Microsoft opens up Rust-inspired Project Verona programming language on GitHub

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January 17, 2020

Microsoft recently created a stir after revealing it was taking some ideas from the popular Rust programming language to create a new language for ‘safe infrastructure programming’ under the banner Project Verona. Matthew Parkinson, a Microsoft researcher from the Cambridge Computer Lab in the UK, detailed Project Verona for the first time in a talk late last year and promised that Microsoft would open-source the project soon.

Microsoft Research has now followed through and open-sourced Project Verona on GitHub, offering a few more details about the project and its ambitions for building safer systems through better memory management, compartmentalization, and “pervasive sandboxing”. Project Verona is also being aided by academics at Imperial College London.

[Source: ZDNet]

Google is Reportedly Working to Bring Steam Support to Chromebooks

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 17, 2020

It would appear that Google is working to bring official Steam support to its Linux-based Chrome OS operating system for supported Chromebook devices.

According to a report from the Android Police website, Kan Liu, director of product management for Google’s
Chrome OS, revealed the fact that Steam support could be enabled on Chrome OS in the near future by taking advantage of the implementation of support for Linux apps that landed in Chrome OS last year.

[Source: Softpedia]

Finance goes agile as open source checks the security box

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 16, 2020

It wasn’t long ago that mixing financial data and open-source software seemed like the recipe for a security disaster. But yesterday’s problems bring today’s solutions. New DevSecOps tools, such as those offered by DevOps platform GitLab, are embedding security in the workflow. Meaning that even establishment giants such as Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. are embracing new, agile methodology and joining the open-source community.

“At Northwestern Mutual, we’ve finally gotten past that curve,” said Sean Corkum (pictured, right), senior engineer at Northwestern Mutual. “Now we’re trying to make it even easier for our internal developers to participate in open source … and contribute more to the community.”

[Source: SiliconAngle]

Facebook Releases Open Source Speech Recognition Platform

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 16, 2020

Facebook has announced that it will be making its wav2letter@anywhere online speech recognition framework more readily available as an open source platform. The framework was developed by Facebook AI Research (FAIR), which claims that it has created the fastest open source automatic speech recognition (ASR) platform currently on the market.

“The system has almost three times the throughput of a well-tuned hybrid ASR baseline while also having lower latency and a better word error rate,” wrote a group of eight FAIR researchers in a recent paper.

[Source: Mobile ID World]

Top NLP Open Source Projects For Developers In 2020

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 16, 2020

The year 2019 was an excellent year for the developers, as almost all industry leaders open-sourced their machine learning tool kits. Open-sourcing not only help the users but also helps the tool itself as developers can contribute and add customisations that serve few complex applications. The benefit is mutual and also helps in accelerating the democratisation of ML. Take a look at few open-source NLP projects that would be exciting both for the developers as well as the users…

[Source: Analytics India Magazine]

There Is Finally Open-Source Accelerated NVIDIA Turing Graphics Support

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 16, 2020

Here is another big feature coming for Linux 5.6: the Nouveau driver will have initial accelerated support for NVIDIA “Turing” GPUs! This is coming at long-last with NVIDIA set to release publicly the Turing firmware images needed for hardware initialization.

As of writing, NVIDIA hasn’t yet volleyed the signed firmware needed for Turing hardware initialization, but it appears advanced copies went out to Nouveau DRM maintainer Ben Skeggs of Red Hat. With the firmware bits and some DRM driver hacking, Skeggs now has the Turing GPUs lighting up with the open-source driver.

[Source: Phoronix]

PinePhone Braveheart Linux smartphone begins shipping January 17th

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 16, 2020

The PinePhone is an inexpensive smartphone designed to run Linux-based operating systems. Developed by the folks at Pine64, the $150 smartphone was first announced about a year ago — and this week the first units will ship.

Pine64 says it will begin shipping the PinePhone Braveheart Edition on January 17th — although it could take a few weeks for customers to receive their phones. This Braveheart edition phone is aimed at early adopters willing to tinker and test the hardware and try out various software environments.

[Source: Liliputing]

A New Desktop Theme Is Coming For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 15, 2020

With Ubuntu 20.04 to see installation on many desktops (and servers) given its Long-Term Support status, Canonical and the Yaru community team have begun working on a successor to the Yaru theme for this Linux distribution release due out in April.

Yaru has been the default Ubuntu theme since 18.10 but now a year and a half later is time for some refinements. The Yaru design team was recently at Canonical’s London offices to work on the new theme.

[Source: Phoronix]

Linux Developers Start Poaching Microsoft Users After Windows 7 End of Support

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 15, 2020

Windows 7 has officially reached the end of support, so users running it have three options to choose from: stick with Windows 7 and face the obvious security risks, upgrade to newer Windows, or migrate to a non-Windows platform. As far as the last option goes, Linux distro makers know how big this opportunity really is, so they started poaching Windows 7 users in an attempt to increase their install base.

After Canonical tried to lure Windows 7 users to install Ubuntu, a number of Korean companies developing their own custom Linux distros have launched similar campaigns specifically supposed to convince Microsoft customers to make the switch.

[Source: Softpedia]

Google open-sources tool to boost 2FA adoption in npm

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 15, 2020

Google has open-sourced an npm publishing tool for heightened security across organizations’ client libraries. The tool, Wombat Dressing Room, aims to reduce the security risks associated with the automation of npm publishing.

“On my team, a small number of developers manage over 75 Node.js libraries,” Benjamin Coe, developer engineer at Google, said in an announcement on Friday (January 10).

[Source: The Daily Swig]