Divided into 2 parts, in this first part I will introduce the concept that everything is file and present the special devices / dev / null, / dev / zero, / dev / random and / dev / full. Part 2 will be to present didactically interesting features about this, for example, how to turn a file into a partition!

• AutoFill your passwords with Firefox Lockbox in iOS

  Today Firefox Lockbox 1.3 gives you the ability to automatically fill your username and password into apps and websites. This is available to anyone running the latest iOS 12 operating system.

• Streaming RNNs in TensorFlow

  The Machine Learning team at Mozilla Research continues to work on an automatic speech recognition engine as part of Project DeepSpeech, which aims to make speech technologies and trained models openly available to developers. We’re hard at work improving performance and ease-of-use for our open source speech-to-text engine. The upcoming 0.2 release will include a much-requested feature: the ability to do speech recognition live, as the audio is being recorded. This blog post describes how we changed the STT engine’s architecture to allow for this, achieving real-time transcription performance. Soon, you’ll be able to transcribe audio at least as fast as it’s coming in.

• Explore the immersive web with Firefox Reality. Now available for Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream

  Earlier this year, we shared that we are building a completely new browser called Firefox Reality. The mixed reality team at Mozilla set out to build a web browser that has been designed from the ground up to work on stand-alone virtual and augmented reality (or mixed reality) headsets. Today, we are pleased to announce that the first release of Firefox Reality is available in the Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream app stores.

  At a time when people are questioning the impact of technology on their lives and looking for leadership from independent organizations like Mozilla, Firefox Reality brings to the 3D web and immersive content experiences the level of ease of use, choice, control and privacy they’ve come to expect from Firefox.

  But for us, the ability to enjoy the 2D web is just table stakes for a VR browser. We built Firefox Reality to move seamlessly between the 2D web and the immersive web.

• These Months In Servo 113

  In the past 1.5 months, we merged 439 PRs in the Servo organization’s repositories.

Linux has been around for almost 30 years. Yes, it’s that old, and it did make history. If you are interested in the history of some of the major Linux distros, here it is in a nutshell – the history of various Linux distros, like Ubuntu, Fedora, REHL, Linux Mint, Slackware, etc. The reasons for their creation and their philosophy will be briefly discussed.

• Security updates for Tuesday

• Reproducible Builds: Weekly report #177

• Microsoft: Like the Borg, we want to absorb all the world's biz computers [Ed: Microsoft wants to spy on and control every single thing. It (kick)started PRISM, so it was never serious about real security.]

  The technology allows Redmond to scan and monitor enrolled devices, and push out security patches, operating system upgrades, and software updates to the kit as necessary. It will also use machine-learning code and analytics to, in its own words, "manage the global MMD device population."

• Unit 42 Researchers Discover Xbash – Malware Which Destroys Linux and Windows Based Databases [Ed: See below; so basically it targets already-screwed systems...]

  Xbash mainly spreads by targeting any unpatched vulnerabilities and weak password

• Distance, the amazing atmospheric racing platformer is now officially out

  I've been waiting on this for what feels like forever, after a great run in Early Access the atmospheric racing platformer Distance is now out. A game I've gone back to many times during Early Access! Everything about Distance hits the mark for me.

• FPS game Ballistic Overkill's Bloodlust update is out

  Ballistic Overkill, a cheap and quite decent online FPS game has released a new update named Bloodlust full of tweaks for their newer Rounds game mode.

• The Count Lucanor, a 2D mystery and horror adventure is now on GOG

  For you GOG fans, they've added another quality Linux game! The Count Lucanor, a 2D mystery and horror adventure is now up with Linux support.

• Valve have been fined 147 thousand euros in France

  Thanks to a tip in our Discord, we've found out today that Valve have been fined 147 thousand euros in France. Probably a drop in the ocean compared to Valve's revenue, but enough to turn their heads and pay attention.

• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood Should Now Be In Good Shape With RadeonSI On Mesa 18.3

  Earlier this month Valve developers began working on Mesa/RadeonSI fixes for Wolfenstein: The Old Blood to run nicely with the open-source Linux drivers while the game is running under Steam Play / Proton. The last batch of these fixes for The Old Blood are now in Git for Mesa 18.3.

  First up is a revert to fix menu hangs in id Tech games like RAGE and Wolfenstein: The New Order.

• Writing More Compact Bash Code
  

  In any programming language, idioms may be used that may not seem obvious from reading the manual. Often these usages of the language represent ways to make your code more compact (as in requiring fewer lines of code). Of course, some will eschew these idioms believing they represent bad style. Style, of course, is in the eyes of beholder, and this article is not intended as an exercise in defining good or bad style. So for those who may be tempted to comment on the grounds of style I would (re)direct your attention to /dev/null.

• How to Run Commands Simultaneously in Linux

• How to Remove Packages with Dependencies Using Yum

• How To Force APT Package Manager To Use IPv4 In Ubuntu 16.04

• How to fix Indigo Error on Kodi

You could use any audio player to listen to audiobooks, but a specialized audiobook player like Cozy makes everything easier, by remembering your playback position and continuing from where you left off for each audiobook, or by letting you set the playback speed of each book individually, among others.

The Cozy interface lets you browse books by author, reader or recency, while also providing search functionality. Books front covers are supported by Cozy - either by using embedded images, or by adding a cover.jpg or cover.png image in the book folder, which is automatically picked up and displayed by Cozy.

When you click on an audiobook, Cozy lists the book chapters on the right, while displaying the book cover (if available) on the left, along with the book name, author and the last played time, along with total and remaining time:

Today, on September 18th, 2018, the Russian-speaking KDE community launches its updated website on KDE.ru.

The new website serves as the main page for the Russian-speaking community. It provides localized information about the community, product download links and the list of social network pages we maintain. It is also meant to help new members get involved in KDE’s projects, particularly in our translation and promotion efforts.

The website was created by me and Alexander Potashev on top of Jonah Brüchert‘s work for plasma-mobile.org. It uses Jekyll and is now hosted on official KDE servers. It replaces the old forum that has significantly lost its users in the past years.

A new major version of Variety Wallpaper Changer is out. With the latest 0.7.0 release, Variety was ported to Python 3, while also receiving some improvements like support for setting the Gnome Screensaver / GDM background to match the desktop wallpaper.

As more people use the Internet everyday they are becoming more conscious about their privacy with regards to how much of the information they don’t want to share at all is being compromised. Tons of VPN services have been created to solidify users’ safety but that doesn’t seem to be enough as there seems to be an increasing need to create custom VPNs.

It isn’t a bad thing to create a VPN service for yourself and there are actually a good number of developers and organizations that favour this habit.

Today, we bring you a list of the best open-source tools that you can use to create your own VPN. Some of them are relatively more difficult to set up and use than the others and they all have their feature highlights.

Depending on the reason why you want to deploy your own VPN, choose the title that is suitable for you.

• How to get Apple-like gestures on the Linux desktop

  I understand a big part of the problem is that Apple owns patents on trackpad gestures, something which hinders the open source community's ability to create a quality experience. But that hurdle shouldn't equate to a bad experience, which many people have. Not only does Linux install without any sort of multi-touch gestures, it is sometimes over sensitive or under sensitive. I've installed Linux on laptop hardware and found the trackpad configuration was a losing battle—until I discovered Fusuma.

• How to fix missing Python for Ansible in Fedora Vagrant

• Did your open source career begin with video games?

  Certainly you don't need to be a gamer as a child to grow up and become a developer, nor does being a gamer automatically set you up for a career in technology.

  But there's definitely a good bit of overlap between the two.

  After listening to the first episode of Command Line Heroes, and reading Ross Turk's story of how MUDs led him to a career in coding, I've thought a bit about how gaming has influenced my own journey into technology, and how it lead to a career in open source.

  For me, that first important game was WarCraft II. Sure, I played games before it, and after it. But shortly after my family replaced our faithful Apple IIc with a blazing fast (by comparison) 486 PC with amazing features like color, and a sound card, and even a 2400 baud modem (that would take about three months to download the equivalent of an hour of Netflix today).

• openSUSE to Have Summit in Nashville

  The openSUSE community is headed to Nashville, Tennessee, next year and will have the openSUSE SUmmit Nashville April 5 through April 6, 2019, during the end of SUSE’s premier annual global technical conference SUSECON.

  Registration for the event is open and the Call for Papers is open until Jan. 15. Partners of openSUSE, open-source community projects and community members are encourage to register for the summit and submit a talk.

  The schedule for the openSUSE SUmmit Nashville will be released at the beginning of February.

• How selfless is your open organization?

  "Community" is a defining characteristic of open organizations. A community could be many things—a "team," a "group," a "department," or a "task force," for example. What makes any of these groups a true community is two distinct factors: a well-defined purpose and clear investment in or value of that purpose.

  How does a person balance a community's values with his or her own, personal values? How does that person negotiate this relationship when setting goals? Answers to these questions will expose and speak to that person's character.

• Andres Rodriguez: MAAS 2.5.0 beta 1 released

  I’m happy to announce that MAAS 2.5.0 beta 1 has been released.

• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 545

  Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 545 for the week of September 9 – 15, 2018.

• Arm delivers production-ready open source Bluetooth Low Energy software stack to unleash IoT innovation

  Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is quickly becoming the Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity protocol of choice for a variety of use cases, including smart lighting, smart cities and asset tracking, where low-cost, power consumption and small footprint are fundamental requirements. According to the 2018 Bluetooth Market Update, there will be more than 5 billion Bluetooth device shipments by 2022, with 97% of them containing Bluetooth Low Energy technology. The advances in Bluetooth 5 technology, along with the introduction of Bluetooth Mesh are driving new market opportunities across building automation, sensor networks, and other IoT solutions.

• Digital Minimalism and Deep Work

  Through Newport's blog I learned that the title of his next book is Digital Minimalism. This intrigued me, because since I started thinking about minimalism myself, I've wondered about the difference of approach needed between minimalism in the "real world" and the digital domains. It turns out the topic of Newport's next book is about something different: from what I can tell, focussing on controlling how one spends one's time online for maximum productivity.

• Juniper Expands Its Edge Networking Ambitions

  With Edge Computing, rather than having all functions occur in a centralized cloud, some data collection and compute elements can happen at the edge of a network, thanks in no small part to the emergence of 5G and SD-WAN capabilities.

  The new Contrail Edge Cloud technology was announced on Sept. 17, providing an edge optimized version of Juniper's SDN platform. Contrail Edge Cloud is based on the Linux Foundation's open source Tungsten project, which was formerly known as Open Contrail. The edge solution is integrated with Red Hat's OpenStack platform and can also support Red Hat's OpenShift Container Platform as well as other Kubernetes distributions.

• Current Change:: The Procter & Gamble Company, (NYSE: PG), Red Hat, Inc., (NYSE: RHT)

• Stock Highlights: Red Hat (NYSE: RHT)

• Rampart Investment Management Company LLC Has $646,000 Position in Red Hat Inc (RHT)

• Lukas "lzap" Zapletal: Switching to Universal Ctags

  For longer coding sessions, I am trying GNOME Builder which looks great and every single release it is catching up with Submlime Text 3, except it is fully open source and it has usable Vim emulation. I’ve tried Atom and VSCode but these slow things are not for me.

• Say thank you this November during Fedora Appreciation Week 2018

• Fedora Magazine: How to install more wallpaper packs on Fedora Workstation

• Announcing Heritage: An Open Source, Public Blockchain Project

  Heritage is a project of A​3​ by Airbus, the advanced projects outpost of Airbus in Silicon Valley. Airbus Foundation is the first strategic partner within Airbus to utilize blockchain technology developed by Heritage.

  Heritage is a decentralized application for the Airbus Foundation to hold charity fundraising campaigns internal to Airbus. Through open sourcing Heritage, Airbus Foundation will help charities onboard cryptocurrency and smart contracts, opening them to a new class of donor. Heritage hopes to set a standard non-profits can replicate to continue to grow the ecosystem while aiding an underserved market.

• Versity announces next generation open source archiving filesystem

  Versity Software has announced that it has released ScoutFS under GPLv2. "ScoutFS is the first GPL archiving file system ever released, creating an inherently safer and more user friendly option for storing archival data where accessibility over very large time scales, and the removal of vendor specific risk is a key consideration."

 

• Chrome Beta 70 Brings 2-Factor Authentication Via Fingerprint Sensor To Android & Mac

  With the beta version of Chrome 70 on the roll, Google has added yet another useful feature to make signing into the websites easier. As announced in an official blog post, Chrome now supports 2-factor authentication in Android and Macbook with the device’s fingerprint sensor.

• Thunderbird 60 with title bar hidden

  Many users like hidden system titlebar as Firefox feature although it’s not finished yet. But we’re very close and I hope to have Firefox 64 in shape that the title bar can be disabled by default at least on Gnome and matches Firefox outfit at Windows and Mac.

  Thunderbird 60 was finally released for Fedora and comes with a basic version of the feature as it was introduced at Firefox 60 ESR. There’s a simple checkbox at “Customize” page at Firefox but Thunderbird is missing an easy switch.

• Washington State Electronic Notary Public endorsements

  [...] This all seemed to me to be something that GnuPG is designed to do and does
  quite well. So I sent an email on Friday night to the sender of the letter
  requesting specific issues that my provider did not comply with. This
  morning I received a call from the DoL, and was able to successfully argue
  for GnuPG's qualification as an electronic records notary public technology
  provider for the State of Washington.

  In short, GnuPG can now be used to perform notarial acts
  <http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=42.45.140> in the State of
  Washington!

• Surprise: Bill Introduced To Finally Make PACER Free To All

      

  This would be... amazing. We've spent years highlighting the massive problems with PACER, the federal court system that charges insane amounts for basically everything you do, just to access public records, and which functions very much like it was designed around 1995. There are a few court cases arguing that PACER fees are illegal and a recent ruling in one of those cases agreed. As we noted at the time, that was hardly the final word on the matter. A bill like the ones Collins introduced would be an amazing leap forward in giving public access to court documents.

• Collins introduces bill to increase transparency and access to federal court documents

  Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) today introduced a bill to reform both parts of the federal courts’ electronic records system.

  “Americans deserve a justice system that is transparent and accessible. I introduced the Electronic Court Records Reform Act to modernize the judicial records systems and remove fee-for-access barriers that technology has rendered unnecessary,” said Collins.

  “As an attorney and the son of a law enforcement officer, I understand how crucial it is that this legislation ensures access to a freer, fairer and more accountable judiciary.”

• Software Patch Claimed To Allow Aadhaar's Security To Be Bypassed, Calling Into Question Biometric Database's Integrity

  As the Huffington Post article explains, creating a patch that is able to circumvent the main security features in this way was possible thanks to design choices made early on in the project. The unprecedented scale of the Aadhaar enrollment process -- so far around 1.2 billion people have been given an Aadhaar number and added to the database -- meant that a large number of private agencies and village-level computer kiosks were used for registration. Since connectivity was often poor, the main software was installed on local computers, rather than being run in the cloud. The patch can be used by anyone with local access to the computer system, and simply involves replacing a folder of Java libraries with versions lacking the security checks.

  The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government body responsible for the Aadhaar project, has responded to the Huffington Post article, but in a rather odd way: as a Donald Trump-like stream of tweets. The Huffington Post points out: "[the UIDAI] has simply stated that its systems are completely secure without any supporting evidence."

• New CAS BACnet Wireshark Report Tool Helps User to Quickly Locate Intermittent Issues

• Hackers For Good, Working To Gather Stakeholders To Find Answers To Cyberspace Challenges

  For a number of people, the word hacker means bad news. However, if some hackers have malevolent intentions, there are also hackers for good, and their skills were put to the challenge last week as they tried to save a fictitious city fallen into the hands of a group of cyber terrorists. The challenge was part of a two-day event organised by a young Geneva-based non-governmental organisation seeking to raise awareness about digital trust and bring accountability to cyberspace.

I am pleased to announce that Qt 5.12 Alpha is released today. There are prebuild binaries as well in addition to source code packages with Alpha release.

Please check Qt 5.12 New Features wiki to see what new is coming with Qt 5.12 release. Please note that the feature list is still in progress and not to be considered final before the first Beta release.

Also: Qt 5.12 Alpha Released With OpenGL ES 3.1 Renderer, Several Wayland Improvements

• RADV's Iffy 16-bit Integer Support Merged Into Mesa

  Just days after the patches were published for enabling 16-bit integers within shaders for the RADV driver, this Radeon Vulkan driver code has been merged.

  The code came out last week by Valve developer Samuel Pitoiset for enabling shaderInt16, the capability allowing 16-bit signed/unsigned integers within the shader code.

• Mesa Eyeing The Removal Of Autotools Build Support In Favor Of Meson

  For those currently relying upon Autotools for building Mesa3D, the days are numbered and soon will likely need to shift over to their modern Meson build system support.

  For the past year now, Mesa developers have been working on bringing up their Meson build system support for its faster build speeds with Ninja, better cross-platform compatibility, and other benefits. Meson has co-existed with the Autotools (and SCons and Android build systems) support over the past year of Mesa releases, but moving forward they are likely very soon to drop the Autotools support.

• OpenBSD/NetBSD on FreeBSD using grub2-bhyve

  When I was writing a blog post about the process title, I needed a couple of virtual machines with OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Ubuntu. Before that day I mainly used FreeBSD and Windows with bhyve. I spent some time trying to set up an OpenBSD using bhyve and UEFI as described here. I had numerous problems trying to use it, and this was the day I discovered the grub2-bhyve tool, and I love it!

  The grub2-bhyve allows you to load a kernel using GRUB bootloader. GRUB supports most of the operating systems with a standard configuration, so exactly the same method can be used to install NetBSD or Ubuntu. [...]

• OpenZFS Developer Summit 2018

  The sixth annual OpenZFS Developer Summit took place September 10th and 11th in San Francisco, California with an expanded focus on non-technical topics like community development and cross-project coordination. It also marked the “light at the end of the tunnel” status of several long-term OpenZFS features, notably dRAID, the distributed spare technology originally developed by Intel. [...]

• Monster taming RPG 'Siralim 3' now has a Linux version on Steam

  Siralim 3, the deep monster taming RPG from Thylacine Studios now has a Linux version available for those who gotta catch 'em all.

  While it's not exactly graphically impressive, the Siralim titles usually make it for it and then some with the amount of features they have. Seems to be a hit with users too, with a nice positive rating.

• Humble has a pretty good Game Development book bundle

  For those thinking about or already creating games, you might want to take a look over at Humble with their game development book bundle.

• Naval strategy game Victory At Sea Pacific is now available with Linux support

  Set during World War II, Victory At Sea Pacific from Evil Twin Artworks is an interesting naval strategy game that released recently with Linux support.

The PostgreSQL community has, after an extended discussion, announced the adoption of a code of conduct "which is intended to ensure that PostgreSQL remains an open and enjoyable project for anyone to join and participate in".

• Renault-Nissan Teams With Google and Lets Android Into the Dash

• Google 'sorry' for remotely enabling Battery Saver on Android Pie handsets

• Google partners with the world's biggest auto group to bring Android to cars

• AnyTrans Offers iPhone and Android Users a Seamless Transition to iPhone XS, XS Max, or XR

• Cyber Sleuths Find Traces of Infamous iPhone and Android Spyware 'Pegasus' in 45 Countries