• The EPO’s Use of Phrases Like “High-Quality Patent Services” Means They Know High-Quality European Patents Are ‘Bygones’
• A Reader’s Suggestion: Directions for Techrights
• Links 21/4/2019: SuperTuxKart’s 1.0 Release, Sam Hartman Is Debian’s Newest Project Leader (DPL)
• Links 20/4/2019: Weblate 3.6 and Pop!_OS 19.04
• IRC Proceedings: December 2nd, 2018 – January 26th, 2019
• IRC Proceedings: January 27th, 2019 – March 24th, 2019

• What’s New in Manjaro 18.0 Deepin Desktop Edition

  Manjaro 18.0 Deepin Edition is official Manjaro Linux flavour with Deepin Desktop Environment 15.8 as default desktop environment includes several deepin applications a free open source software.

  Manjaro 18.0 Deepin Edition is powered by the latest Long-Term Support of Linux Kernel 4.19, include pamac version 7.3. in manjaro 18.0, The Manjaro Settings Manager (MSM) now provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for installing and removing the many series of kernels. At the time of this release, eight kernel-series are available directly from manjaro binary repositories, from 3.16 series to the latest 4.19 release.

• Open Source Security Podcast: Episode 142 - Hypothetical security: what if you find a USB flash drive?

  Josh and Kurt talk about what one could do if you find a USB drive. The context is based on the story where the Secret Service was rumored to have plugged a malicious USB drive into a computer. The purpose of discussion is to explore how to handle a situation like this in the real world. We end the episode with a fantastic comparison of swim safety and security.

• Episode 64 | This Week in Linux

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we got a lot of releases week. Ubuntu and all of the Flavours have released 19.04 versions along with an interesting update from the Ubuntu derivative Pop!_OS. The KDE Community announced the availability of a bunch of new versions of various KDE Applications.

• Linux Gaming News Punch - Episode 9

  Coming in hot (please save me from this heat) is the ninth episode of the Linux Gaming News Punch, your weekly round-up of some interesting bits of news.

  For regular readers, as always this might not be too helpful but for those who don't visit too often this should help keep you updated.

• Linux Action News 102

  Ubuntu 19.04 is released we share our take, OpenSSH has an important release, and Mozilla brings Python to the browser.

  Also WebThings is launched and we think it might have a shot.

• GNU World Order 13x17

• Talk Python to Me: #208 Packaging, Making the most of PyCon, and more

  Are you going to PyCon (or a similar conference)? Join me and Kenneth Retiz as we discuss how to make the most of PyCon and what makes it special for each of us.

• Yet another man to epub converter

  Initial search seemed successful, but actually, none of the things I found worked correctly, or at least were not working for me. More precisely, I wanted something to generate a “book” with consistent internal links, so that I can jump from one page to another correctly. See the README for what I tried and gave up on.

  In Debian, there is of course the online manpages service, and there’s also The Linux man-pages project which do this very well. However, the UI and style for these seem to be designed for interactive browsing, whereas a simple output is better for offline browsing.

  So, after a bit of playing around with man -T html, mandoc and man2html, I settled on the later to write my tiny wrapper script. It’s a v0.0.1 release, but nevertheless works, so here it is: https://github.com/iustin/man2ebook.

• Red Hat to maintain OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11

  Red Hat is taking over maintenance responsibilities for OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11 from Oracle. Red Hat will now oversee bug fixes and security patches for the two older releases, which serve as the basis for two long-term support releases of Java.

  Red Hat’s updates will feed into releases of Java from Oracle, Red Hat, and other providers. Oracle released JDK (Java Development Kit) 8, based on OpenJDK 8, in March 2014 while JDK 11, based on OpenJDK 11, arrived in September 2018. Previously, Red Hat led the OpenJDK 6 and OpenJDK 7 projects. Red Hat is not taking over OpenJDK 9 or OpenJDK 10, which were short-term releases with a six-month support window.

• Red Hat Takes Over Maintenance of OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11 From Oracle

• parallel @ Savannah: GNU Parallel 20190422 ('Invitation') released [stable]

  GNU Parallel 20190422 ('Invitation') [stable] has been released. It is available for download at: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/parallel/
  No new functionality was introduced so this is a good candidate for a stable release.

• GStreamer's Meson and Visual Studio Journey

  Almost 3 years ago, I wrote about how we at Centricular had been working on an experimental port of GStreamer from Autotools to the Meson build system for faster builds on all platforms, and to allow building with Visual Studio on Windows.

  At the time, the response was mixed, and for good reason—Meson was a very new build system, and it needed to work well on all the targets that GStreamer supports, which was all major operating systems. Meson did aim to support all of those, but a lot of work was required to bring platform support up to speed with the requirements of a non-trivial project like GStreamer.

We are pleased to announce the release of NomadBSD 1.2! We would like to thank all the testers who sent us feedback and bug reports.

Alpine Linux is different in some important ways compared to most other distributions. It uses different libraries, it uses a different service manager (than most), it has different command line tools and a custom installer. All of this can, at first, make Alpine feel a bit unfamiliar, a bit alien. But what I found was that, after a little work had been done to get the system up and running (and after a few missteps on my part) I began to greatly appreciate the distribution.

Alpine is unusually small and requires few resources. Even the larger Extended edition I was running required less than 100MB of RAM and less than a gigabyte of disk space after all my services were enabled. I also appreciated that Alpine ships with some security features, like PIE, and does not enable any services it does not need to run.

I believe it is fair to say this distribution requires more work to set up. Installing Alpine is not a point-n-click experience, it's more manual and requires a bit of typing. Not as much as setting up Arch Linux, but still more work than average. Setting up services requires a little more work and, in some cases, reading too since Alpine works a little differently than mainstream Linux projects. I repeatedly found it was a good idea to refer to the project's wiki to learn which steps were different on Alpine.

What I came away thinking at the end of my trial, and I probably sound old (or at least old fashioned), is Alpine Linux reminds me of what got me into running Linux in the first place, about 20 years ago. Alpine is fast, light, and transparent. It offered very few surprises and does almost nothing automatically. This results in a little more effort on our parts, but it means that Alpine does not do things unless we ask it to perform an action. It is lean, efficient and does not go around changing things or trying to guess what we want to do. These are characteristics I sometimes miss these days in the Linux ecosystem.

• How to change the keymap (keyboard layout) used by the GRUB shell in Gentoo Linux

• Bash Functions with Examples

• How to use the Linuxbrew package manager

• How to categorize Steam games on Linux with Steamycats

• Nginx Commands You Should Know

It's Easter Sunday here, but I don't let little things like random
major religious holidays interrupt my kernel development workflow. The
occasional scuba trip? Sure. But everybody sitting around eating
traditional foods? No. You have to have priorities. There's only so
much memma you can eat even if your wife had to make it from scratch
because nobody eats that stuff in the US.

Anyway, rc6 is actually larger than I would have liked, which made me
go back and look at history, and for some reason that's not all that
unusual. We recently had similar rc6 bumps in both 4.18 and 5.0.

So I'm not going to worry about it. I think it's just random timing of
pull requests, and almost certainly at least partly due to the
networking pull request in here (with just over a third of the changes
being networking-related, either in drivers or core networking).

Also: Linux 5.1-rc6 Kernel Released In Linus Torvalds' Easter Day Message

• Moto G7 Review (All 3 Models): Which Moto G is Best?

• This week in Android: The Samsung Galaxy unFolding

• 5 Best Apps to Take Scrolling Screenshots on Android and iOS

• 26 best new Android games released this week including Whispers of a Machine, Agatha Knife, and Metal Slug Infinity

• Google Photos gaining Android Foldables support, backup status indicators

• How to Reset Any iPhone or Android Device

• Lost or stolen Android phone? Here's how to get it back

• Android developers can now enable rounded square icons in Google Play

• Android Update Impact on European Search Marketing

• Cinema APK – Catch Your Favorite Hollywood Movies & TV Series on Android Smartphone/Tablets!

• Install Nextcloud on Ubuntu 18.04 with Nginx – Google Cloud

• How to install the OPNsense Firewall/Router distribution

• How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo from 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish

• Destination Linux EP117 – Chris Were Digital

• Best 20 Data Science Courses Available For Increasing Your Data Scientist Skills

• Snek and a Balloon

• Install Python Package

• Loops in Python explained with examples

• How OBS Is Helping Expand Broadcasting of Esports

  They dig into how big the team is that work on growing the open source software that is used for video recording and live streaming as well as the challenges of working on this type of project.

• Assessment of Open Networking, Bare Metal Switches, White Boxes, and NFVi

  A new networking software industry, including open network operating systems (NOS’s) and open source software of all types, was expected to emerge to create options and choices in the type of network infrastructures which all service providers and IT enterprise customers could put together.

• Open source virtualization expands VM hardware and OS options

  You don't have to use proprietary virtualization software to run virtual machines. The open source community boasts offerings for all different virtualization needs, so you can assemble a program that has exactly the features you want without high upfront costs or tricky service-level agreements.

  Open source virtualization software can help you avoid the costs that come with proprietary software from vendors such as VMware. It also enables you to get updates more frequently, and you can change the source code when necessary.

• Open-source vs. build-your-own: What to choose? [Ed: Contains plenty of the classic FUD, typically spread by Microsoft and its wings, against FOSS (things that apply equally or are worse in proprietary software).]

• OpenStack Follows The Datacenter Out To The Edge

  It is difficult not to be impressed with the rapid adoption of OpenStack since the open source cloud infrastructure software platform was first released.

• Paris’ open source platform for city services is being introduced at a West Baltimore community center

  A tech tool built for cities is going neighborhood level in Baltimore.

  Lutèce, developed by the City of Paris, is an open source platform designed to house city services and offers a base platform on which to develop web and mobile applications. For Paris, it’s the digital home for the 200 various functions city government performs.

• Puppet CTO: an open source mindset is more than just a code dump

  The Computer Weekly Open Source Insider team spoke to Deepak Giridharagopal this week in his role as CTO at Puppet in an attempt to examine the true nature of open source openness.

  As defined in clear terms here, Puppet is an open source systems management tool for centralising and automating configuration management tasks relating to both hardware and software.

  Giridharagopal argues that the ‘open’ part of open source doesn’t just refer to making the code physically available to the masses.

• Open-Source Software Making Museums More Accessible

  Oftentimes, the process of visiting a museum begins at an institution’s website, and not all of them are accessible to people with disabilities. In fact, several notable NYC institutions’ websites are not readable by visitors with loss of vision. Those museums should take a tip from Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art whose open-source software—a tool that can be added to any website—”seamlessly integrates image descriptions into its online platform.” One feature is the “image description” option, which explains an artwork or artifact to the user. For example, “A work by Doris Salcedo is described as: ‘Four murky sepia-toned images of shoes embedded on a white wall by what appears to be surgical stitching.'” These descriptions can then be read aloud. Read more at Artsy.

• This Open Source Software Could Make Museum Websites More Accessible

  A program developed by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago helps people with vision loss navigate art organizations' websites.

• Why the US Government Just Made Its Own Font

  'Public Sans,' a sharp new typeface for interface design has been made freely available, courtesy of a somewhat unusual source: the United States federal government.

• What to expect from DataStax Accelerate

  The Computer Weekly Developer Network and Open Source Insider team are off the nation’s capitol (we said capitol, not capital… it’s Washington DC) to witness the goings on at DataStax Accelerate.

  But before we get to the event, let’s sit back and remind ourselves who and what DataStax actually is.

  In the past, we have called DataStax a data platform provider — the company would no doubt more expansively refer to itself as: a provider of a hybrid cloud database built on Apache Cassandra.

  In more granular terms, DataStax technologies exist to provide an always-on active-everywhere distributed hybrid cloud database built on Apache Cassandra for real-time applications at scale.

• Sole scientist uses open-source AI software to unlock protein folding

  A Harvard Medical school research fellow has used deep learning to predict the structure of any given protein based solely on its amino acid sequence.

  The advance—made using open-source software in the public domain—has the potential to transform virtually all facets of biomedical research, according to a study published online April 17 in Cell Systems.

  In coverage of the development by Harvard’s news division, the researcher, Mohammed AlQuraishi, PhD, said protein folding—the process by which a protein structure assumes its functional shape—has preoccupied biochemists over the last half century.

• Sydney start-up Q-CTRL launches open source quantum error suppression library

  Sydney start-up Q-CTRL is releasing an open source library of error suppression controls for quantum computers.
  The library of controls integrates with IBM’s Qiskit programming framework for quantum computers and can be run on any quantum machine.
  “We’re removing barriers to the community’s use of these powerful techniques as we help bring the first commercially relevant quantum computers to reality,” said Q-CTRL CEO and founder Professor Michael Biercuk.

• Making digital tissue imaging better

  The application is "open source" -- or free for anyone to use, modify and extend.

• Keeping the lights on when the grid takes a hit

  The open-source Severe Contingency Solver software can help government agencies better plan for power outages caused by extreme events.

• HiveMQ Launches New Open Source MQTT Community

  HiveMQ, developers of the enterprise MQTT platform, today announced a new open source community to accelerate the adoption of MQTT and HiveMQ. The new open source community will initially host two open source projects: HiveMQ Community Edition (CE), a Java-based MQTT broker, and HiveMQ MQTT Client, a Java-based MQTT client. The community will provide high quality, professionally managed open source implementations of the MQTT standards to make it easier for IoT developers to experiment and innovate with MQTT and HiveMQ.

• Banks can address Brexit uncertainty by choosing open source IT solutions

  As Brexit uncertainty continues to linger, EnterpriseDB's Matt Peachey makes the case for open source banking software to solve IT professionals' woes

• CWI's DIS group Releases Open Source Software Platform for Object-Based Broadcasting Production

  MMERSE, of which CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group is a member had, a successful final review meeting with the reviewers from the EU commission. The goal of the 2-IMMERSE project was to allow TV service providers to break free from the constraints of rendering a broadcast stream onto a single 16x9 frame. The final objective was to enable professionals to develop and deploy customizable interactive and multi-screen experiences that can adapt to the context of use. The results have been successfully demonstrated across multiple number of screens, multiple content genres (sports and drama), and multiple situations (home, schools and in public venues).

  In order to create new opportunities and sustain the project results, the core 2-IMMERSE platform and components are recently released under an open source license. In particular, the DIS group at CWI has contributed with several core platform components related to media synchronization and with a set of production tools for professionals that enable them to create new multi-screen and customizable experiences.

• OpenFin Reaches Critical Mass [Ed: FOSS is in many way 'the' standard now, like it had been before the proprietary software wave of the 70s (ish). It's now a very bad business 'gamble' to go against FOSS, but the proprietary giants merely pretend to like FOSS. Lips service for PR.]

  Adam Toms, chief executive of OpenFin Europe, said the technology has become the standard operating system across capital markets as it is being used across nearly 200,000 desktops in 1,500 banks and buy-side firms.

  [...]

  The OpenFin desktop operating system is similar to the Android or iOS operating platform for mobile phones but was launched to provide standardisation across capital markets desktops so that the industry can deploy new applications more quickly and they will be interoperable.
  “OpenFin is on nearly 200,000 desktops across 1,500 unique firms, including 13 of the 15 largest investment banks, across a number of different areas,” added Toms.
  He continued that desktop numbers are expected to increase as OpenFin has a number of significant projects launching with clients this year.

  [...]

  Last year OpenFin contributed the FCD3 initiative to the Fintech Open Source Foundation. FINOS is an independent nonprofit organization promoting open standards and open source in financial services.

• DPCI Announces Partnership with OpenKM for Open Source Document Management

  OpenKM is an open source Enterprise Document Management System licensed under the GNU GPL.

• Open Broadcaster Software Adopts the SRT Streaming Protocol

  OBS Studio is a free open source tool that creators use to broadcast their content to the world through live streams and recordings. OBS Studio allows users to capture video from a variety of sources, such as cameras and computer screens, and composite them into professional productions that are used to entertain, teach, and inspire. It has formed the bedrock for creators to launch entire careers broadcasting to their audiences on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, Facebook and more.

• Shashank Kumar: Event report for DebUtsav Delhi 2019

  The Debian India Community in Delhi along with Mozilla Delhi/NCR community organized DebUtsav Delhi 2019 on 9 and 10 March, 2019.

  For those who are unware, DebUtsav is an Indian style version of a typical Mini Debian Conference.

  This was the first Debian related conference to be organized in the Northern region of India. We have had Mini Debian conferences previously in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and in different cities of state of Kerala. But this was the very first one in the Northern Region.

• Cloudera: Plenty Of Upside As The Company Turns A New Page

  In light of how cheap Cloudera's stock now is, it's a good time for investors to review the bullish thesis for this stock. Recall that Cloudera's all-stock merger with Hortonworks (HDP) closed earlier in January, and will start reflecting into Cloudera's results next quarter. Aside from creating the most dominant, integrated vendor of Hadoop software in the market, the addition of Hortonworks' revenues will also help mask Cloudera's revenue deceleration into the mid-20s. Looking longer term, as data volumes explode and use cases evolve, complex data processing and management tools like Hadoop will only become more prevalent. In short, a combined Cloudera-Hortonworks has plenty of runway for growth.

• Open Source Opportunities for OTT 2.0

• Open Banking: The Goldman Sachs Way [Ed: Headline has been modified since]

• Azure HDInsight Analytics Platform Now Supports Apache Hadoop 3.0 [Ed: HDInsight on Zzure is just mass surveillance plus the openwashing to make it 'feel' ethical.]

• Microsoft Expands Hadoop on Azure

• Spectra open source biomedical imaging system affordable CATSCAN alternative

  Mindseye Biomedical has created a new open source biomedical imaging system called Spectra which is both safe and easy to use now available to preorder via the Crowd Supply website price from $299 for a Spectra Starter Kit. Spectra enables hackers and scientists to experiment with one of the technologies used in medical imaging electrical impedance tomography (EIT). Watch the demonstration video below to learn more about the system that allows anyone to explore the fascinating world of medical physics from their own home, without a multimillion dollar CATSCAN.

  “Would you like to see imagery of your own lungs? Use impedance cardiography to monitor heart activity? Measure the dielectric spectrum of a bone, a tumor, or a strawberry? Are you interested in gesture-based user interfaces? Consider what you would do if you could easily and safely experiment with, and contribute to, the science of biomedical imaging. And what we could all do if there existed a Commons for health care technology.

• Sage Bionetworks Executive Urges Adoption of Standards to Create 'Open Science'

  At Bio-IT World, Sage Bionetworks' John Wilbanks called on the research community to adopt the OMOP and FHIR standards so data becomes more useful...

Ksplice is a very cool technology. Ksplice allows you to patch important security updates to your system without a reboot. The in-memory code is patched as well as on-disk components, closing all the gaps for a security vulnerability. All the while, your applications keep running.

A new feature of Ksplice is Known Exploit Detection. When you patch your system with Ksplice, not only is the security vulnerability closed, but also tripwires are laid down for privilege escalation vulnerabilities. If an attacker attempts to exploit a CVE you’ve patched, Ksplice notifies you.

Ksplice is both protecting your system and alerting you to suspicious activity. Very cool.

Also: Oracle's Ksplice Live Kernel Patching Picks Up Known Exploit Detection

Should you have any Daktronics scoreboards, video displays, or digital billboards, mainline Linux kernel support appears to be in the works.

While shielded off by Kconfig build switches and not enabled by default, what some will surely point to the growing size of the Linux kernel and its laissez faire approach to accepting new drivers, a set of drivers that have been out-of-tree since the Linux 2.x kernel days are now on their way to the kernel's staging area with Linux 5.2. Not only that, but the code quality is admittedly less than stellar, hence the staging route.

Also: Intel i40e Driver Supporting Dynamic Device Personalization With Linux 5.2

Learning a new language can provide life changing opportunities and enjoyment. There are so many reasons to learn a foreign language whatever your nationality, to improve employment potential, intellectual curiosity, make travel more enjoyable, sharpen cognitive and life skills, make lifelong friends, and many more. While it is widely acknowledged that it is easier to begin learning a second language at a tender age, starting a new language at any age is eminently worthwhile.

There’s a good selection of traditional materials and tools available to assist with language studies, such as language courses, grammar books, dictionaries, phrasebooks, and electronic translators. However, there are real benefits in using the latest technology to quicken the pace of learning. Online lessons and computer software are two popular ways of immersing yourself in learning a foreign language. They are the best alternative to actually staying in a country where the language is spoken by the general population.

There is an extensive amount of open source computer software to help individuals learn a foreign language. We have identified the best of breed open source Linux software to make language acquisition fun, enjoyable, and a stimulating way of learning. These applications offer the opportunity to radically improve your life.

If you’re celebrating Easter, we’ve got a gift for you: week 67 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative!

Hi,

The winner of the election is Sam Hartman.

The details of the results are available at:
https://vote.debian.org/2019/vote_001

Stats for the DPL votes:
|------+------+--------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-----------|
|      |  Num |        | Valid | Unique | Rejects |      % |  Multiple |
| Year |  DDs | Quorum | Votes | Voters |         | Voting | of Quorum |
|------+------+--------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-----------|
| 1999 |  347 | 27.942 |       |    208 |         | 59.942 |   7.44399 |
| 2000 |  347 | 27.942 |       |    216 |         | 62.248 |   7.73030 |
| 2001 |   ?? |     ?? |       |    311 |         |        |           |
| 2002 |  939 | 45.965 |   509 |    475 |     122 | 50.586 |  10.33395 |
| 2003 |  831 | 43.241 |   510 |    488 |     200 | 58.724 |  11.28559 |
| 2004 |  908 | 45.200 |   506 |    482 |      52 | 53.084 |  10.66372 |
| 2005 |  965 | 46.597 |   531 |    504 |      69 | 52.228 |  10.81615 |
| 2006 |  972 | 46.765 |   436 |    421 |      41 | 43.313 |   9.00246 |
| 2007 | 1036 | 48.280 |   521 |    482 |     267 | 46.525 |   9.98343 |
| 2008 | 1075 | 49.181 |   425 |    401 |      35 | 37.302 |   8.15356 |
| 2009 | 1013 | 47.741 |   366 |    361 |      43 | 35.636 |   7.56155 |
| 2010 |  886 | 44.648 |   459 |    436 |      88 | 49.210 |   9.76513 |
| 2011 |  911 | 45.274 |   402 |    392 |      93 | 43.030 |   8.65836 |
| 2012 |  948 | 46.184 |   436 |    403 |      72 | 42.511 |   8.72589 |
| 2013 |  988 | 47.149 |   402 |    390 |      73 | 39.474 |   8.27170 |
| 2014 | 1003 | 47.505 |   412 |    401 |      61 | 39.980 |   8.44117 |
| 2015 |  986 | 47.101 |   364 |    353 |      39 | 35.801 |   7.49454 |
| 2016 | 1023 | 47.977 |   286 |    282 |      74 | 27.566 |   5.87787 |
| 2017 | 1062 | 48.882 |   327 |    322 |      57 | 30.320 |   6.58729 |
| 2018 | 1001 | 47.457 |   343 |    333 |      53 | 33.266 |   7.01674 |
| 2019 | 1003 | 47.505 |   389 |    378 |      59 | 37.687 |   7.95701 |
|------+------+--------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-----------|


Kurt Roeckx
Debian Project Secretary

Also: DPL elections 2019, congratulations Sam Hartman!

Reference: Debian Project Leader Elections 2019

Phoronix: Sam Hartman Is Debian's Newest Project Leader, Aims To "Keep Debian Fun"

Old: People behind Debian: Sam Hartman, Kerberos package maintainer

Back in April 2018, Ubuntu Studio 18.04 was released as a non-LTS (Long-Term Support) version, which limited its support cycle to end January 2019. This was due to a number of factors, from the involvement of the team members at the time to the number of team members.

In January 2019, the team came up with the idea for a Backports PPA of certain software to eliminate certain bugs and update the main packages (the ones that make Ubuntu Studio what it is). It was officially announced in February 2019.

As such, the Ubuntu Studio team no longer supports Ubuntu Studio 18.04 unless the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA is added. Adding the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA increases the support length of Ubuntu Studio 18.04 to 3 years total, with support ending in April 2021.

• Capcom Home Arcade is a plug-and-play arcade stick with 16 games

  Capcom is getting in on the “classic” game bandwagon, announcing the Capcom Home Arcade, a €229.99 plug-and-play arcade system featuring support for two players and including 16 classic titles. If that price seems high to you, relative to emulator-based offerings from Nintendo, or even the FPGA-based solutions from Analogue, then ... you’d be right. In exchange for roughly $260, you do get genuine Sanwa joystick parts, and emulation courtesy of the well-respected, open source FB Alpha emulator.

• The Emulator In Capcom's Home Arcade Is Stirring Controversy

  Its website markets the Capcom Home Arcade as an “authentic gaming” experience, in part because it utilizes the original arcade ROMs for games like Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting and Alien Vs. Predator and runs them with FB Alpha, an arcade emulator known for its snappy response times. As those in the emulation community were quick to point out, however, FB Alpha is open-source, and distributed under a license that strictly forbids people from trying to profit off of it.

• Interrogation reveals 2019 release for Windows, Mac and Linux

  Getting a criminal suspect to crack under pressure isn't nearly as easy as TV makes it look. In indie Romanian developer Critique Gaming's upcoming Interrogation, players will find that out firsthand, needing all their conversational wiles if they're to bring down a growing terrorist organization.

• The latest Windows patch is breaking even more PCs with antivirus installed

  Earlier this week we reported that Microsoft halted updates to Windows PCs running Sophos and Avast’s security solutions, following user complaints that their machines were locking up or failing to boot. Since then, the list of known issues for the rogue update was itself updated to acknowledge compatibility issues with Avira and ArcaBit antivirus installed, with Microsoft temporarily blocking updates to those affected systems, too. Today, Ars Technica noticed that Microsoft is investigating compatibility issues for systems with McAfee antivirus installed, though it hasn’t started blocking the April 9 update from those PCs just yet.

• ‘WannaCry Hero’ Marcus Hutchins Pleads Guilty to Making Banking Malware [iophk: "It looks like they squeezed malware tech with a “plea bargain”. So I would take reports of a guilty plea with a large grain of salt. They probably threatened him with 1000s of years in prison as an alternative. The plea “deal” is not mentioned in the summary, thus misleading the public about the situation."]

  Marcus Hutchins, a security researcher known for helping stop the destructive WannaCry ransomware, plead guilty to hacking crimes on Friday.

  Hutchins was accused of writing a banking malware called Kronos in 2014, after he finished high school. The researcher was arrested in Las Vegas after attending the hacker conference Def Con in 2017. Days later, he plead not guilty in a Milwaukee courtroom. He was scheduled to be tried this summer.

• Google will begin to block sign-ins from embedded browser frameworks in June

  Phishing — schemes to nab personal data with disguised malicious webpages and emails — constituted more than 70% of all cyber attacks in 2016, according to a Verizon report. In an effort to combat them, Google last year announced it would require users to enable JavaScript during Google Account sign-in so that it could run attack-detecting risk assessments, and today, the company said it’ll begin to block all sign-ins from embedded browser frameworks like Chromium Embedded Framework starting in June.

• A deeper look into OpenVPN: Security vulnerabilities

  OpenVPN is the backbone of online security. It is supported in many popular virtual private network (VPN) providers such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN, and continues to receive frequent updates well into its 17th year in operation.

  It’s an unwritten rule of information technology, however, that popular security protocols will attract the largest contingent of hackers. As OpenVPN is open source, it is therefore much easier for hackers to locate and exploit security vulnerabilities within the software design.

  Nevertheless, the value of the open-source model is that it promotes open collaboration, thus encouraging other programmers to suggest changes to the design. This way, security vulnerabilities can be communicated directly to the developers, who then have the option to patch the software and eliminate the vulnerability.

• DARPA’s New/Old Plan for a Hack-Proof Voting Machine

  The Pentagon’s top research arm is working to build a hack-proof voting machine by combining something brand new with something old – specifically, secure open-source hardware and software using advanced cryptography on one end, and good old paper on the other.

  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded the tech company Galois a $10 million contract for the project, which grew out of a broader agency project to remedy hardware vulnerabilities, the snappily named SSITH, for System Security Integrated Through Hardware and Firmware.

  Galois, which focuses on ensuring the trustworthiness of hardware and software, will design the system, which will start with a different approach used by established voting machine makers, who have come under criticism over the vulnerabilities in their systems, Motherboard reported. For one, it will use open-source software, rather than the proprietary systems used by companies such as Election Systems & Software. It also will use open-source hardware, built from designs developed under the SSITH program.

• New Attacks (and Old Attacks Made New)

  This is shown again in Fortinet's latest Global Threat Landscape Report for the fourth quarter of 2018, where we reported that exploits that targeted individual organizations — often variations of existing malware or the misuse of FOSS (free/open source software) security tools — continue to grow at a rapid pace: 10% over the quarter, while the number of unique exploits they experienced increased by 5%. This suggests that, despite some reports suggesting that malicious actors follow the same work routines as their victims, cybercriminals didn't take much of a break over the holidays. And as you would expect, all of this malware — especially botnets — is becoming more complex and harder to detect.

• Security flaw in French government messaging app exposed confidential conversations

  Tchap wasn’t built from scratch. The DINSIC, France’s government agency in charge of all things digital, forked an open-source project called Riot, which is based on an open-source protocol called Matrix.

  In a few words, Matrix is a messaging protocol that features end-to-end encryption. It competes with other protocols, such as the Signal Protocol that is widely used by consumer apps, such as WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger’s secret conversations and Google Allo’s incognito conversions — Messenger and Allo conversations aren’t end-to-end encrypted by default.

• French Government's 'Secure' WhatsApp Replacement Hacked In Just 90 Minutes

  In order to better protect official conversations, the French government developed its own secure instant messaging alternative to WhatsApp.

• Should Your LMS Be Open Source or Closed Source?

  When looking for a new learning management system, there are a multitude of questions that you must ask, starting with: What do I need my LMS to be able to do to allow us to reach our e-learning goals? One initial consideration that people often overlook is the type of technology an LMS uses. This is important to consider when evaluating whether an LMS will be able to provide the type of functionality you’ll need to meet your e-learning goals.

  When beginning the LMS evaluation process, you must first choose whether to use an open-source or closed-source learning management system. Let’s explore the differences between the two and highlight a few of the advantages of choosing an open-source LMS.

• OIT team, students respond to recent Sakai outage

  Hoffman said that this outage is an anomaly.

  “IT professionals in the OIT completed performance improvements for Sakai in mid-December, following intermittent performance and availability issues last fall. These changes have resulted in improved reliability for Sakai in recent months, the recent unrelated Saturday evening outage not withstanding,” he said.

  The outage ended up affecting a number of students in its 9-hour duration.

  “I logged onto Sakai around 1 a.m. on Sunday to study for my psychology exam and noticed there was a “time out” message. I couldn’t do anything, so I just studied for another class,” said Diana Nguyen, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year.

• 12 DevOps Tools for 2019 Worth Checking Out

  The merging of development and operations (DevOps) has introduced us to a whole new perspective regarding software development, from best practices such as continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) to an entirely different cultural philosophy. As a result we've seen an array of DevOps tools come into the mix to help enterprises meet the needs of these new practices and cultural requirements.

  Here are the top DevOps tools, in no particular order, sourced from G2 Crowd’s compiled list of “popular continuous delivery and source code management tools used by DevOps professionals”.

• 5 Key AI Announcements From Google Cloud 2019 & Why It’s Still The Big Friendly Open Source Giant [Ed: Google is not "Big Friendly Open Source Giant"; it's a proprietary software company (all the core things are proprietary) with 'surveillance capitalism' as the business model.]

• Why You Should Consider Google AI Platform For Your Machine Learning Projects

• Google Anthos reaffirms “managed open-source” as the future of hybrid cloud

  Google Anthos is a huge validation for Platform9’s approach to fully managed hybrid clouds powered by open-source technologies. In particular, the 5 tenets below that are at the core of the technology we’ve pioneered years ago are being used in production since 2015 by our enterprise customers across thousands of cloud deployments every today to power their business.

• Google Cloud adds Confluent, MongoDB and other open-source projects as managed services

  Confluent, the company founded by the creators of the Apache Kafka streaming data platform, announced last week that its Confluent Cloud for Apache Kafka is to be available natively on the Google Platform.

• Q&A: Advice from Red Hat aided Google Anthos’ open-source journey

  Even as Google has built one of the world’s most successful businesses on cloud computing, translating its innovations into enterprise-ready services has been a challenge in a competitive field. Now under new leadership and rebranded as Anthos, the contemporary Google Cloud Platform is the result of a series of decisions spanning open-source partnerships and storage technologies, layered with strong software support for a multicloud world.

  “I’ve been working with Google on their cloud efforts for almost 10 years now, and it started back when Google was about to get into the cloud business. They had to decide whether they were going to use KVM or Xen as their hypervisor, and we helped them do that,” said Mike Evans, vice president of technical business development at Red Hat Inc., noting his company’s role in aiding Google’s contemplation of open-source hypervisors for running their virtual machine services.