The Zenroom project, a brand-new crypto-language virtual machine, has reached version 0.5.0. Zenroom's goal is "improving people's awareness of how their data is processed by algorithms, as well facilitate the work of developers to create and publish algorithms that can be used both client and server side." In addition, it "has no external dependencies, is smaller than 1MB, runs in less than 64KiB memory and is ready for experimental use on many target platforms: desktop, embedded, mobile, cloud and browsers." The program is free software and is licensed under the GNU LGPL v3. Its main use case is "distributed computing of untrusted code where advanced cryptographic functions are required".
Feral Interactive released GameMode, an open-source tool that helps Linux users get the best performance out of their games. According to the press release, "GameMode instructs your CPU to automatically run in Performance Mode when playing games." Rise of the Tomb Raider, which was released in April 2018, will be the first release to integrate this tool. GameMode is available now via GitHub.
Linux kernel developer, free software activist and Google engineer Matthew Garrett discovered that Symantec is using a Linux distro based on the QCA Software Development Kit (QSDK) project: "This is a GPLv2-licensed, open-source platform built around the Linux-based OpenWrt Wi-Fi router operating system" (if true, this means Symantic needs to share the Norton Core Router's code). So, Garrett tweeted "Hi @NortonOnline the Norton Core is clearly running Linux and the license requires you to distribute the kernel source code so where can I get it?" (Source: ZDNet.)
Mozilla announced Firefox Reality, "Bringing the Immersive Web to Mixed Reality Headsets". Firefox Reality is the only open-source browser for mixed reality and the first cross-platform browser for mixed reality. See The Mozilla Blog for more details.
The Linux Foundation announced the launch of the LF Deep Learning Foundation, "an umbrella organization focused on driving open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning", with a goal of making those technologies available to data scientists and developers. In addition, the Linux Foundation also debuted the Acumos AI project, an "open source framework that makes it easy to build, share, and deploy AI apps".
The EFF has questions and advice for Google regarding the company's work on "Project Maven", which is "a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) initiative to deploy machine learning for military purposes". Read the "Google Should Not Help the U.S. Military Build Unaccountable AI Systems" post by Peter Eckersley and Cindy Cohn for more information.
Richard Stallman writes "A radical proposal to keep personal data safe" in The Guardian: "The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place."
The Qubes security-oriented OS has released version 4.0. Major changes in this version include "fully virtualized VMs for enhanced security", "a powerful new VM volume manager that makes it easy to keep VMs on external drives", "more secure backups with scrypt for stronger key derivation and enforced encryption" and "rewritten command-line tools with new options". See the release notes for more information, and download Qubes here.
Purism announces that its Librem laptop orders are now shipping within a weekâin other words, on average, the company now can fulfill orders within five business days. See the Purism blog for more information on this milestone.
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