today's howtos and leftovers

• Making Sink(ed) contacts accessible to Plasma-Phonebook App

• How to Delete MySQL Users Accounts

• How to sync Google Contacts with Thunderbird

• How to set the GNOME idle delay from the command line

• Four Apollo Lake Pico-ITX SBCs start at $245 in single units

  Logic Supply has launched four Ubuntu-ready “EPM16x” Pico-ITX SBCs with Apollo Lake SoCs starting at $245. The $426 and up EPM163 has a Pentium N4200, 4GB LPDDR4, 64GB eMMC, mSATA, mini-PCIe, and 2x each of GbE, DP, and USB 3.0. We’ve reported on over a dozen Linux-friendly Pico-ITX boards with Intel Apollo Lake processors over the last few years, including most recently, Axiomtek’s PICO319 and IEI’s Hyper-AL. Yet, as some of our readers have complained, they are rarely announced with ship dates or prices, and if they are, they usually list only volume pricing.

• Huawei Covers Android Gap with IoT OS

  If you’ve been watching the smartphone world, you may know of Huawei’s problems with the United States. Huawei has had a spotty history of spying on American technology, to the point where Huawei products have been banned from being sold in the US. Huawei responded by saying they would very much like to continue relations with Android and have been hoping they get a second chance with the technology giant. They have stated, however, that if they are officially cut off from Android, they would make their own OS.

• Gaurav Agrawal: Google Summer of Code 2019 FINAL REPORT

  My Google Summer of Code (GSOC) project was focused on “Implementing split view” in gnome-gitg. This blog posts serves as my final submission to my Google Summer of Code project.

• Command Line Heroes season 3, episode 5: The Infrastructure Effect: COBOL and Go

  Languages used for IT infrastructure don't have expiration dates. COBOL's been around for 60 years - and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. We maintain billions of lines of classic code for mainframes. But we're also building new infrastructures for the cloud in languages like Go.

• Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S12E20 – Outrun

  This week we’ve been experimenting with lean podcasting and playing Roguelikes. We discuss what goes on at a Canonical Roadmap Sprint, bring you some command line love and go over all your feedback. It’s Season 12 Episode 20 of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson and Stuart Langridge are connected and speaking to your brain.

OSS Leftovers

• Open-Source Project Unveils Detailed Road Map for New Mainnet

  An open-source project that aims to create a smart economy based on blockchain technology has unveiled a new program designed to fuel its ecosystem’s growth — while setting out a detailed road map for its new mainnet. Neo says its EcoBoost scheme has been designed to support developers and projects that are already in its ecosystem, as well as those that wish to join. A total of $100 million has been allocated to the initiative — and in the first phase, the firm is seeking to establish long-term partnerships that will fuel the organic growth of its network. Media outlets, exchanges, decentralized application (DApp) distribution platforms and other blockchain infrastructures are being encouraged to express an interest in becoming an EcoBoost Partner, and Neo says it has already received numerous applications from “leading institutions and projects in the industry.”

• Square Crypto Hires Blockstream Co-Founder, Open Source Bitcoin Dev

  Square Crypto announced on Twitter that they have hired Matt Corallo, Bitcoin software developer and co-founder of Blockstream.

• 5 Arenas Where Open Source is the Undisputed Champion

  Open source software has come of age. It has now reached a level of maturity and capability where it simply cannot be ignored. Recent research[1] suggests that 82 percent of large organizations are more receptive to open source than they were five years ago and that C-level IT executives are now most likely to prefer an open source solution over proprietary alternatives. Over the years, everyone’s confidence and trust in open source software has been steadily growing. We’ve now reached the point where open source is the dominant player in many of the key technology trends shaping our world. [...] It’s widely acknowledged that Linux is the power behind the vast majority of public internet servers and that Unix-like operating systems are being used by about 70 percent of all web servers, with Linux taking the lion’s share. Why is that important?  Because even though we pay them little thought or attention, web and internet servers are responsible for stitching together the digital fabric that most of us rely on for communications and services every day. [...] There’s no denying that open source is here to stay.  I’ve been working with open source for almost a decade now and over that time I’ve seen how quickly open source solutions have taken off, gained acceptance and become the front runner is so many areas.

• U-Boot Has Been Seeing Better x86 Support, EFI Improvements

  Google's Simon Glass who is part of the Chromium / Chrome OS team presented at this week's Embedded Linux Conference in San Diego on U-Boot.  U-Boot continues making good progress particularly on the embedded front for where this bootloader is most well known, but it's also been seeing increasing x86 support. Currently U-Boot supports around 10 different Intel SoCs and can handle booting from Coreboot on most boards. Intel Apollolake support is forthcoming to U-Boot. Additionally, FSP2 support for the newer version of Intel's firmware support package is being worked on for U-Boot. Also new on U-Boot's x86 front is slimbootloader support. 

• Dustin J. Mitchell: Outreachy Round 20

  Outreachy is a program that provides paid internships working on FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) to applicants from around the world. Internships are three months long and involve deep, technical work on a mentor-selected project, guided by mentors and other developers working on the FOSS application. At Mozilla, projects include work on Firefox itself, development of associated services and sites like Taskcluster and Treeherder, and analysis of Firefox telemetry data from a data-science perspective. The program has an explicit focus on diversity: “Anyone who faces under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technology industry of their country is invited to apply.” It’s a small but very effective step in achieving better representation in this field. One of the interesting side-effects is that the program sees a number of career-changing participants. These people bring a wealth of interesting and valuable perspectives, but face challenges in a field where many have been programming since they were young.

• AI open source leader H2O.ai secures funding worth $72.5 million

  Over the past couple of years, the Silicone-based company has raised a total of $147 million. Since its founding, H2O.ai has gone through a series of funding including its seed round in 2013. In 2017, it saw one of its biggest growth after a Series C funding that raised $75 million. Wells Fargo and NVIDIA led the funding with their $40 million investment. Other participants included Crane Venture Partners, New York Life, Transamerica Ventures, and Nexus Venture Partners.

Security Leftovers

• Cryptojacking Code Found in 11 Open Libraries, Thousands Infected

  A cryptojacking code was found in 11 open-source code libraries written in Ruby, which have been downloaded thousands of times. Hackers downloaded the software, infected it with malware, and subsequently reposted it on the RubyGems platform, industry news outlet Decrypt reported on Aug. 21.

• Malicious cryptojacking code found in 11 Ruby libraries

  Cryptojacking software has been found in 11 code libraries for the programming language Ruby—exposing thousands of people. The latest heist, discovered yesterday on code repository Github made use of a package manager called RubyGems, a popular program that allows developers to upload and share improvements on existing pieces of software.

• Cryptojacking Scripts Found in 11 Open-Source Code Libraries

  According to a Decrypt report, the malware was discovered on Tuesday inside Github code repository, infecting the language manager called RubyGems.

• First‑of‑its‑kind spyware sneaks into Google Play

• Open-source spyware bypasses Google Play defenses — twice

  Radio Balouch — the app in question — is a legitimate radio application serving Balouchi music enthusiasts, except that it also included AhMyth, a remote access espionage tool that has been available on GitHub as an open-source project since late 2017. Lukas Stefanko, ESET researcher who uncovered the campaign, said the app was uploaded twice on Google Play — once on July 2 and a second time on July 13 — only to be swiftly removed by Google within 24 hours upon being alerted by the security team. It continues to be available on third-party app stores. While the service’s dedicated website “radiobalouch.com” is no longer accessible, the attackers also seem to have promoted the app on Instagram and YouTube. The app, in total, attracted over 100 installs.

• 61 impacted versions of Apache Struts left off security advisories

  Security researchers have reviewed security advisories for Apache Struts and found that two dozen of them inaccurately listed affected versions for the open-source development framework. The advisories have since been updated to reflect vulnerabilities in an additional 61 unique versions of Struts that were affected by at least one previously disclosed vulnerability but left off the security advisories for those vulnerabilities.

• Sectigo Sponsors Automated Certificate Issuance and Renewal in Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Certbot Open Source Software Tool

  Sectigo, the world’s largest commercial Certificate Authority (CA) and a provider of purpose-built and automated PKI management solutions, today announced its sponsorship of Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) free, open source software tool, Certbot, to support efforts to encrypt the entire internet and build a network that is more structurally private, safe, and protected against censorship.

GNU Parallel 20190822 ('Jesper Svarre') released [stable]

GNU Parallel 20190822 ('Jesper Svarre') [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. GNU Parallel is 10 years old next year on 2020-04-22. You are here by invited to a reception on Friday 2020-04-17.