• Android Q: Everything we know so far about Google’s next mobile OS

• Qualcomm is testing QM215 chipset for Android Go phones

• Nokia 6 (2017) gets Android 9 Pie as HMD keeps its 2-year update promise

• Samsung Galaxy S10 is the first non-Pixel/Android One device to ship with Google’s Digital Wellbeing

• Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e hands-on: A solid Android tablet with almost zero real competitors [Video]

• Android leads the way in business but security concerns remain

• Here’s how to undo an Android app update if you’re not ready for the new version

• Developer happiness: What you need to know

  A person needs the right tools for the job. There's nothing as frustrating as getting halfway through a car repair, for instance, only to discover you don't have the specialized tool you need to complete the job. The same concept applies to developers: you need the tools to do what you are best at, without disrupting your workflow with compliance and security needs, so you can produce code faster.

  Over half—51%, to be specific—of developers spend only one to four hours each day programming, according to ActiveState's recent Developer Survey 2018: Open Source Runtime Pains. In other words, the majority of developers spend less than half of their time coding. According to the survey, 50% of developers say security is one of their biggest concerns, but 67% of developers choose not to add a new language when coding because of the difficulties related to corporate policies.

• Rblpapi 0.3.8: Keeping CRAN happy

  A minimal maintenance release of Rblpapi, now at version 0.3.9, arrived on CRAN earlier today. Rblpapi provides a direct interface between R and the Bloomberg Terminal via the C++ API provided by Bloomberg (but note that a valid Bloomberg license and installation is required).

  This is the ninth release since the package first appeared on CRAN in 2016. It accomodates a request by CRAN / R Core to cope with staged installs which will be a new feature of R 3.6.0. No other changes were made (besides updating a now-stale URL at Bloomberg in a few spots and other miniscule maintenance). However, a few other changes have been piling up at the GitHub repo so feel free to try that version too.

• Episode #200: Escaping Excel Hell with Python and Pandas

• Testing native ES modules using Mocha and esm.

• A reminder about Steam's platform-specific wishlist feature you should be using

  Why is it important? Well, we speak to a huge amount of game developers and a very common issue we've come across since this was implemented was a very low volume of wishlists from Linux.

• Devil Engine, a seriously good looking shoot 'em up is coming to Linux

  I spoke to the developer of Devil Engine, a brand new shoot 'em up that looks ridiculously good and they confirmed to me it's coming to Linux.

  After searching over new games on Steam, to see if anything not currently on Linux took my interest I came across Devil Engine last night. I decided to shoot a quick email to the developer about Linux support, they replied to mention that "Yes, it's in the works." (quoted with permission)—awesome!

• City Game Studio is another sim that has you run your own games company, developed on Linux

  City Game Studio from Binogure Studio will have you run your own game development company, this one was actually developed on Linux using Godot Engine and other FOSS tools.

• Headliner: NoviNews, a game where you control the news adds experimental Linux support

  This is fun news to start the day with, Unbound Creations have added experimental Linux support to Headliner: NoviNews.

• NBlood, an open source port of the classic FPS 'Blood' using EDuke32

  Based on the EDuke32 game engine, NBlood is a new open source port of the classic FPS Blood. From what Voidpoint said on Twitter, it's using their version of the game engine too.

  While there's a new remaster of Blood coming from Nightdive Studios, which hasn't yet been confirmed for Linux (so we've not mentioned it) it's good to see the classics still being updated for other platforms (and getting newer features).

• Sci-fi puzzle horror 'The Subject' officially adds Linux support

  Today, DarkStone Digital have added Linux support to their rather good and scary looking sci-fi puzzle horror game The Subject.

  DarkStone Digital is actually made up of a single developer, Brian Clarke, who previously worked for different AAA studios as "an artist in leadership and director positions".

• Sudden Strike 4 releases an update with free bonus missions, plus a new Pacific War DLC

  Showing some good post-release support, Kite Games and Kalypso Media Digital have pushed out a free content update and a new DLC for the strategy game Sudden Strike 4 today.

• Melbourne Heart Group hit by Windows ransomware

  The Melbourne Heart Group, a medical unit located at Cabrini Hospital in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern, has been hit by a Windows ransomware attack that has resulted in about 15,000 patients being locked.

• Crime syndicate hacks 15,000 medical files at Cabrini Hospital, demands ransom

  Melbourne Heart Group, which is based at the private hospital in Malvern, has been unable to access some patient files for more than three weeks, after the malware attack crippled its server and corrupted data.

• Venezuela’s Government Appears To Be Trying to Hack Activists With Phishing Pages

  The IP address of the fake site was hosting several domains designed to phish usernames and passwords for Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft Live, Linkedin, and Apple’s iCloud, among other sites, according to public data collected by PassiveTotal and other internet monitoring services reviewed by Motherboard.

• An introduction to spatial joins with QGIS

• Basic dig Command Usage with Examples

• How to Check Weather From your Ubuntu System

• How to Install FreeIPA Client on CentOS 7

• How to Install MediaWiki on CentOS 7

• How to Install Python 3.7.2 in Ubuntu 18.04 / 18.10

• Using the NetworkManager’s DNSMasq plugin

• How to use Kiwi TCMS plugins, Pt. 1

• GCC 8.3 Released

  The GNU Compiler Collection version 8.3 has been released.

  GCC 8.3 is a bug-fix release from the GCC 8 branch
  containing important fixes for regressions and serious bugs in
  GCC 8.2 with more than 153 bugs fixed since the previous release.
  This release is available from the FTP servers listed at:

  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

  Please do not contact me directly regarding questions or comments
  about this release. Instead, use the resources available from
  http://gcc.gnu.org.

  As always, a vast number of people contributed to this GCC release
  -- far too many to thank them individually!

• GCC 8.3 Released With 153 Bug Fixes

  While the GCC 9 stable compiler release is a few weeks away in the form of GCC 9.1, the GNU Compiler Collection is up to version 8.3.0 today as their newest point release to last year's GCC 8 series.

• GCC 9 Compiler Picks Up Official Support For The Arm Neoverse N1 + E1

  Earlier this week Arm announced their next-generation Neoverse N1 and E1 platforms with big performance potential and power efficiency improvements over current generation Cortex-A72 processor cores. The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) ahead of the upcoming GCC9 release has picked up support for the Neoverse N1/E1.

  This newly-added Neoverse N1 and E1 CPU support for GCC9 isn't all that surprising even with the very short time since announcement and GCC9 being nearly out the door... Arm developers had already been working on (and landed) the Arm "Ares" CPU support, which is the codename for what is now the Neoverse platform.

• Android Enterprise Recommended adds MSPs as Google Cloud plans to acquire Alooma

• Google Contacts for Android updated with Material Theme account switcher

• Google shutting down Google Fit on the web, focussing on Android and Wear OS

• Fake Google reCAPTCHA used to hide Android banking malware

• New and updated apps in Google Play will need to support Android 9 Pie by the end of 2019

• Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ stable Android Pie update now rolling in Northern Europe

• Sony Xperia XA2, XA2 Ultra get Android Pie, but the update is bricking some units

• Redmi Note 6 Pro, Redmi Note 5 Pro, Redmi Y2 Android Pie-based MIUI 10 beta update is coming on March 19th

• Android Pie-based MIUI 10 beta update coming soon for these Xiaomi smartphones

• Xiaomi Mi Max 3 and Mi 8 Lite stable Android Pie update is now rolling out

• Xiaomi Mi 9 goes official with Snapdragon 855 and 48MP camera for just $445

• Android 9 Pie is rolling out to the Nokia 2.1 budget smartphone

• [Update: New renders and rumors] Nokia 9 PureView and another device might be announced at MWC

• DxOMark: Galaxy S10 Plus is the best overall smartphone shooter

• What are Android Go apps?

• Nike's $350 self-lacing sneaker is having an Android problem

We have reached a point in time where most every computer user depends upon the cloud … even if only as a storage solution. What makes the cloud really important to users, is when it’s employed as a backup. Why is that such a game changer? By backing up to the cloud, you have access to those files, from any computer you have associated with your cloud account. And because Linux powers the cloud, many services offer Linux tools.

Let’s take a look at five such tools. I will focus on GUI tools, because they offer a much lower barrier to entry to many of the CLI tools. I’ll also be focusing on various, consumer-grade cloud services (e.g., Google Drive, Dropbox, Wasabi, and pCloud). And, I will be demonstrating on the Elementary OS platform, but all of the tools listed will function on most Linux desktop distributions.

Arrow unveiled a 96Boards CE Extended “Avenger96” SBC with a compute module that runs Linux on ST’s Cortex -A7/M4 hybrid STM32MP1 SoC. The SBC has 1GB RAM, 8GB eMMC, GbE, WiFi/BT, and 3x USB ports.

Arrow and manufacturing partner DH Electronics are collaborating on a sandwich-style 96Boards CE Extended SBC with a computer-on-module based on STMicroelectronics’ newly announced STM32MP SoC. Details on the Avenger96 SBC are sketchy and partially revealed via EENews Europe and Electronics Weekly posts.

• The European Patent Office Goes Down a Very Slippery Slope by Promoting and Defending Patents on Life/Nature in Defiance of Parliament and the EPC
• Software Patents Are in a Freefall in Courts Worldwide, But the EPO Keeps Granting and Promoting These
• Team UPC Excited Over Nothing, President Campinos Rarely Even Mentions UPC Anymore
• Battistelli’s Bodyguard Has Been Arrested, But Battistelli Should Join Him
• Links 22/2/2019: GNOME 3.32 Beta 2 Released and Fedora 30 Flicker-Free Boot

Q4OS is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian. It imitates the look and feel of Windows. Read the complete review to know more about Q4OS Linux.

• Android users can now disable Facebook from secretly collecting their location data

• Rumors: Nokia 3.2 (4.2?) TA-1157 gets WiFi certification, running Android 9 Pie

• Nokia 2.1 with 1 GB RAM gets Android Pie Go

• Xiaomi to start beta testing Android Pie update for Redmi Note 5 Pro, Redmi Note 6 Pro and Redmi Y2

• Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 is getting an Android Pie beta in India

• Samsung’s Galaxy S10 will come with Google’s Digital Wellbeing out of the box

• Nike's $350 self-lacing sneaker is having an Android problem

• Google introduces Android Enterprise Recommended for Managed Service Providers

• One developer is attempting to bring Android to the Nintendo Switch

• How to install Android widgets on a Chromebook

• LG’s latest budget Android phones have Google Assistant buttons and small notches

• 10 Best Video Editors for Android

• Clear Linux Has A Goal To Get 3x More Upstream Components In Their Distro

  For those concerned that running Clear Linux means less available packages/bundles than the likes of Debian, Arch Linux, and Fedora with their immense collection of packaged software, Clear has a goal this year of increasing their upstream components available on the distribution by three times.

  Intel Fellow Arjan van de Ven provided an update on their bundling state/changes for the distribution. In this update he shared that the Clear Linux team at Intel established a goal this year to have "three times more upstream components in the distro. That's a steep growth, and we want to do that with some basic direction and without reducing quality/etc. We have some folks figuring out what things are the most desired that we lack, so we can add those with most priority... but this is where again we more than welcome feedback."

• The results from our past three Linux distro polls

  You might think this annual poll would be fairly similar from year to year, from what distros we list to how people answer, but the results are wildly different from year to year.
  (At the time of the creation of each poll, we pull the top 15 distributions according to DistroWatch over the past 12 months.)

  Last year, the total votes tallied in at 15,574! And the winner was PCLinuxOS with Ubuntu a close second. Another interesting point is that in 2018, there were 950 votes for "other" and 122 comments compared to this year with only 367 votes for "other" and 69 comments.

• Fedora Strategy FAQ Part 3: What does this mean for Fedora releases?

  Fedora operating system releases are (largely) time-based activity where a new base operating system (kernel, libraries, compilers) is built and tested against our Editions for functionality. This provides a new source for solutions to be built on. The base operating systems may continue to be maintained on the current 13 month life cycle — or services that extend that period may be provided in the future. A solution is never obligated to build against all currently maintained bases.

• How open data and tools can save lives during a disaster

  If you've lived through a major, natural disaster, you know that during the first few days you'll probably have to rely on a mental map, instead of using a smartphone as an extension of your brain. Where's the closest hospital with disaster care? What about shelters? Gas stations? And how many soft story buildings—with their propensity to collapse—will you have to zig-zag around to get there?

  Trying to answer these questions after moving back to earthquake-prone San Francisco is why I started the Resiliency Maps project. The idea is to store information about assets, resources, and hazards in a given geographical area in a map that you can download and print out. The project contributes to and is powered by OpenStreetMap (OSM), and the project's entire toolkit is open source, ensuring that the maps will be available to anyone who wants to use them.

• Millions of websites threatened by highly critical code-execution bug in Drupal

  Drupal is the third most-widely used CMS behind WordPress and Joomla. With an estimated 3 percent to 4 percent of the world's billion-plus websites, that means Drupal runs tens of millions of sites. Critical flaws in any CMS are popular with hackers, because the vulnerabilities can be unleashed against large numbers of sites with a single, often-easy-to-write script.

• Avoiding the coming IoT dystopia

  Bradley Kuhn works for the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and part of what that organization does is to think about the problems that software freedom may encounter in the future. SFC worries about what will happen with the four freedoms as things change in the world. One of those changes is already upon us: the Internet of Things (IoT) has become quite popular, but it has many dangers, he said. Copyleft can help; his talk is meant to show how.

  It is still an open question in his mind whether the IoT is beneficial or not. But the "deep trouble" that we are in from IoT can be mitigated to some extent by copyleft licenses that are "regularly and fairly enforced". Copyleft is not the solution to all of the problems, all of the time—no idea, no matter how great, can be—but it can help with the dangers of IoT. That is what he hoped to convince attendees with his talk.

  A joke that he had seen at least three times at the conference (and certainly before that as well) is that the "S" in IoT stands for security. As everyone knows by now, the IoT is not about security. He pointed to some recent incidents, including IoT baby monitors that were compromised by attackers in order to verbally threaten the parents. This is "scary stuff", he said.

• [Slackware] Python3 update in -current results in rebuilt Plasma5 packages in ktown

  Pat decided to update the Python 3 to version 3.7.2. This update from 3.6 to 3.7 broke binary compatibility and a lot of packages needed to be rebuilt in -current. But you all saw the ChangeLog.txt entry of course.

  In my ‘ktown’ repository with Plasma5 packages, the same needed to happen. I have uploaded a set of recompiled packages already, so you can safely upgrade to the latest -current as long as you also upgrade to the latest ‘ktown’. Kudos to Pat for giving me advance warning so I could already start recompiling my own stuff before he uploaded his packages.

• Alternatives to rioting

  The KDE Community has just announced the wider integration of Matrix instant messaging into its communications infrastructure. There are instructions on the KDE Community Wiki as well.

  So what’s the state of modern chat with KDE-FreeBSD?

  The web client works pretty well in Falkon, the default browser in a KDE Plasma session on FreeBSD. I don’t like leaving browsers open for long periods of time, so I looked at the available desktop clients. Porting Quaternion to FreeBSD was dead simple. No compile warnings, nothing, just an hour of doing some boilerplate-ish things, figuring out which Qt components are needed, and doing a bunch of test builds. So that client is now available from official FreeBSD ports. The GTK-based client Fractal was already ported, so there’s choices available for native-desktop applications over the browser or Electron experience.

• Ready to test [Kdenlive]?

  If you followed Kdenlive’s activity these last years, you know that we dedicated all our energy into a major code refactoring. During this period, which is not the most exciting since our first goal was to simply restore all the stable version’s features, we were extremely lucky to see new people joining the core team, and investing a lot of time in the project.
  We are now considering to release the updated version in April, with KDE Applications 19.04. There are still a few rough edges and missing features (with many new ones added as well), but we think it now reached the point where it is possible to start working with it.

As one of the most interesting patch series sent over by an Oracle developer in quite a while at least on the virtualization front, a "request for comments" series was sent out on Wednesday that would enable the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to be able to boot Xen HVM guests.

The 39 patches touching surprisingly just over three thousand lines of code allow for Linux's KVM to run unmodified Xen HVM images as well as development/testing of Xen guests and Xen para-virtualized drivers. This approach is different from other efforts in the past of tighter Xen+KVM integration.

• Kubernetes and the Cloud

  One of the questions I get asked quite often by people who are just starting or are simply not used to the “new” way things are done in IT is, “What is the cloud?” This, I think, is something you get many different answers to depending on who you ask. I like to think of it this way: The cloud is a grouping of resources (compute, storage, network) that are available to be used in a manner that makes them both highly available and scalable, either up or down, as needed. If I have an issue with a resource, I need to be able to replace that resource quickly — and this is where containers come in. They are lightweight, can be started quickly, and allow us to focus a container on a single job. Containers are also replaceable. If I have a DB container, for instance, there can’t be anything about it that makes it “special” so that when it is replaced, I do not lose operational capability.

• iSCSI made easy with SUSE Enterprise Storage

  As your data needs continue to expand, it’s important to have a storage solution that’s both scalable and easy to manage. That’s particularly true when you’re managing common gateway resources like iSCSI that provide interfaces to storage pools built in Ceph. In this white paper, you’ll see how to use the SUSE Enterprise Storage openATTIC management console to create RADOS block devices (RBDs), pools and iSCSI interfaces for use with Linux, Windows and VMware systems.

• Useful Resources for deploying SAP Workloads on SUSE in Azure [Ed: SUSE never truly quit being a slave of Microsoft. It's paid to remain a slave.]

  SAP applications are a crucial part of your customer’s digital transformation, but with SAP’s move to SAP S/4HANA, this can also present a challenge.

• How I could have hacked lakhs of IRCTC accounts and get access to all your private info including easily cancelling booked tickets

• Major Flaw Allows Attackers To Cancel Tickets On IRCTC Website

  The website of the Indian Railways has been a subject of ridicule owing to the various security flaws that have been discovered in its website over the years. When it comes to protecting user data, the website has been lacking in many ways.

  The website was previously hacked in 2016 when the details of over 1 crore users were leaked. Last year, Kanishk Sanjani, an ethical hacker had ordered food from the IRCTC website for Rs 7. This vulnerability remained unpatched for well over 7 months even after informing concerned authorities.

• Web Application Security [Ed: a bit spammy]

  Common targets for web application attacks are content management systems (e.g., WordPress), database administration tools (e.g., phpMyAdmin) and SaaS applications.

• This 19-Year-Old WinRAR Flaw Lets Hackers Load Malware To PCs

  he popular windows file archival tool WinRAR has been in use for over two decades now. The software is used to view, create, pack and unpack archives in both ZIP and RAR formats. A recent report by The Register has revealed that the tool has a bug that has remained undetected since 2005.

• WinRAR Has Serious Flaw That Can Load Malware to PCs

  The popular file archiving tool WinRAR has had a bug for at least 14 years that can be exploited to take over your PC.

  The bug can pave the way for archive files that can trigger WinRAR to actually install whatever malware is secretly inside, according to the security firm Check Point, which discovered the software flaw.

  "The exploit works by just extracting an archive, and puts over 500 million users at risk," the company said in a detailed report published on Wednesday.

• Launchpad news, July 2018 – January 2019

• BMW Volleys Open-Source "RAMSES" Distributed 3D Rendering System

  For those interested in distributed 3D rendering, the developers at BMW recently received clearance to open-source RAMSES, a 3D rendering system optimized for bandwidth and resource efficiency.

  RAMSES is a distributed rendering engine that's designed for embedded use-cases and thus a heavy emphasis on efficiency, after all it comes out of BMW. RAMSES allows for different processes on different devices connected via a network to provide/consume 3D content and form a unison of cohesive displays.

• 8 Best Kodi Builds For 2019 That Every Kodi User Must Install

  or Kodi users, it’s always a task to find and install new addons to enjoy live tv, movies, documentaries, and tv shows. To get the Kodi media center up and running, you need to install different Kodi addons which is a time-consuming task. If you want to cut short the amount of time and effort required to install various addons and best Kodi repositories, you must use a Kodi Build.

• Surf Internet Like It’s 1990: CERN Redesigns World’s 1st Web Browser

  CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has redesigned the world’s first web browser WorldWideWeb to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original browser.

  Sir Tim Berners-Lee brought the first proposal for a global hypertext system in 1989, which later came to be known as the World Wide Web that he designed on a NeXT machine in 1990. Internet wasn’t as easy to use as it is today. The primitive version of the internet required users to double click on hyperlinks to open them.

• D-Bus Broker 18 Released While BUS1 In-Kernel IPC Remains Stalled

  Version 18 of D-Bus Broker has been released, the D-Bus message bus implementation designed for high performance and better reliability compared to the D-Bus reference implementation while sticking to compatibility with the original specification.

  D-Bus Broker 18 isn't the most exciting release but just has two main changes for improving its compatibility launcher. As of D-Bus Broker 18, configuration parsing errors for this launcher are handled in the same manner as dbus-daemon. Also, the compatibility launcher is no longer isolated in its own network namespace to deal with SELinux API requirements.

• Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with Linux files, gaming improvements, and Timeline for Chrome [Ed: Microsoft Emil helps promote the lie that Vista 10 is basically "Linux" now.]

• Chrome OS 74 To Bring ‘Audio Output’ Support For Linux Apps

  Pixelbooks, which run on Chrome OS, are compatible with Linux apps owing to Google’s Crostini software. However, it is still in beta, and there are many limitations if you are running Linux apps. One of the major limitations is that Linux apps on Chrome OS do not support hardware-accelerated graphics and audio.

• Chrome Os To Soon Feature Virtual Desktops, Early Concept Demonstrated

  ‘Virtual Desktops’ is a term for being able to manage multiple window configurations across virtual desktops which you are unable to see. Imagine you could move your computer screen to an identical invisible screen next to it, and later switch to it whenever you want. For example, You can have Chrome open in one desktop, text edit in another, and Photoshop in the third and you have the ability to switch between them seamlessly and swiftly without having to juggle between windows open on one desktop. A prime example of Virtual Desktops is Mac OS’s Mission Control feature.

• Raspberry Pi and Retro Gaming | Choose Linux 3

  Jason finally discovers the bottomless well of potential that is the Raspberry Pi, and talks about his first experience with Raspbian. Then Joe and Jason take a nostalgic deep dive into retro gaming on both the Raspberry Pi and the Pinebook.

• Vambrace: Cold Soul, the next title from Devespresso Games will support Linux

  Devespresso Games (The Coma) are working on a new game called Vambrace: Cold Soul, a narrative-driven fantasy adventure that will support Linux.

  It's inspired by games like Darkest Dungeon, Castlevania and more it certainly looks good. I've had access to it for a while to do some pre-release Linux testing for the studio and I've been pretty impressed with it. The developer has also been very responsive to feedback and so far the Linux version seems pretty solid.

  The inspiration from Darkest Dungeon is pretty clear, with the turn-based battles and graphical style of the characters as well as the atmosphere being all quite familiar. Very much its own game though, the narrative focus of it along with the town exploration is certainly very different.