Firejail is a Linux security SUID program that drastically reduces the risk of security breaches by sandboxing the running environment of untrusted applications. Firejail achieves this by using Linux namespaces and seccomp-bpf which allows the attaching of a system call filter to a process and all its descendants, thus reducing the attack surface of the kernel. Find out how to install and use Firejail…
[Source: TechRepublic]
For those still running a GeForce 8 or 9 series graphics card, you really ought to consider upgrading this holiday season. Even the cheapest of recent generation NVIDIA GPUs should deliver better performance and far better efficiency over those older GPUs, but in any case, NVIDIA released the 340.108 Linux driver as part of their legacy maintenance support.
The NVIDIA 340.108 Linux legacy driver update has better compatibility with the latest kernels through v5.4, various installer fixes, and a variety of other build-related failures to let this legacy driver continuing to run gracefully on the latest Linux distributions as we enter 2020.
[Source: Phoronix]
George Hilliard, an embedded systems engineer by profession, decided to make a barebones Linux board in a business card form factor. It is a complete, minimal ARM computer that runs customized Linux firmware built with Buildroot. This Linux-powered business card has a USB port in the corner. Hilliard says that the card takes about 6 seconds to boot after plugging into a computer. It shows up over USB as a flash drive and a virtual serial port that can be used to log into the card’s shell.
[Source: Fossbytes]
The next major version of the digiKam photo management software, that is digiKam 7.0, looks promising. The digiKam Team has released their first beta with deep learning powered faces management. Since the algorithms used in background (not based on deep learning) were older and unchanged since the first revision, the team found them to be “not enough powerful” to facilitate the faces management workflow automatically.
The updated version makes use of the cascade classifier and deep neural network functionality of the OpenCV library to improve face detection big time.
[Source: TFiR]
As a way of approaching software development, open source has been with us for decades. For over twenty years, organisations like the Apache Software Foundation have supported the development of open source software projects that led to new applications and online services enjoyed by billions globally.
However, what will happen to open source in 2020 and in the years ahead? Will the open source movement continue to support and develop software effectively, or are there future risks we need to address?
[Source: IDG Connect]
If you are looking for a tool to deploy machine learning models as production web services, then ‘Cortex’ could be a good option to try. This open-source platform is an alternative to serving models with AWS SageMaker or creating your own model deployment platform over AWS services like Elastic Container Service (ECS), Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and even open-source projects like Docker, Kubernetes, and TensorFlow.
[Source: MarkTechPost]
In a rather unusual twist, the Hyperbola GNU/Linux distribution that is approved by the Free Software Foundation for being free software and making use of the Linux-libre kernel has now decided they are going to fork OpenBSD and become a BSD.
The Hyperbola developers allege that “the Linux kernel rapidly proceeding down an unstable path.” Most readers probably aren’t familiar with Hyperbola but it is GNU-approved for being comprised entirely of free software and using the Linux-libre kernel. It’s based on Arch and Debian while using OpenRC as the init system. But they now are unhappy with the path of the Linux kernel and want to pursue being a BSD platform.
[Source: Phoronix]
By some estimates there are roughly 190 million companies on earth today. Imagine if they were all contributing to open source. Of course, most of those companies aren’t in a position to contribute code, but if we want truly sustainable, customer-friendly open source, it’s time to focus on the best possible source: companies that don’t sell software.
Why? Because the more software is built to suit the needs of those who are actually running it day-to-day, the better that software will be, and the less we’ll need to worry about sustainability. ITWorld’s Matt Asay points out that the real innovation in open source stems from customers; that is, from enterprises who use open source to build their businesses and contribute code accordingly.
[Source: ITWorld]
The Pentagon is urging US telecoms equipment makers to join forces on 5G technology in a drive to offer a homegrown alternative to China’s Huawei. Lisa Porter, who oversees research and development at the defence department, has asked US companies to develop open-source 5G software — in effect opening up their technology to potential rivals — warning they risk becoming obsolete if they do not.
Making 5G tech open-source could threaten American companies such as Cisco or Oracle, the biggest American suppliers of telecoms network equipment.
[Source: Financial Times]
New York-based Hugging Face, a startup known by an app launched in 2017 that allows you to chat with an artificial digital friend, recently open-sourced its library for natural language processing (NLP) framework, called Transformers. It had massive success as there are over a million downloads and 1,000 companies using it, including Microsoft’s Bing. Transformers can be leveraged for text classification, information extraction, summarization, text generation, and conversational artificial intelligence.
On Tuesday, Hugging Face, with just 15 employees, announced the close of a $15 million series, a funding round that adds to a previous amount of $5 million.
[Source: IBL News]
