Intel Firmware Binaries Land For AX200/AX201 Bluetooth Linux Support

With devices beginning to hit store shelves using the new Intel WiFi 6 AX200 series chipsets, the firmware binaries have landed in linux-firmware.git for rounding out support for these latest WiFi/Bluetooth adapters.

For a few kernel releases now since earlier this year these new Intel wireless chipsets have been supported by the mainline kernel but the firmware hasn't been part of the de facto linux-firmware.git tree that houses the various firmware binaries for different hardware component support under Linux.

Improving distfile mirror structure

The Gentoo distfile mirror network is essential in distributing sources to our users. It offloads upstream download locations, improves throughput and reliability, guarantees distfile persistency.

The current structure of distfile mirrors dates back to 2002. It might have worked well back when we mirrored around 2500 files but it proved not to scale well. Today, mirrors hold almost 70 000 files, and this number has been causing problems for mirror admins.

LibreOffice 6.2.7 packages available for Slackware 14.2

There was a recent update in my repository of LibreOffice packages, but that libreoffice-6.3.2 was just for slackware-current.

There’s a recent release in the LibreOffice 6.2 stable series as well (ok… five weeks ago, not that recent…), and so I decided to use my build box’s free weekend to come up with packages for LibreOffice 6.2.7.
This release has a security improvement over previous versions, in that it will popup a warning to the user if a document tries to run an embedded script (similar to existing warning mechanism for embedded macros).

FPgM update: 2019-41

Here’s your report of what has happened in Fedora Program Management this week. The Go/No-Go meeting is next week. We are currently under the Final freeze.

No office hours next week, but normally I have weekly office hours in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else.

5 Best Magento Extensions That Can Boost On-page SEO

Therefore, if online resellers want to get the most out of this multifunctional development platform Magento, it is very important to establish an effective expansion on the shopping page. This helps to expand various functionalities and offers users a wide experience of shopping online, as well as brings high profits and optimize Magento 2 Speed.

Currently, there are many extensions available on the Internet, and it is necessary to choose the most useful ones. This task can be challenging for business owners. To help you choose the best extensions, we have prepared a list of excellent Magento plug-ins that you can install and improve the performance of your website and help you gain an edge over the competition.

Intrinsyc Unveils Open-Q 845 µSOM and Snapdragon 845 Mini-ITX Development Kit

Intrinsyc introduced the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 hardware development platform last year with its Open-Q 845 HDK designed for OEMs and device makers.

Arduino MKR WAN 1310 LoRa Board Gets HW Security, Longer Battery Life and a 2MB SPI flash

Two year ago Arduino launched MKR WAN 1300 board powered by Arduino Zero compatible Microchip Atmel SAMD21 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ MCU and a Murata CMWZ1ZZABZ LoRa module based on Semtech SX1276...

Open source hardware: The problems and promise

Open source hardware projects have struggled to gain the mass audience that popular open source software projects have. This may not matter.

Security updates for Friday

Security updates have been issued by Debian (lucene-solr and ruby-openid), Fedora (krb5 and SDL2), openSUSE (kernel and libopenmpt), and Ubuntu (python2.7, python3.4).

Chromium updated

Here is yet another update for Chromium 77.

The latest release fixes 8 vulnerabilities, several of them high-risk. You can read all about it in the Google announcement.

October 12: International Day Against DRM 2019

Digital Restrictions Management is the practice of imposing technological restrictions that control what users can do with digital media. When a program is designed to prevent you from copying or sharing a song, reading an ebook on another device, or playing a single-player game without an Internet connection, you are being restricted by DRM. In other words, DRM creates a damaged good; it prevents you from doing what would be possible without it. This concentrates control over production and distribution of media, giving DRM peddlers the power to carry out massive digital book burnings and conduct large scale surveillance over people’s media viewing habits.

If we want to avoid a future in which our devices serve as an apparatus to monitor and control our interaction with digital media, we must fight to retain control of our media and software.

Six extra videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2019

Here’s the final set of presentations from the “Sala de Grados (Aulario IV)” room at the LibreOffice Conference 2019 in Almeria, Spain. We have many more videos from other rooms to come, of course! (Note: for better audio, use headphones.)

Paul E. Mc Kenney: The Old Man and His Smartphone, Episode II

At some point in the setup process, it was necessary to disable wifi. And I of course forgot to re-enable it. A number of apps insisted on downloading new versions. Eventually I realized my mistake, and re-enabled wifi, but am still wondering just how severe a case of sticker shock I am in for at the end of the month.

[...]

My new smartphone's virtual keyboard represents a definite improvement over the multipress nature of text messaging on my old flip phone, but it does not hold a candle to a full-sized keyboard. However, even this old man must confess that it is much faster to respond to the smartphone than to the laptop if both start in their respective sleeping states. There is probably an optimal strategy in there somewhere!

openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2019/41

Just like the previous week, we have again released 4 snapshots since last Friday (1003, 1004, 1007 and 1009). 3 more have been tested but have been discarded by openQA; two of them only due to OBS being ‘too fast’ and random failures marking a snapshot as failed; likely they would have been ok. Snapshot 1010, on the other hand, was declined by openQA as the yast software management was not usable due to an ABI break. This has since been fixed and snapshot 1011 is expected to be releasable again (currently building).

Update on Oracle Certifications with SLES 15

The latest versions of Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware and related products are available with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15. This provides flexibility to customers who are migrating from SLES 12 to 15, and for Oracle customers who are still running older versions of the database and middleware products.

Build a simple chat app with Site.js

This weekend, I released Site.js version 12.7.0 with improvements to its WebSocket interface. Today, I want to take you step-by-step through building and running a basic chat app using Site.js.

Onboarding edge applications on the dev environment

Kubernetes on Windows nodes hits GA in Rancher, Amazon EKS

Rancher 2.3 and Amazon EKS were first to roll out support for Windows nodes in Kubernetes clusters this week, as well as mixed-mode clusters that encompass both Windows and Linux nodes. Most Kubernetes platforms already supported Windows containers but running on Linux host nodes; in all cases, including upstream Kubernetes, the Kubernetes master node still runs on Linux.

Collapse OS is a Special Operating System for the Post-Apocalyptic Future

As reported by Motherboard, there’s a new open-source operating system that is currently under heavy development, and it looks like it will soon be ready for a very dire scenario. Its creator, Virgil Dupras, is a person who believes there’s a good chance that by 2030, the world will have collapsed. The software developer isn’t absolutely certain about this, but he believes that the chances of the scenario are high enough to justify the development of a post-apocalyptic operating system, called “Collapse OS”.

So, what would the ideal scavenger’s operating system be like? The simple answer to this would be “one that can run on virtually anything”. If there is one system out there that can run on almost any hardware, this is the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. Collapse OS is taking things a lot further, being able to run on microcontrollers such as the ubiquitous Z80 microprocessor. Dupras considered what piece of hardware would be the easiest to find in a post-apocalyptic world, and Z80 came as the definitive answer. This 8-bit microprocessor is in cash registers, computers, music instruments, calculators, and virtually anything electronic.

PostgreSQL considers seccomp() filters

A discussion on the pgsql-hackers mailing list at the end of August is another reminder that the suitability of seccomp() filters is likely more narrow than was hoped. Applying filters to the PostgreSQL database is difficult for a number of reasons and the benefit for the project and its users is not entirely clear. The discussion highlights the tradeoffs inherent in adding system-call filtering to a complex software suite; it may help crystallize the thinking of other projects that are also looking at supporting seccomp() filters.

Joe Conway raised the idea in an RFC patch posting. It added a way to filter system calls in the main postmaster process and, with a separate system-call list, in the per-session backends. It also showed how to generate the list of system calls that are being used by PostgreSQL under various workloads, such as the test targets in the Makefile or by running a specific application. Information on the system calls made is logged by the audit subsystem; those logs are then processed to produce the list. Once there is confidence that the list is complete—which may be a sticking point—the remaining system calls could be blocked so that executing them would cause an error.

But Peter Eisentraut was concerned that the list is going to be incomplete due to the "fantastic test coverage" needed to generate it and that it will require constant maintenance to keep up with GNU C Library (glibc) and other changes. Beyond that, PostgreSQL extensions will need their own lists of allowed system calls. Conway seems to see the support as something that those interested will maintain for themselves, rather than having a list that the project will distribute. "Perhaps most people never use this, but when needed (and increasingly will be required) it is available."

mjbots quad A0: October 2019 Roadmap

My last video gave an overview of what I’ve accomplished over the past year. Now, let me talk about what I’m planning to work on going forward:

I intend to divide my efforts into two parallel tracks. The first is to demonstrate increased capabilities and continue learning with the existing quad A0, and second is to design and manufacture the next revision of all its major components.

Philip Chimento: Free software at 40°C

It’s that time of year again, time for a belated reflection on the GUADEC conference!

In August I traveled to Thessaloniki, Greece, to attend first the annual GNOME Foundation board handover day, then the advisory board meeting, then the GUADEC conference and associated unconference days.

The board discussion focused quite a lot on the strategic goals for the GNOME Foundation which you can hear more about in executive director Neil McGovern’s talk. Nuritzi has also blogged about the process of putting together these strategic goals.

Linux Action News 126

Microsoft’s CEO says Windows doesn’t matter anymore, but do we buy it? Nextcloud 17 goes enterprise-grade and the Internet’s horrifying new method for installing Google apps on Huawei phones.

Plus, Google finds an Android zero-day in the wild, and the Document Collective’s new approach to earn revenue for LibreOffice.

A diary program for GNOME: Almanah Diary

Almanah Diary is a project I started many years ago for maintaining a personal diary, with encryption and tracking of the events you did that day (from your calendar). It’s been neglected for a long time — given that I no longer use it, I have no incentive to maintain it and improve it, and have only held on to maintainership for so long out of a feeling of duty.

However, having me listed as a maintainer might have been giving people the false impression that it was actually maintained. So I’m removing myself as maintainer, having just made the 0.12.0 release. Álvaro Peña is also listed as a maintainer, but hasn’t been active for over a year. The project is technically now his, but if someone else turns up wanting to work on it, I am happy to add them as a co-maintainer, especially if they are going to revitalise things.

ctxLink Open Hardware WiFi Debug Probe is based Black Magic Probe (Crowdfunding)

Last month, we wrote about Blip nRF52840 dev board that also included an STM32F103 MCU running the open source Black Magic Probe (BMP) firmware for debugging and programming.

How Bash completion works

Recently, I added Bash completion to my tool. I’ve wanted this for a while, but decided to add it now in preparation for secrets management. For example, I want to be able to type zz secret --readamaz and have it complete to zz secret --read amazon/. Perhaps hitting again will list all secrets under this path, e.g. username, password, access_key, etc.

3 ways to build an open-source startup

Founders might be wondering whether there’s still space for new open-source software companies among all of these heavy hitters.

The answer is yes. As an investor, I have a front-line perspective on the many successful attempts to turn open-source projects into successful software startups. Startups actually have an advantage these days because they can learn from what’s worked and what hasn’t when it comes to commercializing open-source software.

Looking at the successes, I’ve identified three proven paths from project to commercial success. Here’s a look at these models and the successful companies associated with each.

The Best WordPress Invoice Plugins in 2019

Managing a business is never easy because selling stuff is not the only task you have to oversee. You also need to keep track of what your clients buy, which clients like what, which transactions were completed, whether refunds were requested for, how much you spend vs how much you ear, etc.

Security updates for Monday

Security updates have been issued by Debian (jackson-databind, libapreq2, libreoffice, novnc, phpbb3, and ruby-mini-magick), Fedora (mbedtls and mosquitto), Mageia (xpdf), openSUSE (bind, firefox, nginx, openssl-1_0_0, php7, python-numpy, and thunderbird), Oracle (kernel), SUSE (ansible1, ardana-ansible, ardana-cluster, ardana-db, ardana-extensions-nsx, ardana-glance, ardana-input-model, ardana-installer-ui, ardana-manila, ardana-monasca, ardana-neutron, ardana-nova, ardana-octavia, ardana-opsconsole-ui, ardana-osconfig, ardana-service, ardana-tls, crowbar-core, crowbar-ha, crowbar-openstack, crowbar-ui, grafana, novnc, openstack-cinder, openstack-dashboard, openstack-designate, openstack-glance, openstack-heat, openstack-horizon-plugin-heat-ui, openstack-horizon-plugin-monasca-ui, openstack-ironic, openstack-ironic-python-agent, openstack-keystone, openstack-manila, openstack-neutron, openstack-neutron-gbp, openstack-nova, openstack-octavia, openstack-sahara, openstack-tempest, openstack-watcher, python-ardana-configurationprocessor, python-cinder-tempest-plugin, python-urllib3, rubygem-easy_diff, bind, compat-openssl098, nginx, and openssl-1_0_0), and Ubuntu (linux-kvm, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon and openexr).

Rootconf 2019 Pune

Rootconf is a professional conference on security and systems and this was their first time in pune. I chose to spoke about TLS 1.3 and also did a BoF on fuzzing.

Rootconf is typically a single track conference, which means that everyone has only one talk to go to at a time. This was my first time i spoke at a single track event. My talk was the first one in the day. I started with talking about the importance of SSL/TLS , then talked about few of the security flaws, described key difference between TLS 1.3 and its previous versions and ended with lot of questions. Eventually ran out of time with people catching me in the hallway to ask tons of questions ranging from security, asking how Red Hat identifies, fixesflaws etc to people even asking if we have vacancies at Red Hat.

The second talk was about automating security workflow using docker. This was given by a security engineer from appsec, and had some important points about how he conducted pentesting and how bits of it can be automated.