amount they spend on proprietary software is huge — $250 billion in 2016, nearly as much as they invested in physical capital net of depreciation.

• Metsä Wood - Open Source Wood Winner: ClipHut Structural Building System

• Shutting the open sauce bottle

  While open source software has revolutionised the enterprise software world, a few people are starting to wonder if its very nature will survive the age of the cloud.

  The concept that software can be used by pretty much anyone for pretty much anything is causing its developers big problems in the era of distributed cloud computing services.

  Two open-source software companies have decided to alter the licences under which some of their software is distributed, with the expressed intent of making it harder -- or impossible -- for cloud computing providers to offer a service based around that software.

• How do we handle and use such enormous amounts of data?

  How many gigabytes of data did we (the people of Earth) create yesterday?

  ...brain. is. thinking...

  More than 2.5 billion!

  And it's growing. Yes, it's hard for us to wrap our human brains around it. So, the question the Command Line Heros podcast deals with this week is: How do we handle and use such enormous amounts of data?

• Security updates for Tuesday

• Sorry, Linux. Kubernetes is now the OS that matters [Ed: Mac Asay does't know what an operating system is. This is what happens when people with a law degree write about technology. And he trolls Linux for clicks.]

• Clear Linux Making Progress With Encrypted Installations

  One of the features I've personally been looking forward to is the official support for encrypted installations with Clear Linux. While many don't view it as a particular desktop distribution, it does have all of the packages I personally need for my main production system. So I've been wanting to see how well it could work out as my main desktop OS and to chronicle that experience. Having official support for encrypted installations has been one of the last blockers for my requirements. You can currently setup Clear on an encrypted installation manually, but for simplicity and wanting to keep to the "official" installation routes, I've been waiting for them to officially support encrypted installs... Especially in this day and age, anyone installing a desktop Linux distribution particularly on a mobile/laptop/ultrabook should really be doing a full-disk encryption.

• The Linux Throwie: A Non-Spacefaring Satellite

  Throwies occupy a special place in hardware culture — a coin cell battery, LED, and a magnet that can be thrown into an inaccessible place and stick there as a little beacon of colored light. Many of us will fondly remember this as a first project. Alas, time marches inevitably on, and launching cheerful lights no longer teaches me new skills. With a nod to those simpler times, I’ve been working on the unusual idea of building a fully functional server that can be left in remote places and remain functional, like a throwie (please don’t actually throw it). It’s a little kooky, yet should still deliver a few years of occasional remote access if you leave it somewhere with sunlight.

• OnePlus To Launch 5G Phone In 2019; $100 Costlier Than OnePlus 6T

• OnePlus Releases OxygenOS Open Beta 7, OnePlus Roaming Launched

  Chinese company OnePlus has released the new OxygenOS Open Beta 7 for its OnePlus 6 smartphone, which has introduced several updates and features.

• Give your students edit access to their course syllabus

  I wanted to give students more agency in their learning. So I let them make pull requests against the syllabus.

  [...]

  This exercise was a learning experience for both my students and me, as we clearly had different visions of what constituted a "disruption." While we all agreed that students should pay attention to the instructor and engage in all classroom activities, students thought they should be able to take "important" calls during class time and that texting during class was acceptable. I thought that cell phones should be turned off entirely during class. Students also thought that leaving the classroom to get a drink without asking permission was acceptable, while I thought that they should handle thirst needs before or after class.

  This resulted in a discussion about professionalism and the expectations associated with college-level work. We discussed what constituted a distraction and agreed that making sounds, whispering, and talking in class all counted as distractions. This in turn led to a discussion of the impacts distractions can have on a learning environment and the importance of paying attention in class. We also explored the impact various learning technologies can have on a classroom—for example, the tools students with disabilities require to fully participate in class, such as a screen reader—and agreed that noise generated by these was acceptable under the policy we intended to construct.

• Open source tools to consider for your RESTful APIs

  At the start of a RESTful API development project, a software team might be tempted to buy an expensive commercial API management tool when an open source tool can just as easily do the trick. In fact, there are plenty of open source tools that can help with each stage of the API lifecycle and help get an API development program off the ground at low cost.

• London Perl Workshop

  As london.pm celebrates its 20th anniversary, join Katherine Spice in conversation with a panel of the group's former leaders.

• GNOME at Capitole du Libre 2018

  Last Saturday and Sunday I went to the Capitole du Libre 2018 to animate the GNOME booth and help on the Purism one.

• Find Out the Visa Requirements to Attend oSC19

  For people planning on attending the openSUSE Conference 2019 in Nuremberg, Germany, from May 24 – 26, there are certain requirements necessary to receive a visa for those who are not a citizen of a Schengen country.

• IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat gives them access to crown jewels: OpenShift and Ansible

  Business opportunities today rarely involve IBM Corp. software, says Kyle Bassett, with only a few IBM-loyal customers using BlueMix requiring his company’s services. But after the largest software acquisition to date, Bassett, partner at Arctiq: Intelligent Solutions, expects that to change.

  [...]

  While Bassett is unsure what IBM’s strategy is going to be moving forward – although Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat, has suggested Red Hat will remain a distinct unit in IBM – what is certain is that Big Blue now has access to Red Hat’s “crown jewels.”

  “Now they’re going to have their hands on OpenShift and Ansible,” says Bassett. “They’ve acquired the maturity around kubernetes and they might be able to turn that around into some type of service offering.”

• Containers without daemons: Podman and Buildah available in RHEL 7.6 and RHEL 8 Beta

• Support Lifecycle for Clang/LLVM, Go, and Rust

The Humble Jumbo Bundle 12 is another bundled rammed full of good games, some of which have a native Linux version.

• Software Composition Analysis Startups: Investors Are Looking For These Three Qualities

  It is clear that enterprises and investors are looking for ways to be heavily integrated into the open-source ecosystem because that is where the developers are. It is up to you to show that your company can appeal to the developers who use open source as the core of their work, gaining significant adoption that can turn into sizable market share. Investors want to know that they are getting into business with a company who has the pulse of the open-source community, providing services that will make working with open-source components easier.

• MicroBlocks Joins Conservancy

  We're proud to announce that we're bringing MicroBlocks into the Conservancy as our newest member project. MicroBlocks provides a quick way for new programmers to jump right in using "blocks" to make toys or tools. People have been proclaiming that IoT is the future for almost a decade, so we're very pleased to be able to support a human-friendly project that makes it really easy to get started building embedded stuff. Curious? Check out a few of the neat things people have already built with MicroBlocks.

  MicroBlocks is the next in a long line of open projects for beginners or "casual programmers" lead by John Maloney, one of the creators of Squeak (also a Conservancy project!) and a longtime Scratch contributor. MicroBlocks is a new programming language that runs right inside microcontroller boards such as the micro:bit, the NodeMCU and many Arduino boards. The versatility and interactivity of MicroBlocks helps users build their own custom tools for everything from wearables to model rockets or custom measuring devices and funky synthesizers.

• $90K Year-end Match to Fund an Ambitious Year for Conservancy

The world of open source software, and Linux/GNU in particular, is a strange one, governed by internal politics and beliefs. Now frustration seems to have the better of the Linux developers who are now considering creating their own Linux call library.

• Decentralizing Social Interactions with ActivityPub

  Hi, I’m Darius Kazemi. I’m a Mozilla Fellow and decentralized web enthusiast. In the last year I’ve become really excited about ActivityPub, a W3C standard protocol that describes ways for different social network sites (loosely defined) to talk to and interact with one another. You might remember the heyday of RSS, when a user could subscribe to almost any content feed in the world from any number of independently developed feed readers. ActivityPub aims to do for social network interactions what RSS did for content.

• DSP-Boosted Neural Speech Synthesis

  LPCNet is a new project out of Mozilla’s Emerging Technologies group — an efficient neural speech synthesiser with reduced complexity over some of its predecessors. Neural speech synthesis models like WaveNet have already demonstrated impressive speech synthesis quality, but their computational complexity has made them hard to use in real-time, especially on phones. In a similar fashion to the RNNoise project, our solution with LPCNet is to use a combination of deep learning and digital signal processing (DSP) techniques.

• Mozilla files comments on NTIA’s proposed American privacy framework

  Countries around the world are considering how to protect their citizens’ data – but there continues to be a lack of comprehensive privacy protections for American internet users. But that could change. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently proposed an outcome-based framework to consumer data privacy, reflecting internationally accepted principles for privacy and data protection. Mozilla believes that the NTIA framework represents a good start to address many of these challenges, and we offered our thoughts to help Americans realize the same protections enjoyed by users in other countries around the world (you can see all the comments that were received at the NTIA’s website).

• Home Assistant: The Python Approach to Home Automation

  A number of home automation platforms support Python as an extension, but if you’re a real Python fiend, you’ll probably want Home Assistant, which places the programming language front and center. Paulus Schoutsen created Home Assistant in 2013 “as a simple script to turn on the lights when the sun was setting,” as he told attendees of his recent Embedded Linux Conference and Open IoT conference presentation. (You can watch the complete video below.)

  Schoutsen, who works as a senior software engineer for AppFolio in San Diego, has attracted 20 active contributors to the project. Home Assistant is now fairly mature, with updates every two weeks and support for more than 240 different smart devices and services. The open source (MIT license) software runs on anything that can run Python 3, from desktop PCs to a Raspberry Pi, and counts thousands of users around the world.

  Like most automation systems, Home Assistant offers mobile and desktop browser clients to control smart home devices from afar. It differs from most commercial offerings, however, in that it has no hub appliance, which means there are no built-in radios. You can add the precisely those radios you want, however, using USB sticks. There’s also no cloud component, but Schoutsen argues that any functionality you might sacrifice because of this is more than matched by better security, privacy, and resiliency.

  “There is no dependency on a cloud provider,” said Schoutsen. “Even when the Internet goes down, the home doesn’t shut down, and your very private data stays in your home.”

  Schoutsen did not offer much of a promo in his presentation, but quickly set to work explaining how the platform works. Since Home Assistant is not radically different from other IoT frameworks -- one reason why it interfaces easily with platforms ranging from Nest to Arduino to Kodi -- the presentation is a useful introduction to IoT concepts.

  To get a better sense of Home Assistant’s strengths, I recently asked Schoutsen for his elevator pitch. He highlighted the free, open source nature of the software, as well as the privacy and security of a local solution. He also noted the ease of setup and discovery, and the strength of the underlying Python language.

Linux file-systems continue getting better along with the infrastructure around it in the VFS and block code, but still there are some pain points for both users and developers around Linux storage.

Steven French who is a Samba developer and the kernel CIFS VFS maintainer while serving as Microsoft's principal software engineer on Azure storage, presented at last week's Linux Plumbers Conference 2018 on some of the recent file-system/VFS improvements as well as current pain points.

• Behind the drone: how aerial robotics solve industrial IOT challenges

  Apellix, an emerging leader in the field of aerial robotics, are creating innovative industrial solutions with the help of Ubuntu.

  The development of aerial robotic systems to carry out tasks at height has taken the responsibility of dangerous activity away from human workers. With 150 workers dying everyday in the USA as a result of hazardous working conditions, there is a clear need for improved occupational safety practices. Of these deaths, 849 came as a result of falling whilst on the job, a figure that Apellix endeavours to reduce. Not only are the benefits significant from a workplace safety perspective, Apellix systems provide a cost-effective and time saving solution to such tasks.

  None of this however, would be possible without software. Software is allowing the industrial world to move from analog to digital and Apellix aerial robotic systems are at the forefront of innovation.

  Ubuntu enables Apellix’s aerial robotics to conduct autonomous flights without the assistance of human navigation, eliminating the risk of human error or danger which can occur with pilot operated drones. To achieve this, each aerial robot is fitted with several sensors which are constantly processing data through an Ubuntu server. The data, once processed is then sent to the autopilot electronics systems to precisely locate and control the drone in a 3D space.

• Costales: Ubuntu Community Appreciation Day: Thanks Rudy (~cm-t)!

  Today is the Ubuntu Appreciation Day in which we share our thanks to people in our community for making Ubuntu great.

  This year, I want to thank you to Rudy (~cm-t)! Why? Because IMHO he is an incredible activist, helpful, funny, always with a smile. He prints passion in everything related to Ubuntu. A perfect example for everyone!

• One Mix 2S Yoga mini laptop running Ubuntu 18.04

  If you are interested in learning more about running the latest Ubuntu 18.04 Linux operating system on the new One Mix 2S Yoga mini laptop. You’ll be pleased to know that Brad Linder from the Liliputing website has created an in-depth run-through complete with video revealing what you can expect from the operating system and performance of the mini laptop.

• Hitting a Break Point

  I am seeking support to be able to undertake freelance work. The first project would be to finally close out the Outernet/Othernet research work to get it submitted. Beyond that there would be technical writing as well as making creative works. Some of that would involve creating “digital library” collections but also helping others create print works instead.

  Who could I help/serve? Unfortunately we have plenty of small, underfunded groups in my town. The American Red Cross no longer maintains a local office and the Salvation Army has no staff presence locally. Our county-owned airport verges on financial collapse and multiple units of government have difficulty staying solvent. There are plenty of needs to cover as long as someone had independent financial backing.

  Besides, I owe some edits of Xubuntu documentation too.

  It isn’t like “going on disability” as it is called in American parlance is immediate let alone simple. One of two sets of paperwork has to eventually go into a cave in Pennsylvania for centralized processing. I wish I were kidding but that cave is located near Slippery Rock. Both processes are backlogged only 12-18 months at last report. For making a change in the short term, that doesn’t even exist as an option on the table.

  That’s why I’m asking for support. I’ve grown tired of spending multiple days at work depressed. Showing physical symptoms of depression in the workplace isn’t good either especially when it results in me missing work. When you can’t help people who are in the throes of despair frequently by their own fault, how much more futile can it get?

• An Update On The Radeon RX 590 For Linux

  Last week AMD released the Radeon RX 590 Polaris refresh graphics card, but after buying this ~$279 USD graphics card, sadly it's not yet out-of-the-box on Linux for driver support. I am still working on getting it working with the open-source driver stack but have a brief update to share.

  As shared last week, when trying various stable/development combinations when receiving the Sapphire Radeon RX 590, the display output doesn't work upon loading of the AMDGPU Direct Rendering Manager driver.

• NVIDIA 415.18 Linux Driver Released: Adds HardDPMS, Fixes Wine Bug & Much More

  This builds succeeds the recent 415.13 Linux beta. That earlier release had a fix for a possible Wine crash, a new HardDPMS configuration option (causing displays to be put to sleep using a mode-set rather than Display Power Management Signaling), Vulkan and OpenGL fixes, and X.Org Server fixes too.

  Today's NVIDIA 415.18 stable driver release incorporates those changes as well as some other extra fixes, including an indicator for the PRIME synchronization state via NVIDIA Settings.

• AMDVLK 2018.4.2 Open-Source Vulkan Driver Brings Sparse Support, Degenerate Triangles

  It appears AMD is stepping up their game around the open-source AMDVLK Vulkan Linux driver with moving to tagged releases and better release notes.

  One year after they began pushing out the sources to AMDVLK, which is based upon their internal Linux/Windows Vulkan driver code, they did their first tagged release last week in the form of AMDVLK 2018.4.1. Out today is AMDVLK 2018.4.2.

• Phoronix Test Suite 8.4 M3 Brings Improvements For POWER9, Colorful Text Graphs

  The third and possibly final development release of the upcoming Phoronix Test Suite 8.4-Skiptvet is now available for testing of our open-source, cross-platform testing and benchmarking framework.

• Install MPV 0.29.1 on Ubuntu 18.10, Ubuntu 18.04 And Earlier Versions

• Install FFmpeg 4.0.3 on Ubuntu 18.04

• How To Install qBittorrent 4.1.4 on Ubuntu 18.04

• Install SMPlayer 18.10 on Ubuntu 18.10 and older versions of Ubuntu

• Nvidiux: Nvidia GPU Overclocking And Underclocking Software For Linux (GUI)

• Linux file Command Tutorial for Beginners (5 Examples)

• How To Install and Secure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• How To Install Darktable 2.4.4 on Ubuntu 18.04

• Learn Node.js, Unit 3: A tour of Node.js

• Krita Fall 2018 Sprint Results: HDR support for Krita and Qt!

  In October we held a Krita developers' sprint in Deventer. One of my goals for the sprint was to start implementing High Dynamic Range (HDR) display support for Krita. Now almost a month have passed and I am finally ready to publish some preliminary results of what I started during the sprint.

  The funny thing is, before the sprint I had never seen what HDR picture even looks like! People around talked about that, shops listed displays with HDR support, documentation mentioned that, but what all this buzz was about? My original understanding was like "Krita passes 16-bit color to OpenGL, so we should already be ready for that". In Deventer I managed to play with Boud's display, which is basically one of few certified HDR displays with support of 1000 nits brightness, and found out that my original understanding was entirely wrong

• KDAB Training at Qt World Summit Berlin

  KDAB is offering eight superb Training Classes in Berlin, you can see the list below, which includes one run by our long-term collaborator, froglogic. All the rest are delivered by KDAB engineers.

• Kdenlive Bugsquashing Day

  On the 2nd of December, the Kdenlive team will be having a bug squash day in preparation for the major refactoring release due in April 2019. This is a great opportunity for interested developers to participate in the project. The team has triaged hundreds of reports, closing more than a hundred of them in the past month. We have also made a list of entry level bugs you can get started with. For the more seasoned developers, there are plenty of options – be it a shiny feature request or a challenge to polish some non-trivial edges. To hack Kdenlive you need to know C++, Qt, QML or KDE Frameworks. Those with knowledge of C can join the fun by improving MLT, the multimedia framework Kdenlive runs on. Those with no programming experience can join in testing fixes and features, as well as triaging more bug reports.

• Spectre Mitigation Causing Significant Slowdown in 4.20 Kernel, Shadow of the Tomb Raider Coming to Linux in 2019, Kdenlive Bug-Squashing Day December 2, Diskio Pi Kickstarter Campaign and Phones to Receive Android Pie

  Kdenlive is holding a bug-squashing day on December 2, 2018 in preparation for an April 2019 major release. A list of proposed bugs to solve is available here. Contact Kdenlive via IRC: #kdenlive on Freenode.

• Total War: WARHAMMER II Is Out Now on Linux and Mac, Ported by Feral Interactive

  The UK-based video games publisher Feral Interactive announced today the availability of the Total War: WARHAMMER II turn-based strategy and real-time tactics on Linux and Mac platforms.

  Developed by Creative Assembly and published by SEGA, Total War: WARHAMMER II was announced on September 28, 2017, only for Microsoft Windows platforms, as the sequel of the Total War: WARHAMMER video game released in 2016. The game is set in Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy universe of colossal proportions.

  "Choose from four iconic Races from the world of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and mount a campaign of conquest to save or destroy the New World," said Feral Interactive. "Enjoy hundreds of hours of sophisticated gameplay with a combination of turn-based strategy on the campaign map and immense real-time clashes on the battlefield."

• Total War: WARHAMMER II released for Linux, port from Feral Interactive

  Originally developed by Creative Assembly and published by SEGA, Total War: WARHAMMER II is another Linux port from Feral Interactive. Arriving on Linux a little over a year after the Windows release, it's another game to use the Vulkan API on Linux.

• Total War: WARHAMMER II Now Available For Linux Gamers, Powered By Vulkan

  Feral Interactive just lit up the Linux build of Total War: WARHAMMER II on Steam.

• Another Pixel 3 bug: Camera encountering 'fatal error' in third-party apps

• How to Create Automated Daily Routines on Your Android

• 9to5Google Gift Guide: The five best smartwatches to go with a new Android phone

• Digital Wellbeing for Android 9 Pie exits beta, available on Google Pixel and Android One

• Police arrest alleged Russian hacker behind huge Android ad scam

• Configure GIMP 2.10 To Use Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts (How-To)

• How to Get Boot Time and Uptime on Ubuntu

• How To Change GDM Login Screen Background In Ubuntu

• What's New in Bash Parameter Expansion

DragonFlyBSD developer Justin Sherrill has shared that DragonFlyBSD 5.4 release preparations will begin soon.

The preparations are going to begin this coming weekend, which is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US.

Also: OpenBSD Community reaches Iridium in 2018!