Bloomberg Eschews Vendors For Direct Kubernetes Involvement

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June 22, 2018

Financial information behemoth Bloomberg is a big fan of Kubernetes, and is using it for everything from serving up Bloomberg.com to complex data processing pipelines.

Rather than use a managed Kubernetes service or employ an outsourced provider, Bloomberg has chosen to invest in deep Kubernetes expertise and keep the skills in-house. Like many enterprise organizations, Bloomberg originally went looking for an off-the-shelf approach before settling on the decision to get involved more deeply with the open source project directly.

“We started looking at Kubernetes a little over two years ago,” said Steven Bower, Data and Infrastructure Lead at Bloomberg. … “It’s a great execution environment for data science,” says Bower. “The real Aha! moment for us was when we realized that not only does it have all these great base primitives like pods and replica sets, but you can also define your own primitives and custom controllers that use them.”

Best Free Linux Firewalls of 2018

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Tech Radar

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June 22, 2018

A firewall is an important aspect of computer security these days, and most modern routers have one built in, which while helpful, can be difficult to configure. Fortunately there are also distributions (distros) of the free operating system Linux which have been specifically designed to function as firewalls.

These will generally have much more advanced features than those found on a router, and allow you to have far greater control over keeping your personal or business network safe.

In this article, we’re going to evaluate six of the most popular free firewall distros. We have tried to emphasise both power and ease of use when considering these offerings and their relative merits. If you want to see all the firewall distros available out there, feel free to visit the DistroWatch website for a comprehensive list.

GitHub: Changes to EU Copyright Law Could Derail Open Source Distribution

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Linux.com Editorial Staff

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June 22, 2018

A proposed European law would mandate that content providers utilize some kind of content filter to make sure rights holders get their royalties. But for a public open source code repository, such a contraption could be a nuisance, or it could be catastrophic.

The E.U. Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee voted 14-9-2 Wednesday, Brussels time, to approve the latest draft of a directive to impose sweeping changes to the continent’s copyright protections. Ostensibly, the purpose of this Parliamentary Directive would be to ensure the accessibility of all forms of content to “cultural heritage institutions” (mainly libraries and museums). Tucked into that draft is a mandate for a method for artists and rights holders to negotiate, perhaps electronically, to negotiate for and receive royalties from the distribution of their work.

But despite a flurry of proposed amendments (some of which may not have been fully circulated among members prior to being voted down, according to one member’s objections), the Directive as it stands may fail to distinguish between a multimedia site like YouTube or Spotify, and a source code repository like GitHub or GitLab.

Zapcc High-Speed C++ Compiler Now Open Source

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InfoWorld

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June 22, 2018

Zapcc, a caching C++ compiler built for speed, has gone open source.

Ceemple Software, Zapcc’s builder, claims the compiler offers dramatic improvements in both incremental and full builds compared to building with Clang 4.0 and Clang 5.0. Based on heavily modified code from the Clang compiler project, Zapcc uses an in-memory compilation cache in a client-server architecture. All compilation information is remembered between runs.

6 Open Source AI Tools to Know

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Sam Dean

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June 21, 2018

In open source, no matter how original your own idea seems, it is always wise to see if someone else has already executed the concept. For organizations and individuals interested in leveraging the growing power of artificial intelligence (AI), many of the best tools are not only free and open source, but, in many cases, have already been hardened and tested.

At leading companies and non-profit organizations, AI is a huge priority, and many of these companies and organizations are open sourcing valuable tools. Here is a sampling of free, open source AI tools available to anyone.

Acumos. Acumos AI is a platform and open source framework that makes it easy to build, share, and deploy AI apps. It standardizes the infrastructure stack and components required to run an out-of-the-box general AI environment. This frees data scientists and model trainers to focus on their core competencies rather than endlessly customizing, modeling, and training an AI implementation.

Acumos is part of the LF Deep Learning Foundation, an organization within The Linux Foundation that supports open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. The goal is to make these critical new technologies available to developers and data scientists, including those who may have limited experience with deep learning and AI. The LF Deep Learning Foundation just recently approved a project lifecycle and contribution process and is now accepting proposals for the contribution of projects.

Facebook’s Framework. Facebook has open sourced its central machine learning system designed for artificial intelligence tasks at large scale, and a series of other AI technologies. The tools are part of a proven platform in use at the company. Facebook has also open sourced a framework for deep learning and AI called Caffe2.

Speaking of Caffe. Yahoo also released its key AI software under an open source license. The CaffeOnSpark tool is based on deep learning, a branch of artificial intelligence particularly useful in helping machines recognize human speech or the contents of a photo or video. Similarly, IBM’s machine learning program known as SystemML is freely available to share and modify through the Apache Software Foundation.

Google’s Tools. Google spent years developing its TensorFlow software framework to support its AI software and other predictive and analytics programs. TensorFlow is the engine behind several Google tools you may already use, including Google Photos and the speech recognition found in the Google app.

Two AIY kits open sourced by Google let individuals easily get hands-on with artificial intelligence. Focused on computer vision and voice assistants, the two kits come as small self-assembly cardboard boxes with all the components needed for use. The kits are currently available at Target in the United States, and are based on the open source Raspberry Pi platform — more evidence of how much is happening at the intersection of open source and AI.

H2O.ai. I previously covered H2O.ai, which has carved out a niche in the machine learning and artificial intelligence arena because its primary tools are free and open source. You can get the main H2O platform and Sparkling Water, which works with Apache Spark, simply by downloading them. These tools operate under the Apache 2.0 license, one of the most flexible open source licenses available, and you can even run them on clusters powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others for just a few hundred dollars.

Microsoft Onboard. “Our goal is to democratize AI to empower every person and every organization to achieve more,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. With that in mind, Microsoft is continuing to iterate its Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit. It’s an open source software framework that competes with tools such as TensorFlow and Caffe. Cognitive Toolkit works with both Windows and Linux on 64-bit platforms.

“Cognitive Toolkit enables enterprise-ready, production-grade AI by allowing users to create, train, and evaluate their own neural networks that can then scale efficiently across multiple GPUs and multiple machines on massive data sets,” reports the Cognitive Toolkit Team.

Learn more about AI in this new ebook from The Linux Foundation. Open Source AI: Projects, Insights, and Trends by Ibrahim Haddad surveys 16 popular open source AI projects – looking in depth at their histories, codebases, and GitHub contributions. Download the free ebook now.

Heather Kirksey on Integrating Networking and Cloud Native

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The Linux Foundation

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June 21, 2018

As highlighted in the recent Open Source Jobs Report, cloud and networking skills are in high demand. And, if you want to hear about the latest networking developments, there is no one better to talk with than Heather Kirksey, VP, Community and Ecosystem Development, Networking at The Linux Foundation. Kirksey was the Director of OPNFV before the recent consolidation of several networking-related projects under the new LF Networking umbrella, and I spoke with her to learn more about LF Networking (LFN) and how the initiative is working closely with cloud native technologies.

Kirksey explained the reasoning behind the move and expansion of her role. “At OPNFV, we were focused on integration and end-to-end testing across the LFN projects. We had interaction with all of those communities. At the same time, we were separate legal entities, and things like that created more barriers to collaboration. Now, it’s easy to look at them more strategically as a portfolio to facilitate member engagement and deliver solutions to service providers.”

Blockchain Beyond the Hype: What is the Strategic Business Value?

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McKinsey & Company

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June 21, 2018

Companies can determine whether they should invest in blockchain by focusing on specific use cases and their market position.

Speculation on the value of blockchain is rife, with Bitcoin—the first and most infamous application of blockchain—grabbing headlines for its rocketing price and volatility. That the focus of blockchain is wrapped up with Bitcoin is not surprising given that its market value surged from less than $20 billion to more than $200 billion over the course of 2017.1Yet Bitcoin is only the first application of blockchain technology that has captured the attention of government and industry.

Blockchain was a priority topic at Davos; a World Economic Forum survey suggested that 10 percent of global GDP will be stored on blockchain by 2027.2Multiple governments have published reports on the potential implications of blockchain, and the past two years alone have seen more than half a million new publications on and 3.7 million Google search results for blockchain.

Linux and Open-Source Jobs Are in More Demand Than Ever

By

ZDNet

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June 21, 2018

Do you want a tech job? Then, it’s time to move away from Windows and head toward Linux and open source. According to The Linux Foundation and Dice‘s 2018 Open Source Jobs Report, 87 percent of hiring managers are having trouble finding open-source talent, while hiring open-source talent is now a priority for 83 percent of employers.

“Open source technology talent is in high demand, as Linux and other open source software dominates software development,” said Linux Foundation’s executive director, Jim Zemlin, in a statement. “I am encouraged that that companies are recognizing more and more each day that open-source technology is the way to advance their businesses. The Linux Foundation, our members, and the open source ecosystem are focused on ensuring training and certification opportunities are highly accessible to everyone who wants to seek them out.”

5 Pillars of Learning Programming

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D Zone

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June 21, 2018

Learning how to program is hard. I often find that university courses and boot camps miss important aspects of programming and take poor approaches to teaching rookies.

I want to share the 5 basic pillars I believe a successful programming course should build upon. As always, I am addressing the context of mainstream web applications.

A rookie’s goal is to master the fundamentals of programming and to understand the importance of libraries and frameworks.

Advanced topics such as the cloud, operations in general, or build tools should not be part of the curriculum. I am also skeptical when it comes to Design Patterns. They presume experience that beginners never have.

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

TDD brings a lot of benefits. Unfortunately, it is an advanced topic that beginners are not entirely ready for.

Beginners shouldn’t write tests. This would be too much for their basic skill levels. Instead, they should learn how to use and work with tests.

Anatomy of a Perfect Pull Request

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OpenSource.com

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June 21, 2018

Writing clean code is just one of many factors you should care about when creating a pull request.

Large pull requests cause a big overhead during the code review and can facilitate bugs in the codebase.

That’s why you need to care about the pull request itself. It should be short, have a clear title and description, and do only one thing.

Why should you care?

A good pull request will be reviewed quickly
It reduces bug introduction into codebase
It facilitates new developers onboarding
It does not block other developers
It speeds up the code review process and consequently, product development