Pop!_OS 19.04 is the latest release of Pop!_OS, based on Ubuntu 19.04 and use GNOME 3.32 as default desktop environment that brings several other features like new icon theme, fractional scaling, permission control for each application, granular control on Night Light intensity among many other changes. Also, include most of the gnome applications 3.32.

The changes that are exclusive to Pop!_OS 19.04, the new Refresh Install option allows you to reinstall the OS without losing your user account and data stored in Home.

• Xfce 4.14pre1 released!

  Note: A lot has happened since Xfce 4.12 was released four years ago and this announcement only covers the changes that were included in the latest development releases dubbed as Xfce 4.14pre1. Also, we have noticed some confusion by people or news outlets that seem to mistake xfdesktop for the “Xfce Desktop Environment”.

  The comprehensive changelog will be provided with the Xfce 4.14 final release, but here go some select highlights that were released in the last week (chosen subjectively by the author).

• Xfce 4.14 Sees Its Long-Awaited Pre-Release

  The GTK3-ported Xfce 4.14 might see its long-awaited official release in the near future. In preparing for a hopeful August debut, the Xfce 4.14 pre-release is now available.

  It's been four years since the release of Xfce 4.12 and in addition to the GTK3 tool-kit re-tooling there has been a lot of UI improvements, vblank support added, colord integration, and many other feature additions.

Sabayon's claim that it is a "beginner-friendly" distro that is "bleeding edge" and "stable and reliable" is a bit of a stretch. I doubt "beginners" will comprehend the instructions for what to do after installing Sabayon - and that is assuming inexperienced users will find the information in the first place. Similarly, the systemd and GNOME versions are rather old for a distro that claims to be "bleeding edge". That said, I did find Sabayon's GNOME edition to be stable and reliable, bar a few minor issues (such as the notification about the VirtualBox kernel service not running).

I don't think it is entirely fair to ask if Sabayon lives up to the bold marketing slogans on its home page. Personally, I see Sabayon as a friendly and interesting distro for tinkerers and distro-hoppers, and a very good one at that. I should also mention that, in general, Sabayon's use of language is refreshingly informal; both the graphical Rigo package manager and the wiki put a smile on my face more than once. Even Equo has some jokes built in - the command equo moo prints an ASCII cow that says "Entromoooo!".

Sabayon does still has some way to go to become the sophisticated operating system it wants to be. With 19.03 the distro switched from the Anaconda to the Calamares installer which, to my mind at least, is a good decision. However, contrary to what is claimed in the release notes, the disk encryption issue has not been resolved yet and the wiki still talks about how to find your way through the Anaconda installer. Work on the new wiki announced in the release notes seems to be at a very early stage.

I also couldn't fail to notice that Sabayon's forums are rather quiet. Lively forums don't necessarily equate to a thriving community, but the overall feeling I got is that Sabayon could do with a bit more momentum. That shouldn't discourage you from giving Sabayon a try though. On the contrary, if you are a Linux-loving tinkerer then Sabayon might be the distro for you.

The importance of Language translation applications cannot be overemphasized especially for those who travel a lot or communicate with people who don’t share the same language on a regular basis.

Today, I introduce to you the best command-line based translation tools for Linux.

We are pleased to announce the release of GNU Guix version 1.0.1. This new version fixes bugs in the graphical installer for the standalone Guix System.

The release comes with ISO-9660 installation images, a virtual machine image, and with tarballs to install the package manager on top of your GNU/Linux distro, either from source or from binaries. Guix users can update by running guix pull.

It’s been just over two weeks since we announced 1.0.0—two weeks and 706 commits by 40 people already!

• Weixuan XIAO (Inokinoki): About me

  I’m Weixuan XIAO, with the nickname: Inoki, sometimes Inokinoki is used to avoid duplicated username.

  I’m glad to be selected in Google Summer of Code 2019 to work for KDE Community to make KDE Connect work on macOS. And I’m willing to be a long-term contributor in KDE Community.

  As a Chinese student, I’m studying in France for my engineering degree. At the same time, I’m waiting for my bachelor degree at Shanghai University.

• Okular: another improvement to annotation

  Continuing with the addition of line terminating style for the Straight Line annotation tool, I have added the ability to select the line start style also. The required code changes are committed today.

• Jonathan Riddell: libqaccessibilityclient 0.4.1

• KDE Craft now delivers with vlc and libvlc on macOS

  Lacking VLC and libvlc in Craft, phonon-vlc cannot be built successfully on macOS. It caused the failed building of KDE Connect in Craft.

  As a small step of my GSoC project, I managed to build KDE Connect by removing the phonon-vlc dependency. But it’s not a good solution. I should try to fix phonon-vlc building on macOS. So during the community bonding period, to know better the community and some important tools in the Community, I tried to fix phonon-vlc.

I've been a fan of virtualization technology for many years, using many different products along the way. Virtualization has advantages for both the data center and the desktop: data centers use it to increase server hardware utilization, while desktop users use it for modeling, testing, and development work. One operating system running on top of a different one on the same hardware, all thanks to the concept of a virtual machine (VM).

I recently upgraded my laptop from Fedora 29 Workstation Edition Linux to version 30. I noticed GNOME Boxes, simply titled Boxes, in my application menu. The GNOME Project—whose members are the creators and maintainers of the GNOME Desktop Environment—describes GNOME Boxes as: "A simple GNOME application to view, access, and manage remote and virtual systems." Of course, I had to check this tool out.

This two part series article will cover two of the main features of Boxes. While writing this article, I used Boxes version 3.32.0.2-stable. Since the GNOME Boxes project refers to a VM as a "box," I'll use that terminology.

Zettlr is an open source markdown editor with features that help writers and researchers. Read and see if Zettlr can be your next favorite application.

• Android Q to bring new Fast Pair feature, improvements to Bluetooth settings

• How to Use the CyberGhost VPN on Android Devices

• Best alternatives to stock Android apps

• 5 new Android games to check out this week (MAY 19, 2019)

• Google cuts Huawei's access to Android updates after blacklist: source

• Google 'restricts Huawei's use of Android'

Nothing particularly odd going on this merge window. I had some travel
in the middle of it, but to offset that I had a new faster test-build
setup, and most of the pull requests came in early (thank you) so my
travels didn't actually end up affecting the merge window all that
much.

We did have a few late pull requests too, but since that meshed fairly
well with my schedule as per above, and people generally made the
proper noises ("sorry for late pull request, I had good reasons: xyz")
I didn't mind this time. But let's try to not repeat that, ok?

Things look fairly normal. Just about two thirds of the patch is
drivers (all over), with the bulk of the rest being arch updates,
tooling, documentation and vfs/filesystem updates, of which there were
more than usual (the unicode tables for ext4 case insensitivity do end
up being a big part of the "bulk" side).

But there's core networking, kernel and vm changes too - it's just
that the other areas tend to simply be much bulkier. Drivers etc tend
to just have a ton more lines to them, if only by virtue of there
being so many of them (although admittedly also sometimes because some
drivers tend to just be very verbose and have a lot of register
definitions etc).

Also: Linux 5.2-rc1 Kernel Released With Case-Insensitive EXT4, New Intel HW & RTW88 WiFi

• Limor Fried, AC2SN, is Recipient of 2019 Women in Open Source Award

  Nominations for this year’s awards were accepted for two categories: “Academic” for those currently enrolled in a college or university, and “Community” for those working on or volunteering with projects related to open source. A panel of judges determined finalists based on nomination criteria, and the public voted to determine the award winners.

• Introducing GopenPGP, an open source encryption library for native applications

  Open source is a core principle of ProtonMail. We’re excited to make even more of our code available for independent inspection and use by the developer community.
  In 2016, ProtonMail became the maintainer of OpenPGP.js, the world’s most widely used Javascript email encryption library. Since then we have updated the library with new features, such as streaming encryption; assisted developers to adopt the library in their own applications; and submitted the library to independent security audits.

  Today, we are happy to announce another open source project that will be maintained by ProtonMail: GopenPGP. This project consists of a high-level OpenPGP library, as well as a fork of the golang crypto library. We started this project to make it easier for mobile and desktop developers to use OpenPGP encryption in their apps.

• Gab's New Strategy: Fork Open-Source Software And Add Bitcoin

  After Keybase announced integration of Stellar on its platform, Gab has threatened to fork the open-source chat software and swap its XLM wallet...

• Seven Major Trends in the Cryptoasset Industry, According to ConsenSys

  Web 3.0 Development Will Mostly Be Open-Sourced, But “Not Free”

  As confirmed by ConsenSys, open-source projects like OpenSSL Software and also open-source blockchain and crypto-related initiatives are, for the most part, operating on relatively low budgets due to lack of adequate funding.

  Although the management at ConsenSys believes Web 3.0, an evolving set of protocols and standards for the new internet, will be created mainly through open-source development projects, it also noted that the world wide web of the future will not be developed “for free.”

  On May 11, 2019, Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin announced they had donated 1,000 ether (each) to Moloch DAO, an initiative aimed at acquiring funding for the ongoing development of Ethereum’s open-source ecosystem.

• UPenn Medicine's AI tool for data analytics is open-source, free to the public

  An automated system that uses machine learning for data analysis is completely open-source and free to use, thanks to the Institute for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine.

  Penn AI is designed to be used by anyone interested in AI, regardless of experience level, from high school students to trained researchers. Users can either import their own datasets for analysis within the tool or use one of the hundreds provided by UPenn.

• Former Chef Software CTO talks IT automation, open source

  Adam Jacob: I'll eventually start another company and do something in enterprise software, because that's where my expertise is, and that's what I like. But I don't know exactly what it'll be or when.

  We have to build the system that makes people effective at adopting new technology -- whatever it is, wherever it may be in the stack -- that they need to run their business more effectively, instead of just the next platform.

  Things like serverless are interesting, because they point the way to the user experience, and they're going to get adopted and have value. Are they the future of enterprise computing? Maybe for a minute. But then, there'll be something else. And until we get good at navigating those transitions, which we're completely bad at right now, I don't know that it matters.

• XJTLU brings Moodle - one of the world's most popular open source learning platform - event to China for first time

  On May 19, Dr Dougiamas, founder and CEO of Moodle, will deliver the keynote address at China's inaugural MoodleMoot, a conference held around the world to encourage collaboration and sharing of best practices of Moodle. China MoodleMoot, part of XJTLU's 2019 Annual Conference on Higher Education Innovation, will see Dr Dougiamas share his experience in using technology to transform teaching and learning.

  Dr Dougiamas, who developed the Moodle software as part of his PhD in Australia and went on to release it to the world as an open source technology in 2002, says he is looking forward to discussing the future of Moodle in China. "Anecdotally, we know many people use Moodle in China - we hope to see many of them at the first China MoodleMoot to help plan the future of Moodle, and open technology in general, in China," he says.

• Acquia Acquires Mautic, Open-Source Marketing Automation Firm

  Hurley adds that “advancements in AI, voice, and connected devices” are raising consumer expectations, and claims that what Drupal did for the web, Elastic did for search and MongoDB did for databases, Mautic is now doing for marketing automation.

• Acquia Delivers Open Source Framework for Contextual Commerce

• Why Drupal matters

  After a number of complaints from the Drupal community, the Drupal Association finally removed the seemingly odd tagline “community plumbing” from its home page a few years ago (the word “plumbing” doesn’t make good SEO for a digital platform, you see).

• Top Open source NoSQL database programs

  NoSql, it stands for Not Only SQL, refers to the non-relational database. The next generation database mainly addresses several key points: non-relational, distributed, open source, and horizontally scalable. The non-relational database has developed very rapidly due to its own characteristics. The NoSQL database was created to solve the challenges brought by the multiple data types of large-scale data collection, especially the big data application problem. It also supports easy replication, simple APIs, final consistency (non-ACID), and large data. It is stored by us with the most key-values, and of course other document types, column stores, graph databases, XML databases, and so on. Here are some top available NoSQL database programs in Open source or free category.

• We need a new type of open source event - here's why

  Open source events tend to focus on developers, this needs to change says EnterpriseDB's Jan Karremans

• RavenDB Adds Pull Replication and Distributed Online Counters to Its Open Source NoSQL Document Database Offering

• The Untapped Potential of Making and Makerspaces

  Makerspaces are physical locations with equipment that students can use to undertake do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. Arguably, they have been around for decades; we just haven’t used the name makerspace. At my institution, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, we’ve had a student-run DIY craft shop on our campus for more than 20 years.

  The difference between older forms of makerspaces like that craft shop and emerging ones is that the latter focus more heavily on digital making, such as 3-D design and printing, digital fabrication (sometimes called “FabLabs”), or the programming of open-source electronic hardware like the Arduino microcontroller. What is also new are the maker practices or principles of: 1) licensing digital designs and how-to instructions under a Creative Commons or similar copyright license and 2) openly sharing those designs through internet-enabled, cloud-based maker websites. Licenses chosen usually permit the sharing of the work with author attribution and, in some cases, permit new users to adapt and remix the work for other purposes. For example, at Thingiverse.com, 3-D modelers openly share their digital designs in this manner.

• Global Learning Xprize splits $10M purse for best teaching app for disadvantaged kids

  These finalists were then subjected to field testing in Tanzania, where 8,000 Pixel C tablets generously donated by Google for the purpose were distributed to communities where teaching was hardest to come by and literacy rates lowest.

• Tech That Makes Us Better Humans: JavaScript, Shudder, Chat Apps, Concordia, Signia

  Technology is a medium; sometimes it’s a humanizing, enchanting one. “Something about the interior life of a computer remains infinitely interesting to me; it’s not romantic, but it is a romance,” writes Paul Ford in his WIRED essay “Why I (Still) Love Tech.” “You flip a bunch of microscopic switches really fast and culture pours out.” To accompany Ford’s essay, we reached out to a bunch of people to ask them about the technology they love—the tools that make them better at being human. Here’s what we heard back.

• Open-source RNA Analysis Tool Takes Root in Plant Biology

  An open-source RNA analysis platform has been successfully used on plant cells for the first time - a breakthrough that could herald a new era of fundamental research and bolster efforts to engineer more efficient food and biofuel crop plants.

  The technology, called Drop-seq, is a method for measuring the RNA present in individual cells, allowing scientists to see what genes are being expressed and how this relates to the specific functions of different cell types. Developed at Harvard Medical School in 2015, the freely shared protocol had previously only been used in animal cells.

  "This is really important in understanding plant biology," said lead researcher Diane Dickel, a scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab). "Like humans and mice, plants have multiple cell and tissue types within them. But learning about plants on a cellular level is a little bit harder because, unlike animals, plants have cell walls, which make it hard to open the cells up for genetic study."

  For many of the genes in plants, we have little to no understanding of what they actually do, Dickel explained. "But by knowing exactly what cell type or developmental stage a specific gene is expressed in, we can start getting a toehold into its function. In our study, we showed that Drop-seq can help us do this."

• OpenStack Keeps One Eye on the Prize, One Over Its Shoulder

  The OpenStack Foundation (OSF) used its recent Open Infrastructure Show (OIS) to remind the open source community of its importance, maturity, and flexibility. But the event also showed that the group understands that the virtualized infrastructure environment is evolving rapidly.

  I must admit that heading into the OIS event I was not expecting much. Conversations I have had over the past year continued to show a strong core of OpenStack supporters, but it seemed that the platform’s innovative spirit was diminishing. And in such a rapidly evolving technology segment, any sort of diminishing momentum is the equivalent of going backwards.

• Open Source Day 2019 focuses on the cloud, security and development

  The 12th edition of Open Source Day (OSD) will take place today at the Legia Warsaw Stadium in Poland’s capital city.

  The event will include presentations, forums and nine technical sessions spanning automation, containerization, cloud computing, virtualization, security, monitoring, CI/CD, software and app development and databases.

• Inspur and Intel share Rocky testing data at premiere of OpenInfra Summit

• Intel hosts Open Source Technology Summit - OSTS 19 - Software - News

• Intel Pushes Open Source Hypervisor With Cloud Giants

  Intel, along with cloud giants Amazon and Google, is working on an open source hypervisor based on the rust-vmm project. The chipmaker discussed this and several other open source efforts at its Open Source Technology Summit, which kicked off yesterday.

  The company “is and has been one of the largest contributors to open source,” said Imad Sousou, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of system software products. “Intel is the No. 1 contributor to the Linux kernel. We write 10% to 12% of the Linux kernel code.” For the record: Red Hat is No. 2, and it contributes about 6%, according to Sousou.

• Open Source to trickle into AI and Cloud

  Intel’s Clear Linux* Distribution is adding Clear Linux Developer Edition, which includes a new installer and store, bringing together toolkits to give developers an operating system with all Intel hardware features already enabled. Additionally, Clear Linux usages are

• Hubject releases OICP as open source [Ed; Some openwashing by mere protocols]

  Hubject has turned their Open InterCharge Protocol (OICP) into an open source protocol to facilitate connectivity with their popular roaming platform. In addition to publishing OICP, Hubject will also allow connection to the platform via other roaming protocols.

• Securitize Open-Sources Its Protocol, Partners With tZERO Token Exchange

  Securitize is partnering with one of the blockchain industry’s largest security token exchange companies as it open-sources the code behind its in-house protocol.

• Securitize Open Sources Core Protocol, Launches V3.0 Of Its Digital Securities Platform

• Integration and Data Specialist Novigi Becomes a WSO2 Value-Added Reseller in the Asia-Pacific Region

• Espire Infolabs and WSO2 Announce Global Partnership to Provide Agile Integration Solutions

• Distributed Management Systems and WSO2 Partner to Integrate CASQUE SNR and Open Source WSO2 Identity Server for IAM with Advanced Authentication

• Dstl develops open-source framework to enhance military tracking technology

• Dstl releases open source tracking software [Ed: Don't miss the irony of this horrible code being given by the British government to Microsoft, a foreign company that profits from caging babies for ICE]

  It said the software framework has uses beyond defence, such as in drone surveillance and management and the development of connected autonomous vehicles.

• Dstl shares new open-source framework initiative

• Dstl develops open-source framework to improve tracking technology

• DLT-Mesosphere Partnership Seeks to Help Agencies Build Apps With Open Source Tech

• Beginner's guide for TensorFlow: The basics of Google's machine-learning library

  It is an open-source, accelerated-math library designed to help developers build and train machine-learning models using a wide range of hardware — CPUs, GPUs, and even specialized chips such as TPUs (Tensor Processing Units).

  While TensorFlow was originally designed for use with more powerful machines, it has evolved to be able to create models to run in all sorts of unlikely places, from browsers to low-power IoT devices. Today, TensorFlow can be used with a wide range of programming languages, including Python, Go, C++, Java, Swift, R, Julia, C#, Haskell, Rust, and JavaScript.

• Google extends lowRISC FOSSi partnership

  Unlike proprietary processors, the design and instruction set architecture (ISA) for which are kept behind a typically expensive licence wall, free and open source silicon (FOSSi) does what it says on the tin: Projects like RISC-V provide both the ISA and key implementations under permissive licences, allowing anyone to use, modify, distribute, and commercialise the technology without a single license or royalty payment - including, in many cases, the ability to create a proprietary implementation, should they so choose.

  Following on from the news that it was a founding member of the Linux Foundation's CHIPS Alliance, an industry group set up to 'host and curate high-quality open source code relevant to the design of silicon devices', Google has now announced that it is extending its existing partnership with the lowRISC project to include additional funding, support, and the appointment of two Google staffers as board members on the project.

• Google wants an open source silicon community for chip design

  As evidenced by Android and Chromium, Google has long been committed to open source software. The company now wants to foster a similar community for hardware and chip design, particularly open source silicon.

• To Create Prosperity, Free Market Competition Isn’t Enough—You Need Collaboration Too

  What’s ironic is that all of this communal activity isn’t driven by beret-wearing revolutionaries plotting in coffee houses, but by many of today’s most powerful and profit-driven corporations, who act not out of altruism, but self-interest. The fact is that technology firms today who do not actively participate in open source communities are at a significant competitive disadvantage.

  For example, Chris DiBona, Director of Open Source at Google, once told me, “We released Android as an open source product because we knew that was the fastest way to grow adoption, which enabled us to preserve the relationships with customers for businesses like search, maps and Gmail.” That is the reality of today’s marketplace. You collaborate in order to compete effectively. Businesses that don’t accept that simple fact will find it difficult to survive.

  Science’s commitment to communal effort is not at all new, but is a thread running deep in America’s long history of technological dominance. And it’s not all about private companies competing with each other, either: it’s about how the market can benefit from public investment. When Vannevar Bush submitted his famous report, “Science, The Endless Frontier,” to President Truman at the end of World War II, he argued that scientific discovery should be considered a public good crucial to the competitiveness of the nation. The crux of his argument is that such efforts build capacity through creating what he called “scientific capital” and pointed out that “New products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science.”

• The benefits of open source networking for enterprise IT

  Open source software has proved its benefits for various aspects of the IT community in terms of costs, agility and flexibility. Open source networking software is in its early stages of deployment among enterprises. Meantime, hyperscale cloud providers and the largest service providers have made effective use of open source networking.

  It is standard in large IT organizations to consider open source software alongside packaged software and SaaS as part of their IT architecture. Enterprise IT shops frequently deploy open source software in test environments and when designing new applications, like in DevOps.

  IT organizations report a range of benefits from open source software, including innovative design, time to market and agility. While open source software helps reduce some costs, deployment in production environments is generally accompanied by a vendor-supplied support contract.

• How “Lab as a Service” supports OPNFV and ONAP development

  The Interoperability Lab at the University of New Hampshire (UNH-IOL) is a community resource that allows developers and open source users to have access to resources that they might not have themselves. The “Lab as a Service” provides the necessary shared compute and networking resources for developers working on projects such as OPNFV. Access is remote via a VPN connection, so it acts like a remote server. Those new to OPNFV can create a virtual deployment on a single node and run small VNFs on top. It gives developers access to a bare metal system for low level checking and installs. The next step is to add better support for multi-node usage, integrating the CI work that's being done in the OPNFV project and making the system more compatible with ONAP development.

• The modern data center and the rise in open-source IP routing suites

  Primarily, what the operators were looking for was a level of control in managing their network which the network vendors couldn’t offer. The revolution burned the path that introduced open networking, and network disaggregation to the work of networking. Let us first learn about disaggregation followed by open networking.

• Tracking Telco Progress in Open Networking

  I recently attended the Open Infrastructure Summit (formerly the OpenStack Summit -- more on this later). While the conference has gotten smaller, I didn't hear any complaints. Instead, people attending recognized that the developers who showed up came to work on real problems, rather than to cheerlead for the latest technology. Despite some of the dire headlines of the past year, I did not sense a crisis or panic.

• Exclusive: Google suspends some business with Huawei after Trump blacklist

• 5G and #Huawei – Trade wars can be prevented by using Open Source

  Consumer Choice Center Managing Director Fred Roeder stressed that more openness and transparency of telephone and radio networks could lead to more trust in the soft- and hardware of infrastructure providers: “Outright bans by country of origin should only be the last resort for policy makers. Bans risk getting the global economy deeper into costly trade wars. Consumers benefit from competition and the fast rollout of new technologies such as 5G networks. At the same time, we are worried about vulnerabilities and potential backdoors in equipment and software. Closed systems have a much higher likelihood of hiding vulnerabilities. Hence more open systems and open source approaches can really help consumers, and governments, trust the security promises of 5G providers,” said Roeder.

  “Private efforts such as the Open Radio Access Network Alliance show that open source systems are an option for telecommunication infrastructure. It would be a win-win situation for consumers and industry if more companies would embrace open standards. An open source approach in telecommunications could revolutionize market access and rollout pace of new standards in the era of 5G, in the same way as blockchain does in the financial services and payment industry. Manufacturers that commit to open source systems show that they don’t have any vulnerabilities to hide, and at the same time have a compelling case not to be excluded on the basis of their country of origin,” he added.

• Why 5G is a huge future threat to privacy

  The next-generation of mobile communications, 5G, is currently a hot topic in two very different domains: technology – and politics. The latter is because of President Trump’s attempts to shut the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei out of Western procurement projects. That might work in the US, but the move is meeting a lot of resistance in Europe.

  There seem to be two primary concerns about allowing Chinese companies to build the new 5G infrastructure. One is a fear that it will help China consolidate its position as the leading nation in 5G technologies, and that it could come to be the dominant supplier of 5G hardware and software around the world. The other is more directly relevant to this blog: a worry that if Chinese companies install key elements of 5G systems, they will be able to spy on all the traffic passing through them. As the South China Morning Post reports, in an attempt to soothe those fears, Huawei has even promised to sign “no-spy agreements with governments“. That’s a rather ridiculous suggestion – as if signing an agreement would prevent Chinese intelligence agencies from using Huawei equipment for surveillance if they could.

Late updates to the Linux kernel's perf subsystem introduces support for compressed recording of traces, which can yield a three to five time reduction in file-size.

The run-time trace compression and auto-decompression is actually a very useful feature in the context of the Perf subsystem with those records easily hitting many GB in size if making a recording of the events for any real length of time.

• Why the future of the cloud is in Linux

  Organisations today are investing in new technologies and practices to transform the way they deliver value to customers. This has become a critical investment area as we move into an era of disruption.

  Cloud computing plays a vital role in supporting both the technologies and processes driving the digital transformation imperative. Offering greater speed, cloud-based strategies leave more time for companies to focus on building and delivering innovation, value, and differentiation while creating financial efficiency.

  While moving to a single public cloud has many benefits, the reality is that for some workloads the public cloud simply doesn't make sense, or meet requirements for things like control, security or regulatory compliance. As a result, a majority of today's IT environments are inherently hybrid, comprising of applications deployed on-premises, and in both private and public clouds.

• A ‘smoking good’ deal? Red Hat could prove a $34 billion bargain for IBM

• Keep Red Hat independent within IBM? Please, no!

• Red Hat Helps Lockheed Adopt Open Source, Agile to Update F-22 Aircraft; Paul Smith Quoted [Ed: Openwashing Murder, Inc.]

• CRI-O: An Open Source Container Runtime for Kubernetes

  The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) voted to accept CRI-O as an incubation-level hosted project on April 8th. CRI-O, created by Red Hat, is an Open Container Initiative (OCI) container runtime for Kubernetes that provides an alternative to Docker, rkt, or Moby.

  CRI-O is designed to work specifically with Kubernetes by delivering a minimal runtime that implements the standard components of the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI). Early versions of Kubernetes only supported containers with the Docker runtime. As the Kubernetes team began to add support for new runtimes, such as rkt, they decided to develop and release CRI in order to decouple Kubernetes from specific container runtimes.

• Solo.io wants to bring order to service meshes with centralized management hub

  Idit Levine, founder and CEO at Solo, says she formed the company because she saw an opportunity to develop a set of tooling for a nascent market. Since founding the company in 2017, it has developed several open-source tools to fill that service mesh tool vacuum.

• How to Build Your Own Futuristic Smart Mirror

  A smart mirror can show your calendar, weather, and news like something out of a sci-fi movie. Powered by a Raspberry Pi, you can build your own with some simple tools and hardware.

• Arduino launches new Nano board range

  Arduino has established itself as one of the leading small open source single-board microcontroller and microcontroller kit makers on the market with its designs popular with enthusiasts through to schools and universities. Founded in Italy, the company has launched its new Nano range of compact project boards that also happen to be among the cheapest it currently offers. They range in price from just US$9.90 for the Nano Every through to US$29.50 for the Nano 33 BLE Sense that includes Bluetooth as well as a range of proximity, gesture and environmental sensors.

  [...]

  Also new from Arduino is a MKR GSM 1400 Cellular SIM Kit. The Nano Every and the Nano 33 IoT will ship from mid-June while the Bluetooth-equipped Nano 33 BLE and Nano 33 BLE Sense will ship from mid-July.

• An Open Source ESC For Brushless Motors

  For something basic like a brushed DC motor, speed control can be quite simple, and powering up the motor is a simple matter of just applying voltage. Brushless motors are much more demanding in their requirements however, and won’t spin unless driven just right. [Electronoobs] has been exploring the design of a brushless speed controller, and just released version 1.0 of his open-source ESC design.

  The basic design is compact, and very similar to many off-the-shelf brushless ESCs in the low power range. There’s a small PCB packing a bank of MOSFETs to handle switching power to the coils of the motor, and a big capacitor to help deal with current spikes. The hacker staple ATMEGA328 is the microcontroller running the show. It’s a sensorless design, which measures the back EMF of the motor in order to determine when to fire the MOSFETs. This keeps things simple for low-torque, low-power applications.

• A Customizable Open Source Mechanical Numpad

  Mechanical keyboards with reduced key counts are all the rage these days, but while those streamlined input devices might look cool on your desk, there are times when the traditional number pad or navigation keys are quite handy. Rather than just going without, [Mattia Dal Ben] decided to put together his own mechanical auxiliary input device for when the main board just isn’t cutting it.

• Little Printer returns as an open-source messaging device

  Berg’s Little Printer, an adorable internet-connected box that printed out tiny snippets of news, Instagram photos, and to-do lists, stopped working when the studio and its servers shut down in 2014. Now, design consultancy firm Nord Projects has brought it back to life with a brand-new app, and it added the ability to send messages between devices, as reported by Core77.

• Perfecting the Open Source RC Controller

  For this entry into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, [Vitor de Miranda Henrique] is working on his own version of the ultimate open source remote control. His design follows some of the trends we’ve already seen in terms of outward design and hardware expandability, but also branches off into some new territory with features such as dual integrated displays.

• HestiaPi Touch open source Raspberry Pi smart thermostat

  This month Google has made a number of changes to its Nest smart thermostat platform and services, some of which will have a profound effect on the integration of the thermostat with other Internet of Things services. If you are interested in moving away from corporate smart thermostats a new open source thermostat specifically designed for controlling HVAC and water systems has been created by the team at MakeOpenStuff.

  The HestiaPi smart thermostat is powered by integrated Raspberry Pi Zero W to offer wireless connectivity has been equipped with the 3.5-inch LCD display together with a host of sensors to monitor and control home heating and water. What she demonstration video below to learn more about the open source system that allows you to build your very own smart home thermostat and offer root access and increased privacy and security from the prying eyes of large corporations.

• The Rise of ROS: Nearly 55% of total commercial robots shipped in 2024 Will Have at Least One Robot Operating System package Installed

• Raptor's Blackbird micro-ATX POWER9 System Is Ready To Take Flight This Week

  The much anticipated Raptor Blackbird is set to begin shipping over the days ahead. Blackbird is the lower-cost (compared to the Talos II Secure Workstation) micro-ATX motherboard for IBM POWER9 systems and offers open-source firmware as currently one of the most open, high-performance systems available.

  The Raptor Blackbird supports up to 8-core 160W Sforza POWER9 CPUs, two DDR4 ECC modules, one PCI Express 4.0 x16 slot (and one PCIe 4.0 x8), dual Gigabit Ethernet, 4 x SATA 3.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and other standard connectivity.