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Comment Re:4K waste of time (Score 1) 49

Isn't that the point... the ability to Switch screens? It's called that for a reason.

I've got a 65" TV. It would be nice to get real 4K output, even if it's not going to have 4K when playing in handheld mode. 15 years ago, people bitched about the Wii only doing 480p, and now you're here complaining about Nintendo doing 4K, even if they're late to the party.

Submission + - Interview with Fedora project leader Matthew Miller on 15 years of Fedora (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Fedora—as a Linux distribution—will celebrate the 15th anniversary of its first release in November, though its technical lineage is much older, as Fedora Core 1 was created following the discontinuation of Red Hat Linux 9 in favor of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Five years after the start of Fedora.next, the distribution is on the right track—stability has improved, and work on minimizing hard dependencies in packages and containers, including more audio/video codecs by default, flicker-free boot, and lowering power consumption for notebooks, among other changes, have greatly improved the Fedora experience, while improvements in upstream projects such as GNOME and KDE have likewise improved the desktop experience.

In a wide-ranging interview with TechRepublic, Fedora project leader Matthew Miller discussed lessons learned from the past, popular adoption and competing standards for software containers, potential changes coming to Fedora, as well as hot-button topics, including systemd.

Submission + - npm CEO Bryan Bogensberger exits after eight months of turmoil (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Bryan Bogensberger's exit from npm, inc was quietly announced Friday afternoon in a press release stating that Bogensberger "resigned effective immediately to pursue new opportunities." This marked likely one of the few quiet actions in Bogensberger's tumultuous tenure as CEO of npm, the popular package manager of Node.js.

Bogensberger started as CEO on January 9 this year, as part of a move announced by original author and co-founder Isaac Z. Schlueter as part of a plan to commercialize the service. Bogensberger's involvement with the company started in mid-2018, although he was not formally named CEO until 2019 pending the resolution of visa requirements.

Submission + - USB-IF to continue confusing name scheme with USB4 Gen 3x2 (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: USB4 will be formally published at the USB Developer Days Seattle on September 17, and the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) is expected to continue the widely maligned naming scheme for USB speeds introduced in February for USB 3.2, an engineer familiar with the USB-IF's plans told TechRepublic.

As a quick recap, USB 3.1 Gen 2, increased the lane speed to 10 Gbps. A second 10 Gbps lane was added in the USB 3.2 standard, which the USB-IF calls "USB 3.2 Gen 2×2." USB4 (which is not written as "USB 4.0") will reach speeds of 40 Gbps, doubling the speeds again. USB4 was first previewed in March, when the USB Promoter Group announced that USB4 would be based on Intel's Thunderbolt 3 specification, though specific details are expected later this month.

Submission + - IBM open sources POWER ISA and related accelerator technology (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: IBM announced the release of the POWER instruction set architecture (ISA) as an open standard at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in San Diego on Tuesday. This announcement comes six years after the formation of the OpenPOWER Foundation, which aimed to foster the creation of hardware from third-party vendors that integrates the POWER architecture in the datacenter.

While the POWER ISA was itself licensable following the creation of the OpenPOWER Foundation in 2013, that came at a cost. Now, the POWER ISA is available royalty-free, inclusive of patent rights. IBM is releasing a soft core reference implementation of the POWER ISA, and reference designs for Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI) and Open Memory Interface (OMI) architecture-agnostic compute accelerators.

Submission + - Microsoft Surface Pro 6 and Surface Book 2 are throttle locking to 400 MHz (zdnet.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Owners of Microsoft's Surface Pro 6 and Surface Book 2 systems are finding themselves stuck at Pentium 2 speeds, as numerous user complaints indicate that the ultra-portables are throttling the processor down to 400 MHz, a state that—in some instances—persists across reboots. While similar issues with Surface devices have occurred in the past, reports of issues have increased in frequency following a firmware update for the Surface Pro 6.

The throttle-lock appears to be caused by an Intel CPU flag called BD PROCHOT (bi-directional processor hot), which can be set by any peripheral, telling the processor to throttle down in order to decrease system temperature—a useful flag in cases where the CPU is operating within thermal limits, but other components tied to the CPU are running too hot, because of the demands placed on other components by processes on the CPU.

Submission + - Huawei doesn't see open source as the fix for spying accusations (they should) (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Networking equipment is one of the last bastions of technology where opaque, proprietary, closed-source hardware continues to thrive. This opacity—combined with networking equipment functioning as the backbone of enterprise computing—creates a fertile breeding ground for fear, uncertainty, and doubt to proliferate. As a result of this, Huawei has spent nearly a decade embattled by accusations of spying for the Chinese government, and since May, a blacklisting.

There's an aphorism named "Linus's Law" which states "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." This plausibly applies to Huawei's circumstances: Publishing the full source code to Huawei products is a simplistic—and maximalist—way of dealing with security vulnerabilities and undercut accusations of spying that have plagued Huawei for years.

Opening Huawei products to third-party scrutiny would—at a minimum—surface situations where third-party open-source libraries are not being properly updated, if not allow security researchers the ability to identify vulnerabilities in Huawei-developed code. Such an initiative could also be used to create a shared build platform, making security updates easier to deploy across different device models.

Submission + - Why Canonical views Snaps as a compelling distribution-agnostic solution (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: For roughly two decades, Linux distributions have been the first choice for servers. Hardware support for Linux on the desktop has historically been an encumbrance to widespread adoption, though support for modern hardware on modern distributions has progressed such that most hardware is detected and configured correctly upon installation.

With these advances in hardware support, the last significant challenge users face when switching from Windows or Mac to a Linux distribution is app distribution and installation. While distribution-provided repositories are useful for most open source software, the release model of distributions such as Ubuntu or Fedora lock in users to a major version for programs for the duration of a particular release.

Because of differences in how they interact with the underlying system, certain configuration tasks are different between Snaps or Flatpaks than for directly-installed applications. Likewise, initial commits for the Snap and Flatpak formats were days apart—while the formats were developed essentially in parallel, the existence of two "universal" package formats has led to disagreement about competing standards.

TechRepublic's James Sanders interviewed Martin Wimpress, engineering manager for Snapcraft at Canonical, about Ubuntu's long term plans for Snaps, its adoption and support in other Linux distributions, Canonical's position as the operator of the Snap Store, and the benefits Snaps provide over Flatpak.

Submission + - It's 2019, and one third of businesses still have Windows XP deployments (techrepublic.com) 3

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: There is a relatively old—though still fundamentally true—adage about Windows: Microsoft's biggest competition is Microsoft, as a specific subset of users (and businesses) only upgrade to the latest version of Windows kicking and screaming. According to SpiceWorks' Future of Network and Endpoint Security report, published Tuesday, 32% of organizations still have at least one Windows XP device connected to their network, despite extended support for XP ending in 2014. (Notably, the last variant of XP, Windows POSReady 2009, reached end of life in April 2019.)

With the looming end of free support for Windows 7, this reticence of users and enterprises to upgrade to newer versions of Windows is likely to create significant security issues. Presently, 79% of organizations still have at least one Windows 7 system on their network, according to SpiceWorks, which also found that two thirds of businesses plan to migrate all of their machines off Windows 7 prior to the end of support on January 14, 2020, while a quarter will only migrate after that deadline.

Submission + - 2 years later, there's still no Windows Server Arm in Microsoft Azure (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Windows Server on ARM was announced to much fanfare in March 2017, with servers powered by Qualcomm Centriq 2400 and Cavium ThunderX2 processors co-developed with Microsoft showcased at the OCP US Summit. At the time, Azure vice president Jason Zander told Bloomberg that "this is a significant commitment on behalf of Microsoft. We wouldn't even bring something to a conference if we didn't think this was a committed project and something that's part of our road map."

That road map has quite clearly hit a dead end—a lack of updates from Microsoft of the subject, and the absence of any partners involved with the project (or companies in the ARM-for-servers market generally) at this year's Microsoft Inspire conference strongly indicates the initiative is dead.

Submission + - Interview with Desktop Engineering Director Will Cooke on future of Ubuntu (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Following Canonical's pivot away from its internally-developed Unity user interface and Mir display server, Ubuntu has enjoyed two relatively low-drama years, as the Linux Desktop market homogenized during its transition back to a customized GNOME desktop. In a review of the most recent release, TechRepublic's Jack Wallen declared that "Ubuntu 19.04 should seriously impress anyone looking for a fast and reliable Linux desktop platform."

Largely, it's been a slow-and-steady pace for Ubuntu since the pivot from Unity to GNOME, though the distribution made headlines for plans to end support for 32-bit support. This prompted Valve, operators of games marketplace Steam, to re-think its approach toward Ubuntu, which it previously characterized as "as the best-supported path for desktop users."

TechRepublic's James Sanders interviewed Will Cooke, director of engineering for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical, about the distribution's long-term plans for legacy 32-bit support, shipping a desktop in a post-Unity-era Ubuntu, and why Linux should be the first choice for users migrating from Windows 7 prior to the end of support.

Submission + - Interview with PINE64 on the upcoming release of the PineBook Pro (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: One of the consequences of the explosive popularity of the Raspberry Pi is the flourishing of competing ecosystems of single-board computers (SBCs). Aside from the accessibility a $35 price tag offers, the foremost benefit of the Raspberry Pi is the community—the proliferation of projects and integrations that center around the Raspberry Pi, and the ease-of-use that creates, makes competing products that look better on spec sheets a disappointment when taken out of the box.

PINE64 has attempted to head this off by fostering an involved community; the PINE64 website explains their philosophy as "the community gets to actively shape the devices, as well as the social platform, of PINE64 from the ground up. The goal is to deliver ARM64 devices that you really wish to engage with and a platform that you want to be a part of." The first-generation Pinebook was available in an 11.6" or 14" configuration, with a quad-core Allwinner A64, 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and 1366x768 display for $99, beating Nicolas Negroponte's OLPC XO-1, a decade after that project sputtered.

PINE64 is differentiating itself by building not just SBCs, but notebooks, tablets, and phones with community input and feedback. Ahead of the release of the Pinebook Pro this summer, a Rockchip RK3399-based ARM laptop with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB eMMC, and a 14" 1080p display, TechRepublic interviewed PINE64 community manager Lukasz Erecinski about the Pinebook Pro, and the PINE64 community philosophy.

Submission + - Meditations on First ThinkPad: How Lenovo adapts to changes in the PC industry (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: From a modality perspective, writers and programmers do the same thing, day after day. Both careers involve spending the bulk of their work day using a computer, though the tools marketed to and preferred by either industry are often diametrically opposed. While MacBooks are often the system of choice for digital creatives, ThinkPads are often seen in the hands of IT professionals. Users of either system are among the most vocal and opinionated, among laptop brands.

While Apple users have been increasingly seen grousing about the butterfly-switch keyboard, ThinkPad users, likewise, have complained about changes that have come to newer models, bringing them more in-line with standard, consumer-focused systems. Some criticize Lenovo's stewardship of the ThinkPad brand—after acquiring IBM's PC OEM division in 2005—though the company has worked to balance ThinkPad's visual design with the changing PC market.

TechRepublic's James Sanders interviews Jerry Paradise, Lenovo's vice president of global commercial portfolio and product management about screen ratios, soldered components, engineering 5G WWAN support, the potential of Linux preinstalled from the factory, and the original butterfly keyboard.

Submission + - D-Link, Cisco, and Sony devices have same "backdoor" claimed in Bloomberg report (techrepublic.com) 1

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Huawei stands accused of implanting "hidden backdoors" into commercial telecom equipment and home internet routers sold to Vodafone Italia in 2009, according to a Bloomberg report published Tuesday. Naturally, Huawei is denying the accusations, while Vodafone told the BBC that "Bloomberg is incorrect in saying that this 'could have given Huawei unauthorised access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy'."

Bloomberg's report hinges on a Telnet interface that was discovered by a third-party contractor hired by Vodafone Italia. Calling this a "smoking gun," as Tim Culpan breathlessly put it in a companion editorial at Bloomberg, would mean that practically every other router vendor has a few bullet holes, as unsecured Telnet interfaces are a problem, writ large: A cursory search finds identical "backdoors" in D-Link, Cisco, and Sony devices, among others, as poor security practices do not equate to malicious intent.

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