AMD Radeon CVP and GM Scott Herkelman said in a video interview with PCWorld that FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), the company’s response to Nvidia DLSS, is “progressing very well internally” and that he believes it could debut later this year.
Nvidia introduced DLSS in 2018 and released DLSS 2.0 in 2020, so in some ways, AMD’s response to the technology is coming later than some might have expected. But that can partly be attributed to AMD’s plans to make FSR a cross-platform tool.
DLSS is currently limited to Nvidia graphics cards. FSR is supposed to operate across AMD’s GPUs, including those used in the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, as well as graphics products made by Intel and Nvidia. That’s a much bigger undertaking.
“Our commitment to the gaming community is [FSR] needs to be open, it needs to work across all things, and our game developers need to adopt it and feel like it’s a good thing,” Herkelman said in the PCWorld interview, which you can watch here:
Herkelman also said that FSR is “probably one of the biggest software initiatives we have internally, because we know how important it is that if you want to turn on ray tracing, you don’t want to […] have your GPU get hit so hard.”
Unfortunately, it seems like foundational aspects of FSR still have to be figured out. Herkelman told PCWorld the tool wouldn’t have to be based on machine learning, and that it’s working with game developers to find the best way to improve performance.
In the meantime, Nvidia said Wednesday that nearly 40 titles currently support DLSS and that “there are many more implementations of these technologies waiting in the wings to be announced and released in the coming weeks and months.”
This could turn out to be a tortoise-and-the-hare situation. An open source, cross-platform solution like FSR could easily appeal to developers more than a proprietary technology like DLSS. The problem is FSR hasn’t even shown up to the race track.
The Raspberry Pi HQ Camera module has appeared in some of the best Raspberry Pi projects we’ve seen, like this stellar astrophotography project. But this maker brings the HQ module into a professional environment with this custom, 3D-printed cinema-style housing project. It’s complete with a custom interface that also provides useful photography features and settings.
In addition to the Raspberry Pi 4 and HQ Camera module, it’s designed to use an adjustable LCD touchscreen and has plenty of room for mounting accessories externally. There is even a dedicated battery slot should the user need to go mobile.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: eat-sleep-code)
Image 2 of 2
(Image credit: eat-sleep-code)
Eat-sleep-code was kind enough to make the project open source. Anyone interested in recreating this project can download the STL files from Thingiverse which includes print notes with optimal print settings and suggestions for each piece of the camera housing.
The custom camera software is available for anyone to use on GitHub. It offers built-in features such as timelapse and additional camera settings like exposure adjustment. For a sleek final touch, it’s optimized to work with touchscreen interfaces.
If you want to read more about the development of this professional HQ camera build, check out the original thread on Reddit.
LastPass, the popular password manager, announced changes last month to the free version of its software designed to make its Premium paid version much more attractive — and the free one much less so.
“LastPass offers access across two device types – computers (including all browsers running on desktops and laptops) or mobiledevices (including mobile phones, smart watches, and tablets),” the company wrote in a blog post. “Starting March 16th, 2021” — that’s today — “LastPass Free will only include access on unlimited devices of one type.”
What that means: if you’re a LastPass free user, you’ll have to choose whether you want to access your passwords on your computer — in browser or via desktop app — or on your mobile device. You won’t be able to use both, though your passwords will sync across devices regardless. That said, you’ll have the opportunity to switch your main device three times, starting today. (LastPass is also offering a discount on Premium subscriptions for a limited time, presumably to dampen the sting.)
If, however, you find all of this too onerous and you’d like to just switch password managers entirely, I have some good news for you: moving your passwords out of LastPass is pretty easy. I actually did it myself, using (naturally) The Verge’s guide. I chose Bitwarden because it syncs across mobile and desktop and it’s open source.
Also, if you’ve made it this far and you don’t have a password manager yet — what are you doing here? Get on that.
Twitter has devised a potential solution to its problematic image cropping issue: no more cropping. The company said on Wednesday it’s now testing a “what you see is what you get” image preview within the tweet compose box and experimenting with displaying full-frame images. That way, images will show up in the Twitter timeline looking just as they did when the user was composing the tweet.
“Now testing on Android and iOS: when you Tweet a single image, how the image appears in the Tweet composer is how it will look on the timeline –– bigger and better,” the company wrote in its announcement tweet on the new feature test. Twitter also says its testing new 4K image uploading on Android and iOS as part of a broader push “to improve how you can share and view media on Twitter.”
Now testing on Android and iOS: when you Tweet a single image, how the image appears in the Tweet composer is how it will look on the timeline –– bigger and better. pic.twitter.com/izI5S9VRdX
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 10, 2021
With the new image preview change, there should be less algorithmic surprises — like the ones several users brought attention to last fall that showed how the company’s automated cropping tool quite often favored white faces over Black ones. In many of those cases, irregularly sized images shared on Twitter were automatically cropped behind the scenes using an AI-powered algorithm, but in ways that raised some troubling questions about how the software prioritized skin color and other factors.
Twitter at the time said the neural network it uses for automated image cropping was tested for racial bias, and the company claims it found none. But it also admitted it needed to perform more analysis and refine its approach to avoid situations like this where even the appearance of bias was a possibility.
“It’s clear that we’ve got more analysis to do. We’ll open source our work so others can review and replicate,” wrote Twitter communications lead Liz Kelley in the aftermath of the controversy going viral. “Just because a system shows no statistical bias, doesn’t mean it won’t cause harm.” Kelley said Twitter would rely “less on auto-cropping so more often the photo you see in the Tweet composer is what it will look like in the Tweet.”
we are going to rely less on auto-cropping so more often the photo you see in the Tweet composer is what it will look like in the Tweet =
— liz kelley (@lizkelley) October 1, 2020
Twitter’s Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer, later wrote a blog post delving into the issue at length, saying at the time that Twitter would be conducting “additional analysis to add further rigor to our testing” and that it was “committed to sharing our findings and… exploring ways to open-source our analysis so that others can help keep us accountable.”
Now, it looks like Twitter’s proposed solution is here, at least in a test phase. While tweets in standard aspect ratios will be identical when previewed in the compose window and displayed in the timeline, Twitter’s design chief Dantley Davis says extra-wide or tall images will be center cropped for those included in the test. Twitter has not shared a concrete timeline for when this change may be pushed live for all users.
With this test, we hope to learn if this new approach is better and what changes we need to make to provide a “what you see is what you get” experience for Tweets with images.
Wave Computing and its subsidiary MIPS Technologies, the developer of the MIPS processor architecture, recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, renamed itself to MIPS and changed the business model. As reported by Electronic Engineering Journal the new company will focus on development of RISC-V CPU cores and will abandon further development of its own MIPS architecture.
“Going forward, the restructured business will be known as MIPS, reflecting the company’s strategic focus on the groundbreaking RISC-based processor architectures which were originally developed by MIPS,” a statement by the company reads. “MIPS is developing a new industry-leading standards-based 8th generation architecture, which will be based on the open source RISC-V processor standard.”
MIPS does not get much publicity these days mostly because it is no longer used for game consoles or supercomputers. Yet, the architecture is still among the most popular in the industry. It is widely used for various microcontrollers, consumer electronics SoCs, communication equipment, and a variety of low-power devices. Hundreds of millions of such products are sold every year and for now MIPS cores are good enough for their applications.
It is hard for MIPS to compete against Arm Holdings which has a wider choice of cores and which who’s architecture powers more applications than any other architecture nowadays. It is close to impossible for MIPS to catch up with Arm when it comes to performance and industry support, so the new MIPS decided to change its business model.
Previously MIPS Technologies and later Wave Computing licensed their architecture and cores to processor developers, which made them compete directly against Arm Holdings that has the same business model. Since the MIPS architecture belongs to one company it is solely responsible for the whole ecosystem (which includes hardware and software) and supporting it alone is hard.
From now on, MIPS will develop RISC-V-based architecture and appropriate CPU cores that it will license to others. In general, the licensing nature of MIPS’s business will not change, but since RISC-V is an open standards architecture supported by dozens of companies, MIPS will not have to support the ecosystem alone, which will make its business more sustainable.
MIPS has a lot of expertise in CPU development as well as a broad portfolio of CPU patents and IP. All of these assets will inevitably be used for the upcoming RISC-V-based architecture as well as CPU cores, so it is logical to expect MIPS to be one of the leading RISC-V developers. Whether or not that architecture will be competitive against Arm’s offerings is something that remains to be seen.
Yesterday, NASA landed a rover named Perseverance on Mars. I, along with 2 million other people, watched the landing happen live on YouTube. It was beautiful. I mean, here’s this little robot dude that’s traveled millions and millions of miles through the barrenness of space, and now it’s just hanging out on Mars taking pics and scientific samples! (Perseverancejoins older sibling Curiosityon the surface of the Red Planet. Hope they have a nice time together!)
In any case, Perseverancedidn’t traverse the vastness of space alone. Ingenuity, a tiny helicopter, tagged along for the ride. As it’s primarily a technology demonstration, Ingenuity’s destiny is to attempt the first powered flight on any planet other than Earth and to hopefully be the blueprint for future Mars missions. It’s also running on Linux.
Here’s Ingenuity!Image: Wikipedia
“This the first time we’ll be flying Linux on Mars,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) senior engineer Tim Canham said in an interview with the the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). “The software framework that we’re using is one that we developed at JPL for cubesats and instruments, and we open-sourced it a few years ago.” It’s called F’ (pronounced “F prime”). The fact that it’s open source means if you want to fly with Linux here on Earth using the same software JPL does, you absolutely can.
“It’s kind of an open-source victory, because we’re flying an open-source operating system and an open-source flight software framework and flying commercial parts that you can buy off the shelf if you wanted to do this yourself someday,” Canham said.
Great stuff. It’s cool that Perseverance, Curiosity, and Ingenuity have all found a new home on the surface Mars. Though I still think it’s cooler that space is pretty obviously inhospitable to human life, and yet we still put people up there anyway.
System76 currently offers pre-built desktops, laptops, and servers meant to complement its Pop!_OS open source operating system. The company said in March 2020 that it would expand its lineup with a keyboard. On Wednesday, it offered more details about that peripheral in a public Git repository spotted by Phoronix.
We already knew that System76 wanted its first keyboard to be highly configurable and tightly integrated with Pop!_OS features like Auto-Tiling. Last year, the company also said it wanted to reimagine the keyboard’s basic layout to make common keys easier to reach, reducing wasted space by shrinking the spacebar, etc.
Now we’ve gotten a glimpse at what System76 has been working on for the last 11 months. The public Git repository showed that the Launch Configurable Keyboard is expected to feature an open source PCB, chassis, and firmware; swappable keycaps and switches; and an integrated dock with two USB-C and USB-A connectors.
System76 said the chassis would be constructed from milled aluminum, and Phoronix reported that it would be manufactured in Denver, Colorado. The company also said that “each pocket, port, and hole is designed and precisely machined so that swapping switches and plugging in cables is easy and secure for the user.”
That configurability is core to the Launch Configurable Keyboard’s design. (Which, given the name, shouldn’t come as a surprise.) System76 said the keyboard would ship with additional keycaps for greater customization and support for a utility called the System76 Keyboard Configurator meant to offer easy button remapping.
The ability to remap specific keys might prove critical because System76 made sweeping changes to the standard keyboard layout. Just look at this diagram:
(Image credit: System76)
The company said it plans to offer extra keys, a keycap puller, and a switch puller with each unit. The PCB will purportedly accept “any RGB switch with an MX-compatible footprint,” such as Cherry MX RGB or Kailh BOX switches, which should make it easy for mechanical switch enthusiast to use their preferred equipment.
Like the many of the best gaming keyboards, System76 said the Launch Configurable Keyboard would also offer independent RGB lighting for each key, n-key rollover support, plus a detachable lift bar that “can be magnetically secured to add 15 degrees of angle to your keyboard for ergonomics.”
We’re still missing two critical pieces of information: the Launch Configurable Keyboard’s launch date and price point. System76 originally said it expected to release the keyboard in the summer of 2020, but now that we’re a few months into 2021, it’s still unclear when the product will be available to purchase.
One of the first Android apps — ZXing Team’s Barcode Scanner, an app that predates the first official release of Android itself — is currently getting review-bombed on the Google Play Store. Hundreds of users are leaving 1-star reviews claiming a recent update spews unwanted ads, while nearly 200 more have come to the app’s defense with 5-star reviews of their own.
It’s not quite clear what’s going on here, but the prevailing theory is that the 100 million-download strong app is getting mistaken for another one with the same exact name — one that might have been a clone of ZXing’s app and one that did add malware in a recent update, according to digital security firm MalwareBytes.
MalwareBytes seems to be aware of the confusion; it updated its post yesterday to be extra clear that the bad barcode scanner app was this one, which came from a company called Lavabird. Google removed that app from the Play Store, so it wouldn’t be surprising if angry users searched for it and found the wrong one.
The sudden attention surprised the app’s co-creator, Sean Owen, who tells The Verge that he’s not worried about his reputation — simply because of how ridiculous he thinks the claims are.
“[T]his is such an old well-known app that I think anyone informed would guess it can’t be this app: it’s open source, for one. It hasn’t been updated in years. And there’s just no motive, to make an app for 13 years just to stick malware in at the end is an implausibly long game,” he says. The Google Play Store shows the app was last updated in February 2019.
But he also isn’t ruling out the possibility that his code is being manipulated somehow, perhaps by hijacking the intents system that Android uses to let one app hand off tasks to another. “Many people claim it’s ‘definitely’ this app in a way I hadn’t seen before — and I’ve read thousands of comments over the years — so, who knows?”
Owen says he and his co-author Daniel Switken now regret their decision to make the app open source back in the day because of all the times it’s been cloned by companies trying to make a quick buck by adding ads or skins. “For a time we pursued some of the larger ones for OSS license / trademark problems, but, that was fewer than 10 out of the 100s I saw even many years ago,” Owen says.
This isn’t the first time his app has been mistaken for a bad clone, he says. “At some point a research paper claimed this app was phoning personal info to a third party site, and that caused another wave [of bad reviews], but, naturally the authors found they’d mixed up two similar apps.”
I redownloaded the OG Barcode Scanner app today for the first time in many years. When I launched it, the app warned me that it “was built for an older version of Android and may not work properly,” and I found it only works in landscape orientation. But I saw no ads, it sure scanned barcodes fast, and I haven’t seen any pop-ups or browser hijacking yet.
Testing out the original Barcode Scanner app on a modern Android phone. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Right now, ZXing Team’s Barcode Scanner app sits at a solid 4.0 stars with nearly 640,000 reviews. Google did not reply to requests for comment about how it would handle the negative reviews.
HarmonyOS is Huawei’s alternative operating system that was created after the company was banned in the US and lost its Android license. The reality is the operating system is less of a new alternative and more of a slapdash fork of Android 10, according to a new report from Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica.
HarmonyOS was initially pitched as a wholly distinct OS from Android and iOS, something that would be just as at home on smart home appliances (like the company’s Honor Vision TV) as it would on smartphones. The announcement was a hopeful promise that losing access to US businesses wouldn’t stop Huawei from innovating, but Amadeo’s experience with the beta highlights some disappointing discoveries:
Getting developer access requires a two-day background check that includes sending copies of your passport, personal ID, and credit card to Huawei
You don’t actually run the beta OS in its emulator; it’s streamed to you, Google Stadia-style, from (presumably) a phone running the beta in China
Most importantly, HarmonyOS seems to be a fork of Android 10 with the word “Android” find-and-replaced with “Harmony”
HarmonyOS was likely always going to be most popular in China, but the fact that the new OS appears to be a continuation of Huawei’s EMUI skin with potentially slower access to Android updates through the Open Source Android Project is a major strike against it being used anywhere else. It might be good enough to not offend the US government and satisfy Chinese authorities, but quick text edits and an invasive application process do not an appetizing operating system make.
Read Amadeo’s whole deep dive of detective work dissecting the beta, along with some jabs at Huawei’s fluff-filled developer documentation for a hypothetical “super virtual device,” over at Ars Technica.
The Open Book Project from Joey Castillo is an amazing piece of work, a DIY open source e-book designed so that anyone can solder up their own reader. The project has been with us for some time, and the past version has been based upon a SAMD51 processor commonly found in newer Arduino boards and Adafruit Feather boards. But in a recent tweet, Castillo has unveiled an early render of a version based around the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico.
(Image credit: Joey Castillo)
The first thing to hit you is just how detailed the PCB is for the Open Book Abridged Edition. The silkscreen printing of the PCB tells us about each component, the GPIO pins used on the Raspberry Pi Pico, and more about the project itself.
Featuring a 4.2-inch e-paper display, micro SD card storage, and a built-in battery charging solution, the Open Book Abridged Edition has space at the top of the board for the Raspberry Pi Pico. This space is designed for use with the Pico’s castellated edges, enabling it to be soldered directly to the PCB with no need for header pins.
Is this just an e-book reader? Chiefly yes, but the Open Book can be used with external components that use the I2C and STEMMA connector, so it can also be used as a display for sensor-based projects.
i’ve designed so many versions of the open book now, one could call it an obsession. I’m chasing something — a buildable, grokkable, accessible, useful gadget — yet the more I learn, the more I can see where each attempt has fallen short. so. let’s see how this one falls short 🙃 pic.twitter.com/GjUq6SuemBFebruary 1, 2021
There are no details on price or availability for the Raspberry Pi Pico version, but previous versions of the board retail for $15 on Tindie, of course, we then need to source our own components, which Castillo lists in the Bill of Materials (BOM) on the project’s GitHub page.
The days of open-source GPUs may soon be upon us. The RISC-V architecture enables small companies to develop purpose-built processors and microcontrollers without paying a royalty. There are numerous free and commercial IP building blocks for RISC-V-based system-on-chips (SoCs), but the portfolio lacks a graphics option. This will change in a few years as a group of enthusiasts has started developing an open-source GPU based on the RISC-V architecture.
At this point, there are no plans to compete against AMD, Arm, Imagination, and Nvidia in the foreseeable future. Instead, the group plans to develop a scalable fused CPU-GPU ISA that could scale from simplistic microcontrollers all the way to advanced GPUs supporting ray tracing, machine learning, and computer vision applications with custom hardware extensions.
On a high level, RV64X-designed GPUs use a basic RV32I or RV64I core that supports new instructions built on the base vector instruction set. Initially, it will use an RV32I core, but eventually, an RV64I core will replace it as the goal is to create an area-efficient design with custom programmability and extensibility that could be used for CPUs, GPUs, and VPUs, writes Jon Peddie for EE Times.
(Image credit: RV64X)
To properly process graphics, the basic RISC-V core will support new graphics and machine learning specific — RV32X — data types, including scalars (8, 16, 24, and 32 bit fixed and floats, vectors (RV32-V), and matrices (2×2, 3×3, and 4×4); vector/math instructions; pixel/texture instructions; frame buffer instructions; a special register set (featuring configurable 136-bit vector registers); and some graphics-specific instructions. Initially, the graphics core will support the Vulkan API, but the group strives to make it DirectX (shader model 5) and OpenGL/ES-compliant.
Image 1 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 2 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 3 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 4 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 5 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 6 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 7 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 8 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 9 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 10 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 11 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 12 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 13 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 14 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 15 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 16 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 17 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 18 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 19 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 20 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 21 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
Image 22 of 22
RV64X (Image credit: RV64X)
The RV64X group says that its graphics processor will implement a standard graphics pipeline in microcode, but it will also be able to add custom rasterizers (splines, SubDiv surfaces, patches) and custom pipeline stages to support features not supported by commercially-available GPU designs.
The group proposes an RV32X reference implementation that features a hardware texture unit (i.e., the Larrabee lesson has been learned), a special function unit, a 32KB L1 cache, an 8K uCode SRAM cache, and four 32-bit DSPs/ALUs that can process FP32 and INT32 data, reports HardwareLuxx. The reference design will most likely be implemented using an FPGA.
(Image credit: RV64X)
The RV64X project is at its early stages of development and it will take at least a couple of years before the specification will be finalized and any hardware implementation emerges, believes Jon Peddie, the president of Jon Peddie Research. In fact, even the specification is subject to change based on stakeholder and community input, so it is way too early to discuss performance or any other matters.
The group, which calls itself RV64X as its plan is to develop a 64-bit universal ISA, is led by Atif Zafar from Pixilica, Grant Jennings from GOWIN Semiconductor, and Ted Marena from CHIPS Alliance and Western Digital.
Initially, an RV64X-designed graphics controller will be used for very simple microcontrollers that require extremely small units due to cost concerns. But as the design evolves, its descendants could address more demanding applications years and generations from the initial implementation.
Google is ending development on the virtual reality painting app Tilt Brush — one of the most well-known VR applications — and making it open source. Tilt Brush was acquired by Google in 2015 after launching for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, and it was soon folded into the company’s larger VR plans, like its Google Cardboard and Daydream headsets.
Tilt Brush’s main feature is three-dimensional painting in VR, but the app received interesting updates over its tenure at Google, including multiplayer support and an open-source toolkit that offered the ability to export Tilt Brush drawings for use in animation. With this latest announcement, that development is coming to an end, and future support of Tilt Brush is in the hands of the community that still uses it.
Tilt Brush’s code can be accessed on GitHub now, but Google says some features had to be removed from the open-source release because of licensing restrictions. Should you want to try your hand at tinkering with open-source Tilt Brush, the company is providing detailed instructions on how to rebuild those missing features in the app. Additionally, Tilt Brush will still be available to download on all of the major VR app stores.
Tilt Brush is just the latest in a series of discontinued Google VR projects. Daydream VR headsets were discontinued around the launch of the Pixel 4, Google Cardboard received a similar open-source send-off in 2019, the Jump camera and video service were 86’ed that same year, and the VR field trip software Expeditions rode off into the sunset in 2020. Its surviving projects include VR versions of YouTube and Google Earth, as well as game development studio Owlchemy Labs.
Google and Alphabet are no strangers to killing off former darlings and other people’s current ones. (Look no further than Loon for an odd and exciting project that was recently ended.) But shifting things to open source seems like a meaningful compromise for the people who still use these products every day. Without Google resources, whatever’s next for Tilt Brush will still be a ways off, but it’s nice that the graveyard was spared a new headstone.
One service with 15 messaging applications. It is not a dream but the new platform of the former CEO of Pebble. It’s called Feeber and gathers all messaging services (even iMessage) in one place. The price? 10 $ per month.
by Bruno Mucciarelli published 22 January 2021 , at 10: 41 in the web channel Whatsapp Telegram Facebook Slack Skype Instagram
Eric Migicovsky, is the former CEO and founder of Pebble, the company born a few decades ago and which gave birth to successful smartwatches with e-Paper display. The developer announced on Twitter the launch of Beeper or its new “ jewel ”: a universal messaging app that allows you to merge up to 15 different services , including iMessage, thanks to the open source protocol Matrix and not only. A solution that many are looking for to simplify the use of messages and that Beeper seems to do well even if paying well 10 $ per month.
Beeper: how the system works ” unifier ”?
Beeper meanwhile it is not a real news if not its name. In this case, in fact, before today, the platform was called NovaChat . From today, however, it is available as a Beeper and can be downloaded on request for both Windows and for macOS, Linux, iOS and Android . As mentioned, however, at least at the moment, one needs to fill out a form to receive an invitation, as it is still an almost Beta phase of the system.
But Beeper’s potential looks interesting. From the official website it is possible to observe how the application is capable of supporting up to 15 messaging systems such as: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Android Messages ( SMS), Telegram, Twitter, Slack, Hangouts, Instagram, Skype, IRC, Matrix, Discord, Signal and Beeper network. Yes, that iMessage is also among the services that can be replicated on Beeper, and this is perhaps the most striking novelty of the new service because so far no one had ever made such a thing possible since iMessage is a proprietary service of Apple but above all because it works only and exclusively on the ecosystem Apple.
How does it work? There is a little trick devised by the former CEO of Pebble. Migicovsky in fact allows iMessage to work also on Windows, Linux and Android if the user has a Mac that is always connected to the Internet so that it can function as a bridge. Alternatively, the software house already has recycled “jailbroken” iPhones ready , on which the Beeper app is installed, which it will send to users and which will allow access to the service. In all this Beeper costs 10 dollars per month although it is not clear if an iPhone is also included in the price.
Finally, you should know that all the various bridges needed to unify the various messaging services through the Matrix network are distributed for free on GitHub. This way the developers can host the backend on their servers. But be careful because the Beeper app is not open source, but it is possible to use Element, the Matrix open source client.
Follow us on our Instagram channel, lots of news coming !
The company Kong has released version 2.3 of the microservices gateway of the same name. The current release changes the default settings for running Lua scripts in favor of security. It also brings some additions to the plug-ins for logging and authentication, among other things.
With a view to global use, Route and service names are now specified in UTF-8. In addition to Russian or Japanese characters, emojis may also be part of the service name.
Open instead of secure The secure-by-default principle now applies to the settings: Kong Gateway is set restrictively by default, and if you need more flexible settings, you must activate them explicitly. This is especially true when running Lua code. The scripting language could previously be used for serverless functions as required and they thus potentially had access to the Kong process itself.
There was an explicit recommendation to secure the administration port and, if in doubt, corresponding plug-ins to deactivate in the configuration. Now, however, the software is turning the tables and by default only executes Lua programs in a sandbox. Administrators must explicitly allow extended use.
The sandbox has its own rules Specifically, serverless Functions that Lua code in the sandbox only has access to the Kong PDK (Plugin Development Kit), the OpenResty-ngx APIs and the Lua standard libraries by default. There are three new configuration parameters for sandboxing: untrusted_lua , untrusted_lua_sandbox_requires and untrusted_lua_sandbox_environment .
In the Standard setting sandbox allows the parameter untrusted_lua running Lua code in the sandbox. Via off the loading of Lua code is generally prohibited, while on allows execution without sandbox. The latter setting corresponds to the previous specifications.
untrusted_lua_sandbox_requires is a global setting , which provides additional modules for the sandbox, and with untrusted_lua_sandbox_environment you can define additional Lua variables for the sandbox.
Extended plug-ins There are a few notable additions to the plug-ins from Kong Gateway. The fact that the HTTP log plug-in allows headers to be added to the HTTP request is intended to improve the interaction with observability tools such as Splunk and the tools of the Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK). The key authentication plug-in brings the two new Boolean configuration parameters key_in_header key_in_query , which are set to true by default.
Finally, the parameter require_content_length can be used to specify that the request size limiting Before reading the request body, the plug-in ensures that the header contains a valid content length .
Big gorilla for small services Kong connects an open source API gateway with a load balancer. The gateway has Italian roots and was originally 2009 in Milan. Until the renaming 2017 the company behind it was called Mashape, and the Kong software has been 2015 an open source project.
There is also an enterprise product that offers additional functions for administration, security and high availability. In addition, the enterprise version with Kong Studio contains an adapted version of Insomnia for creating, testing and publishing REST- and GraphQL-based interfaces.
Further innovations in Kong Gateway 2.3 can be found on the Kong blog remove. As with the previous versions 2.1 and 2.2, Kong has released a beta version of Kong Enterprise 2.3 parallel to the open source version.
Amazon announced a fork from Elasticsearch and Kibana after the open source end of the software. Developer and provider Elastic blamed AWS and in particular its Elasticsearch distribution for the license change. It should explicitly not be a fork when it is announced 2019 – and it is now officially a.
So far, Elasticsearch has also appeared under the Apache 2 license, which will be replaced by the Server Side Public License (SSPL) in the future. However, according to the assessment of organizations such as the OSI, the latter is not an open source license. AWS now also wants to publish its distribution under the ALv2 and involve the community in the further development.
The code base should be the last free Version 7. 10 of Elasticsearch, AWS wants to make its new distribution available on GitHub in the coming weeks. Just one day before Amazon’s announcement, Logz.io had also announced a fork of the software; Whether and how both are related is unclear – both insist on the involvement of unnamed partners.
Motivation unclear, court should clarify Elastics CEO Shay Banon blamed Amazon for the license change. AWS now rejects the allegations. Rather, Elastic wants to prevent other companies in this way from also offering services based on free software – with a stronger growth of their own company as the goal. Shay Banon commented on Amazon’s announcement that they had unfortunately expected the fork. However, Elastic is relieved because they can now concentrate on their products and not on the dispute.
Meanwhile, Elastic continues to take action against Amazon in court. In his allegations against the group, Shay Banon also cited a possible trademark infringement by AWS, the use of the name Elasticsearch would confuse users. Amazon does not comment on the current lawsuit in its announcement of the fork.
(fo)
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
