Ubuntu GNOME Shell in Artful: Day 13

Now that GNOME 3.26 is released, available in Ubuntu artful, and final GNOME Shell UI is confirmed, it’s time to adapt our default user experience to it. Let’s discuss how we worked with dash to dock upstream on the transparency feature. For more background on our current transition to GNOME Shell in artful, you can refer back to our decisions regarding our default session experience as discussed in my blog post.

Android Leftovers

• iPhone 8, iPhone X vs Android flagships: Speed tests say it's not even close

• Here are the features Google Assistant might be getting soon

• Creating an Android 8.0 Oreo app: Implementing Notification Channels

• Here's how to bring the iPhone X's worst feature to your Android phone

• Android 8.0 update: When will my phone get Oreo?

• How Does This Foreign Android Phone Stack Up In America?

• What Android's notification snoozing needs next

• New Mobile Banking Trojan Can Infect Millions of Android Users

Linux-driven Sitara SiP module shrinks to 21mm square

Octavo’s OSD335x-SM is a 40 percent smaller version of its AM335x-based OSD335x SiP that adds a 4KB EEPROM. There’s also a compact, open-spec dev board. Last year, Octavo Systems added a new twist to BeagleBone development when it released its 27 x 27mm OSD335x System-In-Package (SiP) module. The OSD335x, which went on to form the basis of the BeagleBone Black Wireless and BeagleBone Blue SBCs, packs a Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x SoC and nearly all the functions of a BeagleBone Black SBC into a BGA module. Octavo has now followed up with a 40 percent smaller OSD335x-SM variant that measures 21 x 21mm (441 sq. mm).

today's leftovers

• Black screen of death after Win10 update? Microsoft blames HP

  Microsoft is pointing the finger of blame at HP's factory image for black screens of death appearing after a Windows Update. Scores of PC owners took to the HP forums last week to report that Windows 10 updates released September 12 were slowing down the login process. Users stated that once they downloaded the updates and entered their username and password, they only saw black screens for about five to 10 minutes. The forum members said that clean installs or disabling a service called "app readiness", which "gets apps ready for use the first time a user signs in to this PC and when adding new apps" seemed to fix the delay. Today, a Microsoft spokesperson told The Register: "We're working to resolve this as soon as possible" and referred affected customers to a new support post.

• GNOME 3.26 Released! Check Out the New Features

  GNOME 3.26 is the latest version of GNOME 3 released six months after the last stable release GNOME 3.24. The release, code-named “Manchester”, is the 33rd stable release of the free, open-source desktop.

• Arch Arch and away! What's with the Arch warriors?

  If you choose to begin your Linux adventures with Arch Linux after trying Ubuntu for a month, you're probably doing it wrong. If there's a solid reason why you think Arch is for you; awesome! Do it. You will learn new things. A lot of new things. But hey, what's the point in learning what arch-chroot does if you can't figure out what sudo is or what wpa_supplicant does?

• Setting a primary monitor for launching games in a dual monitor rig

• AMD Zen Temperature Monitoring On Linux Is Working With Hwmon-Next

  If you want CPU temperature monitoring to work under Linux for your Ryzen / Threadripper / EPYC processor(s), it's working on hwmon-next. The temperature monitoring support didn't make it for Linux 4.14 but being published earlier this month were finally patches for Zen temperature monitoring by extending the k10temp Linux driver.

• Fanless Skylake computer offers four PCI and PCIe slots

  Adlink’s MVP-6010 and MVP-6020 embedded computers run Linux or Windows on Intel 6th Gen CPUs, and offer 4x PCI/PCIe slots, 6x USB ports, and 4x COM ports. If Adlink’s new MVP-6010/6020 Series looks familiar, that’s because it’s a modified version of the recent MVP-5000 and last year’s MVP-6000 industrial PCs. The top half appears to be identical, with the same ports, layout, and Intel 6th Gen Core “Skylake” TE series processors. Like the MVP-6000, it adds a PCI and PCIe expansion unit on the bottom, but whereas the MVP-6000 had two slots, the MVP-6010 and MVP-6020 have four.

• How Qi wireless charging works, and why it hasn’t taken over yet

  Qi has been an Android staple for a while, and now it’s coming to iPhones, too.

• W3C DRM appeal fails, votes kept secret

  Earlier this summer, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) — the organization responsible for defining the standards that make up the Web — decided to embrace DRM (aka "EME") as a web standard. I wasn’t happy about this. I don’t know many who were. Shortly after that, the W3C agreed to talk with me about the issue. During that discussion, I encouraged the W3C to increase their level of transparency going forward — and if there is an appeal of their DRM decision, to make that process completely open and visible to the public (including how individual members of the W3C vote on the issue). The appeal happened and has officially ended. I immediately reached out to the W3C to gather some details. What I found out was highly concerning. I’ll include the most interesting bits below, as un-edited as possible.