ASIFA-Hollywood Continues Commitment to Open-Source Animation Technology

The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood announced its continued commitment to open-source animation technology earlier in June with a special development sponsorship to Synfig, a 2D vector graphics animation program. The amount awarded was $2,000. This grant will help keep their new developer employed full-time, working on bug-fixes and improving stability of the free and open source software.

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: FLIR Systems

FLIR Systems is enabling the acceleration of being able to test thermal sensors on autonomous vehicles with the release of its open-source thermal dataset, which features more than 10,000 annotated thermal images of day and nighttime scenarios. The company has over a decade of experience within the automotive industry. More than 500,000 FLIR thermal sensors are installed in driver warning systems from various automakers including General Motors, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, according to the company. This dataset will enable developers to evaluate thermal sensors on next-generation algorithms. By combining this data with visible light cameras, LiDAR, and RADAR, developers will be able to build a more comprehensive and redundant system for identifying objects on the road.

Keeping Ethereum's Promise: CryptoKitties Is Embracing Open-Source

Announced this week, CryptoKitties debuted a number of new initiatives that will further decentralize its popular ethereum app, which while largely passing under the radar, show the startup is making strides to give users rights. It's been the subject of criticism for the beloved game, which raised $12 million in March with the expectation it would loosen controls on its code in line with the larger crypto ethos. Among a slew of updates, CryptoKitties is open-sourcing its API and smart contracts for gameplay in the KittyVerse – a virtual world of experiences including catfights, racing and accessories – through a developer toolkit. Plus, it's updated its user agreements to be more lenient and introduced a players' rights contract called the Nifty License.

CryptoKitties Goes Open Source

One of the most popular ethereum-based dApp projects, CryptoKitties, has announced several changes and new initiatives to further decentralize the premium virtual feline offering, reports CoinDesk. [...] In addition, it has also raised questions about whether the project really operates in a truly decentralized manner. For instance, it is possible for Kitty Core, the owner of the CryptoKitties project, to edit the underlying algorithm and mutate a popular or high-worth digital kitten despite objections from the kitten's owner. Essentially, the project runs in a centralized manner, with the project owner(s) having the utmost power.

What does Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub mean for the future of open source? [Ed: White Source is a Trojan horse. Now it's perfuming Microsoft entryism]

Puppet's Cisco-Led $42M Round Going to Cloud and Containers

Some More Very Satisfying Graphs

The power of cleaning up old code: removing 150kb from the average “main” ping sent multiple times per day by each and every Firefox Nightly user.

Ad-blocker-blockers hit a new low. What's the solution?

It may be the wrong day to slam the local newspapers, but this was what greeted me trying to click through to a linked newspaper article this morning on Firefox Android. The link I was sent was from the Riverside Press-Enterprise, but this appears to be throughout the entire network of the P-E's owners, the Southern California News Group (which includes the Orange County Register, San Bernardino Sun and Los Angeles Daily News):

This week in Mixed Reality: Issue 11

This week, we're making great strides in adding new features and making a wide range of improvements and our new contributors are also helping us fix bugs.

Python unit tests now running with Python 3 at Mozilla

LLVM Gets ARMv8.4 Enablement, GCC Gets Cortex-A76 Support

It's been another busy week in compiler land for ARM. First up, the GCC compiler now officially supports the Cortex-A76. The A76 is the new Cortex processor announced back in May for yielding much better performance and efficiency, especially for AI and machine learning.

Compiler fuzzing, part 1

Much has been written about fuzzing compilers already, but there is not a lot that I could find about fuzzing compilers using more modern fuzzing techniques where coverage information is fed back into the fuzzer to find more bugs.

GCC Picks Up Meaningful Bash Completion Support To Help With Compiler Options

One of the advantages of the LLVM Clang compiler has been better integration with Bash completion support, but now the GCC compiler supports a --completion argument for feeding into the Bash completion script with better matching of supported options/values when typing into a supported terminal.

RcppArmadillo 0.8.600.0.0

A new RcppArmadillo release 0.8.600.0.0, based on the new Armadillo release 8.600.0 from this week, just arrived on CRAN. It follows our (and Conrad’s) bi-monthly release schedule. We have made interim and release candidate versions available via the GitHub repo (and as usual thoroughly tested them) but this is the real release cycle. A matching Debian release will be prepared in due course.

Thirty-Five Organizations From Tech, Finance, Energy, and Biotech Join The Linux Foundation and Invest in Open Source Technology

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, announced the addition of 32 Silver members and 3 Associate members. Linux Foundation members help support development of the shared technology resources, while accelerating their own innovation through open source leadership and participation. Linux Foundation member contributions help provide the infrastructure and resources that enable the world's largest open collaboration communities.

Cloud East Meets Cloud West: Google and Tencent Go for Linux Foundation Platinum

Tencent makes a splash in open source community by becoming a Linux Foundation platinum member

Tencent has become the latest platinum member of the Linux Foundation, and the only one from China. The move suggests the increasing importance of open source to the company’s IP strategy, which is becoming more and more global in scope. IAM reached out to Tencent, and found out that this is merely the latest in a long line of open source initiatives at the Shenzhen-based software giant. Roger Xu, executive director of Tencent’s Open Source division, tells us that Tencent launched its open source programme back in 2010, but has started to speed up projects since 2017.