While Epic Games has been in a number of articles and video regarding their practices in the gaming space, it’s nice to see a positive spin for the company. Today, Epic Games has announced that they have donated $1.2 million in cash towards the Blender Project. A free and open source creation tool that is used by a number of developers, which allows them to create 3D graphics animation and even entire games.

This award is part of the Epic MegaGrants Initiative which Epic Games has committed $100 million. This program was created to help game developers, students, professionals, and creators. By providing funding, the Epic MegaGrants goal is to help foster a positive gaming and creative landscape.

• CBA discloses NetBank's open source components

  One update explained that NetBank had started to make use of Google Safetynet, a service billed as “a set of services and APIs that help protect your app against security threats, including device tampering, bad URLs, potentially harmful apps, and fake users.”

  “The Google Safetynet feature does not involve CommBank sharing data with Google, but rather, the Android device shares some data with Google in order to provide an assessment of the device security, which we then use to detect certain types of fraud and cybercrime," a CBA spokesperson told iTnews.

  The second update to NetBank added open source licences, which the bank's spokesperson said was “a decision to acknowledge the use of third party components within our apps, where appropriate”.

  The spokesperson added that “this transparency, if anything, benefits security.”

  “We take security seriously,” the spokesperson added.

  “Every version of the CommBank app, including the open source components, is rigorously scrutinised and scanned by our engineering and cyber security teams for any potential vulnerabilities, and to ensure it is safe to use."

• InAccel releases open-source Logistic Regression IP core for FPGAs

  Machine learning algorithms are extremely computationally intensive and time consuming when they must be trained on large amounts of data. Typical processors are not optimized for machine learning applications and therefore offer limited performance. Therefore, both academia an industry is focused on the development of specialized architectures for the efficient acceleration of machine learning applications.

• Eradani Bridges The Gap Between Legacy And Open Source

  In this publication, legacy is not a dirty word or even remotely pejorative. Rather, “legacy” is just a shorthand way of delineating between applications that encapsulate decades of the evolution of a business and the transactions it processes, and all of the other new stuff that this business is also doing and perhaps coding with newer tools and programming languages.

  A new company, called Eradani, has been founded by some experts in both the IBM i world and the open source world with the express purpose of building a technical bridge so these two different cultures can see a unified, hybrid system without knowing all of the details of both sides of that system. This is a lot easier than having heated arguments about how things should be done or whose software stack is better or worse.

  Eradani, which is named after the sun around which the planet Vulcan orbits in the Star Trek science fiction series and which is actually a constellation in the southern hemisphere with several stars bearing that name (but spelled Eridani), was founded by Dan Magid, who was most recently in charge of the modernization labs and sales specialists teams at Rocket Software. Magid came to Rocket Software back in 2011, when that software conglomerate acquired software change management tool maker Aldon Software, where Magid was its long-time chief executive officer. Aldon was co-founded by Albert Magid, his father, and Don Parr back in 1979 in the wake of the System/38 launch, so the Magid family has deep, deep roots in the IBM i world. (Aldon had previously sold itself to private equity firm in 2007.)

• Open source plays leading role in getting driverless cars on the road

  pen source is playing an increasingly important role in the race to develop fully-functional, totally driverless cars capable of handling all traffic conditions – and investors are lining up to support these efforts.

  Last week, Japan-based open source company Tier IV announced it had raised a further $100 million to facilitate commercialisation of self-driving technology for what it called `private, depopulated and urban’ areas. This brings the amount of money investors have pumped into the company to around $230million.

  However, Tier IV, which was spun out of Japan’s Nagoya University by Shinpei Kato and which counts Yamaha Motor Corporation among its backers, is not the only open source company in the self-driving vehicle starting line-up.

• AV Mapping Startup Carmera Joins Baidu's Open-Source Apollo Platform

  The company also maintains Baidu Apollo, an open-source software platform launched in 2017 that allows software developers, researchers, and the company’s 130 enterprise partners, including Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Ford (NYSE: F), Velodyne Lidar, and Toyota (NYSE: TM), to build their own AV systems. The Apollo technology stack has more than 12,000 GitHub developers, and earlier this month, Baidu released Apollo 5.0, the latest version. Other mobility players maintain open-source development platforms—Nvidia, for example—but they aren’t as comprehensive as Apollo.

• NEC Embraces Open Source Frameworks for SX-Aurora Vector Computing
  

  In this video from ISC 2019, Dr. Erich Focht from NEC Deutschland GmbH describes how the company is embracing open source frameworks for the SX-Aurora TSUBASA Vector Supercomputer.

  NEC recently opened the Vector Engine Data Acceleration Center (VEDAC) at its Silicon Valley facility. VEDAC is focused on fostering big data innovations using NEC’s emerging technologies while tapping into Silicon Valley’s rich ecosystem.

• Four misconceptions about open source technology - Acquia

  Despite widespread adoption around the globe, open source technology continues to generate questions about its security and performance.

  Detractors question whether it’s a suitable basis for enterprise projects and platforms; their scepticism due, in no small part, to a series of myths and misconceptions which surround the technology.

  In an era in which cyber-crime and hacking attacks are so frequent, they’ve ceased to be newsworthy, some of these concerns spring from a genuine fear that open source means open to all comers.

  Others have their roots in inertia and the deep comfort of the familiar. Many IT managers would prefer to stick with the tried and true – proprietary technologies whose performance is known and for which they’re happy to be accountable, rather than the unknown quantity which is open source.

• Google Releases Open Source Cryptographic Tool

  Google has made available an open-source cryptographic tool called Private Join and Compute. The tool uses secure multi-party computation (MPC) to augment the core PSI protocol.

  The product combines two cryptographic techniques - private set intersection and homomorphic encryption. Private set intersection is a technique that finds common identifiers in two sets of data without either data owner needing to show the other owner the underlying data. Google uses an oblivious variant which only marks encrypted identifiers without learning any of the identifiers.

• Haiku monthly activity report - 06/2019

  We are now in beta phase, and besides the usual bugfixes, it's time to start investigating performance bottlenecks in Haiku. Waddlesplash has been hard at work in that area this month, starting with tuning of the newly integrated rpmalloc allocator.

  He also started benchmarking the uses of the allocator and found various opportunities to save memory, and use dedicated object caches instead of the generic malloc allocator, helping reduce memory fragmentation. The first patches have just started to land (in packagefs), there will likely be more. Ideally beta2 will be able to boot and install with 256MB of RAM or maybe even less thanks to this work.

  Meanwhile, waddlesplash is also auditing the code and starting to work towards making APIs more restricted (allowing some things only for the root user, for example), in order to provide some more privilege separation. Haiku has so far been largely a single user system, and did not worry too much about the usual attack vectors for an UNIX system. But modern computers are often online and we should try to keep our user's data reasonably safe. We have a long way to go, but we have to start with something.

• Maintaining Independent Infrastructure

  One thing I end up embarassing myself about sometimes in the Ubuntu Podcast telegram chatter is that I end up buying and selling tiny amounts of shares on the US stock markets. All I can say is that I got spooked by the 35 day "government shutdown" at the start of the calendar year when I was stuck working without pay as a federal civil servant. Granted I did get back pay but the Human Capital Office at work is still fiddling with things even now in terms of getting payroll records and other matters fixed. I generally buy shares in companies that pay dividends and then I take the dividends as cash. At work we refer to that as "unearned income" especially as it is taxed at a rate different from the one applied to my wages.

  My portfolio is somewhat weird. I am rather heavily invested in shipping whether it happens to be oil tankers or dry bulk cargo ships. In contrast I have almost nothing invested in technology companies. There aren't many "open source" companies available on the open stock market and the ones out there either I can't afford to buy a single share of or they violate my portfolio rule that stocks held must pay a divided of some sort. Too many companies in the computer tech world appear to make money but don't send any profits back to shareholders as their dividends are stuck at USD$0.00.

• Mozilla figures out how users can avoid online ads and sites can still make money

  I've written for websites that depended on every single impression and click generated by viewers. Some viewers complained about ads and some stayed silent. However, the owner of the site knew that without those advertisements the site would go dark.

  And so, I go about my daily life without the help of ad blockers—assuming that, at some point in time, someone would come up with a way to make both sides of the coin happy.

  That time has finally come. And it should be of no surprise that those behind the solution are from within the open source community—specifically, Mozilla (which may or may not be in conjunction with a new venture, namely Scroll).

  How are they solving this little conundrum (that has perplexed the masses for years)? With a new service they're calling Ad-free Internet. Just what is this new service? It's as equally brilliant as it is simple (and surprising that no one else has realized this solution already).

• Online Data Science Learning with Tech’s Biggest Names Through edX

  The main advantage of attending a prestigious name-brand data science certification program is the reputation of that esteemed organization that it carries with it. Other than providing tech students and rookies with better opportunities to find an entry-level job at that company (such as Microsoft), it’s a great badge for the more experienced professionals as well.

  However, there are several high-level courses available, such as the ones through edX at IBM, Microsoft, MIT, UC San Diego and Harvard. Each one is different, and tailored to fit the needs of a variety of different professionals at many levels. In this article, we will take a look at these different programs, summarize their most important characteristics, the skills you’re going to acquire (as well as those you need before taking the course), and why you should choose one of them over another.

• Open-Source Platform Lets Users Build Their Own Blockchain in Under 10 Min

  An out-of-the-box solution says it enables anyone, even with no experience, to build their own blockchain in under 10 minutes.
  According to Nuls, businesses are going through a similar evolution as they did with the early internet, when every company wanted their own website: They now want their own blockchain. And although these firms may not fully understand how to deploy blockchain technology, they are aware of how their business may benefit from it.
  Nuls aims is to “dismantle some of the biggest barriers” that are stopping individuals and companies of all sizes from creating their own blockchains. Hurdles for adoption include the need to ensure that networks are fully secure and the sheer cost of bringing them to fruition. On top of this, it can be an incredibly time-consuming process — not least because there aren’t enough skilled developers to keep on top of demand.

• Open-Source Tool Lets Anyone Experiment With Cryptocurrency Blockchains

  Blockchain technology records information to a ledger shared between thousands of nodes. In the technology’s purest form, those nodes are not controlled by any central authority, and information cannot be changed once written to the ledger. Because of the security and autonomy this technology offers (in theory at least), blockchains now underpin many popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

  But as Kazuyuki Shudo, an associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, points out, "It has been nearly impossible to test improvements on real-world blockchain networks, because that would mean having to update the software of all the thousands of nodes on a network."

• Blockchain founders raised $822m by Q2 – with enterprises focused on open source

  According to the latest State of Blockchains report from Outlier Ventures, blockchain startups raised $822 million by Q2 – but the ecosystem continues to lag behind the 2017 and early 2018 peak.

  $822m was raised across 279 deals over the second quarter of 2019, with more than half of them being seed stage deals indicating continued fresh talent into the space.

  Yet while the numbers may be lower, the scope is much more advanced – particularly with how enterprises are associating with the technology.

  The report explores case studies which will be familiar to readers of this publication. Last month The Block reported that retailer Target had posted a job advert for a blockchain engineer, with the right candidate being able to contribute to ConsenSource, a certificate registry blockchain application based on Hyperledger Sawtooth. The company’s interest in blockchain has been noted, working with agribusiness provider Cargill on a Hyperledger-built project around the supply chain.

  [...]

  The Block spoke with Burke at the Blockchain Expo Global event in London around the data and platform monopolies which exist today.

• Inside the IT industry’s largest commercial open source software ecosystem

  At Red Hat, our vision of an open hybrid cloud is simple. We believe they should be truly open platforms across any application, environment, and cloud, with portability and operational consistency. This reaches from public and private clouds, to bare metal and virtual environments in traditional datacenters, the extended datacenter (edge), and end-user devices.

  Delivering application portability for development and operations across a diverse set of environments, without vendor lock-in, requires ubiquitous open source technologies as well as commercial offerings based on these technologies. Open source technologies can provide layers of abstraction and offer an ecosystem worth investing in for customers and vendors alike. These technologies deliver a pathway to commercial offerings as stand-alone products or as solutions that help solve customer needs.

  Standardising with open source.

  Standardising on products that use open source technologies can help protect customers by offering an exit strategy. Linux, Linux containers, Kubernetes and Kubernetes Operators are key technologies for these abstractions in modern computing environments. A closer look reveals why:

• Open Source TriggerMesh Operator Available for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for Hybrid Serverless Computing

  TriggerMesh, a multi-cloud serverless management platform company, and Vshn, a DevOps consultancy, have announced the availability of the TriggerMesh Operator for Red Hat OpenShift 4. OpenShift 4 was recently announced by Red Hat to bring additional automation to Kubernetes applications. The TriggerMesh Operator allows OpenShift users to install the TriggerMesh management platform and integrate serverless workloads with other clouds and legacy infrastructure. In addition, TriggerMesh enables serverless function CI/CD as well as access to multi-cloud event sources from AWS and Google Cloud.

• Are Open Source Active Path Testing Tools Viable for You?

  An open source path testing tool could be an alternative to a commercial product, but you must understand the tradeoffs.

• What Is Open-Source Software? (+The Benefits and Risks)

  Many open-source applications are also freely distributed. This is referred to as free and open-source software, or FOSS. Often, vendors only ask for donations to help keep them afloat, along with costs for additional plugins, support and services.

  These brands provide a solution they believe in without attaching a price tag or subscription plan to the product. The most successful releases usually generate a profit from a passionate community of users. But the prevalence of zero-cost software goes hand in hand with the transparency of open-source code.

  Not only do these features increase a vendor’s chances of reaching a wider audience, but they also offer opportunities to inspire innovation. It is all about paying it forward.

  There are twists and turns in the timeline of open-source technology, and there is still a substantial place in B2B for proprietary code. But the spread of free, open-source software is a defining story of the 2000s, leading to the rise of many products and careers. Popular products like Blender and MySQL remain free and open source even with millions of downloads. These success stories helped to fortify the movement and rewrite the rules of software development and usership.

• Zim is a free, open source, text editor with wiki like features

  One unusual text editor which I came across a while ago, was Zim. This isn't your average text editor. If you have used hierarchical text editors like AllMyNotes Organizer or Tree Notes (commercial), it is sort of similar.

  Zim can be used to create pages, and link to those pages, kind of like a wiki functions, hence the tagline, A Desktop Wiki. The application which is written in Python, is available for Windows and Linux. Both versions are identical in usage and features, though the PC version is a few builds behind.

  [...]

  Tip: You can use Zim as a text-editor and use it to edit TXT files using the import option. The export options can be used to save the documents to other formats like HTML, MHTML, Latex, Markdown and RST.

  The toolbar has a few navigation options, some formatting styles, and the attach files option. Opening the Calendar option creates a Journal notebook which has automatically categorized sub-pages for the selected year, month and date. The format menu has a lot more options including headings, list styles (numbered, bulleted, checkbox list), scripts, etc. This means can use the program for anything, like keeping a journal, maintaining a record of your expenses, a collection of notes, use it for note-taking in class or meetings, to-do lists, etc. It's up to you.

  Tip: Though the toolbar says Strong, Emphasis, etc., the program supports universal keyboard shortcuts for Bold, Italics, Underline etc.

• ThoughtWorks Releases Taiko - A Free and Open Source Browser Automation Tool
  

  ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy, today announced the availability of Taiko 1.0, an open source browser automation tool which is available to download for free. Taiko is sponsored by the same ThoughtWorks team that created the free and open source test automation framework Gauge.

• Open Source's Role in UC & Networking on the Rise

  Exploring the impact of the software revolution that's quietly empowering more open source networking and communications solutions.

• SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Qinling

  This week’s SD Times Open Source Project of the Week — OpenStack’s Qinling — allows users to run code without provisioning or managing servers and only pay for the compute time they consume. The release is still under development and the current supported release is Stein.

  According to the makers of Qinling, the project was created to provide “Functions-as-a-Service” for serverless functions such as AWS Lambda. Through plugins, Qinling supports container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes and Swarm as well as function package storage backends.

• AMD Picasso Support For Coreboot Appears Finally Ready

  Back in April I wrote about Coreboot seeing AMD Picasso APU enablement work as the first Zen/Ryzen processor target being handled by this open-source BIOS alternative. It now looks like that Picasso support is all squared away and ready for use by future AMD-powered Google Chromebooks.

• Lessons from the GraphQL Documentary: Never Underestimate the Power of Open Source Communities

  Honeypot, a tech-focused job platform based in Europe, has produced a documentary that offers a fascinating look at the origins of GraphQL. The 28-minute video explores how quickly the project began to have an impact on the wider tech industry after Facebook publicly released it as an open source project.

  GraphQL co-founder Nick Schrock, who was interviewed along with fellow co-creators Lee Byron and Dan Schafer, said the documentary “captured both the urgency and joy of the early months of the GraphQL.” It was filmed over two months in San Francisco and Berlin, where Honeypot runs the GraphQL Conf in cooperation with Prisma.

• The Apache® Software Foundation Announces Program for ApacheCon™ Europe

  The Apache® Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today the event program for the European edition of ApacheCon™, the ASF's official global conference series. ApacheCon Europe will take place 22-24 October 2019 at the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Germany.