• Batteries are Leaking | Coder Radio 358

  A strong argument against Python’s batteries included model exposes some bigger problems the community is struggling with. We chat about all of it.

  Plus lessons learned six years after a project, a new tool, and some feedback.

• SMLR 307 Night of The Living Daemon

• This Week in Linux 67 | Zombieload, Nextcloud, Peppermint 10, KDE Plasma, IPFire, ArcoLinux, LuneOS

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ll check out some Distro News from Peppermint OS, ArcoLinux, LuneOS & IPFire. We got a couple apps to talking about like Nextclou0…d and a new Wallpaper tool that has quite a bit of potential. We’ll take a look at what is to come with the next version of KDE Plasma. Intel users have gotten some more bad news regarding a new security vulnerability. Later in the show, we’ll cover some interesting information regarding a couple governments saving money by switching to Linux. Then finally we’ll check out some Linux Gaming News. All that and much more on your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

• Some Btrfs vs Ext4 random-read/write performance observations

  I’ve been using XFS as a very conservative file system choice for the last four years or so after being burned by BtrFS file system corruptions a couple of times in a row. However, I’ve been working more with many small files lately to build this blog using a static website generator. Performance hasn’t been great and I’ve also found a need for recording file creation times, something which isn’t natively supported by XFS.

  My hardware setup have consisted of two old fashioned spinning software mirrored 4 terabyte hard drives for my home directory. I’ve used these drives as a backing drive with a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe solid state drive as a LVM cache drive for performance. I stopped using LVM cache disk a few months ago as I wanted to enable full-drive encryption and it also prevented my system from hibernating; a problem LVM caches share with BCache. I considered trying BCache anyway, but luckily decided against it just days before people started noticing drive corruptions with BCache on GCC 9 and Linux 5.

  After a careful review I decided to slim down my home directory and move over to the NVMe with an LUKS encrypted BtrFS file system. I’ve had bad experiences with this file system in the past, but surely something has happened in the last four years, right? I decided to give it a fourth chance in the interest of getting a more modern file system. I had to move a lot of files over to a separate drive, but cleaning up your home directory never hurt anyone (assuming you have proper backups).

• Xen Developers Continue Work On CPU Core Scheduling Support

  Sent out earlier this month is the second version of the Xen core scheduling patches that allow for CPU core and socket-level scheduling by this virtualization hypervisor.

  The focus of this core/socket-level scheduling is to ensure the same VM(s) share the vCPU threads, which is more important these days in light of the various CPU speculative execution vulnerabilities that make Hyper Threading look particularly unsafe.

• Do you know what IVBP, ROMB or UTOK are?

  First, thanks to everyone for the all the help with UEFI modules. There are a ton left, but also a lot done, so we’re getting there. If anyone is intimately familiar with ME firmware, I’d also really like some help with this Intel Management Engine document too. Thanks!

• Purism and the Linux Kernel

  We’re especially proud of our kernel contributions – where 13 patches have made it into 5.1. Since this is our first installment, it also includes the changes that went into 5.0 and 4.20. Bellow is a list of our most recent contributions.

• Pixel Noir, a turn-based RPG set against a film noir backdrop is entering Early Access soon

  Here's another game successfully funded on Kickstarter, one we missed, which looks fantastic and it's coming to Linux. It's called Pixel Noir and it sure does look stylish.

  It was funded on Kickstarter back in 2015 with the help of nearly two thousand backers. Interestingly, the reason we didn't pick it up is that the campaign wasn't originally targetting Linux as a platform.

• Hell is Other Demons is a frantic arcade shooter that's pure bliss to play, out now

  Not originally scheduled to release same-day with Linux support, Hell is Other Demons, developed by Cuddle Monster Games and publishing from Kongregate is out now and it's damn good.

  Hell is Other Demons is a ridiculously good retro-looking arcade shooter, one that I've pretty much fallen in love with. From the moment I got to test it, I was hooked right in thanks to the incredible styling. That's not all though, while the game is mechanically simple as it's basically a platform shooter with tiny arenas it's in no way easy. It manages to do a lot with the simplicity, while also giving you a lot of choice.

• Creature-building survival-action game 'Sipho' has a new breed in the latest update

  The whole idea of the game is pretty sweet, giving a different kind of action and survival experience. It has a nice gameplay loop to it already with you picking a breed, constructing your creature and then attempting to survive while also possibly unlocking a new breed if you collect enough of their DNA. Once you manage to take down the Queen, you also get to play with the Aquarium feature, which is basically a sandbox area to do whatever you want.

• Regions Of Ruin, a side-scrolling RPG with town-building is now on GOG

  Regions Of Ruin from Vox Games and Poysky Productions, a side-scrolling RPG with town-building is now available DRM-free on GOG. A nice reminder of it too, one we completely missed actually being properly released for Linux.

• In the 2.5D puzzle-adventure Afterlight, you play as an isolated astronaut on Titan

  Afterlight really does look beautiful, with a "2.5D" style this puzzle-adventure is one to firmly keep an eye on.

  It's currently looking for funding on Kickstarter, with Linux as a planned platform for release "Our main platform is PC (Windows, Mac & Linux) via Steam" and their FAQ also makes it clear Linux is a target too. With 24 days to go, they're closing in on half of the $35K goal.

• Tank Maniacs looks like some seriously good local multiplayer fun, coming to Linux soon

  Tank Maniacs, a local multiplayer party game about blowing up everyone with tanks looks really fun and it's coming to Linux. I managed to get confirmation from the developer on Twitter, who mentioned a Linux build is now up for those testing it.

  A game that doesn't exactly need a long description, you each pilot a strange tank and attempt to destroy everyone else. As the developer says "It's mostly about destroying your closest friends' hopes and dreams with weird tanks."—hah.

• Fedora Mexico: Three months of activities

  The Fedora contributors and enthusiast in Mexico city has monthly meetings since February.

• Linux Security Summit 2019 North America: CFP / OSS Early Bird Registration

  The LSS North America 2019 CFP is currently open, and you have until May 31st to submit your proposal. (That’s the end of next week!)

  If you’re planning on attending LSS NA in San Diego, note that the Early Bird registration for Open Source Summit (which we’re co-located with) ends today.

• Kubeflow at KubeCon Europe 2019 in Barcelona

  Kubeflow, the Kubernetes native application for AI and Machine Learning, continues to accelerate feature additions and community growth. The community has released two new versions since the last Kubecon – 0.4 in January and 0.5 in April – and is currently working on the 0.6 release, to be released in July. The key features in each release are briefly discussed below.

• Tracing Microconference Accepted into 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference

  We are pleased to announce that the Tracing Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! Its return to Linux Plumbers shows that tracing is not finished in Linux, and there continue to be challenging problems to solve.

  There’s a broad list of ways to perform Tracing in Linux. From the original mainline Linux tracer, Ftrace, to profiling tools like perf, more complex customized tracing like BPF and out-of-tree tracers like LTTng, systemtap, and Dtrace. Part of the trouble with tracing within Linux is that there is so much to choose from. Each of these have their own audience, but there is a lot of overlap. This year’s theme is to find those common areas and combine them into common utilities.

• YottaDB

  At the core of YottaDB is a daemon-less hierarchical key-value database engine that executes within the address space of the application process, which makes in-memory calls to a YottaDB API. Processes cooperate with one another to manage the database, and the achievable throughput is limited by the underlying computing platform, rather than the potential single-point bottleneck of a daemon. Combining the database engine and application logic in a single process yields robustness, security, simplicity and performance.

• YottaDB at LFNW 2019

  YottaDB was happy to sponsor and attend the 2019 Linux Fest North West in Bellingham, WA on April 26 -28, 2019.

• Google cuts Huawei's Android access to app and security updates

• Google's Huawei Android restrictions: what does it mean for you?

• What the Google Android suspension means for Huawei users

• Google Restricts Huawei's Access To Android Systems After Trump Ban

• Google restricting Huawei's access to Android operating system

• Huawei suffers hammer blow with Android ban

• Google Calendar and Google Keep get dark mode on Android

• Android Q is already struggling with Google’s biggest problem

• Android Q Beta Now Available for OnePlus 7 Pro

• Android Q Beta is now available for OnePlus 7 Pro and OnePlus 7

• List of Android-Powered Smart TV Box Options on Discount, Includes Lenovo G66, Xiaomi 4SE, more

• Anker Nebula Capsule II portable projector w/ Android TV now available for $579

• AirTV Mini is a $79 4K streaming stick w/ Android TV from DISH

• Are Powerbeats Pro the best wireless exercise headphones…for Android?

• Don't expect to sideload Android apps on a Chromebook until Chrome OS 76 or later

• Fedora Community Blog: GSOC 2019 – release-bot project

  On May 6, the selected students for Google summer of code 2019 were officially announced. We, as mentors of the release-bot project, would like to thank all applicants and provide insight into our decision process.

  Google summer of code is popular for the past several years which means that competition is really high. For our project, release-bot, this was definitely the case. We had several very promising candidates providing early contributions.

• CloudLinux OS Feature Survey - CLOSING SOON

  We're closing this CloudLinux OS feature survey at the end of this month. We'll publish the results after the survey has closed.

  Thanks to everyone who participated. If you didn't, there's still time to share your views on the direction of CloudLinux OS. It only takes a few minutes.

• May 30 virtual event explores digital leadership in financial services

  Today’s financial services businesses are faced with the need to drive new and better digital products, services, and efficiencies to improve customer loyalty and competitive advantage. Payments, authorizations, and risk and fraud assessments are embedded as part of everyday events rather than an event unto itself, with the need for speed—now often in fractions of a second—blurring the lines between front office and back office operational processing. Financial services companies need to balance the costs of renewing systems with the costs of adopting new, innovative technologies, while seeking advantages from automation, real time assessments, embedded intelligence, and more.

• CentOS 8 Release Map And It’s Details

  We already know that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 was released on 2019-05-07, and everyone is waiting for CentOS 8 release.

  Most of us doesn’t have active subscription to download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 from the Red Hat Customer Portal.

  We have to wait till CentOS 8 release to test this out.

• OpenShift 4: Red Hat's on ramp for the hybrid cloud

  In this next generation of Red Hat's Kubernetes platform, Red Hat explicitly stated OpenShift 4 is designed to deliver a cloud-like experience across the hybrid cloud by driving automated updates across Kubernetes deployments everywhere. Or, as Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst summed it up: "Make open hybrid cloud the default architecture."

  In more detail, Ashesh Badani, Red Hat senior vice president of Cloud Platforms, said: "Enterprise IT's future is driven by hybrid and multicloud computing, with Kubernetes acting as a bridge to seamlessly connect workloads between on-premise datacenters and public cloud footprints. Red Hat OpenShift 4 makes this vision of Kubernetes a reality, offering a consistent, self-managing enterprise Kubernetes platform that spans the hybrid cloud."

• Sudo + syslog-ng: two software at two conferences

  Recently I visited two conferences: LOADays and Red Hat Summit. They both focus on open source software, but similarities end there. LOADays in Antwerp is small, free and focuses on Linux administrators. The Red Hat Summit in Boston is huge, expensive and covers a wide variety of topics, including administration among many others. No matter of the differences, both are among my favorite events.

  Why sudo? Last year Balabit, the company where I work, was acquired by One Identity. Todd Miller, developer of sudo became my colleague. I was happy to see another open source software around. I read sudo and learned that it has many more features than I knew about, even if I have been using it for decades. So, next to syslog-ng I started to evangelize sudo as well, demonstrating how much more it can be than a simple prefix to administrative commands.

• Software Defined Storage: The Next Killer App for Cloud

  It’s never going to be possible to completely disconnect software from hardware. Indeed, hardware development is having a bit of a rebirth as young developers rediscover things like the 6502, homebrew computing, and 8-bit assembly languages. If this keeps going, in 20 years developers will reminisce fondly and build hobby projects in early IoT platforms, using 2007-era cloud APIs with old refrigerator-sized storage arrays.

  In my experience, storage hardware has remained something of a legacy boat anchor in many enterprises: you don’t mess around when it comes to storing your company’s long term data or selecting storage providers for your lights-on, business critical applications. Governments demand it be retained, and data scientists are increasingly building new algorithms based on giant old datasets. For a time after the cloud revolution began in the late 2000’s it seemed that storage hardware wouldn’t be moving to x86 cloud-based virtual machines–much less Linux containers–anytime soon.

DragonFlyBSD 5.4.3 was released on Monday with just a hand full of changes over last month's 5.4.2 point release.

DragonFlyBSD 5.4.3 takes care of an SMP race condition within the PF code, fixes a FP bug in its kernel, restores the trim_enabled device sysctl, ensures the ca_root_nss certificate is installed, sets GID_TTY for non-root users by default, and stubs out pthread_equal() for its C library.

Personally, I like Nemo search better than Nautilus search as I need to sort everything I find and I cannot do that with Nautilus. I love sort by Date/Descending as I use it everyday.

Apparently, not only me saying this. I don't know why this once-existed feature removed in current versions of Nautilus, as normal interface provides sorting but search interface does not. I will not wonder if somebody ask "why not removing sort in the normal interface as well?" or such.

Configuring a network connection from a Linux machine can be challenging. Fortunately, many new Linux distributions come with some type of network management tool that can help you automatically connect to a wireless network. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to set up a static network connection from a Linux machine? This guide will show you how to use different Linux tools to check for network connections from a CentOS/RHEL machine and explain how to add a static network using the nmcli tool.

If you are reading this post you're very much likely not a fan of systemd already. So we won't preach on why systemd is bad, but today we'll focus more on what are the alternatives out there. Our approach is obviously not for settling for less but for changing things for the better. We have started the world after systemd project some time ago and the search isn't over.

Discussion: Linux Distros Without Systemd (2019)

• Security updates for Monday

• NetBSD 8.1 RC1 Released With MDS Mitigations, Option To Turn Off SMT/HT, Driver Updates

  The first and only anticipated release candidate for NetBSD 8.1 is now available for testing.

  The NetBSD 8.1 release candidate adds the necessary mitigations for the Microarchitectural Data Sampling / Zombieload vulnerabilities. With Hyper Threading looking increasingly insecure with these new CPU vulnerabilities, NetBSD has joined other operating systems in offering a new setting to disable HT/SMT support: the smtoff rc.conf option.

• Outbound Traffic Filtering | Roadmap to Securing Your Infrastructure

  This week, we’re discussing outbound traffic filtering. This is filtering provided at the network edge by a firewall with rules (ACLs) restricting what internal users are allowed to access. Some firewalls have the ability to filter by an application (layer 7 firewalls), but we’re going to concentrate on standard packet-filtering firewalls and their capabilities. There are several reasons for wanting to restrict outbound communications, such as defeating malware, making data exfiltration harder, and the detection of infected hosts.

• Bluetooth's Complexity Has Become a Security Risk

  Fundamentally, both Bluetooth and BLE open up a channel for two devices to communicate—an extremely useful arrangement, but one that also opens the door for dangerous interactions. Without strong cryptographic authentication checks, malicious third parties can use Bluetooth and BLE to connect to a device they shouldn't have access to, or trick targets into thinking their rogue device is a trusted one.

• Huawei promises continued security updates and service to existing users post Google ban

  Google has shocked the world by banning Huawei from future OS versions and security updates, but existing Huawei handsets will continue getting Google Play app updates, while Huawei promises it will issue security updates instead.

• Security Advisory: Kernel and Firmware Updates for Intel MDS Vulnerability

• ICE Tops Its Old Record, Spends Another $820,000 On Cellphone-Cracking Tools

  As consecutive heads of the FBI have whined about the general public's increasing ability to keep their devices and personal data secure with encryption, a number of companies have offered tools that make this a moot point. Grayshift -- the manufacturer of phone-cracking tool GrayKey -- has been selling hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of devices to other federal agencies not so insistent the only solution is backdoored encryption.

  ICE is one of these agencies. It led all federal agencies in phone-cracking expenditures in 2018. It spent $384,000 on these tools last year. It wasn't just ICE. Other agencies like the DEA and [checks notes] the Food and Drug Administration have also purchased these devices. But ICE led the pack, most likely because ICE -- along with DHS counterpart CBP -- are engaging in more suspicionless, warrantless device searches than ever.

As a sign of the times with the Linux kernel being affected by an increasing number of CVEs (and particularly high profile ones at that), there are now more Ubuntu developers with upload rights for sending down new kernel upgrades.

Ubuntu's Kernel Uploaders Team approved adding Tyler Hicks (a longtime Canonical developer working as an Ubuntu kernel engineer) to the kernel uploaders group as well as Juerg Haefliger (having worked on stable kernels and recent high profile CVE issues already) and Khalid Elmously (another Canonical employee and existing kernel team member).

Also: Design and Web team summary – 10 May 2019

• Getting started with Source-to-Image for building container images

  Source-to-Image is an excellent tool for building container images for applications in a fast, flexible, and reproducible way. Usually abbreviated as S2I, Source-to-Image takes a base "builder" image with all the libraries and build tools needed to compile an application or install dependencies (like Python's PIP or Ruby's Bundler) and a set of scripts in predefined locations that are used to build, test, and run the application. Once the builder image is created, S2I can take code from a repository, inject it into the build image, compile or install dependencies, and generate an application image with the final application ready to go.

  I set out to learn how to build container images for applications written in Go (unofficially called Golang), and in over the next two articles, we will do so.

• EuroPython 2019: Conference and training ticket sale opens today

  After the rush to the early-bird tickets last week (we sold more than 290 tickets in 10 minutes), we expect a rush to the regular and training tickets this week as well.
  We only have 300 training tickets available, so if you want to attend the training days, please consider getting your ticket soon.

• Adding Pagination With Django

  While working on a modern web application quite often you will need to paginate the app be it for better user experience or performance. Fortunately, Django comes with built-in pagination classes for managing paginating data of your application.

  In this article, we will go through the pagination process with class-based views and function based views in Django.

• Python's Counter - Part 2

  Counter is an amazing tool that simplifies the task of counting items, but, No! it works only on iterables - there is more to this, so keep reading. In the meantime, what is an iterable? In basic terms, an iterable stores a sequence of values, or characters, which you can traverse.

• Wing Tips: Selecting Logical Units of Python Code in Wing

  In this issue of Wing Tips we take a look at quickly selecting Python code in logical units, which can make some editing tasks easier.

• Python 3.7.3 : Use the tweepy to deal with twitter api - part 002.

• Python 3.7.3 : The google-cloud-vision python module - part 002.

• Growth of a Population

  Hello and welcome back, in this episode we are going to solve a python related problem in Codewars. Before we start I just want to say that this post is related to python programming, you are welcome to leave your comments below this post if and only if they are related to the below solution, kindly do not leave any comment which has nothing to do with python programming under this article, thank you.

• Overview of Async IO in Python 3.7

• Test and Code: 74: Technical Interviews: Preparing For, What to Expect, and Tips for Success - Derrick Mar

• Unicode & Character Encodings in Python: A Painless Guide

• The google-cloud-vision python module - part 001.

• The 2019 Rust Event Lineup

• This Summer with Kdenlive

  Hi! I’m Akhil K Gangadharan and I’ve been selected for GSoC this year with Kdenlive. My project is titled ‘Revamping the Titler Tool’ and my work for this summer aims to kickoff the complete revamp of one of the major tools used in video-editing in Kdenlive, called the Titler tool.

  [...]

  After the backend is done with, we begin integrating it with Kdenlive and evolve the titler to use the new backend.

  A great long challenge lies ahead, and I’m looking forward to this summer and beyond with the community to complete writing the tool - right from the backend to the new UI.

• Linux perf and KCachegrind

  If you occassionally do performance profiling as I do, you probably know Valgrind's Callgrind and the related UI KCachegrind. While Callgrind is a pretty powerful tool, running it takes quite a while (not exactly fun to do with something as big as e.g. LibreOffice).

  Recently I finally gave Linux perf a try. Not quite sure why I didn't use it before, IIRC when I tried it somewhen long ago, it was probably difficult to set up or something. Using perf record has very little overhead, but I wasn't exactly thrilled by perf report. I mean, it's text UI, and it just gives a list of functions, so if I want to see anything close to a call graph, I have to manually expand one function, expand another function inside it, expand yet another function inside that, and so on. Not that it wouldn't work, but compared to just looking at what KCachegrind shows and seeing ...

  When figuring out how to use perf, while watching a talk from Milian Wolff, on one slide I noticed a mention of a Callgrind script. Of course I had to try it. It was a bit slow, but hey, I could finally look at perf results without feeling like that's an effort. Well, and then I improved the part of the script that was slow, so I guess I've just put the effort elsewhere .

• KDAB helps unu build Qt-based UI

  Those of you who’ve visited KDAB’s offices in Berlin, will know we have a fleet of electric scooters for our staff. You may have even tried one yourself!

  Today, unu, the Berlin-based mobility company that makes them, launches their latest electric scooter – the unu Scooter.

  The unu Scooter has been completely redeveloped, is more open to sharing and rental services and has the fastest acceleration you’ll find in any electric scooter, courtesy of its Bosch engine.

• Help Test Plasma 5.16 Beta

  Plasma 5.16 beta was released last week and there?s now a further couple of weeks to test it to find and fix all the beasties. To help out download the Neon Testing image and install it in a virtual machine or on your raw hardware. You probably want to do a full-upgrade to make sure you have the latest builds. Then try out the new notifications system, or the new animated wallpaper settings or anything else mentioned in the release announcement. When you find a problem report it on bugs.kde.org and/or chat on the Plasma Matrix room. Thanks for your help!

Huawei has probably played a questionable game with user data and corporate data. This has led governments to discourage the usage of Huawei devices, which is a fair and understandable attitude.

However, what Huawei really didn’t understand is that their dependency on Google/Android technology and services would put them into this terrible situation. Discussions have moved out beyond regular commercial and trade arguments, and are now clearly out of control.

They should have learned from the past: USA has a significant track record when it comes to embargoes and export restrictions. They don’t even hesitate to force their allies to apply the same restrictions, by threatening them more or less directly, commercially and financially.

For Huawei, what we witness today is the result of 10 years of strategic blindness. They should have realized that when they sell a smartphone, most of the value is in the software, not in the hardware. Therefore, they shouldn’t have become so reliant on Google/Android for the software: this hard dependency is a major risk for any mobile business.

• 2 Ways to Install Wine on Linux Mint 19.1 (Terminal and GUI)

• DVDStyler 3.1 Released with HD Videos Support (How-to Install)

• How to Disable IPv6 on Ubuntu Linux

• How To Fix netstat Command Not Found On CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

• How to install Stacer 1.1.0 on Ubuntu 18.04

• Enabling Monitor Mode & Packet Injection on the Raspberry Pi

• Find out what processes are running in the background on Linux

• Check if a directory exists in Linux or Unix shell

• 20+ FFmpeg Commands For Beginners

• Guide to install Ansible on Ubuntu

• LVM cache in six easy steps

• OnePlus 7 Pro review: The best Android phone value of 2019

• Daily Crunch: Huawei faces Android ban

• Google blocks Huawei’s access to Android updates

• Google Calendar dark mode rolling out on Android, now official for Keep

• Niantic warns that it's banning 'Scanner [REDACTED]' players for using Android Q

• Hints for Tasker-like Settings Rules surface on Android Q

• The Samsung Galaxy Tab S4, the best Android tablet in the game, is now $152 off

Google has launched a $999 “Glass Enterprise Edition 2” headset that runs Android Oreo on a faster, quad-core, 1.7GHz Snapdragon XR1 SoC with an 8MP camera, WiFi-ac, BT 5.x, a USB Type-C port, and longer battery life.

After backing away from its consumer Google Glass eyewear due in part to complaints about privacy, in 2017 Google parent company Alphabet announced a more business- and industrial focused Glass Enterprise Edition as a $1,500 developer platform. Now, Google has brought the Glass unit inhouse, and has returned with a Glass Enterprise Edition 2 designed for mass production. The new eyeware device has a faster processor, longer battery life, improved camera and wireless features, and a reduced $999 price.

• 2D indie platform brawler 'Super Powered Battle Friends' is now up on Steam and itch.io

  Super Powered Battle Friends from Cache Grab Studios is a new platform fighter, with both local and online play and it's now in Early Access. As promised on the rather unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, it was release with same-day Linux support.

• Geneshift gets a GTA2-inspired update with civilians, an expanded demo, better maps for driving and more

  Geneshift continues to evolve into a very interesting top-down action game, mixing in a single-player/co-op campaign, various traditional multiple modes and a Battle Royale.

  The developer, Nik Nak Studios, said they're celebrating ten years since Geneshift first came online (originally under other names). This latest update pulls in some inspiration from GTA2, adding in roaming civilians you can take down which will eventually become aggressive towards you. The more you kill, the higher their aggression rating and loot dropping will be giving the various online modes like Deathmatch and Battle Royale a little mini-game.

• Video recording and livestreaming software OBS Studio has a new 23.2 Release Candidate out

  For those who create videos and livestreams, OBS Studio is for the most part all you need. It continues advancing too, with a Release Candidate out for OBS 23.2.

  New features this time around include a hotkey to toggle the preview, the ability to preview scene transitions, the ability to estimate recording time available based on disk space (not that I've seen it, might be Windows only), a "luma" key video filter, the ability to copy and paste filter to/from scenes in addition to sources, the ability to centre items vertically or horizontally in the transform menus, a message when there's no sources included in a scene to help new users and numerous other enhancements.

• DASH, the fast-paced platformer where you create the levels is launching in June with a new trailer

  Best get your running shoes, you're going to need them to compete in DASH: Danger Action Speed Heroes. This fast-paced competitive platformer from Baby Duka and Schubell IT will also let your creative juices flow since a lot of the levels are made by people like you and me.

• Why Are Cryptographers Being Denied Entry into the US?

  Is there some cryptographer blacklist? Is something else going on? A lot of us would like to know.

• Security Engineering: Third Edition

  Today I put online a chapter on Who is the Opponent, which draws together what we learned from Snowden and others about the capabilities of state actors, together with what we’ve learned about cybercrime actors as a result of running the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre. Isn’t it odd that almost six years after Snowden, nobody’s tried to pull together what we learned into a coherent summary?

  There’s also a chapter on Surveillance or Privacy which looks at policy. What’s the privacy landscape now, and what might we expect from the tussles over data retention, government backdoors and censorship more generally?

• Google halts some business with China's Huawei: report

  Huawei will reportedly no longer be able to access Android updates, the Gmail app, the Google Play store and new versions of Google phones outside of China.

• Google restricts Huawei's use of Android

  Existing Huawei smartphone users will be able to update apps and push through security fixes, as well as update Google Play services.

  But when Google launches the next version of Android later this year, it may not be available on Huawei devices.

  Future Huawei devices may no longer have apps such as YouTube and Maps.

• Forget Huawei, The Internet Of Things Is The Real Security Threat

  We've noted for a while how a lot of the US protectionist security hysteria surrounding Huawei isn't supported by much in the way of hard data. And while it's certainly possible that Huawei helps the Chinese government spy, the reality is that Chinese (or any other) intelligence services don't really need to rely on Huawei to spy on the American public. Why? Because people around the world keep connecting millions of internet of broken things devices to their home and business networks that lack even the most rudimentary of security and privacy protections.

  Week after week we've documented how these devices are being built with both privacy and security as a distant afterthought, resulting in everything from your television to your refrigerator creating both new attack vectors and wonderful new surveillance opportunities for hackers and state actors.