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CES 2021: AMD shows a preview of the third generation of its processors AMD Epyc

Today took place the presentation of the new processors AMD Ryzen 5000 Series for laptops, where we have been able to see high-performance models, such as the Ryzen 9 5980 HX, as well as low-power models such as the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 U , but at the last minute, AMD has decided to leave us with honey on our lips showing what the new generation of AMD Epyc processors will be capable of.

After running a simulation of a climatology research model, we have seen that two AMD Epyc Milan processors of 28 cores achieved a performance of 68% higher than two Intel Xeon Gold processors 6258 R of 12 cores , which we remember, arrive with a maximum turbo frequency of 4GHz, very high for a server processor.

For now we have not been able to see more data about it, but it is expected that the top of the range model will arrive with 64 cores, since no leaks have been seen of any model of 128 cores , and maybe 512 MB of L3 cache if we consider that the new Zen 3 architecture allows doubling the amount of L3 cache available for the processor, although this is not confirmed by AMD.

Be that as it may, they are very interesting processors about which information is expected in the future.

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Jordi Bercial

Avid enthusiast of technology and electronics. I messed around with computer components almost since I learned to ride. I started working at Geeknetic after winning a contest on their forum for writing hardware articles. Drift, mechanics and photography lover. Don’t be shy and leave a comment on my articles if you have any questions.

Fixed lsass crash bug in Windows 10 20H2

Microsoft provides a remedy for a problem that has existed since October: Some users have been using 10 since the upgrade to Windows H2 plagued by crashes, blue screens and reboots. With certain actions such as listing groups in the computer management, the mmc.exe generates a blue screen with the stop code 0xc 0000374. In all cases, the cause is the critical process LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service, C: WINDOWS system 32 lsass.exe). The machine must then be rebooted. This affected clients with Windows 10 Version 20 H2 as well as Windows Server Version 20 H2.

Microsoft had this problem in November 2020 admitted, whereby Windows 10 Version 20 H2 as well as the version 2004 are mentioned as affected. To protect Windows – 10 – users, Microsoft had an upgrade stop for function updates on Windows 10 20 H2 set.

Incompatibility of the module lsass.exe According to Microsoft, the cause of the crashes was an incompatibility of the lsass.exe module, which could not handle renamed build-in accounts such as Administrator or Guest. However, the author of this post has indications that the crashes are not exclusively related to renamed build-in accounts. The bug often affected systems that had been updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Microsoft announced that it would provide updated bundles and updated installation media in the next update cycles in order to prevent the problem with upgrades.

In January 2021 Microsoft gave on the status website for Windows 10 20 H2 now announced that the upgrade lock has been lifted. The warning that a system is not upgrading to Windows 10 20 H2 should only appear if this upgrade is initiated using outdated installation media.

As part of troubleshooting, the company has been providing since December 2020 updated packages for feature updates that are delivered through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager in managed environments. Since December 7th 2020, updated installation images for Visual Studio Subscriptions (VSS, formerly MSDN Subscriptions) and in the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) are available.

Even with systems that are supplied with the current function updates via Windows Update, the upgrade lock on Windows 10 20 H2 due to the Lsass.exe error has now been eliminated.

(emw )

Failures in learning platforms: technical defect, server and DDoS

“The cause of the failures was a technical defect in the assignment of the users of our video conference tool and affected all federal states. The problem could be up to about 14. 00 clock to be fixed. ” That’s what IServ writes about the failures. A technical glitch is the reason why many students and their teachers were unable to see each other in a video conference. Other areas of IServ were not affected.

The servers held up, whereby a distinction must be made here: The school servers themselves are at the schools or Led by school authorities. IServ provides the software and takes over maintenance. “Of course, these servers are often years old and were never designed for the current onslaught”, explains IServ managing director Jörg Ludwig. Many of these servers have already been upgraded in cooperation with the customers, but occasional overloads can still occur. According to the company, new customers who have been added in the past nine months mainly run in the cloud, “which enables higher-performance access from home”. The performance of all cloud instances was doubled in November.

Video conferences have only been available at IServ since the end of the Easter holidays 2020. The developed solution runs centrally in German data centers. In December there were 1.5 million participants per day. “The country solutions with double-digit million amounts did not follow suit until much later and, as far as we know, never achieved comparable usage figures. Of course, our solution cannot compete with international specialists such as Zoom – there the user pays with his data.” There shouldn’t be any problems today.

Minor disruptions and DDoS attacks It is also said that other services the difficulties occurred occasionally and have since been resolved. The Lower Saxony Education Cloud ran on 750 additional servers on Monday and was stable apart from a half-hour problem phase.

Run in North Rhine-Westphalia several platforms under the name Logineo. LogineoNRW-LMS is based on Moodle as a learning platform and has not had any failures. Other Moodle systems are said to have been partially unavailable. “With the high number of registered schools, problems cannot be completely ruled out in individual cases. The systems of the Logineo NRW product family are currently running stable and efficient,” according to Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from the Ministry of Education. And at the same time, that as a result of the higher usage compared to before the Christmas holidays, there were waiting times, as a spokesman for the Lower Rhine municipal data center, which runs several Moodle systems.

Quite Another reason is said to have caused the failure of the Brandenburg school cloud of the Hasso Plattner Institute: a DDoS attack, i.e. too many accesses at the same time. These are said to have come from abroad, said a spokesman for the RBB. In March there is said to have already been a DDoS attack on the Bavarian Mebis platform. There, students can view and download learning materials. Last week it was said that DDoS attacks were to blame for some failures in federal states that started teaching again earlier. However, there were immediately doubts as to whether there were attacks or simply too many legitimate access attempts.

(emw)

IBM releases critical security updates for many products

After a break over the holidays, IBM released the first security updates in 2021 last week . Weaknesses in ratings from “Low” to “High” affect numerous products across the company’s portfolio. In addition, a critical vulnerability lurks in several versions of IBM Aspera High-Speed Transfer (server and endpoint). Under certain conditions, it enables any code execution from a distance (Remote Code Execution) on vulnerable systems.

This announcement focuses on those vulnerabilities with a high to critical risk rating. An overview of all publications is provided by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Blog. Caution: A filtered search for January 2021 returns 77 entries back; however, the search results also include entries from the previous months that were only updated.

Critical: Aspera High- Speed transfer secured The critical vulnerability CVE – 2020 – 35728 applies to all server and endpoint versions of IBM Aspera High-Speed Transfer up to and including version 3.9.6.2 for Linux, Linux on IBM Z Systems, AIX, macOS and Windows. CVE – 2020 – 35728 is not in IBM’s software itself, but in the external Jackson API, more precisely: in the version 2.x of FasterXML / jackson-databind before version 2.9. 10. 8.

The vulnerability assessed with the CVSS score 9.8 was converted to IBM Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server and Endpoint 4.0 eliminated. Links to the available updates can be found in the security bulletin:

IBM Security Bulletin: jackson-databind vulnerability CVE – 2019 – 35728 “High” vulnerabilities at a glance Below we have the Security that has been published since the beginning of the year Bulletins with “High” rating listed alphabetically:

IBM API Connect V5 (CVE – 2020 – 4899) IBM App Connect Enterprise (CVE – 2020 – 15168 ) IBM DataPower Monitor (CVE – 2020 – 8172) IBM Netezza SQL Extensions Toolkit IBM Sterling B2B Integrator (CVE – 77 – 4728) IBM Sterling B2B Integrator (CVE – 2020 – 4762) IBM Sterling Secure External Authentication Server (CVE – 2020 – 27216) IBM Sterling Secure Proxy (CVE – 2019 – 27216) (ovw)

Will Intel use the manufacturing process of others in its plants? Never say never

Answering questions from US reporters, Intel CEO Bob Swan has not categorically closed the door to the use of competitors’ manufacturing processes within its facilities. “We don’t have to make all the innovations alone,” he added.

by Manolo De Agostini published 12 January 2021 , at 11: 31 in the Processors channel

Intel

The CEO of Intel Bob Swan, during a round table with US journalists, took stock of the company’s performance. The top executive talked about how digitalization is pushing the semiconductor market bringing back the role of PCs, strengthening the server sector and opening new outlets, such as artificial intelligence, 5G and the industrial automation sector.

“Fortunately, in some ways, but for others unfortunately, we are not the only ones who have noticed this huge opportunity in front of us. The competition is strong and never sleeps. That means we have to be on top at what we do, which we have every intention of being, closing last year and entering this year. We are excited about the competitive landscape – sometimes I wish it wasn’t that intense, but I think it makes us stronger in the long term “.

One of the problems that plagued Intel in recent years is undoubtedly the fine-tuning of new generation production processes, such as the 10 nanometers. After years of delay, Intel seems to have found the square and Swan has confirmed the continuous progress on the front of 10 nanometers , both in terms of technology and volumes, with positive implications also for profit margins.

Nevertheless, as stated during the ‘Architecture Day 2020, Intel has acknowledged that there are players – notably TSMC, but also Samsung – with better manufacturing technology right now , and for this reason it will use it: for example, future Xe-HPG gaming GPUs will be made externally.

The CEO does not exclude any option at all : during the round table he did not say “no” to a licensing agreement that allows to produce chips in their own plants using the production process of others . “If there are ways or opportunities to leverage other advances in the industry, it will be important for Intel to capitalize on industry innovations. We are coming to the conclusion that we don’t have to deliver all the innovations we want suns . Then we could outsource, switch to use third party intellectual property, open our own production and become a foundry. Is there a scenario where we could use another’s manufacturing process in our production? It is certainly possible. The industry is evolving and we need to leverage this innovation, inside our walls or elsewhere, and take advantage of it “.

Obviously we are talking about hypotheses, but the opening to this eventuality is symptomatic: several years ago Intel would never have considered such a path – certainly not unprecedented if we think of the 14 nm of Globalfoundries, a production technology obtained in l icence from Samsung. That said, it is not an option that appears concretely on the table, in fact during the interview Swan underlines how outsourcing can represent a problem in terms of production capacity (any reference to the current shortage of AMD and Nvidia GPUs is purely coincidental) and that Intel has experienced a less severe shortage than its competitors.

Finally, Swan wanted to sweep some rumors about his figure. Not the rumors of recent weeks on the search for a new CEO, but the fact that arriving at the top position from the previous role of CFO, he had a greater focus on profits with respect to the technology side . When asked about this, Swan said that the technical side is more important to Intel’s success. “As you know they are not decoupled: the rate of innovation, the number of products, production and investments in technological development. One drives the other”.

Intel Introduces Affordable Next-Generation Pentium Silver and Celeron Processors (Jasper Lake)

Intel’s new Atom-class Pentium Silver and Celeron processors will be seen in the market, including the new generation of Chromebooks.

In addition to the previously announced Rocket Lake desktop processors and the new Tiger Lake processors for laptops, Intel has also unveiled the new Jasper Lake processors in the most affordable category at CES 2021. Positive news was also heard from the server side.

Jasper Lake processors are based on Intel’s latest generation Atom-class Tremont cores. The same cores have been used in Lakefield hybrid processors in the past. In the market, the new products will be seen under the Pentium Silver and Celeron brands, including the new generation Chromebooks

The new processors are based on a single quad-core chip and do not support SMT technology. The four cores share a common 1.5 MB L2 cache and a 4 MB L3 cache. Full caches are enabled regardless of whether the processor has two or four cores active. The graphics driver for the processors is based on the Gen 11 architecture that preceded Xe. You can find the most important information about the processors in the table above.

On the server side, Intel ensured that mass production of its 3rd generation Xeon Scalable processors finally and finally started. Processors based on the Ice Lake-SP architecture were introduced as early as last year, and the company’s customers have had access to various sample batches in the past, but now production lines are pushing the processors up for sale at full speed. Ice Lake-SP processors are manufactured using Intel’s older enhanced 10 nanometer process instead of the latest 10 nm SuperFin process.

Source: Intel, AnandTech (1), (2)

Ice Lake-SP will go into mass production this quarter

At yesterday’s keynote at CES, Intel presented numerous innovations in the field of processors. Tiger Lake, Rocket Lake, Jasper Lake and Alder Lake – these are the code names of the processors used in the various categories.

But there is another announcement from Intel concerning the data center. The third-generation Xeon scaleable processors alias Ice Lake-SP, which were already expected in the fourth quarter and then apparently moved to 2021 to be mass-produced this quarter. This means that the first major customers should be supplied with the new processors in the coming weeks. General availability should be achieved in the second quarter.

“Today marks a significant milestone for Intel as we continue to accelerate the delivery of our 10 nm products and maintain an intense focus on delivering a predictable cadence of leadership products for our customers, “ said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the data center group at Intel. “Our 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable platform represents a strategic part of our data center strategy and one that we’ve created alongside some of our biggest customers to enable the data center of tomorrow.”

Intel is not giving the official starting shot, but is talking about a formal announcement that will follow in the coming months.

Use the Xeon processors based on Ice Lake-SP CPU cores based on the Sunny Cove architecture. It is not yet known how many cores Intel has packed into a package. Thanks to the new CPU cores, an IPC plus of about 14% expected. As an innovation of the platform, Ice Lake-SP will support PCI-Express 4.0 and thus eliminate a disadvantage of the current Xeon generation. In addition, Intel is increasing the number of memory channels from six to eight.

The EPYC processors based on the Milan design, i.e. the Zen 3 architecture, are expected to start in the coming weeks and months . So there is another exchange of blows in the server area.

To come back to the code names at the beginning of the message: Yesterday Intel presented new quad-core processors for mobile use (Tiger Lake -H 21) announced the more powerful models with up to eight cores for later in the year at (Tiger Lake-H 45), transferred the first Pentium and Celeron processors in the 01 -nm production (Jasper Lake) and gave further details about the next (Rocket Lake-S) and the next but one (Alder Lake) desktop platform.

heise offer: Keeping the code fit: workshop on the major migration to PHP 8

On February 9th, Stefan Priebsch, co-founder and consultant at thePHP.cc, is giving an online workshop with the title “The Great Migration – How to Make Your Code Ready for PHP 8”, which ties in with the online conference betterCode () PHP 8 from 26. November 2020. Participants have the opportunity to prepare their code for PHP 8 with an expert at their side.

Fit for PHP 8 Install PHP 8, restart the web server or the FastCGI container, done – if it were that easy. With the appearance of PHP 8, the consistent technical modernization of the language that began with the 7 series and the associated “tidying up” behind the scenes will be completed. So if you want to upgrade to the new version, you have to make changes to the existing code before installing PHP 8 in order to avoid major chaos.

In this workshop, participants get a comprehensive overview of the hooks and grommets that can be upgraded to PHP 7.x and 8. Stefan Priebsch provides concrete solutions that developers can use to prepare their code for the use of PHP 8 in advance. In several programming exercises, participants in the online workshop apply what they have learned directly in practice. A discussion about different migration scenarios and strategies as well as space for questions from the participants round off the day’s program.

More details on the website More information on the necessary prior knowledge and the technical requirements of the workshop can be found on the website of the event. Interested parties can use the conference website for 449 Euro (plus 19% VAT .) purchase a ticket.

betterCode () is a new brand from heise Developer and dpunkt.verlag, under whose roof online conferences are held.

(mdo)

Ubiquiti, maker of prosumer routers and access points, has had a data breach

Ubiquiti, the company I bought networking gear from because I wanted Wi-Fi that’s totally under my control, now tells me something may not have been under my control after all: my basic account information. According to an email it’s sending out to users today, a “third party cloud provider” was accessed by an unauthorized user, and that provider might possibly have some of our data.

While the company says it isn’t hasn’t found any evidence that our user data has been accessed, it also “cannot be certain that user data has not been exposed”. The potential data at risk will be familiar if you’ve received these kinds of emails before: names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, and (encrypted, hopefully unreadable) passwords. You’ll want to change your password now.

It doesn’t sound like that bad a breach as breaches go, but it’s annoying news to hear from a company that prides itself on giving users control. If I had wanted my data on someone else’s server, I might have picked a router that gave me some benefit for it, like plug-and-play setup. The database of customer info, it seems, is hard to get away from.

The full email text, which can also be viewed on the Ubiquiti forums, is below:

We recently became aware of unauthorized access to certain of our information technology systems hosted by a third party cloud provider. We have no indication that there has been unauthorized activity with respect to any user’s account.

We are not currently aware of evidence of access to any databases that host user data, but we cannot be certain that user data has not been exposed. This data may include your name, email address, and the one-way encrypted password to your account (in technical terms, the passwords are hashed and salted). The data may also include your address and phone number if you have provided that to us.

As a precaution, we encourage you to change your password. We recommend that you also change your password on any website where you use the same user ID or password. Finally, we recommend that you enable two-factor authentication on your Ubiquiti accounts if you have not already done so.

We apologize for, and deeply regret, any inconvenience this may cause you. We take the security of your information very seriously and appreciate your continued trust.

Thank you,

Ubiquiti Team

Intel Teases 10nm Alder Lake-S, Announces Ice Lake Server Production

(Image credit: Intel / YouTube)

Intel’s CES livestream included plenty of new chips to chew over, including new Rocket Lake and Tiger Lake models, but the company held out one teaser for the end – a quick demo of an Alder Lake-S system. During the keynote, Intel also announced that its 10nm Ice Lake processors, which have experienced a seemingly-unending string of delays, are finally in production.

Intel’s Alder Lake-S demo wasn’t much – the company simply showed the system running an air-cooled processor as it played a video. We can also see two DRAM sticks in the system, which according to the latest information on the chips, should be the first chips to support DDR5.

The system was clearly running the Windows operating system, which is an important step in the development process: Alder Lake-S is the first x86 hybrid architecture, which merges both larger and smaller cores, for the mainstream desktop. That presents both software and operating system challenges that require dedicated support for hybrid architectures.

Intel’s Alder Lake-S architecture features a design reminiscent of ARM’s big.LITTLE, with the larger Golden Cove cores used primarily for high-priority work, while the smaller Atom Gracemont cores execute less-intensive tasks and background workloads.

Aside from mentioning that the chips come with the 10nm SuperFin process, Intel didn’t share any new details about the design. Intel says these chips will come to market in the second half of the year.

(Image credit: Intel / YouTube)

Intel also announced that its 10nm third-gen Xeon Scalable Ice Lake server processors have finally entered production, and that the chips are being ramped for volume production. This announcement comes after a long string of delays; the chips were originally pegged for launch in 2020, signaling problems with Intel’s 10nm process.

Intel CEO Bob Swan commented on Ice Lake server products during a recent roundtable with Tom’s Hardware:

“The last thing I’d say about the execution as we exit the year – we launched the Ice Lake server product, qualified it at the end of the year, and started production of the Third-Gen Xeon Scalable processors. We are ramping [production] in the first quarter.”

Swan’s comments on Ice Lake’s launch probably refer to early shipments to members of the Super Seven (hyperscalers), like Amazon, Google, and Facebook, which traditionally occurs before official launch announcements. Intel recently detailed the Ice Lake architecture during the recent Hot Chips event and will formally announce the lineup in the coming months.

School starts as suddenly as snow: the learning platforms are overwhelmed

School starts again. You really couldn’t (at least many apparently) expect that. It’s almost like the snowfall that likes to throw the train off the track, so incredibly surprising that everything sinks into chaos. Thousands of students and teachers tried today and in the past few days to register on the various learning platforms, many failed.

Now that is not so much the problem Again and again the teachers are accused of a lack of digital competence, it is due to the learning platforms. Apparently they could not count on such a rush to start school. Or does it? Oh yes, there can be snowfall in Germany. In Germany there is a start date for schools and the number of pupils who are dependent on the platforms is also known. So why are there so many failures?

IServ does not want any more complaint emails After the learning disaster occurred in some federal states last week was, the next providers shone this Monday with total failure. IServ advertises on its website with 317 years of experience and 4502 satisfied schools as well as 2nd 317. 892 satisfied users. But none of them had access to video conferences today. In the mail from a school management to the college, which heise online is available, it says:

” There are currently general problems with the IServ video conference module and it is not possible to open or join conferences. We are working flat out to correct the error and will update this message as soon as we have more detailed information. Individual contact from you is not necessary and would only lead to delays in our support. ”

At Netzwelt, the peak value of the error messages in the morning was 3403. It is questionable whether this leaves only satisfied schools and users. After all, the mail should have been checked. Also 2021 this does not seem to be a matter of course for learning platforms.

Functionality as news value Also astonishing: “The Mebis learning platform is currently running without problems”. That was the headline of the news site Nordbayern.de. Despite the restriction in the headline, it is a joke that the functioning of an Internet portal of the Bavarian Ministry of Culture has news value – instead of being taken for granted.

Eva-Maria Weiß studied communication science with a focus on media psychology at the University of Vienna and has been working as a journalist since then.

Last week Mebis, Lernsax in Saxony and the study room in Berlin had problems made. The Saxon platform said that the reason was not a capacity problem, but a technical problem in the data center. In Hamburg, however, the server capacities had to be upgraded. Schools that use outdated, school-owned servers have been obliged to purchase new hardware at short notice. Not before the end of the Christmas holidays, but on the second day after school starts.

No influence at the Ministry Heise asked online why IServ also went down on its knees during the video conferences and is waiting for the answer. The Moodle-based system Logineo in North Rhine-Westphalia is also said to have had some failures. But the Ministry of Education said to the dpa: So far, there has been no feedback that major problems with Moodle had occurred in North Rhine-Westphalia. Many schools also use other systems over which the ministry has no influence.

“No influence” – on their own schools. The fact that every federal state has to choose and decide on teaching and learning aids when digitizing schools has already been criticized several times. The fact that a ministry now claims that it has no influence and thus shifts the blame for problems that are actually in-house is absurd. Somebody should urgently take a general influence on this chaos. It really doesn’t come as a surprise.

(emw)

heise + | iSH Shell: Develop on iOS for Linux

iSH Shell: Develop on iOS for Linux File interface for the shell Pocket web server on the iPhone Interview with the iSH developer Theodore Dubois Article in Mac & i 6 / 2020 read So far, it could be as Linux developers do little with an iPad. Code editors did exist, but the programs that were written could not be tried out. There was no compiler, no web server app or Node.js app for local experiments. Many tried to make do with a rented server: tap on the iPad and control the rented server with an SSH app. But already in the ICE this good idea failed due to interruptions in the internet connection.

That changes with the free iSH Shell app. To get started, you need an iOS device with at least iOS 11. No need to worry about in-app purchases. The application runs on iPad and iPhone; The emulation is not much fun on the phones because of the smaller screens.

There are not many frills. After starting the app you will immediately land on the command line; Linux doesn’t have to boot for minutes. Similar to Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or Wine, iSH does not start a virtual machine, but rather emulates system calls from Linux applications.

Access to all contents of heise + exclusive tests, advice & background: independent , critically founded c’t, iX, Technology Review, Mac & i, Make, c’t read photography directly in the browser register once – read on all devices – can be canceled monthly first month free, then monthly 9 , 95 € Weekly newsletter with personal reading recommendations from the editor-in-chief Start FREE month Start FREE month now heise + already subscribed?

Spring cleaning: Google's new registry API is supposed to create order

With the Registry API, Google provides the open source community with an experimental approach to organizing information via APIs. The company wants to support developers in avoiding inconsistencies and duplicates of existing APIs.

Order in chaos The Registry API is designed to enable teams to upload and share machine-readable descriptions of APIs that are in use and under development. These descriptions include API specifications in standard formats such as OpenAPI, the Google API Discovery Service Format and the Protocol Buffers Language.

According to the blog post, such a collection of API descriptions could be a good basis for further tools and services that are supposed to make APIs better and easier to use. In this way, for example, Linter code analysis tools can verify that APIs follow a standard pattern. Documentation generators provide documentation that is easy to read and in an accessible format. Code generators create API clients and server scaffolding. APIs can be searched for and found using the registry API and the online catalog it contains. In addition, the consolidation of all API information in one place should strengthen the consistency of an API portfolio.

A look under the hood Under the hood is a gRPC (Remote Procedure Call) service, which is formally described by Protocol Buffers and which closely follows the Google API design guidelines under aip.dev (API Improvement Proposals). The registry API supports gRPC-HTTP / JSON transcoding, which ensures that it can be automatically published as a JSON-REST API using a proxy. Proxies also enable gRPC Web, which means that gRPC calls can be made directly from browser-based applications. The project also includes an experimental GraphQL interface.

More information on the registry API for Google’s open source projects can be found in the company’s open source blog.

(mdo)

FOSDEM 2021: Matrix is used for communication in online infrastructure

The organizers of the developer conference for free software FOSDEM announced in September 2020 that the FOSDEM 21 will only take place online as a virtual event. A new supporter also helps with the ongoing preparations: Immediately after the announcement, the Matrix.org Foundation, under whose aegis the development of the instant messaging platform Matrix is located, has the FOSDEM organizers its own know-how as well as practical support in setting up the Online infrastructure offered.

The annual Free and Open Source Developers Meeting (FOSDEM) will take place on February 6th and 7th , one of the larger conferences on open source software and Linux in Europe. Reserved for the 8000 to 9000 participants are usually several buildings of the Free University of Brussels.

Under construction: Community server for the FOSDEM 21 Although Matrix.org has so far been mainly concerned with the development of the messenger, according to its own statements in the year 2020 inevitably has a lot of practical experience with the development of online Communities collected. As examples, Matrix.org gives the successful realization of the online conference “Hackers On Planet Earth” (HOPE) last August as well as the progress made in setting up the “Project Phoenix” of the German IT service provider Dataport, which has up to 500. 000 should connect jobs in authorities via matrix and the client element.

Since there is not much time left until FOSDEM 21, according to the interim report from Matrix.org, the technical preparations are also in full swing: The community servers at fosdem.org are hosted by Element as a matrix server and, together with their own elements client on the web and for supported devices, represent the backbone of the next FOSDEM. All participants can use it without creating an account , follow the talks even in read-only mode. Bridges to IRC and XMPP servers open up alternative paths to talks and should allow users to use their existing accounts.

Chat rooms: organization via matrix bot All talks should be recorded in advance this year in order to minimize the risk of technical problems. But there will be an attached Question Time as a live stream. A Jitsi instance and WebRTC are also used, as well as an individual chat room for questions and discussions. Own widgets are to integrate Jitsi and a program overview and the matrix chat.

This year there is also a chat room plus Jitsi for exhibitors on request, in order to show the virtual visitors more than presentations and recorded videos . Wherever possible, Matrix wants to automate the set-up of the expected hundreds of chat rooms with a currently developed Matrix bot and compare it with the official FOSDEM program 21. Matrix.org has listed some open points that could still use help and volunteer work at the end of the interim report on the Foundation’s blog.

(tiw )

Microsoft Edge rolls out cross-platform tab and history sync

Microsoft’s Edge browser is based on Chromium, an open-source web browsing platform from Google that’s also the basis for other browsers like Opera and Amazon Silk. The browser has proven to be quite a popular option for those who’d rather not use Chrome. The latest feature that enables cross-sync for open tabs and browsing history between PC and mobile versions of Microsoft Edge.

This feature was first spotted with the Android Beta version of the app, but only now is the feature officially rolling out to the stable release of the Edge browser. The rollout is currently taking place in the UK, but other regions will follow suit.

Microsoft Edge sync settings on Windows 10

Edge tab and history sync will be possible between macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android builds of the browser. The update is happening server-side, so you might not see it right away. Head to Settings > Profiles > Sync on the desktop browser and see if you can enable the ‘History’ and ‘Open Tabs’ to be synced.

Source