Devices/Embedded With Linux

• Gemini Lake industrial mini-PCs are loaded with USB and COM ports

  GigaIPC latest QBiX Series industrial mini-PCs run Linux or Windows on Intel Gemini Lake and offer up to 8x USB and 5x COM ports plus dual displays, GbE, SATA III, M.2, and ruggedization features. Taiwanese computer vendor Gigabyte primarily produces consumer and enterprise desktop PC and server equipment, so we were surprised in 2017 when it launched an embedded 3.5-inch, Intel Apollo Lake GA-SBCAP3350 SBC. The following year in 2018, Gigabyte spun off GigaIPC as an embedded unit, and it has already generated a large catalog of Intel-based products including Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX, thin Mini-ITX, and 110 x 105mm “10×10” boards. There are 15 different 3.5-inch “QBi Pro” boards much like the GA-SBCAP3350, but also available with Whiskey Lake and Kaby Lake-U processors.

• 19″ Rackmounts Support up to 12 Raspberry Pi SBCs

  Last time, we wrote about myelectronics.nl we covered their Tesla Cybertruck Case for Intel NUCs which housed the mini PC into a mini CyberTruck looking enclosure. The company has now come up with new housing solutions specifically designed for Raspberry Pi 1/2/3/4 Model B/B+ boards.

• PoE-ready Ryzen V1000 SBC is all about camera control

  Axiomtek’s “MIRU130” SBC targets embedded vision applications with a Ryzen V1000 SoC, 4x USB 3.1 Gen2, HDMI and DP ports, cam triggers and lighting controls, 2x M.2, PCIe x16, and 4x GbE ports, 2x of which offer PoE. Axiomtek recently launched a CAPA13R, joineing Seco’s similarly 3.5-inch SBC-C90 as the only SBCs we have seen based on AMD’s Ryzen Embedded V100. Now Axiomtek has returned with a larger, V1000-based MIRU130 motherboard with a 244 x 170mm form factor that falls in between Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX.

• IAR Systems Delivers Efficient Embedded Software Building on Linux

  Through the C/C++ compiler and debugger toolchain IAR Embedded Workbench®, IAR Systems provides its customers with the market's most diverse microcontroller support as well as adapted licensing options to fit different organizations' needs. This flexibility is now extended to the build environment as the well-known build tools in IAR Embedded Workbench now support Linux. The tools offer leading code quality, outstanding optimizations for size and speed, and fast build times. Supporting implementation in Linux-based frameworks for automated application build and test processes, the tools enable large-scale deployments of critical software building and testing and is suitable for installations ranging from a few licenses on a small build server, to massive installations with several hundreds of parallel builds active at the same time.

• Librem 5 April 2020 Software Development Update

  This is another incarnation of the software development progress for the Librem 5. This time for April 2020 (weeks 14-18). Some items are covered in more detail in separate blog posts at https://puri.sm/news. The idea of this summaries is so you can have a closer look at the coding and design side of things. It also shows how much we’re standing on the shoulders of giants reusing existing software and how contributions are flowing back and forth. So these reports are usually rather link heavy pointing to individual merge requests on https://source.puri.sm/ or to the upstream side (like e.g. GNOME’s gitlab.)

Games: Burning Knight, Elder Scrolls, Cities: Skylines and PyGame

• Burning Knight is a roguelike where you rob a dungeon, coming soon

  At least the setting is honest, you're totally robbing the dungeons in Burning Knight and then attempting to flee. Burning Knight is an action-packed procedurally generated roguelike, with fast-paced action and plenty of exploration across various floors in the Burning Knight's castle that you're stealing goods from. It can turn into a bullet-hell in some rooms, there's hundreds of items to find and they can be combined to "build your very own game-breaking combos" and it does sound awesome. The developer, Rexcellent Games, just announced on Twitter yesterday that it's now actually complete. They're waiting on Valve's approval, and it looks like it will hopefully release next month. SteamDB captured the date changing to June 5 but that might be a temporary date.

• Stadia gets Elder Scrolls Online on June 16, 1440p in web and more

  A few bits of Stadia news for you as Google have announced the next set of additions coming to their game streaming service. For players who were a bit let down by resolution options, there's some good news. As some players already saw across the last few weeks and today being made properly official, 1440p is now an option when playing Stadia in a web browser.

• Humble Cities: Skylines Bundle is up for some easy city building

  Cities: Skylines, one of the finest city builders ever is now available in a big Humble Bundle for you to grab the base game and lots of extra content. This is honestly a ridiculously good deal and probably the cheapest Cities: Skylines has ever been. For £1 you can get Cities: Skylines and the Deep Focus Radio DLC. Even if you only go for that, there's a lot to enjoy without any expansions.

• Python Qt5 - PyQt5 and PyGame compatibility with source code.

  This tutorial tries to solve from the objectives related to solving and stabilizing compatibility errors between PyQt4 and PyQt5 and creating a common interface between PyQt5 and PyGame. There is always the same problem in programming when the developer for some reason has to change classes, methods and functions and reusing the old code is no longer valid. In this case, common or other errors occur, which leads to a waste of time.

Red Hat and IBM

• Fighting exploits with Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) in Clang

  Many available exploits are based on techniques such as Return Oriented Programming and Shell Code Injection and execution, as well as other ways an attacker can gain control and subvert the expected execution flow from an application’s execution flow. These exploits aren't novel, nor are techniques to try to prevent them. Compilers deploy a wide range of hardening at compilation-time to mitigate the risk of arbitrary code execution. These include Stack Canaries, Stack-clash protection, and FORTIFY_SOURCE as examples of builtin protections against stack corruption and control flow integrity. With that in mind we are going to have a look at the Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) protection implemented by the Clang compiler for x86_64 architecture.

• Red Hat Software Collections 3.5 and Red Hat Developer Toolset 9.1 now generally available

  The latest versions of Red Hat Software Collections and Red Hat Developer Toolset are now generally available. Red Hat Software Collections 3.5 delivers the latest stable versions of many popular open source runtime languages and databases natively to the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform. These components are supported for up to five years, helping to enable a more consistent, efficient, and reliable developer experience.

• Build Smart on Kubernetes with OpenShift from anywhere in the world

  The Build Smart on Kubernetes World Tour is a series of in-person and virtual workshops around the globe that help you build the skills you need to quickly modernize your applications. This World Tour provides a hands-on experience and teaches the basics and more of working with Kubernetes using the hybrid-cloud, enterprise container platform Red Hat® OpenShift® on IBM Cloud™.

• IBM Data Asset eXchange launches new data sets and exploratory Watson Studio notebooks

  The IBM® Data Asset eXchange (DAX) is an online hub for developers and data scientists to find free and open data sets under open data licenses. A particular focus of the exchange is data sets under the Community Data License Agreement (CDLA). Since launching the exchange in 2019, the Center for Open-Source Data & AI Technologies (CODAIT) team has been working on steadily adding new data sets to the exchange, as well as resources that help explore these data sets. Our latest update to the Data Asset eXchange adds a host of new data-related assets and user experience enhancements. For existing data sets, we’ve added seven new Watson Studio notebooks as well as three Watson Studio projects (a new class of data assets that package multiple notebooks together). Along with these notebooks, we’ve also added eight new data sets to the exchange, featuring domains such as oil extraction, remote sensing, and speech recognition. Finally, we are working on improving the way DAX displays data set previews. We have begun to add data glossaries and detailed metadata sections to provide users with extra context behind a data set’s features and use cases. We have also started working on accommodating text, image, and audio data record preview allowing users to sample data sets without having to download the entire data set archive.

• New container capabilities in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2

  In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1, we added new container features including full support for rootless Podman, Podman Play/generate Kube, and container images for the Golang toolset ("A minor release with major new container capabilities"). Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 hits the ground with an even bigger set of features.