Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

When security researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson publicly released attack code two weeks ago that takes advantage of an insidious vulnerability in USB devices, they argued that publishing their exploits would get the problems fixed faster. Now they've released a partial fix themselves-albeit one that's so messy it includes coating your USB thumb drive in epoxy.

This year's keynote speaker at the annual All Things Open conference is Red Hat's DeLisa Alexander, executive VP and head of Red Hat's human resources operations. DeLisa is not only in a professional position to comment on gender and diversity in open source and tech but has also personally campaigned for inclusiveness in the workplace to produce better outcomes for everybody.

How do you find the right open source project to jump into? Here's a guide based on my jouney to find the right fit. In the guide, I wrote about doing your research by casting a wide net, then evaluating yourself (your skills, your goals, and your time). In this evaluation to find the right fit, I looked at my motivations and skills, made a list of goals, and named a few target projects. Because this isn’t my first rodeo, I take a good, hard look at my track record. What can I learn from the ones that didn't stick to find the one that will? I notice patterns I can avoid and see how they line up against my new list of goals and skills. Then, I evaluate four open source projects and their communities to see if they might be a good fit. See the winner at the end!

Barely two months after the Linux 3.16 kernel release and Linux 3.17 is now out. The Linux 3.17 kernel is the fifth major kernel release so far in 2014 and among its features is a fix for a flaw that wouldn't actually impact Linux for another 24 years.

Logic Supply unveiled four Ubuntu-ready, Mini-ITX industrial PCs based on Intel Celeron (Bay Trail and Ivy Bridge) and Core (Haswell-ULT and Haswell) CPUs. Do aesthetics matter in on the factory floor? Logic Supply, which has been selling Ubuntu Linux ready embedded computers for years, has answered with a resounding yes with a new line of ML400G embedded PCs. The four new systems are the “smallest full-size Mini-ITX systems” ever built by the company, and offer a “sleek, exciting aesthetic with ultra-reliable, fanless and ventless engineering,” says Logic Supply.

Lennart Poettering, creator of the systemd system management software for Linux, says the open-source world is "quite a sick place to be in." He also said the Linux development community is "awful" – and he pins the blame for that on Linux supremo Linus Torvalds.

Let's reminisce. What was the first open source tool you ever used? Was it for work or fun? Maybe you were trying to start or finish a project and reached for a free and accessible tool? Or maybe you just have a preference for open source software? Tell us about it. We're collecting stories.

LXer Feature: 05-Oct-2014

The LXer Weekly Roundup for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

When you're dealing with audio files, you'll run into a few problems every so soften. This is especially true with voice recordings and audio that was converted to a digital format from a cassette tape or a vinyl record. One of the biggest problems is noise. This could be hissing or background noise like the sound of the wind or a loud air conditioning unit, or even someone inadvertently breathing into a microphone. No matter what the source is, that noise is distracting. And while it's difficult to eliminate all of the noise from a digital audio recording, it is possible to clean the file up so that the noise tolerable.

LinkSprite unveiled a “pcDuino Acadia 1? SBC that runs Linux or Android on a 1.2GHz Freescale i.MX6 Quad SoC and features eMMC flash and dual microSD slots. LinkSprite Technologies, which hosts the open source project for pcDuino single board computers, last month announced a pcDuino3Nano SBC, featuring a dual-core, 1GHz Cortex-A7 Allwinner A20 system-on-chip for only $39. At last weekend’s Maker Faire New York, the company unveiled a quad-core based SBC called the pcDuino Acadia 1. No pricing or availability information was released.

Qt Developer Days Europe is next Monday to Wednesday in Berlin. It features tutorials and talks on making the most of the Qt toolkit most KDE Software is based upon. Since Qt opened up its development process a large part of KDE Frameworks development has been to ensure close cooperation between the two projects. This has succeeded spectaularly well and at this Qt Dev Days an incredible over 50% of the speakers are active or past developers with KDE. Some highlights include The Designer's Cookbook by VDG master Jens Reuterberg, Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen talking about Calligra Gemini in 2-in-1 Office Suite, David Faure will talk about inqlude.org and the KDE Frameworks and David Edmundson will talk on Plasma - A flexible workspace shell. Look at the schedule to see many more. As usual slides from the talks should be up on the website after the event for those who can not be there. KDE e.V. is a partner organisation of Qt Dev Days with vice-president Aleix Pol representing our community to anyone who wants to find out more.

Interested in building an open source cloud using the latest and greatest that OpenStack has to offer? You're not alone. We've collected some of the best howtos, guides, tutorials, and tips published over the past month into this handy collection. Take a look, get ready to learn, and when you get stuck, remember that he official documentation for OpenStack is your friend, too.

What if you treated all of the configuration files and scripts which set up and control your infrastructure like an open source project in their own right? What if you put the code out there for review and allowed developers and operators to work in tandem to ensure a smooth roll out of code to production? That's how the OpenStack Infrastructure team at HP work.

OpenVPN wasn’t immune to the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL, and it’s not going to sidestep Shellshock either. Fredrick Stromberg, cofounder of Mullvad, a Swedish VPN company, reported that OpenVPN servers are vulnerable to Shellshock , the vulnerability in Bash plaguing Linux, UNIX and Mac OS X systems.

A group established to shield Linux from patent trolls has warned OpenStack will be the next big target for intellectual property hoarders. The Open Invention Network (OIN) reckons the open-source cloud is ripe for the plucking by trolls, who would easily be able to box off and claim core technologies as their own.

I recently got a new laptop, and one of the key features (for me) on this new laptop was that it had a high DPI screen, and for the most part, Fedora 21 Alpha looks amazing with so many extra pixels. However, when I launched Firefox, I was greeted with the following less-than-amazing view..

Variscite has refreshed its Linux- and Android-ready, Freescale i.MX6 based VAR-SOM-MX6 module, adding WiFi, Bluetooth, and up to 64GB of eMMC. The original VAR-SOM-MX6 computer-on-module arrived before LinuxGizmos launched in early 2013. Now Variscite has delivered an update that adds a WiFi and Bluetooth module, and adds up to 64GB of eMMC flash. Otherwise, the module appears to be the same, but since it’s new to us, we’ll give it the full treatment here.

Put your testing hats on, Plasma 5 has a beta release. The second version of Plasma 5 is due out in under two weeks and now is your chance to test it for bugs which have crept in. It features a bunch of missing features which have been added back such as the much requested icon only task bar. The Visual Design Group have been hard at work over the last three months adding a Qt 4 Breeze theme to make all KDE applications fit into the desktop and many new icons as part of the Breeze icon theme. Check for packages for your distro and try it out.

If you think Oracle's only goal when it gained control of MySQL was to undermine it, Oracle has a message for you: Get over it. Speaking at the annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Monday, Oracle chief corporate architect Edward Screven said there was never any question of the database giant mothballing MySQL.

ITTIA has added bidirectional sync to ITTIA DB SQL for Android, enabling a back-end RDBMS to store device data and download sync’d updates for each device. In March of last year, ITTIA announced the Android version of its Linux-compatible ITTIA DB SQL lightweight embedded relational database. Now, ITTIA has added bidirectional synchronization for Android apps to the Android version, in order to “bridge the gap of collecting big data on-the-go” in an era of “unprecedented influx of sensitive data that is managed and collected on mobile devices,” says the company.