Development Boards and Open Hardware/Modding

• Cucumber ESP32-S2 Development Board Comes with USB OTG Port, Optional Sensors

  Yesterday, I wrote about LilyGO TTGO ESP32-S2 WiFi IoT board, but one commenter mentioned it missed one of the key features of ESP32-S2 chip: a USB OTG port. While USB OTG is accessible through the header pins, it’s not the most convenient to use. I also quickly mentioned Cucumber ESP32-S2 development board in that post, but I did not expand too much since I thought it should only ship within Thailand. But the board does include two USB Type-C ports, one for the usual USB UART connector, and the other for USB OTG, and I found out the board is available worldwide.

• TTGO ESP32-S2 WiFi IoT Board Comes with Optional MicroSD Card and Battery Support

  All ESP32-S2 boards I’ve seen so far were from Espressif Systems themselves including ESP32-S2-Saola-1 and ESP32-S2-Kaluga-1, but LilyGO TTGO ESP32-S2 is the first third-party board for sale so far. The tiny board is somewhat similar to ESP32-S2-Saola-1 board and comes in two versions with a similar form factor, but a completely different pinout and the presence of a MicroSD card socket and a battery connector on one of the boards. [...] The boards are a bit more different than I expected at first look. Please note that specifications should be seen as preliminary, as there were obvious mistakes such as Bluetooth support (not available for ESP32-S2) which I did not included in the specs above, but there may be others which I missed.

• CR Deck Mk.1 Is An Open Source AR Headset Based On Project North Star With Ultraleap Hand-Tracking

• Open Source Ventilators Helped by Electronic Design Software

  In the early days of the pandemic, the first major challenge facing nations was a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators. The former helps safeguard hospital personnel from potential contamination; the latter are necessary to keep the most critically ill patients breathing once the virus attacks their respiratory systems. Ventilators are traditionally large and very costly devices; smaller ventilators—known as field emergency ventilators (FEVs) have been used in emergency settings, including combat missions and in Third World nations for decades to help keep patients alive as they await transport to hospitals for intubation.

• NASA JPL Team Fires up Open Source PPE Respirator Designs

  Does it really take a team of rocket scientists to rapidly engineer a top-notch line of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect against COVID-19 spread? And then to open source its production designs for the benefit of anyone with access to a 3D printer? The answer: not necessarily, but it sure can help. That’s the latest good news on the pandemic front from the technology and innovation team at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

• NASA and other innovators work to redesign ventilators for Covid-19 patients

  NASA scientists as well as other innovators are busy developing alternatives to the traditional ventilator being used worldwide to treat severe cases of Covid-19. The movement is in response to growing evidence that in some cases ventilators can cause more harm than good in some patients with low oxygen levels. Statistics tell the story: 80% of patients with the coronavirus die on such machines. This comes just a few months since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when U.S. healthcare providers said that they needed ventilators to accommodate the flood of new patients, and lots of them. The crisis triggered the Trump administration to activate the Defense Production Act so manufacturers including Ford, GM and GE could start ventilator production to produce these medical devices for the U.S. government.

Software: NetworkManager, Google's Chrome/Chromium, Best Linux Remote Desktop Tools, RapidDisk and Mastodon

• NetworkManager 1.26 Development Progressing With New Functionality

  NetworkManager 1.25.2-dev is the latest development version of this important Linux networking component in the road towards NetworkManager 1.26. NetworkManager 1.25.2-dev was bumped this weekend as another milestone towards the upcoming 1.26 stable release of this widely used component for configuring wired and wireless networking on Linux and other platforms. Some of the changes building up so far for NetworkManager 1.26 include: - A new "firewalld-zone" option that is enabled by default that will install a firewalld zone for connection sharing and put the IPv4/IPv6 shared mode interfaces in this zone.

• Chrome Is Reaching The Point Of Good X11 + Wayland Support In Same Build

  Google's Chrome/Chromium web browser is finally reaching the stage where having both the X11 support and Ozone abstraction layer for Wayland can be enabled concurrently in the same build. Thanks to the work by Google, Igalia, and others, the Chrome/Chromium code-base is nearly at the stage where the traditional X11 support can be built along with the Ozone platform support concurrently. Ozone is the platform abstraction layer being worked on for years for handling low-level input/graphics and necessary for Wayland support as well as various embedded use-cases and other platform abstraction capabilities. An overview of the Ozone code can be found here.

• Best Linux Remote Desktop Tools For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS To Share Your Desktop In 2020

  7. KDE Connect KDE Connect helps you to enable remote desktop sharing with the help of Android and Linux applications. 8. VNC Connect VNC Connect is a simple and secure remote desktop sharing tool for Linux. VNC Connect is equipped with 256 bit AES session encryption and it uses Remote Frame Buffer protocol to remotely control another computer.

• RapidDisk version 6.1 released

  RapidDisk is an advanced Linux RAM Disk which consists of a collection of modules and an administration tool. Features include: Dynamically allocate RAM as block device. Use them as stand alone disk drives or even map them as caching nodes to slower local disk drives.

• Experience With Mastodon

• Share PeerTube Videos on Mastodon

Security and Proprietary Issues

• 10 open source cloud security tools to know [Ed: The moment you choose 'clown computing' you've already disowned your own infrastructure and lost privacy, security, control. So this is sort of missing the point of "open" (the environment itself is proprietary).]

  Pacu is written in Python and maintained by Rhino Security Labs, a penetration testing provider.

• Cisco security breach hits corporate servers that ran unpatched software

  Six servers Cisco uses to provide a virtual networking service were compromised by hackers who exploited critical flaws contained in unpatched versions the open source software service relies on, the company disclosed on Thursday.

• Zoom to Strengthen Encryption for Paying Customers: Reuters

  In response to queries, Zoom pointed to its May 27 report that said its focus is to build the so-called end-to-end encryption for its meeting product, which may be later rolled out for its chat, phone and webinar offerings. “Only our paid users will have access to end-to-end encryption for their meetings,” it said. “However, all users will use the 256-bit GCM encryption on May 30 regardless of their license type.”

• Zoom paid accounts reportedly will get strong encryption for calls

  Zoom published a draft paper May 22nd outlining some of its encryption plans.

• Zoom Publishes Draft Design of End-to-End Encryption Offering

  Once we have assessed this feedback for integration into a final design, we will announce our engineering milestones and goals for deploying an end-to-end encryption offering for Zoom users.

• Exclusive: Zoom plans to roll out strong encryption for paying customers

  The company, whose business has boomed with the coronavirus pandemic, discussed the move on a call with civil liberties groups and child-sex abuse fighters on Thursday, and Zoom security consultant Alex Stamos confirmed it on Friday.

  In an interview, Stamos said the plan was subject to change and it was not yet clear which, if any, nonprofits or other users, such as political dissidents, might qualify for accounts allowing more secure video meetings.

  He added that a combination of technological, safety and business factors went into the plan, which drew mixed reactions from privacy advocates.

• NHS contact tracing undermined by hackers sending fraudulent warnings to public

  The new NHS test and trace programme is being undermined by hackers sending out phishing scams falsely warning the public they may have Covid-19.

  Public Health England have warned potential contacts to check suspicious messages against the Government website after a flurry of reports of Britons being falsely informed they may have coronavirus.