Linux Candy: CMatrix – terminal based “The Matrix”

Who loves eye candy? Don’t be shy — you can raise both hands!! Linux Candy is a new series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We’re only going to feature open-source software in this series. The subject of this article is CMatrix. CMatrix is an ncurses program that simulates the display from “The Matrix”, and is based on the screensaver from the movie’s website. If you have been living in a cave for the past few decades, you might not know The Matrix is a hugely popular 1999 American science fiction film starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano.

Blender 2.81 Released With NVIDIA RTX Optix Back-End, Intel Open Image Denoise Support

Blender 2.81 features some exciting changes like a NVIDIA OptiX back-end for use on RTX/Turing GPUs for faster rendering performance than the CUDA/OpenCL back-ends, Intel Open Image Denoise support, adaptive subdivision support for Cycles, new Sculpt tools, outliner improvements, a better grease pencil tool, and a lot more. 

Open-Source Intel TXT Support Published For Coreboot

Thanks to work done by 9elements Cyber Security for an unnamed client, there is now working open-source Intel TXT support for Coreboot with the patches under review for upstream inclusion. This is the culmination of work that started months ago for getting Intel Trusted Execution Technology working with Coreboot. Intel TXT offers authenticity capabilities for the platform, extending the trust to the operating system, and other security features built around TPM and crypto functionality.

Ransomware Bites 400 Veterinary Hospitals [iophk: Windows TCO]

                       

The source told KrebsOnSecurity that NVA suffered a separate ransomware infestation earlier this summer that also involved Ryuk, and they expressed concern that the first incident may not have been fully remediated — potentially letting the attackers maintain a foothold within the organization.

                       

“This is the second time this year Ryuk struck NVA,” the source said. “The first time, NVA was rather open to all facilities about what happened. This time, however, they are simply referring to it as a ‘system outage.'”

Responding to Growing Demand, Edgewater Launches Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing Development Kit

Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing offers breakthrough performance, slicing available spectrum, and exposing a new level of Wi-Fi spectrum granularity for developers to exploit. Edgewater’s groundbreaking MCSR™ silicon solutions and advanced Linux drivers allow the global Linux community to use the widely adopted Linux and OpenWrt software platforms to harness Edgewater’s technology and invent new and creative applications for the platform.

Rugged Kaby Lake vehicle PC does it all on the road or rail

Vecow’s Linux-friendly “IVH-9024MX ICY” in-vehicle PC runs on a 7th or 6th Gen Core or Xeon CPUs and offers triple displays, 6x SATA bays, 4x PoE+ ports, 2x mini-PCIe, and EN50155: 2017 and EN45545-2 railway compliance. Vecow unveiled the rugged IVH-9024MX ICY back in June as an all-purpose in-vehicle and rolling-stock computer and this week announced certifications for EN50155 and EN45545-2 (fire protection) railway safety standards. This is the first 7th Gen Kaby Lake based fanless embedded system to receive these certifications, claims Vecow.

Exploring Zyxel GS1900 firmware with Ghidra

Earlier this year the NSA released Ghidra, a reverse engineering suite with support for a large number of CPU/MCU instruction sets. While I have some experience with Hopper and radare2 I wanted to play with Ghidra to poke around the firmware for my Zyxel GS1900-8 switch which runs on a 32-bit MIPS CPU. All in all this has turned out to be an interesting exploration of both Ghidra and the GS1900-8-2.40(AAHH.2)C0.bix firmware image.

Initially I wanted to write about poking around the firmware image and showing how one can use Ghidra to explore unknown binaries, but whilst looking around some libraries that are used by this switch I realised there is actually an interesting vulnerability to write about.

Linux Foundation Training Announces a Free Online Course-Introduction to Hyperledger Sovereign Identity Blockchain Solutions: Indy, Aries & Ursa

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced enrollment is now open for a new, free, course – Introduction to Hyperledger Sovereign Identity Blockchain Solutions: Indy, Aries & Ursa. This course is offered through edX, the trusted platform for learning. To the surprise of absolutely no one, trust is broken on the Internet. Any identity-related data available online can be subject to theft. Breach Level Index says that over 5,880,000 records are stolen every day. The 2019 MidYear QuickView Data Breach Report shows that reported breaches in the first half of 2019 were up 54% compared to midyear 2018 (over 4.1 billion records exposed), with web being the number one breach type for records exposed, and hacking being the number one breach type for incidents. Wherever you go online, the advice is the same–make sure you understand what is behind each button before you click it.

Is the future of farming under water?

"[The] first thing we did was open source our model. In the new economy, we make things accessible to everybody. Anybody with 20 acres and a boat and $30,000 can start their farm and be up and growing the first year. Our farms require minimal capital costs and minimal skill. The potential of replication is tremendous: A network of small ocean farms about the size of Washington State could feed the world and, as bio-fuel, replace all the oil in the United States, while simultaneously capturing five times the amount of carbon as land-based plants," Smith predicts. The 3D ocean farming model consists of an underwater rope scaffolding system, anchors on the floor, and ropes up to the surface as well as horizontal ropes. Farmers grow their crops within this system, such as kelp ("the soy of the sea"). Mussels, scallops, and oysters are grown on the floor, and plants are grown in the mud. GreenWave is disseminating its model for restorative 3D ocean farms through open source manuals, farmer training programs, and an online collaboration platform to create a network of restorative ocean farming communities. Outside of ongoing replication along the waters of Long Island Sound, 3D ocean farmers anywhere in the world will be able to select appropriate native species to restore productive ecosystems along the coast, as reported by the Buckminster Fuller Insititute.

Seeds Or Code?

I'd like to congratulate Microsoft on a truly excellent PR stunt, drawing attention to two important topics about which I've been writing for a long time, the cultural significance of open source software, and the need for digital preservation. Ashlee Vance provides the channel to publicize the stunt in Open Source Code Will Survive the Apocalypse in an Arctic Cave. In summary, near Longyearbyen on Spitzbergen is: [...]

What Is DeepMind? A Peek into the World’s Leading Neural Network

Deep learning refers to an emerging area of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to make decisions on our behalf as they are more reliable than human decisions. It consists of many interrelated fields including natural language processing (NLP), cognitive computing, recommender systems, board game programs, and image recognition. Ever since its takeover by Google, DeepMind has become the world’s foremost deep learning neural network. Let’s look at the story behind the AI engine, its ongoing applications and whether you should have concerns about privacy in the smart devices where it’s used.

Amazon Music now free for Android, iOS, and Fire TV

Oppo ColorOS 7 unveiled, will launch later this year

Google Is Sunsetting Its AdSense iOS And Android Apps

10 best cricket score apps for Android!

Android-x86 project releases Android 9 Pie RC while Bliss OS releases Android 10 alpha build for PCs