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Slashdot

• 'Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits', Argues Rolling Stone
  A new article in Rolling Stone argues that the forgotten 2013 hit song "Blurred Lines", which a court later ruled infringed on a 1977 song by Marvin Gaye, turned copyright law into "a minefield" -- for the music industry. While copyright laws used to protect only lyrics and melodies (a prime example is the Chiffons' successful suit against George Harrison in 1976 for the strong compositional similarities between his "My Sweet Lord" and their "He's So Fine"), the "Blurred Lines" case raised the stakes by suggesting that the far more abstract qualities of rhythm, tempo, and even the general feel of a song are also eligible for protection -- and thus that a song can be sued for feeling like an earlier one. Sure enough, a jury in 2019 ruled that Katy Perry owed millions for ostensibly copying the beat of her hit "Dark Horse" from a little-known song by Christian rapper Flame, stunning both the music business and the legal community. "They're trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone," Perry's lawyer Christine Lepera warned in the case's closing arguments. That case, which Perry's team is currently in the process of appealing, suggests a second point: Plaintiffs in copycat cases are largely targeting megahit songs because they've seen where the money is, and the increasing frequency of those court battles in headlines is causing an avalanche effect of further infringement lawsuits.... While some record labels may have the budget to hire on-call musicologists who vet new releases for potential copyright claims, smaller players who can't afford that luxury are turning toward a tried-and-true form of protection: insurance. Lucas Keller -- the founder of music management company Milk and Honey, which represents writers and producers who've worked with everyone from Alessia Cara and Carrie Underwood to 5 Seconds of Summer and Muse -- recently began encouraging all his songwriter clients to purchase errors-and-omissions insurance, which protects creative professionals from legal challenges to their intellectual property. "We all feel like the system has failed us," Keller says. "There are a lot of aggressive lawyers filing lawsuits and going ham on people." (He's particularly critical of publishers whose rosters are heavier on older catalogs than new acts: "Heritage publishers who aren't making a lot of money are coming out of the woodwork and saying, âWe're going to take a piece of your contemporary hit....'â") Artists are understandably reluctant to publicly disclose that they have copyright insurance, which could open them up to an increase in lawsuits. But music attorney Bob Celestin, who's helped represent acts like Pusha T and Missy Elliott, says it is safe to assume that the majority of artists who show up in Top 10 chart positions are covered in this way... The popularity of cheap music-production software, which offers the same features to every user, has added another layer of risk. "Music is now more similar than it is different, for the first time," says Ross Golan, a producer and songwriter who has released songs with stars like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber. "People are using the same sample packs, the same plug-ins, because it's efficient." Then there's the issue of the finite number of notes, chord progressions, and melodies available...

  

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• The End of Windows 7 'Marks the End of the PC Era Too'
  ZDNet's UK editor-in-chief Steve Ranger argues the end of Windows 7 "marks the end of the PC era, too." When Windows 7 launched, the iPhone and its app store were around but were still novelties, while the iPad hadn't arrived yet. If you wanted to get work -- or pretty much anything -- done on a computer, you needed a PC. Just over a decade later, the picture is much more complicated. PC sales have been in decline for the last seven years; a slide which only ended with a small increase last year, largely because businesses needed to buy new PCs to run Windows 10, after bowing to the inevitable and upgrading. In many scenarios and use cases the PC has been superseded by the smartphone, the tablet or digital assistants embodied in various other devices. And it's not just the PC -- Windows is no longer the defining product for Microsoft that it once was. That's not to say the PC is dead, of course: I'm typing on one now, and it will remain the primary device I use to do my job for the foreseeable future. Many office and knowledge workers will feel the same. But there are now plenty of other options: I could be using a tablet or dictating to my phone... And outside of work I barely touch a PC at all. And even the definition of the PCs is getting blurry. PC makers have come up with a late burst of creativity that has delivered all manner of weird and occasionally wonderful new shapes and sizes. Microsoft's Surface is a PC that looks a lot like a tablet; Lenovo's X1 Fold is a folding screen that can be a tablet, or a mini laptop or a desktop. Folding and detachable PCs are now mainstream.

  

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• Internet Pioneers Fight For Control of .Org Registry By Forming a Nonprofit Alternative
  Reuters reports that a group of "prominent internet pioneers" now has a plan to block the $1.1 billion sale of the .org internet domain registry to Ethos Capital. The group has created their own nonprofit cooperative to offer an alternative: "There needs to be a place on the internet that represents the public interest, where educational sites, humanitarian sites, and organizations like Wikipedia can provide a broader public benefit," said Katherine Maher, the CEO of Wikipedia parent Wikimedia Foundation, who signed on to be a director of the new nonprofit. The crowd-sourced research tool Wikipedia is the most visited of the 10 million .org sites registered worldwide... Hundreds of nonprofits have already objected to the transaction, worried that Ethos will raise registration and renewal prices, cut back on infrastructure and security spending, or make deals to sell sensitive data or allow censorship or surveillance... "What offended me about the Ethos Capital deal and the way it unfolded is that it seems to have completely betrayed this concept of stewardship," said Andrew McLaughlin, who oversaw the transfer of internet governance from the U.S. Commerce Department to ICANN, completed in 2016. Maher and others said the idea of the new cooperative is not to offer a competing financial bid for .org, which brings in roughly $100 million in revenue from domain sales. Instead, they hope that the unusual new entity, formally a California Consumer Cooperative Corporation, can manage the domain for security and stability and make sure it does not become a tool for censorship. The advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which previously organized a protest over the .org sale that drew in organizations including the YMCA of the United States, Greenpeace, and Consumer Reports, is also supporting the cooperative. "It's highly inappropriate for it to be turned over to a commercial venture at all, much less one that's going to need to recover $1 billion," said EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn.

  

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• Apple's Stock Rose 86% in 2019 -- Partly Because Of AirPods
  "Shares of Apple gained 86.2% in 2019, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence," reports the Motley Fool: The tech stock's share price tracked relatively closely with momentum for the broader market for much of the year and then dramatically outperformed from September through December thanks to strong performance for its wearables products. iPhone Sales were down from 2018, but they still came in ahead of expectations, and the company's business was lifted by strong performance for its wearables segment... Growth for Apple's services segment (which includes revenue generated from the company's mobile app store and subscription-based offerings like Apple Music) also slowed in the year. However, explosive growth for AirPods, promising momentum for the Apple Watch, and the promise of a bigger tech and feature leap for the iPhone line in 2020 powered a great year for Apple stock. Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, estimates that AirPod sales came in at roughly $6 billion in 2019 and nearly doubled compared to 2018. The Bernstein analyst projects that AirPod revenue will hit $15 billion in 2020.

  

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• After Mishap with Boeing Spacecraft, NASA Faces a Dilemma
  An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: As it probes why Boeing's Starliner spacecraft suffered a serious setback during a flight test last month that forced the cancellation of its planned docking with the International Space Station, NASA faces a high-stakes dilemma: Should the space agency require the company to repeat the uncrewed test flight, or allow the next flight to proceed, as originally planned, with astronauts on board? The answer could have significant ramifications for the agency, and put astronauts' lives on the line, at a time when NASA is struggling to restore human spaceflight from the United States since the Space Shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. Forcing Boeing to redo the test flight without anyone on board would be costly, possibly requiring the embattled company, already struggling from the consequences of two deadly crashes of its 737 Max airplane, to spend tens of millions of dollars to demonstrate that its new spacecraft is capable of meeting the space station in orbit. But if NASA moves ahead with the crewed flight, and something goes wrong that puts the astronauts in danger, the agency would come under withering criticism that could plague it for years to come... For now, NASA is moving cautiously. It has formed an independent team with Boeing to examine what went wrong with the Starliner during last month's test flight. NASA also is reviewing data to help it determine if the capsule achieved enough objectives during its truncated flight to assure NASA that its astronauts will be safe.... If NASA does force Boeing to perform another test flight, it's not clear who would have to pay the tens of millions of dollars such a mission would cost.

  

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• Equifax's Stock Rose More Than 50% In 2019
  "There's still time to file a claim for a share of the $425 million that Equifax agreed to cough up after hosing almost half of the country in its massive data breach a few years ago," writes a Pennyslvania newspaper columnist, pointing victims to equifaxbreachsettlement.com. "But unless you can prove you were an identity theft victim who lost money, or had to waste time cleaning up the mess, don't expect much of a payout. Victims are being hosed again." The breach affected an estimated 147 million Americans. Hackers exploited a known but unpatched website vulnerability and gained access to names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver's license numbers and credit card numbers. Facing lawsuits from federal and state consumer protection agencies, Equifax agreed to a settlement. It offered several ways for people to file claims, with a deadline of Jan. 22. The option that applies to most people is 10 years of free credit monitoring, or a cash payout of up to $125 for those who already have monitoring. But you aren't going to get anywhere near $125. The settlement called for a pot of only $31 million for those payouts. And based on the number of people who have applied, that's not enough to cover the maximum payment. You may not even get enough to buy a decent sandwich, according to Ted Frank, director of litigation for Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, which includes the Center for Class Action Fairness. "That's down to $6 or $7 now," Frank told CNBC in December. "Maybe even less than that." Frank spoke after the federal judge overseeing the settlement awarded $77.5 million of the $425 million settlement fund to the attorneys who represented consumers against Equifax. His organization had opposed that award as being too much. Meanwhile, the Motley Fool notes that in 2019 Equifax's stock rose 50.5% -- after dropping 21% in 2018 and remaining "relatively flat" in 2017. "The credit-reporting company's stock rose thanks to a series of earnings beats and with the shadow of the big 2017 data breach receding further into the rear view...."

  

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• Microsoft's Azure Cloud Service Is Becoming More Popular Than Amazon's AWS At Big Companies
  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been focusing the company on cloud services -- and CNBC reports on the results: A Goldman Sachs survey of technology executives at large companies last month showed that Microsoft remained the most popular supplier of public cloud services, even as Amazon leads the market overall in terms of revenue. Goldman Sachs based its latest findings on an information-technology spending survey of 100 IT executives at Global 2000 companies. It performs the survey each June and December. The latest survey showed that 56 executives are using Azure for cloud infrastructure, versus 48 using AWS. Across cloud infrastructure and platform as a service put together, Microsoft's lead has been increasing since December 2017, according to the analysts. Additionally, more respondents expect their companies to be using Azure than any other cloud in three years, the analysts wrote... The results lead the analysts to conclude that about 23% of IT workloads are now on public clouds, up from 19% in June, and they expect the percentage to reach 43% in three years. That leaves plenty of room for growth for other contenders, like Google, for example... About 91% of analysts surveyed by FactSet have the equivalent of buy ratings on Microsoft stock, including Goldman Sachs. In the original submission Slashdot reader soldersold wonders if it's pre-existing business relationships with Microsoft (plus a workforce that's already been trained and certified in their technologies). Another caveat: The survey only included large companies. It'd be interesting to hear from Slashdot readers working in the cloud about whether they're using AWS or Azure?

  

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• Thoughts on Our Possible Future Without Work
  There's a new book called A World Without Work by economics scholar/former government policy adviser Daniel Susskind. The Guardian succinctly summarizes its prognostications for the future: It used to be argued that workers who lost their low-skilled jobs should retrain for more challenging roles, but what happens when the robots, or drones, or driverless cars, come for those as well? Predictions vary but up to half of jobs are at least partially vulnerable to AI, from truck-driving, retail and warehouse work to medicine, law and accountancy. That's why the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers confessed in 2013 that he used to think "the Luddites were wrong, and the believers in technology and technological progress were right. I'm not so completely certain now." That same year, the economist and Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky wrote that fears of technological unemployment were not so much wrong as premature: "Sooner or later, we will run out of jobs." Yet Skidelsky, like Keynes, saw this as an opportunity. If the doomsayers are to be finally proven right, then why not the utopians, too...? The work ethic, [Susskind] says, is a modern religion that purports to be the only source of meaning and purpose. "What do you do for a living?" is for many people the first question they ask when meeting a stranger, and there is no entity more beloved of politicians than the "hard-working family". Yet faced with precarious, unfulfilling jobs and stagnant wages, many are losing faith in the gospel of work. In a 2015 YouGov survey, 37% of UK workers said their jobs made no meaningful contribution. Susskind wonders in the final pages "whether the academics and commentators who write fearfully about a world with less work are just mistakenly projecting the personal enjoyment they take from their jobs on to the experience of everyone else". That deserves to be more than an afterthought. The challenge of a world without work isn't just economic but political and psychological... [I]s relying on work to provide self-worth and social status an inevitable human truth or the relatively recent product of a puritan work ethic? Keynes regretted that the possibility of an "age of leisure and abundance" was freighted with dread: "For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy." The state, Susskind concedes with ambivalence, will need to smooth the transition. Moving beyond the "Age of Labour" will require something like a universal basic income (he prefers a more selective conditional basic income), funded by taxes on capital to share the proceeds of technological prosperity. The available work will also need to be more evenly distributed. After decades of a 40-hour week, the recent Labour manifesto, influenced by Skidelsky, promised 32 hours by 2030. And that's the relatively easy part. Moving society's centre of gravity away from waged labour will require visionary "leisure policies" on every level, from urban planning to education, and a revolution in thinking. "We will be forced to consider what it really means to live a meaningful life," Susskind writes, implying that this is above his pay grade. The review concludes that "if AI really does to employment what previous technologies did not, radical change can't be postponed indefinitely. "It may well be utopia or bust."

  

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• Are We Teaching Engineers the Wrong Way to Think?
  Tech columnist Chris Matyszczyk summarizes the argument of four researchers who are warning about the perils of pure engineer thought: They write, politely: "Engineers enter the workforce with important analysis skills, but may struggle to 'think outside the box' when it comes to creative problem-solving." The academics blame the way engineers are educated. They explain there are two sorts of thinking -- convergent and divergent. The former is the one with which engineers are most familiar. You make a list of steps to be taken to solve a problem and you take those steps. You expect a definite answer. Divergent thinking, however, requires many different ways of thinking about a problem and leads to many potential solutions. These academics declare emphatically: "Divergent thinking skills are largely ignored in engineering courses, which tend to focus on a linear progression of narrow, discipline-focused technical information." Ah, that explains a lot, doesn't it? Indeed, these researchers insist that engineering students "become experts at working individually and applying a series of formulas and rules to structured problems with a 'right' answer." Oddly, I know several people at Google just like that. Fortunately, the researchers are also proposing this solution: "While engineers need skills in analysis and judgment, they also need to cultivate an open, curious, and kind attitude, so they don't fixate on one particular approach and are able to consider new data."

  

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• 'Top Programming Skills' List Shows Employers Want SQL
  Former Slashdot contributor Nick Kolakowski is now a senior editor at Dice Insights, where he's just published a list of the top programming skills employers were looking for during the last 30 days. If you're a software developer on the hunt for a new gig (or you're merely curious about what programming skills employers are looking for these days), one thing is clear: employers really, really, really want technologists who know how to build, maintain, and scale everything database- (and data-) related. We've come to that conclusion after analyzing data about programming skills from Burning Glass, which collects and organizes millions of job postings from across the country. The biggest takeaway? "When it comes to programming skills, employers are hungriest for SQL." Here's their ranking of the top most in-demand skills: SQLJava"Software development""Software engineering"PythonJavaScriptLinuxOracleC#Git The list actually includes the top 18 programming skills, but besides languages like C++ and .NET, it also includes more generalized skills like "Agile development," "debugging," and "Unix." But Nick concludes that "As a developer, if you've mastered database and data-analytics skills, that makes you insanely valuable to a whole range of companies out there."

  

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Linux Today

• Secure your Android phone data with OpenVPN in 10 minutes

  This guide shows you how to you how to setup an OpenVPN server and get your phone connected in 10 minutes.

• Debian GNU/Linux 9.2 "Stretch" Update Introduces Over 150 Security and Bug Fixes

  Coming two and a half months after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 9.1, the Debian GNU/Linux 9.2 point release introduces numerous updates

• TMOUT - Auto Logout Linux Shell When There Isn't Any Activity

  How often do you leave a Linux system idle after login?

• BlackBerry Motion Is Now Official with Android 7.1 and No Physical Keyboard

  At first glance, BlackBerry Motion appears to be a variant of the BlackBerry KEYone smartphone, but without a physical keyboard,

• How To Enable Jumbo Frames In Linux

  Are file transfers slow on your network?

• Microsoft Lobbying, the EPO, and Software Patents Disguised as 'Internet of Things'

  techrights: The European Patent Office (EPO) continues to act like a vassal of patent aggressors

• Secure your Android phone data with OpenVPN in 10 minutes

  This guide shows you how to you how to setup an OpenVPN server and get your phone connected in 10 minutes.

• Debian GNU/Linux 9.2 "Stretch" Update Introduces Over 150 Security and Bug Fixes

  Coming two and a half months after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 9.1, the Debian GNU/Linux 9.2 point release introduces numerous updates

• How to Install Multiple Linux Distributions on One USB

  This tutorial shows you how to install multiple Linux distributions on one USB.

• TMOUT - Auto Logout Linux Shell When There Isn't Any Activity

  How often do you leave a Linux system idle after login?

Phoronix

• Linux 5.5-rc6 Released With Some Notable Radeon Graphics Fixes Plus Other Random Work
  Linus Torvalds has just issued Linux 5.5-rc6 as the latest test release ahead of the stable Linux 5.5 kernel due out in a few weeks...
• Benchmarks Of LLVM Clang 6.0 Through Clang 10.0 Compilers
  At the end of 2019 I ran some GCC 5 through GCC 10 compiler benchmarks while here are the similar tests conducted on the LLVM side for seeing how the Clang C/C++ compiler performance has evolved over the past few years...
• The Big Highlights Of Wine 5.0 From FAudio Integration To Vulkan 1.1 + A Ton Of Bug Fixes
  Wine 5.0 is still going through weekly release candidates but the stable release of Wine 5 is expected to land in the back-half of January. With that imminent release, here is a look at the big changes to find with this annual Wine update...
• Project Trident Reaches Beta For Its ZFS-Based Void Linux Powered OS
  Making rounds in Q4 of last year was the little known Project Trident open-source operating system switching from its TrueOS/FreeBSD base to in turn moving to Void Linux as a base for their platform. Towards the end of the year they offered some initial images of their reborn OS while now Project Trident based on Void Linux has reached beta...
• Linux In 2020 Can Finally Provide Sane Monitoring Of SATA Drive Temperatures
  Here is another long overdue kernel change... For more than a decade there have been patches trying to get SATA/SCSI drive temperature monitoring working nicely within the Linux kernel but none of that work ever made it through for mainlining. That has left various user-space tools to provide the functionality, but in doing so that has required root access and not to mention the need to first install said utilities. Well, with Linux 5.6 in 2020, there is finally a proper drive temperature driver for disks and solid-state drives with temperature sensors...
• Marvell Is Plumbing Octeon TX2 Support Into The GCC Compiler
  Marvell has been preparing the Octeon TX2 processor support for the GCC compiler, their next-generation version of the (originally Cavium) infrastructure/network processors now based on their ThunderX2 line...
• Steam's December Numbers Point To A Lower Linux Marketshare But With More Oddities
  I refrained from writing about Valve's Steam Survey numbers at the start of January when they were posted for December as the numbers didn't seem up to scratch. But half-way through the month now, the same numbers are up with no edits by Valve, as we've seen in some months when they refine their measurements...
• It's 2020 And GCC Has Finally Converted From SVN To Git
  I reported a few days ago GCC was hoping to transition to Git this weekend from their large SVN repository. Going into this weekend I wasn't going to be the least bit surprised if this transition got delayed again given all of the months of delays already, but actually, they went ahead and migrated to Git!..
• KDE Devs Fix Several Wayland Bugs, Annoying KWin Issues Plus Easier To Toggle Night Color
  KDE developers fixed a number of Wayland and KWin bugs this week along with a number of other annoying bugs as well as making several other noteworthy refinements to the growing KDE ecosystem...
• Wine-Staging 5.0-RC5 Brings Fix For Far Cry 5 Plus Sound Bug With Proton/ESYNC
  Wine-Staging 5.0-RC5 is out today as usual, arriving just one day after the upstream Wine 5.0-rc5 release...

DistroWatch

• Development Release: Ubuntu 18.04 Beta 2
  Steve Langasek has announced the availability of the second and final beta build of Ubuntu 18.04, including all official Ubuntu sub-projects. This is a long-term support (LTS) version the final release of which is scheduled for April 26: "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta....
• Distribution Release: NixOS 18.03
  NixOS is an independently developed Linux distribution which is configured and managed using the Nix package manager. The NixOS project has released a new version, NixOS 18.03, which includes version 2.0 of the Nix package manager minor upgrades to the GNOME and KDE Plasma desktops along with several....
• Development Release: Fedora 28 Beta
  The Fedora team has launched a new testing version of their Red Hat sponsored project. The new development release, Fedora 28 Beta, features 64-bit ARM support and GNOME 3.28. VirtualBox guest additions are now included by default. The big new feature though across all Fedora editions is the....
• BSD Release: OpenBSD 6.3
  OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system with a focus on correct code and accurate documentation. The project has released OpenBSD 6.3 which introduces SMP support on the ARM64 architecture, includes ISO support in the virtual machine daemon (vmd) and makes memory allocation more efficient. There have also been....
• DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 757
  This week in DistroWatch Weekly: Review: Gatter Linux 0.8News: Red Hat turns 25, Ubuntu's minimal desktop option, super long term support kernels, new shortcuts in elementary OS, FreeBSD 10.3 reaching EoLBook review: UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (Fifth Edition)Released last week: Slax 9.4.0, heads 0.4, Qubes OS....
• Distribution Release: Redcore Linux 1803
  Redcore Linux is a Gentoo-based distribution which strives to be easy to install and features the LXQt desktop environment. The project's latest snapshot release includes several security improvements, such as running a hardened Linux kernel and compiling software with address space layout randomization (ASLR). "The Redcore Linux team....
• BSD Release: TrueOS 18.03
  TrueOS is a FreeBSD-based operating system which features a graphical system installer and a rolling release platform. The TrueOS team has announced the availability of a new snapshot, TrueOS 18.03, which includes fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre classes of CPU bugs. "The TrueOS team is pleased to....
• BSD Release: pfSense 2.4.3
  Jim Pingle has announced the release of pfSense 2.4.3, the latest update of the specialist FreeBSD-based operating system for firewalls and routers: "We are excited to announce the release of pfSense software version 2.4.3, now available for new installations and upgrades. pfSense software version 2.4.3 brings security patches,....
• Development Release: Pop!_OS 18.04 Testing
  Pop!_OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution developed by System76 which features the GNOME desktop. The distribution's developers have published a testing snapshot for the upcoming version of Pop!_OS 18.04. This testing snapshot includes a new installer that offers full disk encryption. However, the new installer also has the limitation....
• Distribution Release: Qubes OS 4.0
  Andrew David Wong has announced the release of Qubes OS 4.0, a major new update of the project's security-oriented desktop Linux distribution based on Fedora 25: "After nearly two years in development and countless hours of testing, we're pleased to announce the stable release of Qubes OS 4.0.....

Schneier on Security

• Friday Squid Blogging: Bobtail Squid Photos

  Pretty.

  As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

• Decoding the Voynich Manuscript

  The Voynich Manuscript has been partially decoded. This seems not to be a hoax. And the manuscript seems not to be a hoax, either.

  Here's the paper.
  

• GENESIS: NSA Exploit of the Day

  Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog:

  GENESIS

  (S//SI//REL) Commercial GSM handset that has been modified to include a Software Defined Radio (SDR) and additional system memory. The internal SDR allows a witting user to covertly perform network surveys, record RF spectrum, or perform handset location in hostile environments.

  (S//SI//REL) The GENESIS systems are designed to support covert operations in hostile environments. A witting user would be able to survey the local environment with the spectrum analyzer tool, select spectrum of interest to record, and download the spectrum information via the integrated Ethernet to a laptop controller. The GENESIS system could also be used, in conjunction with an active interrogator, as the finishing tool when performing Find/Fix/Finish operations in unconventional environments.

  (S//SI//REL) Features:

  • Concealed SDR with Handset Menu Interface
  • Spectrum Analyzer Capability
  • Find/Fix/Finish Capability
  • Integrated Ethernet
  • External Antenna Port
  • Internal 16 GB of storage
  • Multiple Integrated Antennas

    (S//SI//REL) Future Enhancements:

    • 3G Handset Host Platform
    • Additional Host Platforms
    • Increased Memory Capacity
    • Additional Find/Fix/Finish Capabilities
    • Active Interrogation Capabilities

      Status: Current GENESIS platform available. Future platforms available when developments are completed.

      Unit Cost: $15K

      Page, with graphics, is here. General information about TAO and the catalog is here.

      In the comments, feel free to discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on.

• Was the iOS SSL Flaw Deliberate?

  Last October, I speculated on the best ways to go about designing and implementing a software backdoor. I suggested three characteristics of a good backdoor: low chance of discovery, high deniability if discovered, and minimal conspiracy to implement.

  The critical iOS vulnerability that Apple patched last week is an excellent example. Look at the code. What caused the vulnerability is a single line of code: a second "goto fail;" statement. Since that statement isn't a conditional, it causes the whole procedure to terminate.

  The flaw is subtle, and hard to spot while scanning the code. It's easy to imagine how this could have happened by error. And it would have been trivially easy for one person to add the vulnerability.

  Was this done on purpose? I have no idea. But if I wanted to do something like this on purpose, this is exactly how I would do it.

  EDITED TO ADD (2/27): If the Apple auditing system is any good, they would be able to trace this errant goto line not just to the source-code check-in details, but to the specific login that made the change. And they would quickly know whether this was just an error, or a deliberate change by a bad actor. Does anyone know what's going on inside Apple?

  EDITED TO ADD (2/27): Steve Bellovin has a pair of posts where he concludes that if this bug is enemy action, it's fairly clumsy and unlikely to be the work of professionals.

• ENTOURAGE: NSA Exploit of the Day

  Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog:

  ENTOURAGE

  (S//SI//REL) Direction Finding application operating on the HOLLOWPOINT platform. The system is capable of providing line of bearing for GSM/UMTS/CDMA2000/FRS signals. A band-specific antenna and laptop controller is needed to compliment the HOLLOWPOINT system and completes the ground based system.

  (S//SI) The ENTOURAGE application leverages the 4 Software Defined Radio (SDR) units in the HOLLOWPOINT platform. This capability provides an "Artemis-like" capability for waveforms of interest (2G,3G,others). The ENTOURAGE application works in conjunction with the NEBULA active interrogator as part of the Find/Fix/Finish capabilities of the GALAXY program.

  (S//SI//REL) Features:

  • Software Defined Radio System
  • Operating range 10MHz - 4GHz
  • 4 Receive paths, all synchronized
  • 1 Transmit path
  • DF capability on GSM/UMTS/CDMA2000/FRS signals
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • Integrated GPS
  • Highly Mobile and Deployable

    (S//SI//REL) Enclosure:

    • 1.8"H x 8.0"W x 8.0"D
    • Approximately 3 lbs
    • 15 Watts
    • Passively cooled

      (S//SI//REL) Future Developments:

      • WiMAX
      • WiFi
      • LTE

        Status: The system is in the final testing stage and will be in production Spring 09.

        Unit Cost: $70K
        

        Page, with graphics, is here. General information about TAO and the catalog is here.

        In the comments, feel free to discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on.

• DDoSing a Cell Phone Network

  Interesting research:

  Abstract: The HLR/AuC is considered to be one of the most important network elements of a 3G network. It can serve up to five million subscribers and at least one transaction with HLR/AuC is required for every single phone call or data session. This paper presents experimental results and observations that can be exploited to perform a novel distributed denial of service attack in 3G networks that targets the availability of the HLR/AuC. More specifically, first we present an experiment in which we identified and proved some zero-day vulnerabilities of the 3G network that can be exploited by malicious actors to mount various attacks. For the purpose of our experiment, we have used off-the-shelf infrastructure and software, without any specialized modification. Based on the observations of the experiment, we reveal an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) in 3G networks that aims to flood an HLR/AuC of a mobile operator. We also prove that the discovered APT can be performed in a trivial manner using commodity hardware and software, which is widely and affordably available.

  The attack involves cloning SIM cards, then making multiple calls from different handsets in different locations with the same SIM card. This confuses the network into thinking that the same phone is in multiple places at once.

  Note that this has not been tested in the field, but there seems no reason why it wouldn't work.

  There's a lot of insecurity in the fact that cell phones and towers largely trust each other. The NSA and FBI use that fact for eavesdropping, and here it's used for a denial-of-service attack.

• EBSR: NSA Exploit of the Day

  Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog:

  EBSR

  (S//SI//REL) Multi-purpose, Pico class, tri-band active GSM base station with internal 802.11/GPS/handset capability.

  (S//SI//REL) Operational Restrictions exist for equipment deployment.

  (S//SI//REL) Features:

  • LxT Model: 900/1800/1900MHz
  • LxU Model: 850/1800/1900MHz
  • Pico-class (1Watt) Base station
  • Optional Battery Kits
  • Highly Mobile and Deployable
  • Integrated GPS, MS, & 802.11
  • Voice & High-speed Data
  • SMS Capability

    (S//SI//REL) Enclosure:

    • 1.9"H x 8.6"W x 6.3"D
    • Approximately 3 lbs
    • Actively cooled for extreme environments

      (S//SI//REL) EBSR System Kit:

      • EBSR System
      • AC/DC power converter
      • Antenna to support MS, GPS, WIFI, & RF
      • LAN, RF, & USB cables
      • Pelican Case
      • (Field Kit only) Control Laptop and Accessories

        (S//SI//REL) Separately Priced Options:

        • 90 WH LiIon Battery Kit

          (S//SI//REL) Base Station Router Platform:

          • Multiple BSR units can be interconnected to form a macro network using 802.3 and 802.11 back-haul.
          • Supports Landshark/Candygram capabilities.

            Status:

            Unit Cost: $40K

            Page, with graphics, is here. General information about TAO and the catalog is here.

            In the comments, feel free to discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on.

• Breaking Up the NSA

  The NSA has become too big and too powerful. What was supposed to be a single agency with a dual mission -- protecting the security of U.S. communications and eavesdropping on the communications of our enemies -- has become unbalanced in the post-Cold War, all-terrorism-all-the-time era.

  Putting the U.S. Cyber Command, the military's cyberwar wing, in the same location and under the same commander, expanded the NSA's power. The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security, and that's increasingly putting us all at risk. It's time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency.

  Broadly speaking, three types of NSA surveillance programs were exposed by the documents released by Edward Snowden. And while the media tends to lump them together, understanding their differences is critical to understanding how to divide up the NSA's missions.

  The first is targeted surveillance.

  This is best illustrated by the work of the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group, including its catalog of hardware and software "implants" designed to be surreptitiously installed onto the enemy's computers. This sort of thing represents the best of the NSA and is exactly what we want it to do. That the United States has these capabilities, as scary as they might be, is cause for gratification.

  The second is bulk surveillance, the NSA's collection of everything it can obtain on every communications channel to which it can get access. This includes things such as the NSA's bulk collection of call records, location data, e-mail messages and text messages.

  This is where the NSA overreaches: collecting data on innocent Americans either incidentally or deliberately, and data on foreign citizens indiscriminately. It doesn't make us any safer, and it is liable to be abused. Even the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, acknowledged that the collection and storage of data was kept a secret for too long.

  The third is the deliberate sabotaging of security. The primary example we have of this is the NSA's BULLRUN program, which tries to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices." This is the worst of the NSA's excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide.

  That's the three: good, bad, very bad. Reorganizing the U.S. intelligence apparatus so it concentrates on our enemies requires breaking up the NSA along those functions.

  First, TAO and its targeted surveillance mission should be moved under the control of U.S. Cyber Command, and Cyber Command should be completely separated from the NSA. Actively attacking enemy networks is an offensive military operation, and should be part of an offensive military unit.

  Whatever rules of engagement Cyber Command operates under should apply equally to active operations such as sabotaging the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran and hacking a Belgian telephone company. If we're going to attack the infrastructure of a foreign nation, let it be a clear military operation.

  Second, all surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI.

  The FBI is charged with counterterrorism in the United States, and it needs to play that role. Any operations focused against U.S. citizens need to be subject to U.S. law, and the FBI is the best place to apply that law. That the NSA can, in the view of many, do an end-run around congressional oversight, legal due process and domestic laws is an affront to our Constitution and a danger to our society. The NSA's mission should be focused outside the United States -- for real, not just for show.

  And third, the remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.

  Computer and network security is hard, and we need the NSA's expertise to secure our social networks, business systems, computers, phones and critical infrastructure. Just recall the recent incidents of hacked accounts -- from Target to Kickstarter. What once seemed occasional now seems routine. Any NSA work to secure our networks and infrastructure can be done openly—no secrecy required.

  This is a radical solution, but the NSA's many harms require radical thinking. It's not far off from what the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, charged with evaluating the NSA's current programs, recommended. Its 24th recommendation was to put the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command under different generals, and the 29th recommendation was to put encryption ahead of exploitation.

  I have no illusions that anything like this will happen anytime soon, but it might be the only way to tame the enormous beast that the NSA has become.

  This essay previously appeared on CNN.com.

  Slashdot thread. Hacker News thread.

• CYCLONE Hx9: NSA Exploit of the Day

  Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog:

  CYCLONE Hx9

  (S//SI//FVEY) EGSM (900MGz) macro-class Network-In-a-Box (NIB) system. Uses the existing Typhon GUI and supports the full Typhon feature base and applications.

  (S//SI//REL) Operational Restrictions exist for equipment deployment.

  (S//SI//REL) Features:

  • EGSM 900MHz
  • Macro-class (+43dBm)
  • 32+Km Range
  • Optional Battery Kits
  • Highly Mobile and Deployable
  • Integrated GPS, MS, & 802.11
  • Voice & High-speed Data
  • GSM Security & Encryption

    (S//SI//REL) Advanced Features:

    • GPS -- Supporting Typhon applications
    • GSM Handset Module -- Supports auto-configuration and remote command and control features.
    • 802.11 -- Supports high speed wireless LAN remote command and control

      (S//SI//REL) Enclosure:

      • 3.5"H x 8.5"W x 9"D
      • Approximately 8 lbs
      • Actively cooled for extreme environments

        (S//SI//REL) Cyclone Hx9 System Kit:

        • Cyclone Hx9 System
        • AC/DC power converter
        • Antenna to support MS, GPS, WIFI, & RF
        • LAN, RF, & USB cables
        • Pelican Case
        • (Field Kit only) Control Laptop and Accessories

          (S//SI//REL) Separately Priced Options:

          • 800 WH LiIon Battery Kit

            (S//SI//REL) Base Station Router Platform:

            • Overlay GSM cellular communications supporting up to 32 Cyclone Mx9 systems providing full mobility and utilizing a VoIP back-haul.
            • GPRS data service and associated application

              Unit Cost: $70K for two months

              Status: Just out of development, first production runs ongoing.

              Page, with graphics, is here. General information about TAO and the catalog is here.

              In the comments, feel free to discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on.

• New Results in Software Obfuscation

  Amit Sahai and others have some new results in software obfuscation. The papers are here. An over-the top Wired.com story on the research is here. And Matthew Green has a great blog post explaining what's real and what's hype.

GNOME

• Bringing the free desktop into 2020
  I am frequently asked if there’s any point in the desktop anymore. With the rise of cloud services, it’s easy to wonder whether there is a need. I believe that a free software desktop system is more important than ever. GNOME creates an entire desktop environment that is beautifully designed and simple to use. We […]
• GNOME in 2019
  2019 represented an exciting year for GNOME with many things happening. GUADEC, GNOME’s biggest annual conference took in 2019 place in Thessaloniki, Greece while GNOME.Asia Summit (GNOME’s second major conference) was organized in Gresik, Indonesia. Both events were considered successful. In addition to the conferences, the community organized several Hackfests in different locations each gathering contributors […]
• ATK, GTK, and Plans for 2020
  The GNOME Project is built by a vibrant community and supported by the GNOME Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity registered in California (USA). The GNOME community has spent more than 20 years creating a desktop environment designed for the user. We‘re asking you to become Friend of GNOME, with a recommended donation of $25/month ($5/month […]
• Keeping the (server) lights on
  The GNOME project is built by a vibrant community and supported by the GNOME Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity registered in California (USA). The GNOME community has spent more than 20 years creating a free desktop environment designed for the user. We‘re asking you to join us by becoming Friend of GNOME. The GNOME Foundation […]
• Call for GNOME.Asia 2020 Summit proposals
  The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting interested parties to submit proposals for hosting the GNOME.Asia Summit during the second half of 2020. GNOME.Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME Conference in Asia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, but also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide […]
• Step up and become a Friend of GNOME!
  The GNOME project is built by a vibrant community and supported by the GNOME Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity registered in California (USA). The GNOME community has spent more than 20 years creating a desktop environment designed for the user. We‘re asking you to step up for GNOME and become Friend of GNOME. We're working to have 100 new Friends of GNOME join by January 6, 2020.
• GUADEC 2020 announcement
  The GNOME Foundation is excited to announce that GUADEC 2020 will take place between the 22nd – 28th of July in Zacatecas, Mexico. Zacatecas is a city and municipality in Mexico, located in the north-central part of the country. Set in a valley and surrounded by mountains, the city, which had its start as a […]
• GNOME acknowledge AWS Sponsorship
  The GNOME Foundation wants to recognize AWS for donating credits that have allowed us (GNOME) to taking advantage of the multitude of services Amazon provides. In particular, the GNOME Infrastructure utilizes AWS S3 service as a file store for the multitude of Docker images that are generated or updated daily. GNOME uses GitLab as its […]
• GNOME AWS Sponsorship
  The GNOME Foundation wants to recognize AWS for donating credits that have allowed us (GNOME) to taking advantage of the multitude of services Amazon provides. In particular, the GNOME Infrastructure utilizes AWS S3 service as a file store for the multitude of Docker images that are generated or updated daily. GNOME uses GitLab as its […]
• Linux Application Summit 2019 about to start in Barcelona
  The GNOME Foundation is very excited that Linux Application Summit 2019 is about to start in Barcelona, Spain. Linux App Summit 2019 (or LAS) is a joint collaboration between GNOME and KDE which will feature 3 days of talks from prominent members of the Linux developer community from Tuesday 12th November to Thursday 14th November, […]

KDE

• KDE's January 2020 Apps Update

  The year is 2020, we are living in the future, let’s see what KDE apps has brought us in the last month!

  KTimeTracker ported to KDE Frameworks 5

  The long-awaited modernized version of KTimeTracker is finally released.
  The application is a personal time tracker for busy people which is now
  available on Linux, FreeBSD and Windows. Over the course of 2019 it had been
  ported to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks after being unmaintained since around 2013.

  
  

  The new version is also polished and slightly modernised with the most
  noticeable new features being the new Task Time Editing dialog and
  live preview in the Export dialog as seen in the picture below.

  
  

  https://download.kde.org/stable/ktimetracker/5.0.1/src/
  It is available through your Linux distro or as a Windows installer and there’s even untested MacOS builds built nightly.

  The release is announced in the blog of the maintainer Alexander Potashev

  KStars 3.3.9

  Astronomy program KStars got new features in 3.3.9.

  Images can have fine changes in Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights allowing the faintest of stars to be seen.

  Alternative constellations from the Western Sky Culture which is fascinating to read about.

  

  KStars is available for Android, Windows, MacOS, Snap store and from your Linux distro.

  Common Frameworks - KNewStuff

  Here on the Apps Update we focus on the apps rather than coding libraries. But new features in the common libraries will mean new features in all your apps :)

  This month saw a redesigned UI for KNewStuff, the framework to download addons for your applications. The browse and download dialog was redesigned and the comments section can now be filtered. It’ll be appearing in all your apps and settings modules shortly starting with the Global Theme module in System Settings.

  

  

  Bugfixes

  KDevelop’s monthly bugfix update 5.4.6 fixed a longstanding problem where the GPL and LGPL headers were mixed up, grab it from your distro or Appimage to make sure your licencing is correct.

  Latte Dock 0.9.7 fixed some features with Qt 5.14 and removed some crashes.

  Dolphin Plugins 19.12.1 fixed a broken SVN Commit dialog.

  There was improved file indexing in Elisa. It also fixed some compilation issues on Android and without Baloo.

  The new release of KPat was declaired to have no OARS relevant age restrictions.

  Okular fixed a crash when closing the print preview dialog.

  This month’s release of Kdenlive video editor had an impressive number of fixes best of all was updating the screenshots used in the meta info. It also has dozens of improvements and fixes in timeline and preview handling.

  New JavaScript support is now in Kate’s LSP client.

  Enjoy KDE on the Flathub Store

  KDE is embracing all the app stores. We can now deliver more and more of our programs directly to you the user. One of the leading app stores on Linux is Flathub which uses the FlatPak format.

  You may well already have Flatpak and Flathub configured on your system and ready to use in Discover or other app installers. For example KDE neon has set it up by default on installs for over a year now. If not it’s a quick setup process for all the major distros.

  If you’re interested in the techy details you can browse KDE’s Flatpak packaging repo and read the KDE Flatpak guide.

  But probably what you’re interested in is the apps so take a look at what the Flathub store has under KDE.

  

  LabPlot now on Chocolatey

  Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows. If you want full control over what software is installed on your Windows machine or whole office of machines then Chocolatey gives you easy control over that just like you are used to on Linux.

  LabPlot is KDE’s app for interactive graphing and analysis of scientific data and it is now available through Chocolatey. Give it a try!

  LabPlot blog

  

  Website Updates

  The recently revived KDE Web Team has been updating a bunch of our older themed sites. The newly relaunched KPhotoAlbum website is a lovely example, updated and refreshed for our photo storage and search app.

  And if you want to show off a simple to use but full featured local music player but were ashamed by the old looking website, JuK has just had an updated website too.

  

  Releases 19.12.1

  Some of our projects release on their own timescale and some get released en-masse. The 19.12.1 bundle of projects was released today and should be available through app stores and distros soon. See the 19.12.1 releases page. This bundle was previously called KDE Applications but has been de-branded to become a release service to avoid confusion with all the other applications by KDE and because it is dozens of different products rather than a single whole.

• Libre Graphics Meeting Call for Proposals

  

  Update: sorry, the call for proposals is not yet ready, they are working on some technical fixes so please do not fill in the form yet. Watch out on social media for when it is ready.

  The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is the annual international convention for the discussion and development of free and open source graphics software.

  This year it will happen in Rennes, France, from May 26th to 29th. We are welcoming all relevant projects to submit a proposal for a talk and/or a workshop. We already expect Krita and Kdenlive teams to be present. The Krita sprint will be held after the meeting and Kdenlive are planning to have a sprint around that time too. It would be awesome to also see some people from Plasma team working on graphics tablet support and color management, or any other topic of interest for developers and users of graphics creation application.

  LGM are now asking for talks, workshops, BoF meetings and lightning talks for the conference. Please don't be shy and submit your proposal.

  KDE e.V. has agreed to support the event by providing travel support to KDE contributors. If you are interested, make sure to file your reimbursement request before January 31st.

  
  LGM 2019

• Plasma: A Safe Haven for Windows 7 Refugees

  
  

  Microsoft will stop providing updates for Windows 7 on January 14 2020.

  There won't be any more patches that correct bugs or even dangerous vulnerabilities. This will leave Windows 7 users exposed to all sorts of bad stuff. But that is not a huge concern for Microsoft. With this move, Redmond hopes to encourage users to upgrade to Windows 10.

  But why should we care? Maybe because Windows currently holds 77% of the global desktop market share (all Linux desktops combined hold less than 2%). Of that 77%, nearly 30% belongs to Windows 7. That is nearly a billion people still holding on to Windows 7 because they are resisting the move to Windows 10. Apart from the natural human resistance to change, Windows 10 has earned a bad rap as an operating system that will gladly leak your data back to Microsoft and lace your desktop with intrusive advertisements as a matter of course.

  Helping people regain control over their systems and protecting their data is precisely what Free Software communities do best, making this the perfect opportunity to help Windows 7 users upgrade to something much better: To the Plasma desktop!

  How you can help

  We need you to help convince Windows 7 users to move to the Plasma desktop. We have set up a task where we are brainstorming ideas, advice and resources. You can contribute your thoughts too. Get your KDE Identity today and join the conversation.

  You can also join the Promo team live on Matrix and help us run this campaign.

  Or fly solo! Talk to your friends, family, classmates and colleagues. Even if you convince just one person to make the transition to any Linux-based system, you will have done something valuable and helped the FLOSS movement.

  ---

  The Windows 7-like theme shown above was put together (from many parts created by many generous contributors) by Dominic Hayes, creator of Feren OS, a cool-looking Ubuntu-based Linux distro aimed squarely at end users. Check it out!

  Dominic used the following elements to re-create the look and feel of the desktop:

  Plasma Theme: Seven Black
  Window Decorations: Seven Black
  Application Style: gtk2
  GTK Theme: Windows Se7en by Elbullazul
  Icons: Darkine
  Colours: Breeze Light
  Cursors: DMZ White
  Splash Screen: Feren OS
  Panel: 38 height
  Widgets: Default Apps Menu, I-O Task Manager, Stock System Tray, Feren Calendar or Event Calendar, Win7 Show Desktop

• Host Akademy 2020 in your City!

  By Aleix Pol

  

  Hosting an event is a big and significant way of contributing to Free Software. One of the biggest challenges in international distributed teams like KDE is communicating effectively with one another. Akademy, the yearly global conference of the KDE community, solves that by bringing the community together in one place, allowing us to share what we have been up to and have it reach its potential.

  By organising Akademy we are then turning one of our weak points into a strength. We get to work together like a local team does, while remaining flexible and geographically distributed for most of the rest of the year. It becomes therefore one of the best ways for Free Software to thrive in your area.

  What is Akademy

  

  While Akademy has evolved over the years, its main structure remains similar: We have two conference days, the KDE e.V. Annual General Meeting and few days with smaller meetings and trainings. Akademy is open for everyone to join and participate, regardless of their background, studies or origin.

  We would like you to consider hosting Akademy. We could look into doing it in 2020, although if you think this is too short-notice, 2021 could also be discussed.

  You can find the full description of what's necessary in this simple-to -follow brochure. Reach out to the KDE e.V. Board and the Akademy team and put your thoughts in action.

• Announcing KDE Plasma 5.18 Wallpaper and Video Contests

  By Niccolò Venerandi

  

  KDE wants you to create the next wallpaper for Plasma 5.18 and the promotional videos for Plasma and applications of KDE.

  
  

  The chance of getting your work seen by thousands of people and organizations worldwide, including at NASA and CERN, is within your grasp! You can also win some really astounding prizes courtesy of our friends at TUXEDO Computers.

  Prizes

  
  

  The winner of the wallpaper contest will have their work included as the default background on KDE's upcoming Plasma 5.18 desktop. This means you will not only earn the admiration of thousands of Plasma users, but you can also win a very cool TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 computer.

  More details about the InfinityBook Pro are available on the Wallpaper Contest's page.

  Is fillmmaking more your thing? Try your hand at shooting and editing an exciting promotional video for Plasma or for applications KDE makes. The winners of the best Plasma promotional video will win a TUXEDO Gaming PC, and if you win the best Applications video competition, you'll get a TUXEDO InfinityBox.

  
  

  You can read about the specs of each machine on the Video Contest's page.

  Twelve finalists will also receive a package of goodies containing among other things:

  • A KDE Baseball cap
  • A plush Tux
  • KDE Stickers
  • A frozen glass coffee mug

  How to Participate

  Taking part is easy! Check out the rules for Wallpaper Competition and send in your masterpiece. Remember that, in order to submit a wallpaper, you need to follow the link to the appropriate subforum where you can create a new post. You can also find suggestions and helpful material on the webpages.

  Want to make a video instead? Read the rules for the Video Competition carefully and start shooting your clip!

  We can't wait to see what you will create!

• Apps Update for December

  

  Creating new applications is the easy part. Maintaining them, making them safer and faster and adding features that make them more useful to users is what marks the difference between one-shot wonders and solid tools you can trust and enjoy for years. That is why KDE developers are constantly renewing and updating their applications, making them more reliable, more useful, and in general, just better.

  What follows is just a minor sample of what you can expect from the latest round of updates for applications made by the KDE community over the last month:

  Calligra Plan is Back

  
  

  Calligra Plan, KDE's project planning and management tool, gets its first big update in two years.

  In case you were not aware, Plan helps you manage small and large projects which require multiple resources. In order for you to model your project, Plan offers different types of task dependencies and timing constraints. You can define your tasks, estimate the effort needed to perform each, allocate resources and then schedule the project according to your needs and the actual resources available.

  One of Plan's strengths is its excellent support for Gantt charts. Gantt charts help you plan, coordinate, and track specific tasks in a project. Using Gantt charts in Plan you will be able to better monitor your project's workflow.

  Kdenlive Pumps up the Volume

  
  

  Kdenlive developers have been adding new features and squashing bugs like crazy -- the latest version alone comes with more than 200 changes.

  A lot of work has gone into improving support for audio. In the "bugs solved", department they have gotten rid of an error that would eat up memory. They have also made saving audio thumbnails much more efficient.

  But the most exciting new feature is that Kdenlive now comes with a spectacular sound mixer (see image). Developers have also added a new audio clip display in the clip monitor and the project bin so you can better synchronize your moving images with the soundtrack.

  Für Elisa

  Talking of sound, Elisa is one of KDE's most popular up-and-coming music players. Elisa belongs to the deceptively simple, very light, very good-looking variety of players, with an intuitive and elegant interface and, in its latest version, Elisa has upgraded its looks even further to adapt better to High DPI screens. It also now integrates better with the looks other KDE applications.

  Indexing music files has also improved and Elisa now supports web radios and comes with a few examples for you to try.

  
  The Elisa music player.

  KDE Connect: Let Your Phone Rule your Desktop

  
  

  Most people who get to know KDE Connect, end up raving about it just because of how darned useful it is.

  The latest version of KDE Connect packs even more features. One of the more noticeable is that there is a new SMS app that lets you read and write SMS from your computer with the full conversation history.

  Developers are also adding new functionalities to existing features to make them even more useful. For example, you could already use KDE Connect to control the volume of media playing on your desktop, say, in VLC. But now you can use KDE Connect to also control your system's global volume from your phone. When giving a talk, you can control your presentation using KDE Connect to flip forward and back through your slides, and apart from integrating with other KDE apps, you can now also send files from Thunar (Xfce's file manager) and Elementary applications such as Pantheon Files.

  Talking of other platforms, you can now run the mobile component of KDE Connect not only on Android, but also on all those mobile Linux platforms we'll be seeing in upcoming devices like the PinePhone and the Librem 5. The new version also provides features for desktop-to-desktop users, such as media control across desktops, remote input, device ringing, file transfers and running commands.

  And Much More

  But that is not all by any means: Dolphin, Spectacle, Okular and dozens of other applications have included new features you are sure to find useful. Even more projects, broaching apps, libraries and frameworks, have tweaked their code making them more stable and secure.

  If you want to get an idea of the full range of changes, visit the official release announcement, or check out the changelog for every single detail of what has changed.

  Getting applications made by KDE is also now easier: most are now available as Flatpaks, Snaps and AppImages. You just have to download them and they run straight out of the box. Many programs are also available for more platforms, such as Android, macOs and Windows. Krita and Okular have been available in the Microsoft Store for some time now, and they have recently been joined by Kile, a user-friendly LaTeX document editor.

  Distributions will be updating their own repos and making the new versions available to Linux users over the next few weeks. Look out for your updates!

• Announcing Season of KDE 2020

  By Caio Jordão Carvalho

  

  After a one-year hiatus, KDE Student Programs is very happy to announce Season of KDE 2020!

  Focused on offering an opportunity to anyone (not just enrolled students) contributing to the KDE community, this is a program that is comparable to the well-known Google Summer of Code, with some special differences. A key difference is that SoK projects are not limited to code-focused work, but any that benefit our community. For instance, projects can be about documentation, reports, translation, system administration, web and other types of work as well as code. Each contributor will work with a mentor and within a team that will also help the contributor.

  Schedule

  This year we have decreased the duration of the projects. Previously, all projects were 80 days long. However, during SoK 2018 we included the option of 40-day projects. This new option was widely adopted by participants during 2018 and, so we decided to keep only this alternative.

  Timeline:

  • From the 9th of December 2019 to the 3rd of January 2020: Participant and Mentor Application period
  • 6th of January 2020: Projects announced
  • 8th of January 2020, 00:00 UTC: SoK work period begins
  • 17th of February 2020, 23:59 UTC: End of work
  • 21st of February 2020: Results announced
  • 28th of February 2020: Certificates issued
  • Beginning of Q3 2020: Merchandise and Swag sent out by courier

  Getting Started

  Prospective participants should get in touch with us before the application period begins to discuss possible projects. You can connect with us on Matrix, in the #kde-soc room on IRC, in KDE-SoC on Telegram, or through our mailing list. Besides talking to the SoK team, contact the application maintainer and team with whom you want to work.

  If you’re looking for project ideas, you can find some on our KDE Season of Code 2020 Ideas Page. Mentors please add ideas, so that we have a central repository of project ideas for Season of KDE 2020 and even GSoC 2020. Applicants will work with the teams to develop a proposal, and the SoK admin team will help too.

  Help us spread the word! Tell your friends, blog, tweet, and share on Facebook using the #2020SeasonKDE hashtag.

  Participants and mentors can apply here once applications open.

• Translation Workshop in Indonesia this Weekend

  

  The KDE Indonesia Community will once again hold a Kopdar (local term for BoF). This meeting is the second meeting after the successful meeting in 2018. The activity will be held this weekend with talks and activities about translating KDE software into Indonesian. The main event is for KDE fans in particular and Linux in general to collaborate in KDE translation.

  The event will be held on:
  Day: Saturday, 23 November 2019
  Time: 19.00 (UTC + 7)
  Venue: Midtrans Office Jl. Gandok Baru No.46, Sleman, Yogyakarta
  Speaker: Wantoyek
  Topic: The First Step to Becoming a KDE Translator

  The purpose of this event is to invite KDE activists to participate in contributing to the community, especially as translators. The KDE Indonesia community also opens opportunities to donate activities for anyone who wants to support this activity, please contact Rifky Affand (rifki.affandi3@gmail.com). See you in DIY Yogyakarta, KDE lovers!

  To register go to the registration form and join the KDE Indonesia Telegram channel.

• Apps Update for November

  

  LabPlot

  The big release this month has been LabPlot 2.7. LabPlot is fast becoming one of KDE's highest profile apps. It is an application for interactive graphing and analysis of scientific data. LabPlot provides an easy way to create, manage and edit plots. It allows you to produce plots based on data from a spreadsheet or on data imported from external files. Plots can be exported to several pixmap and vector graphic formats.

  In this release we made the user experience while working with LabPlot easier and more fun. Entering and working with data in spreadsheets is slicker and when reading live data from file sources you can now use a relative path to find a live data source. This allows you to, for example, copy the folder containing the project file together with the data file or files across different folders on your computer without losing the connection to the file or files. In the Project Explorer you can now move top-level objects to different folders via drag & drop.

  The data picker, which allows you to digitize data points on images, has had an overhaul in 2.7. The devs have greatly simplified the overall workflow and the process of digitizing data points as you can see in this video.

  Check out the Labplot YouTube channel for more videos on using this advanced application.

  Bugfixes

  Alternative panel Latte Dock got a bugfix release, 0.9.4. It fixes autoloading in some distros such as Manjaro.

  KDevelop is on its monthly bugfix release which tidied up CLang support for some distros.

  Over 100 apps gets released as part of the KDE Applications bundle which has just had its 19.08.3 bugfix releases and includes:

  • In the video-editor Kdenlive, compositions no longer disappear when reopening a project with locked tracks.
  • Okular's annotation view now shows creation times in local time zone instead of UTC.
  • Keyboard control has been improved in the Spectacle screenshot utility.

  Snap Store

  
  

  Snaps are one of the new container-based package formats for Linux. KDE has over 50 apps published on the Snap store and ready to be installed on almost any Linux distro. On many Ubuntu flavors and derivatives, they come ready to be used. On others you may need to use your package manager to install snapd first. This is usually as simple as running a command such as sudo dnf install snapd or sudo pacman -S snapd. Most of KDE's Snap packages are built by the KDE neon team on their servers and the aim is to get packaging and building integrated more directly with app's repositories and continuous integration setups. This means they are updated more frequently and the moment changes are made so you always get the latest and greatest features and fixes.

  New this month in the Snap store is KDE's video editor, Kdenlive.

  
  

  Coming Up

  
  

  We have a couple of nice progressions towards stable releases from KDE apps. First, the mobile journey search app KTrip has moved into kdereview, meaning the authors want it checked over for sanity before making a stable release. In a first for KDE developer Nicolas Fella, he worked out how to get KTrip into F-Droid, the free software app store for Android.

  Then, the developer tool ELF Dissector passed kdereview, meaning KDE has approved it as something we are happy to put our name on when it gets released. It's a static analysis tool for ELF libraries and executables. It does things like inspect forward and backward dependencies (on a library or symbol level), identify load-time performance bottlenecks such as expensive static constructors or excessive relocations, or size profiling of ELF files.

  Help Out

  By getting KDE's apps into the most popular of channels like the Windows Store, Google Play and F-Droid, we can reach more users and boost KDE's adoption through its software. Now that Kate is successfully shipping in the Windows Store, Kate developer Christoph Cullmann wrote a guide to Windows Store submission. Check it out.

  KDE's All About the Apps Goal has loads of other things you can do to help get our applications to users, so come along and give us a hand.

• Consistency Update

  By Niccolò Venerandi

  

  It's been a month since Consistency was announced as an official goal for KDE at Akademy. During this time, we have focused on setting up all the tools needed to support the goal and tracking already active consistency tasks. Here's an update on what we have done so far and the main tasks we're working on.

  Community Page

  We have created a Consistency page on the community wiki where you can learn what the consistency goal is and find out how you can easily get involved in it. Check it out, regardless of your level of technical expertise!

  Matrix Channel

  There is also a Consistency channel on KDE's Matrix instance. Access it through the webchat page or at consistency:kde.org. You are welcome to come in and join us to discuss anything related to the consistency goal!

  Sprint!

  A sprint is in the works. If you would like to participate, join in the discussion and come and discuss the time and the place on the Matrix channel as well.

  Phabricator Workboard

  We created a Consistency workboard so you can track all the tasks and keep up with their development. You can add yourself as a member or watcher to receive Phabricator updates.

  Tasks are organized into the following categories:

  • Reported shows consistency problems that still need to be addressed, but are currently not being worked on, or are not actively developed yet
  • VDG Discussion lists tasks that the VDG (Visual Design Group) are discussing
  • HIG Specification shows tasks that are waiting for an HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) specification so they can be developed in a consistent way
  • Under Apps Implementation you can find tasks that are actively being worked on
  • Meta contains all the tasks that are not exactly consistency problems, but are related to the consistency goal in some way

  
  The Consistency goal's workboard.

  Consistency Tasks

  There are already many tasks in the Consistency project. Some tasks are new, some existed before. Many of these tasks are quite interesting, so read on to get an idea of what lays ahead for this goal.

  Unify Highlight Effect Style

  This task was already in progress when the Consistency goal was selected, but it is nevertheless a great example of what we'd like to see happen in the goal.

  Currently, Plasma has a discrepancy in its highlight effect. The first kind of effect is a plain rectangle using the highlight color, while the second one is a rounded rectangle with an outline and semi-transparent background. Although the former is more common, we think the latter is more appropriate to use in all situations.

  
  Here's the correct highlight effect in Plasma

  
  Here's what it looks like in Dolphin now.

  
  Dolphin mockup showing correct highlighting.

  A few more examples of what the new highlight could consistently look like in various use-cases:

  
  Big icons sidebar highlight.

  
  In plasmoids.

  
  In menus.

  This is a great example of what consistency can be: not simply applying the same style everywhere, but finding something that a single app does very well, and bringing that to all the other apps. Noah Davis is actively developing this task, and he's doing a great job!

  Unify Sidebar Navigation and Appearance

  These tasks originated directly from the Consistency goal.

  Sidebars are used in many applications and it would be great that they were consistent. There are two main aspects to this: the type of sidebar (system settings-like lists, big square icons, etc.) and the navigation within the sidebar (tabs, combo boxes, etc.).

  What is the best solution? That part is currently under discussion. We welcome everyone's opinions on the matter or, even better, an expert assessment on the feasibility of each of the options.

  Let's quickly illustrate some options:

  For the sidebar appearance, the current main option relies on using lists and big square icons, depending on the number of elements:

  
  Sidebars.

  On the other hand, the option for navigating sidebar views includes tabs that become icons-only when horizontal space is insufficient, vertical tabs on the left, and combo boxes:

  
  Option 1.

  
  Option 1b.

  
  Option 2.

  
  Option 3.

  Furthermore, Nate Graham is focused on making sure that all big icons displayed in sidebars are colorful. He has already fixed a lot of them, and only a few are missing that we know of. Finally, there's also a task to create an HIG specification for sidebars as soon as the discussion settles. We welcome help with any of these tasks. :-)

  Website Redesign

  This task was already ongoing when the Consistency goal was chosen and it aims to modernize old web pages that follow obsolete styles. There are many of them and some are well-hidden. Carl Schwan created and works on this task alongside many other contributors. Check it out and see if you too can find any old websites that need updating!

  That's the end of this update!

  If you would like to help out, come join us in the matrix room and let's make KDE software more consistent together!

IBM Developerworks

• Deploying an OpenStack-based private cloud and Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) on a Linux on IBM Power Systems server
  This article describes private cloud deployment with OpenStack and Linux on IBM Power System LC servers that are running KVM. This article also explains the deployment of Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) using OpenStack.
• Learn Linux, 101: A roadmap for LPIC-1
  Use this roadmap to find IBM developerWorks articles that will help you learn and review basic Linux tasks. And if you're also pursuing professional certification as a Linux system administrator, these articles can help you study for the Linux Professional Institute's LPIC-1: Linux Server Professional Certification exams 101 and exam 102. This roadmap is organized according to the 43 objectives in the 101 and 102 exams, which you are required to pass for LPIC-1 certification.
• Getting started with Neo4j on IBM Power Systems running Linux
  Neo4j on IBM Power Systems running Linux is an ideal solution for managing big data workloads. In this article, you can learn how to install Neo4j and begin using it with your application and data set today.
• Installing CentOS 7.2 on IBM Power System S822LC for high-performance computing (HPC) with a USB device
  Use this article to install CentOS on an IBM Power System LC server with a USB device. This installation is specifically for installing CentOS on an IBM Power System (OpenPOWER) server.
• Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) environment on IBM Power Systems
  This article describes how to install and configure RHV components based on RHEL 7.3 LE, on an IBM POWER8 host.
• Getting started with Neo4j on IBM Power Systems running Linux
  Neo4j on IBM Power Systems running Linux is an ideal solution for managing big data workloads. In this article, you can learn how to install Neo4j and begin using it with your application and data set today.
• Guide to port Linux on x86 applications to Linux on Power
  This article describes how to port your Linux® C/C++ applications from the x86 platform (Intel® or AMD) to IBM® PowerLinux™ using the following straightforward, step-by-step process. First, learn what it takes to prepare for the port and then follow the implementation tips to get your 32-bit or 64-bit x86 code running on PowerLinux.
• Learn Linux, 101: Automate system administration tasks by scheduling jobs
  Learn how to run the same job every day, week, or month. And learn how to schedule a single job when system usage is low, or when you would ratherspend your time in other ways. You can use the material in this tutorial to study for the LPI 102 exam for Linux system administrator certification or to learn for fun.
• Put a Linux-based chess app on the cloud with Bluemix and IBM Containers
  Build a Docker container that uses WebSockets to expose an existing Linux CLI chess engine as a cloud service. This tutorial shows step-by-step the process for building a Docker container and deploying it as a running container on IBM Containers for Bluemix. It includes sample code and a JavaScript chess game that runs in a browser and illustrates how to consume the WebSocket-based service. You can apply the methods demonstrated to containerize almost any pipe-based Linux application and leverage them as cloud services on Bluemix.
• Using Trusted Boot on IBM OpenPOWER servers
  IBM OpenPOWER servers provide a firmware level security feature known as Trusted Boot. Trusted Boot helps defend against a boot code cyberattack by helping to verify that your server is running only authorized firmware. Integrity of your firmware is vital to the security of your system. Trusted Boot works by taking measurements of the executable boot code as the server boots and recording these measurements to a dedicated hardware security module known as the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Together with a process known as remote attestation, you can use the data in the TPM to verify the integrity of your server's boot code.

BSD DevCenter

• Using DesktopBSD
  A few user-friendly distributions of FreeBSD have appeared lately. DesktopBSD is a user-friendly variant of FreeBSD 5.5 that is suitable even for Unix novices. Dru Lavigne walks through the installation and use of DesktopBSD to provide a modern, powerful workstation.
• Using PC-BSD
  A few user-friendly distributions of FreeBSD have appeared lately. PC-BSD is one suitable for the corporate and home desktops, even those of users unfamiliar with Unix. Dru Lavigne walks through the installation and configuration of PC-BSD to provide a modern, powerful workstation.
• Virtualization with FreeBSD Jails
  Consolidating several small machines into one powerful one has advantages in administration and resource usage. It also has implications for security and encapsulation. FreeBSD's jails feature allows you to host multiple separate services on a single machine while keeping them securely separate. Dan Langille shows how.
• Lightweight Web Serving with thttpd
  Apache httpd is full of features and abilities, but sometimes it's too heavy for simple sites or static pages. In some cases, a simpler, lighter web server is a good alternative (or addition). Julio M. Merino Vidal demonstrates how to install and configure the simple, fast, and powerful thttpd to serve simple static and generated content very quickly.
• Running Cyrus IMAP
  As laptops and mobility become more effective and prevalent, your job as a system administrator is to provide users with easy, secure access to their data. IMAP is one way to allow users to receive email wherever they go. Cyrus IMAP is a popular server, but installation and configuration is a bear. Fortunately, Francisco Reyes has the answer in this tutorial on installing and configuring Cyrus IMAP with Postfix.
• Using FreeBSD's ACLs
  The standard Unix permissions scheme works fine if you have simple needs, but juggling groups and users can grow unwieldy very quickly. FreeBSD's Access Control Lists give you more control over who can access files and directories. Dru Lavigne explains how to enable, understand, and use them appropriately.
• Important Notice for BSD DevCenter Readers About O'Reilly RSS and Atom Feeds

  O'Reilly Media, Inc. is rolling out a new syndication mechanism that provides greater control over the content we publish online. You'll notice some improvements immediately, such as better standards compliance, graphical tiles accompanying article descriptions, and enclosure support for podcatching applications. We've tested the new feeds using a variety of popular newsreaders and aggregators, but we realize that there may be a few bumps along the way. If you experience problems, please don't hesitate to send mail to webmaster@oreilly.com. Please include detail about your operating system and reader applications. We also welcome your suggestions. Thank you for your continued support of the BSD DevCenter.

  The following URLs represent the BSD DevCenter's article and weblog content in a variety of popular formats:

  Atom 1.0

  http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/feed/10

  RSS 1.0

  http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/feed/10?format=rss1

  RSS 2.0

  http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/feed/10?format=rss2

  We will begin automatically redirecting the existing feeds to the new feeds above, but we recommend that you update your feedreader's subscription settings to ensure continuous and uninterrupted service.

  Thanks,
  O'Reilly Media, Inc.'s Online Publishing Group

• OpenBSD 3.8: Hackers of the Lost RAID
  Every six months, the OpenBSD team releases a new version of their OS. It's time for OpenBSD 3.8. Federico Biancuzzi recently interviewed the core developers about new features and improvements, as well as ongoing struggles to find support from hardware vendors. Here's what to expect when you upgrade.
• Network Filtering by Operating System
  Some operating systems are better networking citizens than others. Depending on your network, you may want to prioritize traffic from certain machines over traffic from other operating systems--especially when the latest Windows worm strikes. Avleen Vig shows how to use pf, altq, and Squid on FreeBSD to shape your bandwidth with respect to the systems you run.
• Running Commercial Linux Software on FreeBSD
  One intriguing feature of the BSDs is their ability to run binaries for Linux distributions. This can be very useful for running commercial software. Michael W. Lucas demonstrates how to configure and use the Linux compatibility layer on FreeBSD.

Ars Technica

• Help save 17 years of PC game modding history
  Download your backups before GameFront's mod-hosting platform shuts down April 30.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ancient shopping lists point to widespread Bible-era literacy
  Handwriting recognition algorithm suggests even lower-rank soldiers were writing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• First-person drone racing descends upon Wembley Stadium
  90,000-capacity venue is a nearly perfect arena for the emerging sport of FPV.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Guilds of trees share their sugar
  Trees of different species are caught sharing carbon via fungal symbiotes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Guess what? URL shorteners short-circuit cloud security
  Researchers search for Microsoft, Google short URLs, find exposed personal data.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• All it takes is one (very carefully located) atom to make a magnet
  Individual atoms of holmium retain magnetic memories for 25 minutes near 0K.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Signs point to Apple abandoning OS X branding in favor of “MacOS” [Updated]
  Change would bring the Mac in line with iDevices, the Apple Watch, and Apple TV.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• AMC CEO says texting in theaters might be needed to attract millennials
  "You can’t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their phone. It's not how they live."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Science proves that Fangio was the greatest F1 driver of all time
  Mathematical modeling confirms most subjective lists, he really was that good.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Is mobile gaming helping Nintendo’s bottom line?
  Miitomo is off to a fast start, but it needs more to match console revenues.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

AnandTech

• Western Digital Ships 12 TB WD Gold HDD: 8 Platters and Helium

  

  Western Digital has begun to ship its WD Gold HDD with 12 TB capacity to partners and large retailers. The 3.5” drive relies on the same platform as the HGST Ultrastar He12 launched this year, and will initially be available to select customers of the company. The WD Gold 12 TB is designed for enterprise workloads and has all the performance and reliability enhancements that we come to expect, but the availability at retail should make them accessible to wider audiences.  

  From a hardware point of view, the WD Gold 12 TB is similar to the HGST Ultrastar He12 12 TB hard drive: both are based on the fourth-generation HelioSeal technology that uses eight perpendicular magnetic recording platters with a 1.5 TB capacity for each platter. The internal architecture of both HDDs was redesigned compared to predecessors to accommodate the eighth platter. Since the WD Gold and the Ultrastar He12 are aimed at nearline enterprise environments, they are equipped with various sensors and technologies to protect themselves against vibration and as a result, guarantee sustained performance. For example, the WD Gold and the Ultrastar He12 attach their spindles both to the top and the bottom of the drives. In addition the HDDs feature a special technology that increases the accuracy of head positioning in high-vibration environments to improve performance, integrity, and reliability. Finally, both product families support TLER (time-limited error recovery) rebuild assist mode to speed up RAID recovery time.

  Since the WD Gold 12 TB and the HGST Ultrastar He12 are similar internally and feature the same 7200 RPM spindle speed, they also have similar performance — the manufacturer puts them both at 255 MB/s sustained transfer rate and 4.16 ms average latency. The main difference between the WD Gold and the HGST Ultrastar He12 are the enterprise options for the latter: there are models with the SAS 12 Gb/s interface and there are models with SED support and Instant Secure Erase feature.

  Comparison of Western Digital's WD Gold HDDs
  		WD121KRYZ	WD101KRYZ	WD8002FRYZ	WD6002FRYZ	WD4002FRYZ
  Capacity		12 TB	10 TB	8 TB	6 TB	4 TB
  RPM		7200 RPM
  Interface		SATA 6 Gbps
  DRAM Cache			256 MB	128 MB
  NAND Cache			Unknown	No	Yes	Unknown
  Helium-Filling			Yes		No
  Data Transfer Rate (host to/from drive)		255 MB/s	249 MB/s	205 MB/s	226 MB/s	201 MB/s
  MTBF		2.5 million
  Rated Annual Workload		550 TB
  Acoustics (Seek)			-	36 dBA
  Power Consumption	Sequential read	7 W	7.1 W	7.2 W	9.3 W	9 W
  	Sequential write	6.8 W	6.7 W	7 W	8.9 W	8.7 W
  	Random read/write	6.9 W	6.8 W	7.4 W	9.1 W	8.8 W
  	Idle	5 W		5.1 W	7.1 W	7 W
  Warranty		5 Years
  Price as of September 9, 2017	MSRP	$521.99	$410.99	$327.99	$244.99	$183.99
  	Per GB	$0.0435	$0.0411	$0.041	$0.0408	$0.046
  	GB per $	22.98 GB	24.33 GB	24.39 GB	24.48 GB	21.73 GB

  Western Digital aims its WD Gold and HGST Ultrastar He-series drives at operators of cloud and exascale data centers that demand maximum capacity. The 12 TB HDDs can increase the total storage capacity for a single rack from 2440 TB to 2880 TB, replacing 10 TB drives with 12 TB drives, which can be a major benefit for companies that need to maximize their storage capacity per watt and per square meter. Where the HGST-branded drives are made available primarily through B2B channels, the WD Gold are sold both through B2B and B2C channels and thus can be purchased by wider audiences. For example, boutique PC makers, as well as DIY enthusiasts, may start using the WD Gold 12 TB for their high-end builds, something they could not do with the HGST drives. These HDDs may be considered as an overkill for desktops, but since WD’s desktop offerings top at 6 TB, the WD Gold (and the perhaps inevitable future WD Red Pro 12 TB) is the WD’s closest rival for Seagate’s BarraCuda Pro drives.

  

  The WD Gold HDD is currently available directly from Western Digital for $521.99 as well as from multiple retailers, including Newegg for $539.99. While over $500 for a hard drive is expensive, it is actually less than Western Digital charged for its WD Gold 8 TB about 1.5 years ago ($595) and considerably less than the initial price of the WD Gold 10 TB drive last April.

  Related Reading:

  • Western Digital: Sales of Helium-Filled HDDs Accelerating, 15M Sold So Far
  • Western Digital Starts Shipments of HGST Ultrastar He12 12 TB HDDs
  • Western Digital Expands Purple Lineup with a 10 TB Helium-Filled HDD
  • Western Digital Announces Ultrastar He12 12 TB and 14 TB HDDs
  • Western Digital Adds Helium-Filled WD Gold 10 TB HDD to Lineup

  

• An AMD Threadripper X399 Motherboard Overview: A Quick Look at Seven Products

  With the release of AMD’s Threadripper CPUs into the HEDT market, board partners have released new motherboards based on the X399 chipset. Consumers are going to see quad channel memory, native 4-Way SLI and Crossfire capabilities, more full-speed M.2 slots, added 10G network ports, and more on the new platform. We're taking a quick look at each of the motherboards that the vendors are promoting in the market, as well as a few upcoming teasers.

• Corsair Announces 16GB DDR4-4600 Vengeance LPX DRAM Kits

  

  Corsair on Thursday announced two fresh Vengeance LPX memory kits that set new performance records for the product family. The new dual-channel memory kits are intended for Intel’s Kaby Lake-X CPUs and Intel’s X299 platforms, and they operate at DDR4-4500 and DDR4-4600 MT/s data transfer rates and require over 1.4 V.

  Corsair’s new fastest-ever DDR4 memory kits have a combined capacity of 16 GB and are rated for DDR4-4500 with CL19-19-19-39 timings at 1.45 V and for DDR4-4600 at CL19 26-26-46 at 1.5 V. Corsair verified stable performance of its DIMMs at transfer rates well beyond those recommended by JEDEC using an Intel Kaby Lake-X CPU and ASRock’s X299 OC Formula motherboard. The OC Formula motherboard only runs at one DIMM per channel (vs. 2 DPC on most X299 mainboards) in a bid to guarantee a  “cleaner” data path and stable power supply to maximize overclocking potential for DRAM. Given the increased speeds and required overvoltage over the standard, the quality of the motherboard DRAM VRM becomes crucial for stability in case of DDR4-4500 and DDR4-4600 modules. For the same reason, Corsair does not equip its ultra-fast Vengeance LPX DIMMs with RGB LEDs because they may affect power supply and stability.

  

  The new Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-4500 and DDR4-4600 memory kits are based on Samsung’s B-die, produced using 20 nm process technology. These memory ICs have been used by makers of leading-edge DDR4 memory modules (Corsair, G.Skill, GeIL, etc.) for a couple of years and by now they all know what to expect from these devices even in extreme conditions, such as operation with a 20 or 25% overvoltage.

  The new Vengeance LPX memory modules from Corsair come with regular black aluminum heat spreaders that work well with all types of CPU coolers. The embedded XMP 2.0 SPD settings to make it easy for end users to set up correct timings and sub-timings.

  Corsair's 'Extreme' Vengeance LPX Memory for Intel's X299 Platform
  Speed	CL Timing	Voltage	Kit	Capacity	P/N
  DDR4-4500	CL19 19-19-39	1.45 V	2×8 GB	16 GB	CMK16GX4M2F4500C19
  DDR4-4600	CL19 23-23-43	1.5 V			CMK16GX4M2F4600C19

  Corsair’s new Vengeance LPX 16 GB (8 GB×2) DDR4-4500 and DDR4-4600 kits are going to hit the market in the coming days, and they are going to be expensive. The DDR4-4500 kit will retail at $479.99, whereas the DDR4-4600 kit will retail for $549.99.

  Related Reading

  • G.Skill Ups the Ante on Memory Speed and Voltage: 16 GB DDR4-4600 1.5v Kit for Kaby Lake-X
  • G.Skill Announces Quad-Channel DDR4-4200 Kit for Intel Skylake-X CPUs
  • DRAM and Motherboard Makers Demonstrate Quad-Channel DDR4-4000+ Operation
  • The Corsair Neutron NX500 (400GB) PCIe SSD Review: Big Card, Big Pricetag
  • Corsair’s ONE SFF PCs Get Upgraded: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, 32 GB of RAM, NVMe SSD
  • EagleTree and Partners Acquire Majority Stake in Corsair for $525 Million

• Dell’s Visor Available for Pre-Order: A Mixed Reality Headset, Ships in Mid-October

  

  Dell has begun to take pre-orders on its Visor headset for Windows Mixed Reality applications. The company will start shipments of the device in mid-October, just in time for Microsoft’s Windows 10 Creators Update that arrives on October 17 and ahead of the holiday season.

  Starting from September 14, Dell’s Visor WMR headset is available for pre-order from Dell.com/Visor in the U.S. and from PCWorld in the U.K. The headset itself is priced at $349.99, the controller kit costs $99.99 and a Visor with controllers is priced at $449.99. In the U.K., the whole kit is available for pre-order at £429.99. In order to play non-controller based AR/VR games on the Visor, users will also have to get an Xbox One controller. Dell will start to ship its Visor product on October 17, 2017. In addition, the company plans to make the device available in BestBuy stores and directly from Microsoft (online and offline).

  Dell’s Visor AR/VR headset complies with Microsoft’s requirements for headsets compatible with the Windows Mixed Reality platform: it connects to Windows 10-based PCs using HDMI and USB cables, it features two 1440×1440@90 Hz LCD panels (for a total resolution of 2880×1440) and two cameras to capture the outside world. While ergonomics and industrial designs of WMR-compliant headsets from Dell, Acer, ASUS and Lenovo are different, internally they end up being very similar.

  

  The shipments date of the Dell Visor coincides with the launch date of Microsoft’s Windows 10 Creators Update, which will bring support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets to end users. That said it is highly likely that other makers of WMR gear will try to ship their products around the time of the official launch of the platform. In the meantime, Dell seems to be the first with pre-orders.

  Related Reading

  • Dell Enters VR Arena With "Visor" HMD
  • ASUS Details HC102 Mixed Reality Headset for Windows
  • Lenovo Immerses into Windows Mixed Reality with Lenovo Explorer

• HP Updates Z8 Workstations: Up to 56 Cores, 3 TB RAM, 9 PCIe Slots, 1700W

  

  HP has updated its most powerful dual-processor Z8 workstation line with the latest components. The new systems contain up to two Intel Skylake-SP Xeon CPUs with up to 56 cores in total, up to 3 TB of DDR4 RAM, terabytes of storage as well as up to 9 PCIe slots along with optional TB3 and 10 GbE support via add-in cards. The HP Z8 workstation will be the pinnacle of HP’s computers for personal and professional use and its price in high-end configurations will surpass even the top-of-the-range gaming PCs.

  Historically, most high-end workstations relied on server platforms to support more than one CPU and thus offer higher performance than any consumer desktop. The emergence of dual-core and then multi-core CPUs a little more a decade ago changed the workstation market quite quickly and significantly. In a world with quad-core CPUs, 4-way workstations did not make a lot of sense for 99% of the users and therefore they quickly became extinct. Moreover, by now, even 2-way workstations became rare. Today, the vast majority of workstations use one multi-core CPU that provides enough compute horsepower for professional workloads, whereas GPU-based accelerators are used for tasks like simulations. Nonetheless, there are still users who need maximum x86 performance and who therefore require 2-way workstations — and the HP Z8 is aimed precisely at such users. While the Intel Xeon Scalable processors with extreme core count were developed primarily with servers in mind, the Z8 is a system that people put on their desks and therefore it has a number of specific requirements regarding noise levels, features, security, compatibility with components and so on.

  

  One of the key components of all PCs is its microprocessor. When it comes to the HP Z8, it is based on up to two Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 with 28 cores and 205 W TDP each, which means that the system has to remove 410 W of thermal energy only from CPUs, and this requirement had a significant impact on the design of the whole system. The company did not want to use a liquid cooling system, so it had to design an air cooling solution capable of cooling down two extremely hot CPUs as well as up to 24 DDR4-2666 memory modules. Each processor has its own radiator equipped with a high-pressure air fan (which speed is regulated by BIOS in accordance with system temperature monitored by numerous sensors). In addition, the system has multiple airflow vents on the front and on the top as well as one fan that exhausts hot air on the back. According to HP, such a chassis architecture ensures that the second CPU does not re-use warm air from the first one, but since they are located in close proximity, one will always affect another with its heat. Finally, the system has additional fans that cool down other components and produce more airflow within the chassis.

  

  Speaking of other components, the HP Z8 supports plenty of them — whatever one might want. First off, the system has four PCIe 3.0 x16 slots for graphics cards or SSDs (up to AMD Radeon Pro, NVIDIA Quadro P100 or GP100, up to 4 TB HP Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro, etc.) three PCIe 3.0 x8 (two are non-hot swap) slots for SSDs and two PCIe 3.0 x4 slots. In addition to PCIe-based storage, the Z8 also features four 2.5”/3.5” bays for SATA/SAS SSDs or HDDs as well as two external 5.25” bays that can also accommodate drive form-factor storage devices using appropriate adapters. Those who need it, HP may also install an SD card reader as well as a slim DVD or Blu-ray ODD.

  

  When it comes to connectivity, the HP Z8 has all the bases covered. By default, the system supports two GbE connectors (powered by Intel controllers), an 802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth module (Intel Wireless-AC 8265 controller), two USB 3.1 Type-C ports and two USB 3.1 Type-A ports on the front, four USB 3.1 Type-A ports on the back, multi-channel audio connectors (a Realtek HD ALC221 controller) on the back, a TRRS audio connector on the front and so on. Meanwhile, owners can optionally order to install two 10 GbE controllers, a Thunderbolt 3-supporting add-in-card and a variety of custom components for various industries and workloads (an external audio solution for a 5.25” bay, for example).

  Since many businesses and enterprises require robust security for all of their machines, the HP takes everything seriously and ships the Z8 with a whole set of security features that it calls HP SureStart. The system features secure authentication, full volume encryption, TPM 2.0, has a Kensington lock and so on.

  

  All the CPUs, GPUs, SSDs and other components require a lot of power and HP Z8 has plenty of it. The manufacturer offers 1125 W, 1450 W or 1700 W internal PSUs with up to 90 % efficiency. The PSU is located in a compartment behind the motherboard, so chances are that HP uses proprietary units.

  General Specifications of the HP Z8 2017
  		HP Z8 G4
  CPU	Family	Intel Xeon Scalable processor
  	Models	Xeon Platinum 8180 (2.5GHz/3.8GHz, 38.5MB cache, 28 cores) Xeon Platinum 8160 (2.1 GHz/3.7 GHz, 33 MB cache, 24 cores) Xeon Gold 6152 (2.1 GHz/3.7 GHz, 30.25 MB cache, 22 cores) Xeon Gold 6154 (3 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 18 cores) Xeon Gold 6148 (2.4 GHz/3.7 GHz, 27.5 MB cache, 20 cores) Xeon Gold 6142 (2.6 GHz/3.7 GHz, 22 MB cache, 16 cores) Xeon Gold 6136 (3 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 12 cores) Xeon Gold 6140 (2.3 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 18 cores) Xeon Gold 6134 (3.2 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 8 cores) Xeon Gold 6132 (2.6 GHz/3.7 GHz, 19.25 MB cache, 14 cores) Xeon Gold 6130 (2.1 GHz/3.7 GHz, 22 MB cache, 16 cores) Xeon Gold 6128 (3.4 GHz/3.7 GHz, 19.25 MB cache, 6 cores) Xeon Gold 5120 (2.2 GHz/3.2 GHz, 19.25 MB cache, 14 cores) Xeon Gold 5118 (2.3 GHz/3.2 GHz, 16.5 MB cache, 12 cores) Xeon Gold 5122 (3.6 GHz/3.7 GHz, 16.5 MB cache, 4 cores) Xeon Silver 4116 (2.1 GHz/3 GHz, 16.5 MB cache, 12 cores) Xeon Silver 4114 (2.2 GHz/3 GHz, 13.75 MB cache, 10 cores) Xeon Silver 4112 (2.6 GHz/3 GHz, 8.25 MB cache, 4 cores) Xeon Silver 4108 (1.8 GHz/3 GHz, 11 MB cache, 8 cores) Xeon Bronze 3106 (1.7 GHz, 11 MB cache, 8 cores) Xeon Bronze 3104 (1.7 GHz, 8.25 MB cache, 6 cores)
  Graphics	Entry	NVIDIA Quadro P400 (2 GB GDDR5) NVIDIA Quadro P600 (2 GB GDDR5) AMD FirePro W2100 (2 GB DDR3)
  	Mid-Range	NVIDIA Quadro P1000 (4 GB GDDR5) NVIDIA Quadro P2000 (5 GB GDDR5) AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 (4 GB GDDR5) AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100 (4 GB GDDR5)
  	High-End	NVIDIA Quadro P4000 (8 GB GDDR5) AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 Graphics (8 GB GDDR5)
  	Ultra High-End	NVIDIA Quadro P5000 (16 GB GDDR5X) NVIDIA Quadro P6000 (24 GB GDDR5X) AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 Graphics (16 GB HBM2) NVIDIA Quadro GP100 (16 GB HBM2)
  RAM		24 DDR4 DIMMs, up to 1.5 TB of DDR4-2666 (3TB options in H1 2018, when M CPUs are available)
  Storage	Bays	4 × 2.5"/3.5", 2 × 5.25", 1 × slim 5.25" for ODDs
  	Options	300 GB SAS (15000 rpm) 500 GB up to 2 TB SATA (7200 rpm) 500 GB SATA SED (7200 rpm) 1 TB up to 4 TB 7200 rpm SATA Enterprise 256 GB up to 2 TB SATA SSD 256 GB up to 512 GB SATA SED Opal 2 SSD 240 GB up to 480 GB SATA Enterprise SSD 256 GB up to 1 TB HP Z Turbo Drive PCIe SSD M.2 256 GB up to 512 GB HP Z Turbo Drive PCIe SED SSD M.2 256 GB up to 4 TB HP Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro PCIe SSD HP Slim DVD-ROM HP Slim Blu-ray Writer HP Slim DVD-Writer
  Networking	GbE	Integrated Intel I219-LM PCIe GbE Integrated Intel X722 PCIe GbE Intel I350-T2 dual-port GbE NIC Intel I350-T4 dual-port GbE NIC Intel I210-T1 PCIe GbE
  	10 GbE	Intel X550-T2 dual-port GbE NIC Intel X710-DA2 dual-port GbE NIC Intel 10 GbE SFP+ SR transceiver HP dual-port 10GBase-T NIC
  	Wireless	Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 Combo, non-vPro
  PCIe 3.0 Expansion Slots	x4	2
  	x8	3
  	x16	4
  	Notes	1 PCIe x8 has rear bulkhead access and 2 PCIe x8 are internal access only. Slot 1: Transforms to PCIe x8 when 2nd CPU is installed. Slots 3 and 6: are available only when 2nd processor is installed. PCIe x16 - Available only when 2nd processor is installed
  USB	3.1	2 × Type-A, 2 × Type-C
  	3.0	4 × Type-A
  	2.0	unknown
  Thunderbolt		Optional Thunderbolt 3 add-in-card
  Card Reader		4-in-1 card reader
  PSUs		1125 W, 1450 W, 1700 W
  Other I/O		Audio connectors, Realtek HD ALC221 controller
  Input Devices		HP Wireless Business Slim Keyboard and Mouse Combo HP USB Business Slim Keyboard USB Premium wired keyboard USB Smart Card (CCID) keyboard 3Dconnexion CADMouse HP USB Optical Mouse HP PS/2 Mouse HP USB Hardened Mouse
  Dimensions		8.5 × 21.7 × 17.5 in 21.59 × 55.12 × 44.45 cm
  Weight		Starting at 49.4 lb Starting at 22.4 kg
  Operating System		Windows 10 Pro for Workstations HP Installer Kit for Linux HP Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  Price		Starting at $2,439

  Now, time to talk about availability and pricing. HP intends to ship the HP Z8 workstations in October. An entry-level model with one CPU, a basic GPU and storage will cost $2,439. Meanwhile, once the system is equipped with two Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs, NVIDIA Quadro P100/GP100 graphics, multiple PCIe SSDs, 3 TB of DDR4 memory, several 12 TB HDDs and various advanced I/O capabilities (TB3, 10 GbE, etc.), its price will easily hit tens of thousands of dollars.

  It's normally at this point that a vendor such as HP states that the high-end models are likely to be sold under B2B contracts, where per-unit costs are not as severe. One OEM has told us that only 5% of sales of their high-end workstations come through direct sales for onlike pricing.

  Gallery: HP Updates Its Dual-Processor Z8 Workstation: Up to 56 Cores, 3 TB RAM, 9 PCIe Slots, 1700W

  

  Related Reading

  • HP Announces Omen X Laptop: 17.3” LCD, Core i7 + GeForce GTX with Overclocking
  • HP Expands Commercial VR Strategy: Z VR Backpack and Immersion Centers
  • HP Launches Elite x2 1012 G2 2-in-1: 12.3-Inch Display, Kaby Lake, 1 TB SSD, 16 GB LPDDR3, TB3
  • HP Z2 Mini G3 Announced: Miniature Professional Workstation with Xeon and Quadro
  • HP Introduces HP ENVY 13 Laptops with Kaby Lake, USB-C, New Battery, $849
  • HP Updates The Z240 Workstation With The Core i7-6700K

• TSMC Teams Up with ARM and Cadence to Build 7nm Data Center Test Chips in Q1 2018

  

  TSMC has announced plans to build its first test chips for data center applications using its 7 nm fabrication technology. The chip will use compute cores from ARM, a Cache Coherent Interconnect for Accelerators (CCIX), and IP from Cadence (a DDR4 memory controller, PCIe 3.0/4.0 links). Given the presence of the CCIX bus and PCIe 4.0 interconnects, the chip will be used to show the benefits of TSMC’s 7 nm process primarily for high-performance compute (HPC) applications. The IC will be taped out in early Q1 2018.

  The 7 nm test chips from TSMC will be built mainly to demonstrate capabilities of the semiconductor manufacturing technology for performance-demanding applications and find out more about peculiarities of the process in general. The chip will be based on ARMv8.2 compute cores featuring DynamIQ, as well as a CMN-600 interconnect bus for heterogeneous multi-core CPUs. ARM and TSMC do not disclose which cores they are going to use for the device - the Cortex A55 and A75 are natural suspects, but that’s a speculation at this point. The new chip will also have a DDR4 memory controller as well as PCI Express 3.0/4.0 links, CCIX bus and peripheral IP buses developed by Cadence. The CCIX bus will be used to connect the chip to Xilinx’s Virtex UltraScale+ FPGAs (made using a 16 nm manufacturing technology), so in addition to implementation of its cores using TSMC’s 7 nm fabrication process, ARM will also be able to test Cadence’s physical implementation of the CCIX bus for accelerators, which is important for future data center products.

  TSMC's 7 nm Test Chip at Glance
  	Logic	PHY
  Compute Cores	ARM v8.2 with DynamIQ
  Internal Interconnect Bus	ARM CMN-600
  CCIX	Cadence
  DDR4 DRAM Controller	?	Cadence
  PCI Express 3.0/4.0	Cadence
  Peripheral Buses	I2C, SPI and QSPI by Cadence
  Verification and Implementation Tools	Cadence

  As reported multiple times, TSMC’s 7 nm manufacturing process will be a “long” node and the foundry expects the majority of its large customers to use it. By contrast, the current 10 nm technology is aimed primarily at developers of smartphone SoCs. TSMC projects that its first-generation CLN 7FF fabrication technology, compared to its CLN16FF+, will enable its customers to reduce power consumption of their chip by 60% (at the same frequency and complexity), increase their clock rate by 30% (at the same power and transistor count) and shrink their die sizes by 70% at the same complexity. Sometime in 2019, TSMC plans to start making chips using its CLN7FF+ process technology with EUV for critical layers. TSMC claims that the CLN7FF+ will enable the company’s customers to further increase transistor density while improving other areas, such as yields and power consumption.

  TSMC does not disclose which of its 7 nm process technologies announced so far it is going to use for the test chip, but the use of EUV for test chips is something that cannot be excluded. For example, GlobalFoundries claims that they use EUV to accelerate production of test chips. On the other hand, since design rules for CLN7FF and CLN7FF+ are different, it is highly likely that TSMC conservatively uses the former for the test chip.

  TSMC’s CLN7FF process tech passed qualification in April and was expected to enter risk production in Q2 2017, according to TSMC’s management. The foundry expected 13 CLN7FF tape outs this year and it is projected that the fabrication technology would be used commercially starting from Q2 2018. Therefore, taping out the test vehicle using the first-gen DUV-only 7 nm process in Q1 2018 seems a bit late for early adopters who intend to ship their 7 nm SoCs in the second half of next year. Meanwhile, early adopters (read: Apple, Qualcomm, and some others) get access to new process technologies long before their development is completed and final PDKs (process development kits) are ready. Keeping in mind that the test chips feature a CCIX and PCIe 4.0 buses, it is clearly designed to show advantages of TSMC’s 7 nm process technologies for HPC applications. In fact, this is what TSMC says itself:

  “Artificial intelligence and deep learning will significantly impact industries including media, consumer electronics and healthcare,” said Dr. Cliff Hou, TSMC vice president, Research & Development/Design and Technology Platform. “TSMC’s most advanced 7nm FinFET process technology provides high performance and low power benefits that satisfy distinct product requirements for High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications targeting these markets.”

  Related Reading

  • GlobalFoundries Details 7 nm Plans: Three Generations, 700 mm², HVM in 2018
  • Intel to Equip Fab 42 for 7 nm
  • Samsung and TSMC Roadmaps: 8 and 6 nm Added, Looking at 22ULP and 12FFC
  • ARM Launches DynamIQ: big.Little to Eight Cores Per Cluster
  • ARM Announces Mali-G72: Bifrost Refined for the High-End SoC
  • ARM Announces Mali-G72: Bifrost Refined for the High-End SoC

• One Design, Two Products: The SanDisk Ultra 3D (1TB) and WD Blue 3D (1TB) SSD Reviews, with BiCS 3D NAND

  The first 3D NAND SSDs from Western Digital and its SanDisk subsidiary have arrived. The same mainstream SATA SSD with 3D TLC is being sold under two names, but either way it is a big step forward: SanDisk's 64-layer BiCS3 3D NAND enables faster performance and lower power consumption.

• Raja Koduri, Head of AMD's RTG, to go on Sabbatical until December

  

  Late last night, PC Perspective confirmed rumors that Raja Koduri, AMD's Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, is to go on sabbatical. Sourcing Raja’s internal letter to the RTG team, he will be taking leave from September 25 until an unspecified date in December, to spend time with his family. Dr Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, will lead RTG in the interim.

  As reproduced by Ryan Shrout, Raja’s letter is as follows:

  RTG Team,

  You haven’t heard from me collectively in a while – a symptom not only of the whirlwind of launching Vega, but simply of the huge number of demands on my time since the formation of RTG. Looking back over this short period, it is an impressive view. We have delivered 6 straight quarters of double-digit growth in graphics, culminating in the launch of Vega and being back in high-performance. What we have done with Vega is unparalleled. We entered the high-end gaming, professional workstation and machine intelligence markets with Vega in a very short period of time. The demand for Vega (and Polaris!) is fantastic, and overall momentum for our graphics is strong.

  Incredibly, we as AMD also managed to spectacularly re-enter the high-performance CPU segments this year. We are all exceptionally proud of Ryzen, Epyc and Threadripper. The computing world is not the same anymore and the whole world is cheering for AMD. Congratulations and thanks to those of you in RTG who helped see these products through. The market for high-performance computing is on an explosive growth trajectory driven by machine intelligence, visual cloud, blockchain and other exciting new workloads. Our vision of immersive and instinctive computing is within grasp. As we enter 2018, I will be shifting my focus more toward architecting and realizing this vision and rebalancing my operational responsibilities.

  At the beginning of the year I warned that Vega would be hard. At the time, some folks didn’t believe me. Now many of you understand what I said. Vega was indeed hard on many, and my sincere heartfelt thanks to all of you who endured the Vega journey with me. Vega was personally hard on me as well and I used up a lot of family credits during this journey. I have decided to take a time-off in Q4 to spend time with my family. I have been contemplating this for a while now and there was never a good time to do this. Lisa and I agreed that Q4 is better than 2018, before the next wave of product excitement. Lisa will be acting as the leader of RTG during by absence. My sincere thanks to Lisa and rest of AET for supporting me in this decision and agreeing to take on additional workload during my absence.

  I am looking to start my time-off on Sept 25th and return in December.

  Thank you, all of you, for your unwavering focus, dedication and support over these past months, and for helping us to build something incredible. We are not done yet, and keep the momentum going!

  Regards, Raja

  Since his return to AMD in 2013 and the reformation of a monolithic graphics division with RTG in 2015, Raja has overseen and led all aspects of AMD graphics hardware and software. Raja’s public presence and involvement render him the face of graphics at AMD, in all senses of the word, from Capsaicin events to Twitter and Reddit. Following Vega’s launch, Raja had taken two weeks vacation to visit family, following visits to company sites in India.

  Given the news in his letter, we hope all is well.

• Apple 2017: The iPhone X (Ten) Announced

  

  The hot button item expected to come from Apple’s announcement today was the set of iPhones being announced. The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus were the expected models to come to market, but Apple felt that for the 10-year anniversary since the launch of the original iPhone, it should release a new model which ‘breaks the standard for another 10 years’. This new iPhone X device goes all in on some significant features that are novel to the Apple smartphone ecosystem: an edge-to-edge OLED display, a TrueDepth front-facing camera system, removal of TouchID in favor of a new facial recognition system called FaceID, and a few new features surrounding the integrated neural engine inside the A11 SoC.

  

  The iPhone X (pronounced iPhone Ten) is a visually significant departure from previous Apple smartphones. The 5.8-inch display is called an ‘edge-to-edge’ display in the marketing material, citing minimal bezels and taking up pretty much the full real estate of the phone. Apple also dubs this as a new retina display, specifically a ‘Super Retina’ display, with a 2436x1125 resolution with a pixel density of 458 PPI. The display is Apple’s first foray into OLED technology on a smartphone, as ‘previous versions of OLED were not sufficient’ in previous generations. This means that Apple is promoting features such as HDR10 for high dynamic range, a 1000000:1 contrast ratio, and high color accuracy. That contrast ratio is due to the blacks provided by the OLED display, although it will be interesting to see what the practical limits are. Apple has always been consistent with having superb color accuracy on its smartphones, so we will have to see in our testing if OLED changes things in Apple’s qualification process. Also Apple’s TrueTone technology makes its way from the iPad to the iPhone. This display technology uses data from the ambient light sensor to detect the ambiance of the surroundings and adjust colors (particularly when reading black on white) and adjusting the display to make it easier to read. The display will also support 3D Touch.

  

  With Apple moving to a full-screen technology like this, there is no room for the standard Home button, and with it, TouchID. As a replacement/upgrade, Apple is implementing FaceID: a set of front-facing technologies that will develop a face-map of a user and embed that as the passcode. This functionality is likely derived from Apple’s acquisitions of PrimeSense in 2013 (the IP behind Microsoft Kinect) and FaceShift in 2015. Apple states that the technology uses its embedded neural network engine to speed up facial recognition, but also that algorithms are in place such that the system will work if a user puts on glasses, wears a hat, has different hair, and even in low light. The algorithms will also auto-update as a user grows a beard. A lot of security researchers have questioned this move, while Apple quotes that the possibility for a false positive on TouchID was around 50k-to-1, FaceID should be more similar to a million-to-one. With FaceID, users will be able to unlock the device, as well as use their face to preapprove ApplePay purchases before touching a pay pad.

  

  In order to enable FaceID, Apple implemented a small top area for the main hardware. This includes an infrared camera, a flood illuminator, the front camera, and a dot projector. The hardware will map the face in three dimensions with a 5-second startup (when in sufficient light) to produce a face mesh. One version of the mesh, with the textures as part of the algorithm, will be held in a secure enclave for identification and approval. At this point in time, only one face per device can be registered, marking an initial limitation in the hardware. One of the other features for the technology shown by Apple was the ability to generate a face mesh and map new textures to it, such as new SnapChat ‘masks’, or animated emoji in Message. The hardware will map 50 muscle tracking points, and a user can choose one of twelve animal emoji (fox, cat, dog, pig, unicorn, poop emoji) and record a ten second message where the ‘ani-moji’ will mimic in real-time how the user is moving and speaking in order to send to the other person. Apples plan here is to open the resources up to developers to use in their own applications.

  

  

  Because the FaceID hardware is essentially an indent into the display, there will be some issues on content that will have to be addressed. On the home screen, Apple has designed the top icons to be inside the two nooks either side of the FaceID hardware, and adjust as needed. As shown by several journalists on the show floor at the launch event, the video will naturally default to fit perfectly without the little nooks, but if a user selects full screen, it will wrap around the FaceID hardware and intrude into the video being watched. Apple usually prides itself in the simplicity in its display support, and this might be a little scratch in that armor.

  

  With no home button, Apple is having to implement new interactions to deal with regular home button actions. To wake the phone from a screen off state, a user can tap on the display (or use FaceID if setup). To get to the home screen, the user can swipe up in any application, although this seems a bit fraught with issues, especially with games where swiping up is a key mechanic of the application. In order to get the list of applications in memory, then swipe up but hold the finger down on the screen. Apple neglected to mention how to put the phone to sleep / screen off mode – there is a button on the side, but that is specifically for Siri. In order to get the notifications menu, swipe down from the top.

  

  Under the hood, Apple is using its new A11 Bionic processor, with significant upgrades over the A10 and A10X. Details were scarce, but this is a TSMC 10nm design featuring six cores: two high-performance cores and four power efficient cores, with all six cores available for use at the same time. Apple is quoting that the high-performance cores are 25% faster than the high-performance cores in A10, while the high-efficiency cores are 70% faster than their counterparts in A10. No speeds are details about the cores were provided, though some initial analysis online from the code base suggests that the larger cores have two levels of private cache, while the smaller cores only have one level of private cache, with a high level of shared cache between both sets before hitting the DRAM. The A11 SoC will come in at 4.3 billion transistors, and features Apple’s second generation performance controller to assist with the 2+4 configuration. Also involved is a new GPU, which Apple states is its own custom design, coming in at ‘three cores’ (whatever that means in this context) and offers 30% higher performance than the graphics in the A10. Apple also stated that it can offer A10 graphics for half the A10 power, and that the GPU can assist in machine learning. We’ve seen discussions on Apple’s Metal 2 compute already appear at WWDC, so this is likely what Apple is talking about. The SoC also features a new ‘Neural Engine’ inside, offering two cores and 600 Giga-Ops per second, although no information as to how this inference hardware operates or at what precision (for example, Huawei’s NPU gives 1.92 TFLOPs of FP16). Apple was very light on A11 details, so we’ll likely revisit this topic later with more details.

  

  For the camera system, Apple is using a vertical dual camera on the rear of the iPhone X, rather than the horizontal cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 8 Plus. Both of these cameras are new models, both are 12 megapixels, and both come with optical image stabilization. One camera is f/1.8, while the other is f/2.4, with both having larger and faster sensors with deeper pixels than previous iPhones to aid in image focus. Like with the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, Apple will use the embedded Neural Engine to assist with photo taking, such as adjusting skin-tone mapping in real-time depending on the environment. The camera also supports dual Quad-LED flash.

  

  The full design is glass on the back and front, using a new technology that Apple is quoting as the most shatter-resistant glass on an iPhone, and the band in the device will be ‘surgical grade stainless steel’ rather than aluminum. The iPhone X will be dust and water resistant, although Apple stopped short of giving it a full IPXX rating. Due to the glass, Apple is equipping the iPhone X with wireless charging capabilities using the Qi standard, and will offer a large ‘Air Power’ pad in 2018 that will allow users to wireless charge the iPhone X, the new Apple Watch Series 3, and the Air Pods all at the same time. Apple did not go into the size of the battery, although it does quote it as having two hours more battery life than the iPhone 7, despite the large OLED display.

  

  Lots of features that we’ve seen discussed in previous Apple launches were glossed over here: changes in the haptic feedback, anything about audio (there’s no 3.5mm jack, if you were wondering), any hard performance metrics, SoC details about the cores and how/if they are different, or frequencies, or how the Neural Engine is laid out, or even how much DRAM is in the device. This is likely due to the fact that even for a two-hour presentation, time was spent detailing the new features more than the underlying hardware. Unlike other smartphone vendors or chip designers, Apple doesn’t do a deeper ‘Tech Day’ on their hardware, which is a shame.

  

  What we do know is that Apple will be offering two storage options, 64GB and 256GB, and two colors in Space Grey and Silver (both of which have a slight pearlescence, according to Apple). The 64GB model will start at $999, and include Ear Pods in the box. The 256 GB model will have some markup, although Apple did not disclose how much. The iPhone X will go up for pre-order on October 27^th in around 30 countries, and ship on November 3^rd.

  

  Gallery: Apple 2017: The iPhone X (Ten) Announced

  

  Additional: turns out there are a lot more specifications on Apple's product page that just went live. Key features are screen brightness (625 nits), dimensions (143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7 mm, 174 grams), native FLAC support and HDR video playback support. The 256 GB model will start at $1149, putting a $150 mark-up on the higher capacity, and the Lightning-to-3.5mm cables are still included in the box.

  Apple iPhone
  	iPhone 7	iPhone 7 Plus	iPhone 8	iPhone 8 Plus	iPhone X
  SoC	Apple A10 Fusion 2 x 2.3 GHz Hurricane 2 x little cores		Apple A11 Bionic 2 x High-Perf 4 x High Efficiency
  GPU	6 Core PowerVR GPU		3-Core Apple Custom
  Display	4.7-inch 1334 x 750 IPS LCD DCI-P3	5.5-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD DCI-P3	4.7-inch 1334 x 750 IPS LCD DCI-P3	5.5-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD DCI-P3	5.8-inch 2436x1125 OLED DCI-P3
  Size / Mass	138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm 138 grams	158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3 mm 188 grams	138.4 x 67.3 x 7.3 mm 148 grams	158.4 x 78.1 x 7.5 mm 202 grams	143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7mm 174 grams
  Battery	1960 mAh (7.55Whr)	2900 mAh (11.17Whr)	?	?	+2hr over iPhone 7
  Wireless Charging	-	-	Qi	Qi	Qi
  Rear Cameras	12 MP f/1.8, OIS Wide Color Gamut Quad LED True Tone Flash		12 MP, f/1.8, OIS Wide Color Gamut Quad LED True Tone Flash
  	-	12MP ƒ/2.8 Telephoto, 2x Optical Portrait Mode	-	12 MP f/2.8 Telephoto, 2x Optical Portrait Mode, Portrait Lighting	12 MP f/2.4 Telephoto, OIS 2x Optical Portrait Mode, Portrait Lighting
  Front Camera	7MP ƒ/2.2 Wide Gamut Retina Flash		7MP ƒ/2.2 Wide Gamut Retina Flash		7MP f/2.2 Wide Gamut Retina Flash Portrait Mode, Portrait Lighting
  Storage	32 / 128 / 256 GB		64 / 256 GB
  I/O	Apple Lightning connector		Apple Lightning connector
  WiFi	2.4 / 5GHz 2T2R 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, NFC BlueTooth 4.2		2.4 / 5GHz 2T2R 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, NFC BlueTooth 5.0
  Launch Price	32 GB: $649 128 GB: $749 256 GB: $849	32 GB: $769 128 GB: $869 256 GB: $969	64 GB: $699 256 GB: $849	64 GB: $799 256 GB: $949	64 GB: $999 256 GB: $1149

   

   

• Apple 2017: Announcing a new Apple Watch Series 3, with Intel LTE/Cellular

  

  Today at Apple’s new Steve Jobs Theatre, Apple announced its new Apple Watch, called the Series 3. This is a new model above the Series 2 announced last year, with the new headline feature being LTE support through an integrated modem, which we believe to be an Intel modem according to trusted analysts.

  

  With other watch makers having had LTE models, it had been one of the missing features with the Watch Series 2. Now Apple is making that leap, supporting both LTE and UTMS by using the display as the antenna, rather than internal antennas that might take up extra space. Rather than use a regular SIM, Apple is implementing an eSIM to save on size, which was demonstrated on AT&T during the presentation. To that end, Apple stated that the Watch Series 3 is only 0.25mm wider than the Watch Series 2 on the rear crystal, with all other dimensions the same. With LTE, Apple states that users can use features such as Maps, take calls, and stream Apple music.

  

  At the heart of the Watch Series 3 is a new processor – moving up to a dual core version over the Series 2. Apple gave very little information on the processor, except that it offers 70% more performance over the Series 2 but stays at the same size. No details on the cores inside, or the node, but with the new LTE add-in, Apple is quoting the same 18 hours of battery life with a mix of LTE, WiFi and screen-off use during that time.

  

  Also in the hardware is a new wireless chip, called the W2. Again Apple was light on details, except to say that it offers 85% faster WiFi combined with a 50% higher efficiency. On the health side, there is a new barometric altimeter, for calculating air pressure and detecting going up stairs.

  For software, Apple is going to launch WatchOS4 on September 19^th , which will ship on the new Watch Series 3. This update will bring the heart rate detection to now display directly on the display, with an enhanced heart-rate detection mechanism that will provide resting heart rate data, calculated based on continuous data over several days. Apple will also add in notifications for users that might experience abnormal heart rates when exercise is not detected. This will be in conjunction with Apple’s new Heart Study, which will use Watch data to analyse arrhythmia in a collaboration with Stanford Medical and the FDA. The first phase of this Heart Study will be available to download in the US early next year.

  

  For prices, Apple gave the base Watch Series 3 as $329, but in order to have the LTE version the price increases to $399. It looks like Apple will be discontinuing the Series 2 as it was not mentioned, but the Series 1 model will still be available at $249. Orders will begin on September 15^th, with availability on the 22^nd.

  The Apple Watch Numbers

  During the presentation, Apple stated that the Apple Watch is now the #1 watch brand worldwide, up from #2 in 2016, supplanting Rolex. This is on the back of a 50% year-on-year growth in Apple Watch sales, with Apple citing a 97% customer satisfaction rate. Apple did not disclose the exact number of unit sales, due to bundling the numbers in with other products, and so did not disclose if the 50% YoY was on unit sales or overall revenue from accessory or app sales.

  Gallery: Apple 2017: Announcing a new Apple Watch Series 3, with Intel LTE/Cellular