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To provide compatibility with a wide range of Windows-only games to all Linux users, a Beta version of the new and improved Steam Play is now available. It uses Proton, a modified distribution of Wine, to allow games which are exclusive to Windows to run on Linux and macOS operating systems. Proton is an open source tool, allowing advanced users to alter the code to make their own local builds. The included improvements to Wine have been designed and funded by Valve, in a joint development effort with CodeWeavers. In order to identify games that currently work great in this compatibility environment and solve the issues, if any, they are testing the entire Steam catalog. The list of games that they are enabling with this Beta release include: Beat Saber, Bejeweled 2 Deluxe, Doki Doki Literature Club!, DOOM, Fallout Shelter, FATE, FINAL FANTASY VI, and many more. Using Steam Play the gamers can purchase the games once and play anywhere. Whether you have purchased your Steam Play enabled game on a Mac, Windows, or Linux, you will be able to play on the other platform free of charge. What are the improvements introduced? You can now install and run Windows games with no Linux version currently available, directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support. Improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact is facilitated by DirectX 11 and 12 whose implementations are now based on Vulkan. The support for fullscreen games is improved allowing them to seamlessly stretch to the desired display without interfering with the native monitor resolution or requiring the use of a virtual desktop. The support for game controller is improved enabling games to automatically recognize all controllers supported by Steam. Improved performance for multi-threaded games as compared to vanilla Wine. They have mentioned that there could be a performance difference for games where graphics API translation is required, but there is no fundamental reason for a Vulkan title to run any slower. You can find out more about the Stream Play Beta, the full list of supported games, and how Proton works in the Steam post. Facebook launched new multiplayer AR games in Messenger Meet yuzu – an experimental emulator for the Nintendo Switch What’s got game developers excited about Unity 2018.2?

We have Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Phillips Hue for smart actions in your home. But they are individual and require different controls. What if all of your smart devices can work together with a master hub? That is Home Assistant. Home assistant is an automation platform that can run on Raspberry Pi. It acts as a central hub for connecting and automating all your smart devices. It supports services like IFTTT, Pushbullet, Google cast, and many others. Currently there are over a thousand components supported. It tracks the state of all the installed smart devices in your home. All the devices can be controlled from a single, mobile-friendly, interface. For security and privacy, all operations via Home Assistant are done locally, meaning no data is stored on the cloud. The Home assistant website advertises functions like having lights turn on upon sunset, dimming lights when you watch a movie on Chromecast. There is a virtual image called Hass.io which is an all in one solution and get started with Home Assistant. There is a guide is to install Hass.io on a Raspberry Pi. The requirements for running Home Assistant are: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ + Power Supply (at least 2.5A) A Class 10 or higher, Size 32 GB or bigger Micro SD card An SD Card reader Ethernet cable (optional, Hass.io can work with WiFi) For unattended configuration, optionally a USB-Stick Home assistant is a hub, it cannot control anything on its own. Think of it as a hub that passes instructions, a master device that communicates with other devices for home automation. Home assistant can’t do anything if there are no smart devices to work with. Since it is open source, there are dozens of contributions from tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts worldwide. You can check out the automation examples to know more and use them. The installation is very simple and there is a friendly UI to control your automation tasks. There is plenty of information at the Home Assistant website to get your started. They also have a GitHub repository. Cortana and Alexa become best friends: Microsoft and Amazon release a preview of this integration Apple joins the Thread Group, signalling its Smart Home ambitions with HomeKit, Siri and other IoT products Amazon Echo vs Google Home: Next-gen IoT war

Apple has asked Facebook to take down its app, Onavo Protect from App Store as it violates Apple’s new rules on data collection. Onavo is an Israeli analytics company, which was founded in 2010 and then acquired by Facebook in 2013. Apple revised their data collection policies in May this year to prevent app developers from engaging in certain app data collection activities in the future. One of their spokesperson told CNBC: "We work hard to protect user privacy and data security throughout the Apple ecosystem. With the latest update to our guidelines, we made it explicitly clear that apps should not collect information about which other apps are installed on a user's device for the purposes of analytics or advertising/marketing and must make it clear what user data will be collected and how it will be used." What Onavo Protect does? Onavo Protect is a VPN and data manager, which provides security and data encryption.  It comes with functionalities like: Limiting apps from using data in the background Setting data alerts when apps use too much data A report on how much data is consumed by each app on your phone A VPN network that helps in keeping your personal info protected, Onavo in their app description have mentioned that they may collect your mobile data traffic to analyze your use of websites, apps, and data. They have further mentioned that, being a part of Facebook, they also use this info to gain insights in order to improve Facebook products and services. A Facebook spokesperson said,  "We've always been clear when people download Onavo about the information that is collected and how it is used. As a developer on Apple's platform we follow the rules they've put in place." Though, it is mentioned in the app’s description that the information will be used by Facebook, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see that disclosure; something not every new user may do. This story was first reported on the Wall Street Journal. Earlier, they had also reported that the app has helped Facebook by monitoring usage of competing apps like Snapchat. After this Facebook added the Stories feature in their Instagram app, which is similar to that of Snapchat. The VPN app is now removed from App Store but is currently available on Google Play Store for the Android device users. 16 year old hacked into Apple’s servers, accessed ‘extremely secure’ customer accounts for over a year undetected Apple joins the Thread Group, signaling its Smart Home ambitions with HomeKit, Siri and other IoT products ‘Think different’ makes Apple the world’s most valuable company, crossing $1 Trillion market cap

"Authenticity matters and people need to be able to trust the connections they make on Facebook." -Mark Zuckerberg After Facebook announced last month that it had identified suspicious accounts that were engaged in "coordinated inauthentic behavior," it successfully took down 652 fake accounts and pages that published political content. Facebook had then declined to specify which country or countries may have been leading the campaign, but officials said the campaign was consistent with previous Russian attacks. These pages were suspected to have been intended to influence the US midterm elections set to take place in November this year. The campaigns were first discovered by FireEye, a cybersecurity firm that worked with Facebook on investigating the fake pages and accounts. Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed in a blog post that these campaigns had links to Russia and Iran. The existence of the fake accounts was first reported by The New York Times. Taking down Inauthentic Behaviour The conspiracy started unravelling in July,  when FireEye tipped Facebook off to the existence of a network of pages known as “Liberty Front Press”. The network included 70 accounts, three Facebook groups, and 76 Instagram accounts, which had 155,000 Facebook followers and 48,000 Instagram followers. The network had undisclosed links to Iranian state media, Facebook said, and spent more than $6,000 between 2015 and today. The network also hosted three events. On investigating those pages, it was found that they linked them back to Iranian state media using website registration information and internet protocol addresses. Pages created in 2013, posted political content that was focused on the Middle East, Latin America, Britain and the United States. Other fake pages also had a far more international spread than the earlier batches uncovered. They carried a number of pro-Iranian themes. The aim of the pages also included promoting Palestinians. Some included anti-Trump language and were tied to relations between the United States and Iran, including references to the Iranian nuclear weapons deal. Newer accounts, created in 2016 targeted cybersecurity by spreading malware and stealing passwords. The accounts that originated in Russia focused on activity in Ukraine and Syria. They did not appear to target the United States. But the aim of the latest campaigns can be summed up to be on similar lines as to those of past operations on the social network. Mainly to distribute fake news that might cause confusion among people, as well as to alter people’s thinking to become more biased or pro-government on various issues. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, officially made a statement in a conference call late Tuesday saying, “We believe these pages, groups, and accounts were part of two sets of campaigns, One from Iran, with ties to state-owned media. The other came from a set of people the U.S. government and others have linked to Russia.” Closely following suit, Twitter also went ahead and suspended 284 accounts for engaging in coordinated manipulation. Their analysis supports the theory that many of these accounts originated from Iran. Another social media giant, YouTube, deleted a channel called ‘Liberty Front Press’, which was a website linked to some of the fake Iranian accounts on Facebook. This was done because the account violated its community guidelines. Facebook has come under heavy audit for how its policies are exploited by third parties for fake news, propaganda, and other malicious activity especially after the debacle of the coordinated election interference from Russia’s IRA before, during, and after the 2016 US election. The criticism has only aggravated as the US heads toward the midterms. Facebook has been making an effort to prepare its products and moderation strategy for any manipulation. Now Facebook has taken a step further and is working with researchers to study social media-based election interference. The social media giant hopes to understand how this interference functions and to find ways to stop it. Read the the new york times post for further analysis of this evolving situation. Facebook and NYU are working together to make MRI scans 10x faster Four 2018 Facebook patents to battle fake news and improve news feed Facebook is investigating data analytics firm Crimson Hexagon over misuse of data  

The Mozilla organization, Internet Society, and the web foundation have spoken out about the current “techlash” that is posing a strong risk to the Internet on their blogs. They want the G20 to address the issues causing techlash at the ongoing G20 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting this week. Techlash, a term originally coined by The Economist last year, refers to a strong response against major tech companies due to concerns over power, user privacy, and security. This techlash is caused by security and privacy concerns for users on the web. As mentioned in their (Mozilla, Internet Society, web foundation) blog post, “once thought of as the global equalizer, opening doors for communication, work opportunities, commerce and more – the Internet is now increasingly viewed with skepticism and wariness. We are witnessing a trend where people are feeling let down by the technology they use”. The Internet is estimated to contribute US$6.6 trillion a year in the G20 countries by 2020. For developing nations, the rate at which digital economy is growing is 15 to 25 percent a year. Yet, the internet seems to be at continuous risk. This is largely due to the reasons like data breaches, silence around how data is utilized and monetized, cybercrime, surveillance as well as other online threats that are causing mistrust among users. The blog reads that “It is the priority of G20 to reinject hope into technological innovation: by putting people, their rights, and needs first”. With over 100 organizations calling on the leaders at the G20 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting this week, the urgency speaks highly of how the leaders need to start putting people at “the center of the digital future”. G20 comprises of the world’s largest advanced and emerging economies. It represents, about two-thirds of the world’s population, 85% of global gross domestic product and over 75% of global trade These member nations engage with guest countries and other non-member countries to make sure that the G20 presents a broad range of international opinion. The G20 is famous for addressing issues such as connectivity, future of work and education. But, topics such as security and privacy, which are of great importance and concern to people across the globe, haven’t featured equally as prominently on discussion forums. According to the blog post, “It must be in the interest of the G20 as a global economic powerhouse to address these issues so that our digital societies can continue to thrive”. With recent data issues such as a 16-year-old hacking Apple’s “super secure” customer accounts, idle Android devices sending data to Google, and governments using surveillance tech to watch you, it is quite evident that the need of the hour is to make the internet a secure place. Other recent data breaches include Homebrew’s Github repo getting hacked in 30 minutes, TimeHop’s data breach, and AG Bob Ferguson asking Facebook to stop discriminatory ads. Companies should be held accountable for their invasive advertising techniques, manipulating user data or sharing user data without permission. People should be made aware of the ways their data is being used by the governments and the private sector. Now, there are measures being taken by organizations at an individual level to make the internet more safe for the users. For instance, DARPA is working on AI forensic tools to catch deepfakes over the web, Twitter deleted 70 million fake accounts to curb fake news, and EU fined Google with $5 billion over the Android antitrust case. But, with G20 bringing more focus to the issue, it can really help protect the development of the Internet on a global scale. G20 members should aim at protecting information of all the internet users across the world. It can play a detrimental role by taking into account people’s concerns over internet privacy and security. The techlash is ”questioning the benefits of the digital society”. Argentine President, Mauricio Macri, said that to tackle the challenges of the 21st century “put the needs of people first” and it's time for G20 to do the same. Check out the official blog post by Mozilla, Internet Society and Web Foundation. 1k+ Google employees frustrated with continued betrayal, protest against Censored Search engine project for China Four 2018 Facebook patents to battle fake news and improve news feed Time for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to take responsibility or face regulation  

Intel has introduced microcode updates for mitigating the recently disclosed speculative execution vulnerabilities known as ‘Foreshadow’ a.k.a the L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF). These microcode patches were supposed to handle various side-channel and timing attacks. A new license term applied to the new microcode is as follows: You will not, and will not allow any third party to (i) use, copy, distribute, sell or offer to sell the Software or associated documentation; (ii) modify, adapt, enhance, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, change or create derivative works from the Software except and only to the extent as specifically required by mandatory applicable laws or any applicable third party license terms accompanying the Software; (iii) use or make the Software available for the use or benefit of third parties; or (iv) use the Software on Your products other than those that include the Intel hardware product(s), platform(s), or software identified in the Software; or (v) publish or provide any Software benchmark or comparison test results. However, this was not very well received by the public. Let’s find out why. Issues in the Security Patches The security fixes introduced apparently slow down Intel processors. Intel could very well be facing a backlash from the public on this. Imagine companies that run huge server farms or provide cloud services having to face a significant 5-10% speed reduction in their server. Security and reputation, both would be at stake. Another dilemma is whether the customer should install the fix or not. Many computer users don't allow outside or unprivileged users to run on their CPUs the way a cloud or hosting company does. For them, the slowdown incurred by installing the fix is unnecessary. Through its license, Intel has now attempted to gag anyone who would collect information for reporting about speed loss incurred penalties. Bad move. When in reality, it should have focussed on ways to handle security problems by owning up to the damage and publish mitigations. This clause of the license just hides how they are damaged. By Silencing free speech of those who would merely publish benchmarks is bad ethics . Intel’s decision to include this clause in the license also gained attention by many big names in the tech industry. The Register reported on Tuesday that Linux distro Debian decided to withhold packages containing the microcode security fix over concerns about its license. After this, open-source pioneer Bruce Perens called out Intel for trying to "gag"  netizens. Here is what Lucas Holt, MidnightBSD project lead, had to say in a tweet.   Source: Twitter.com Terms of the License stand re-written To save further confusion and chaos of the masses, Intel has backtracked on the license for its latest microcode update after the previous wording outlawed public benchmarking of the chips. The reworked license no longer prohibits benchmarking. In an announcement via Twitter, Imad Sousou, corporate VP and general manager of Intel Open Source Technology Center, on Thursday said: "We have simplified the Intel license to make it easier to distribute CPU microcode updates and posted the new version here. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback and thank the community." While Intel could have faced major trust issues not only from their dedicated users, it managed to re-trace its steps just in time. It’s about time Intel starts taking responsibility of its own machines. Hopefully, the company thinks twice before introducing any other changes that could lead to a backlash. You can read all about the origins of the discussion on Bruce Perens blog. Intel acquires Vertex.ai to join it under their artificial intelligence unit Defending Democracy Program: How Microsoft is taking steps to curb cybersecurity threats to democracy Microsoft claims it halted Russian spearphishing cyberattacks

Red Hat recently introduced its infrastructure migration solution to help provide an open pathway to digital transformation. Red Hat infrastructure migration solution provides an enterprise-ready pathway to cloud-native application development via Linux containers, Kubernetes, automation, and other open source technologies. It helps organizations to accelerate transformation by more safely migrating and managing workload to an open source infrastructure platform, thus reducing cost and speeding innovation. Joe Fernandes, Vice President, Cloud Platforms Products at Red Hat, said, “Legacy virtualization infrastructure can serve as a stumbling block too, rather than a catalyst, for IT innovation. From licensing costs to closed vendor ecosystems, these silos can hold organizations back from evolving their operations to better meet customer demand. We’re providing a way for enterprises to leapfrog these legacy deployments and move to an open, flexible, enterprise platform, one that is designed for digital transformation and primed for the ecosystem of cloud-native development, Kubernetes, and automation.” RedHat program consists of three phases: Discovery Session: Here, Red Hat Consulting will engage with an organization in a complimentary Discovery Session to better understand the scope of the migration and document it effectively. Pilot Migrations: In this phase, an open source platform is deployed and operationalized using Red Hat’s hybrid cloud infrastructure and management tooling. Pilot migrations are carried out to demonstrate typical approaches, establish initial migration capability, and define the requirements for a larger scale migration. Migration at scale: In this phase, IT teams are able to migrate workloads at scale. Red Hat Consulting also aids in better streamline operations across virtualization pool, and navigate complex migration cases. Post the Discovery Session, recommendations are provided for a more flexible open source virtualization platform based on Red Hat technologies. These include: Red Hat Virtualization offers an open software-defined infrastructure and centralized management platform for virtualized Linux and Windows workloads. It is designed to empower customers with greater efficiency for traditional workloads, along with creating a launchpad for cloud-native and container-based application innovation. Red Hat OpenStack Platform is built on the enterprise-grade backbone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It helps users to build an on-premise cloud architecture that provides resource elasticity, scalability, and increased efficiency. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is a portfolio of solutions that includes Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for both Virtualization and Cloud. Customers can use it to integrate compute, network and storage in a form factor designed to provide greater operational and cost efficiency. Using the new migration capabilities based on Red Hat’s management technologies, including Red Hat Ansible Automation, new workloads can be delivered in an automated fashion with self-service. These can also enable IT to more quickly re-create workload across hybrid and multi-cloud environment. Read more about the Red Hat infrastructure migration solution on RedHat’s official blog. Zefflin Systems unveils ServiceNow Plugin for Red Hat Ansible 2.0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 (RHEL 7.5) now generally available Installing Red Hat CloudForms on Red Hat OpenStack

Earlier this week, the Gluon team announced that JavaFX 11 GA will be released in the second half of September, close to the release of Java 11. In the meantime, development has begun on JavaFX 12. JavaFX is the software platform that allows development of desktop Java apps. It comprises a single codebase which consists of code for a rich, interactive UI on many platforms. Users access information from multiple devices so having a single codebase makes it cost-effective. Single codebases are also easy to maintain and interact well with enterprise and cloud services. It was announced, back in March, that the framework JavaFX would be offered as a separate component and no longer will be a part of the Java SDK. Ever since then, JavaFX has been under development by the community as a stand-alone project called OpenJFX with multiple new developers joining in. As mentioned in the official Gluon blog post, the reason behind new developers contributing to JavaFX 11 is the fact that GitHub has made it easier for these developers to get started  as all they have to do now is “sign the contributor agreement, commit the code -- pushed upstream to the official OpenJFX repository on the OpenJDK infrastructure”. JavaFX 11 is the first release under the umbrella of the OpenJFX open project. Johan Vos, Co-CTO of Gluon, is also co-lead of the OpenJFX project and one of the driving forces behind the advancement of JavaFX. A JavaFX 11 stabilization repository has been created. This will only be responsible for fixing the blocking issues. Gluon will be handling the release of JavaFX 11. In addition to that, the Gluon team has increased their investment in OpenJFX as they are constantly working on its code. Development on JavaFX 12 is currently ongoing and the Gluon community is keen on following the same core principles which are: release often, include the ready features. In case of a feature not ready for a particular release, it can be made available in the next release cycle, 6 months away. Keeping in mind that not all developers are interested in changing versions every six months, Gluon offers JavaFX Enterprise Support, where a Long Term Support version of JavaFX 11 is maintained. On subscribing to this payment mode, you will have access to builds s which have been backported to JavaFX 11. This is an attempt to make sure that the developers are always using  “the latest, feature-rich, stable, well-tested code in their projects They don’t have to wait years for a feature or bug fix to be in a released version. It also allows the OpenJFX developers to work on future versions, and to include new technologies and ideas into the JavaFX code” says the Gluon team. For more information, check out the official blog post. State of OpenJDK: Past, Present and Future with Oracle NVIDIA open sources its material definition language, MDL SDK Unit testing with Java frameworks: JUnit and TestNG [Tutorial]  

Facebook today revealed that it has banned another quiz app, myPersonality, over concerns of data misuse. This step was taken after they did not allow Facebook to audit their app raising doubts regarding them having shared user information with researchers as well as companies. So far this is the second quiz app that has been banned after Facebook announced a large-scale audit of its platform in March. The first one being, This Is Your Digital Life which Facebook banned after it was found to be linked to Cambridge Analytica. According to Ime Archibong, VP of Product Partnerships at Facebook, “Since launching our investigation in March, we have investigated thousands of apps. And we have suspended more than 400.” These apps were banned on concerns around the developers who built them or around these apps misusing the information people chose to share. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]According to Facebook App Review policy, no user information will be shared with apps if the user hasn’t used them in 90 days.[/box] myPersonality was created by researchers at the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre to source data from Facebook users via personality quizzes. The quiz app gathered data on some four million users when it was operational from 2007 to 2012 and illegally gave it to researchers and companies. In May, Facebook suspended the app, which hadn’t been active since 2012, but now it has been completely banned. Facebook will notify people who chose to share their Facebook information with myPersonality. Currently, they have no evidence if the quiz app accessed any friends’ information. If they find any such evidence, they will be notifying these people’s Facebook friends as well. Read Facebook’s official statement on the Facebook blog. Facebook is reportedly rating users on how trustworthy they are at flagging fake news. Four 2018 Facebook patents to battle fake news and improve news feed. Facebook, Apple, Spotify pull Alex Jones content.

Red Hat has rolled out their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 beta in their goal of becoming the cloud powerhouse. This release focuses on security and compliance, automation, and cloud deployment features. Linux security improvements As far as Linux based security is considered, some improvements made include: GnuTLS library with Hardware Security Module (HSM) support Strengthened OpenSSL for mainframes Enhancements to the nftables firewall Integration of Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) to provide a safer mechanism for monitoring Linux kernel activity Hybrid cloud deployment-related changes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 has introduced a variety of cloud deployment improvements. Red Hat’s Paul Cormier considers the hybrid cloud to be the default technology choice. “Enterprises want the best answers to meet their specific needs, regardless of whether that’s through the public cloud or on bare metal in their own datacenter.” For starters, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 uses Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware modules to enable Network Bound Disk Encryption (NBDE). This provides two layers of security features for hybrid cloud operations: The network-based mechanism works in the cloud, On-premises TPM helps to keep information on disks more secure. They have also introduced Podman, a part of Red Hat's lightweight container toolkit. It adds enterprise-grade security features to containers. Podman complements Buildah and Skopeo by enabling users to run, build, and share containers using the command line interface. It can also work with CRI-O, a lightweight Kubernetes containers runtime. Management and Automation The latest beta version also adds enhancements to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console including: Showing available updates on the system summary pages. Automatic configuration of single sign-on for identity management, helping to simplify this task for security administrators. An interface to control firewall services. These are just a select few updates. For a more detailed coverage, go through the release notes available on the Red Hat Blog. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 (RHEL 7.5) now generally available. What RedHat and others announced at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2018. RedHat and others launch Istio 1.0 service mesh for microservices.

Gitlab released version 11.2 with new features to help developers get started and iterate faster. Major improvements in this version are enhancements to the Web IDE, support for manifesting files to import Android projects, and custom project templates enabled. Let us look at each in detail: Preview changes in Web IDE Contributing changes to your projects with an advanced code editor and commit staging right within your browser will be faster and easier with the new WebIDE version. You can now easily see the effect of your code change and debug even before you commit with the Gitlab 11.2. You can now preview your JavaScript web app in the Web IDE, viewing your changes in real time, right next to the code for client-side evaluation. In addition, with 11.2, you can delete and rename files and switch branches without ever leaving the Web IDE. Android Project Import Importing complex project structures with multiple sub-structures was a tedious, time-consuming task until now. With the new support for XML manifest files, you can now import larger project structures with multiple repositories altogether, including Android OS code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Simplified Cloud Native & more features To help you quickly install Gitlab on Kubernetes, the Cloud Native Helm Chart is now generally available. A GitLab Runner is deployed, making it easy to get started with GitLab CI/CD. With 11.2, GitLab administrators can offer instance-wide custom project templates, allowing users to start new projects quickly by automating repetitive setup tasks. Features such as issue board milestone lists, summed weights for issue board lists, group milestones on the milestone dashboard page, and todos for epics enable better work management. Major changes and improvements are contributed by the Gitlab community itself. Check out the Gitlab page for more details. GitLab is moving from Azure to Google Cloud in July GitLab open sources its Web IDE in GitLab 10.7 GitLab’s new DevOps solution

Express Gateway 1.11.0 has been released after adding an important feature for the proxy policy and some bug fixes. Express Gateway is a simple, agnostic, organic, and portable, microservices API Gateway built on Express.js. What is new in this version? Additions New parameter called stripPath: Support for a new parameter called stripPath has been added to the Proxy Policy for Express Gateway. Its default value is false. You can now completely own both the URL space of your backend server as well the one exposed by Express Gateway. Official Helm chart: An official Helm chart has been added that enables you to install Express Gateway on your Rancher or Kubernetes Cluster with a single command. Bug Fixes The base condition schema is now correctly returned by the /schemas Admin API Endpoint so that the external clients can use it and resolve its references correctly. Previously, invalid configuration could be sent to the gateway through the Admin API when using Express Gateway in production. The gateway was correctly validating the gateway.config content, but it wasn't validating all the policies inside it. This bug fix was done to  make sure when an Admin API call that is modifying the configuration is done, the validation should be triggered so that we do not persist on disk a broken configuration file. Fixed a missing field in oauth2-introspect JSON Schema. For maintaining consistency, the keyauth schema name is now correctly named key-auth. Miscellaneous changes Unused migration framework has been removed. The X-Powered-By header is now disabled for security reasons. The way of starting Express Gateway in official Docker file is changed. Express Gateway is not wrapped in a bash command before being run. The reason is that the former command allocates an additional /bin/sh process, the latter does not. In this article we looked through some of the updates introduced in Express Gateway 1.11.0. To know more on this new update head over to their GitHub repo. API Gateway and its need Deploying Node.js apps on Google App Engine is now easy How to build Dockers with microservices

The Bodhi Team have announced the fifth major release of their Linux distribution. Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 comes with an updated Ubuntu core 18.04 and an overall modern look for its Moksha Window Manager. Bodhi Linux was first released as a stable version seven years ago, as a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and Moksha window manager. It uses a minimal base system allowing users to populate it with the software of their choice. Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 features disc images which have a fresh new look; a modified version of the popular 'Arc Dark' theme colorized in Bodhi Green. They have also included a fresh default wallpaper, login screen, and splash scenes as your system boots. Bodhi Linux Default Desktop - Busy Bodhi Linux Desktop - Clean The Bodhi team have not provided a change log because the move to an Ubuntu 18.04 base from 16.04 is the only major difference. Ubuntu 18.04 comes with changes such as Better metric collection in Ubuntu Report Support for installing on NVMe with RAID1 Fix for a typo that made update-manager report crash Miscellaneous unattended-upgrade fixes Ubuntu welcome tool now mentions dock and notifications Patches to make audio work on Lenovo machines with dual audio codecs Restore New Tab menu item in GNOME Terminal New “Thunderbolt” panel in Settings app If you installed a pre-release of Bodhi 5.0.0 you will simply need to run your system updates for the latest ISO images. However, the system updates will not adjust the look of your desktop automatically. If you have a previous Bodhi release installed you will need to do a clean install to upgrade to Bodhi 5.0.0. Bodhi 4.5.0 will have support until Ubuntu 16.04 runs out in April 2021. You can read more about the Bodhi 5.0.0 release on Bodhi Linux Blog. What to expect from upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 release. Is Linux hard to learn? Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 (RHEL 7.5) now generally available.

Microsoft came out with a library, named DoWhy, earlier this week, for promoting widespread use of causal inference. Causal inference refers to the process of drawing a conclusion from a causal connection which is based on the conditions of the occurrence of an effect. Simply put, causal inference attempts to find or guess why something happened. "DoWhy" is a Python library which is aimed to spark causal thinking and analysis. It provides a unified interface for causal inference methods. There’s also automatic testing of multiple assumptions making the inference accessible to non-experts. According to Microsoft, “Our motivation for creating DoWhy comes from our experiences in causal inference studies -- ranging from estimating the impact of a recommender system to predicting likely outcomes given a life event -- we found ourselves repeating the common steps of finding the right identification strategy, devising the most suitable estimator, and conducting robustness checks, all from scratch”. DoWhy highlights the critical assumptions lying beneath causal inference analysis. It is designed using four major principles: Model a causal inference problem using assumptions. Identifying expression for the causal effect ("causal estimand"). Estimate the expression using statistical methods Verifying validity of the estimate How DoWhy works? First, DoWhy builds an underlying causal graphical model for every problem. This makes each causal assumption explicit. The graph does not have to be complete and you can provide a partial graph which represents prior knowledge about variables. The rest of the variables are automatically considered as potential confounders by DoWhy. Secondly, DoWhy distinguishes between identification and estimation. Identification of a causal effect refers to assumptions made about the data-generating process along with counterfactual expressions to specifying a target estimand. It uses the Bayesian graphical model framework to represent assumptions formally. Here the users can specify what they know and what they don’t know about the data-generation process. Thirdly, for estimation, there are methods based on the potential-outcomes framework including matching, stratification, and instrumental variables. Lastly, there are robustness tests along with sensitivity checks for testing or verifying the reliability of an obtained estimate. With this, you can test how the estimate changes with varying assumptions. The library is also capable of automatically checking the validity of obtained estimate depending on assumptions in the graphical model. DoWhy supports Python 3+ and requires packages such as numpy, scipy, scikit-learn, pandas, pygraphviz (for causal graphs plotting), networkx (for causal graphs analysis), matplotlib (for general plotting), and sympy (for symbolic expressions rendering). Microsoft plans on adding more features to the DoWhy library. This includes improved estimation support, sensitivity methods and interoperability with available estimation software. For more information, check out the official DoWhy documentation. Say hello to FASTER: a new key-value store for large state management by Microsoft NIPS 2017 Special: A deep dive into Deep Bayesian and Bayesian Deep Learning with Yee Whye Teh Microsoft launches a free version of its Teams app to take Slack head on  

Say hello to IBM RXN, a free AI Tool in IBM Cloud for predicting chemical reactions Earlier this week, IBM launched an AI tool called IBM RXN in IBM cloud at the American Chemistry Society, Boston, for predicting chemical reactions in just seconds.  IBM RXN is an advanced AI model which is useful in daily research activities and experiments. IBM Research IBM presented a web-based app last year at the NIPS 2017 Conference, which is capable of relating organic chemistry to a language. It also applies state-of-the-art neural machine translation methods which take care of converting designing materials to generating products leveraging sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) models. IBM RXN for Chemistry uses a system known as a simplified molecular-input line-entry system or SMILES. SMILES is used to represent a molecule as a sequence of characters. The model was trained using a combination of reaction datasets, equivalent to a total of 2 million reactions. SMILES in IBM RXN IBM RXN comprises of features such as Ketcher editor, pre-configured libraries, and challenge mode. Ketcher is a web-based chemical structure editor which is designed for chemists, lab scientists, and technicians. It involves selecting, modifying, and erasing the connected, and unconnected atom bonds with the help of a selection tool or shift key. There’s a cleanup tool which checks bond lengths, angles and spatial arrangement of atoms. It is also capable of checking the stereochemistry and structure layout with its advanced features. It is a simple data-driven tool which is trained without querying a database or any additional external information. Additionally, users can build projects and share them with friends or colleagues. There are Pre Configured libraries of molecules which enable adding reactants and reagents to your Ketcher board in just a few clicks. It also provides access to the most common molecules in organic chemistry via the installation of a library to your molecule set. You can also upload molecules to customize libraries. Enhancing the libraries with your own reaction outcomes or with molecules drawn on the Ketcher board is also possible. Finally, there is a challenge mode which puts your Organic Chemistry knowledge to test and helps with Organic grade preparation for class exams. IBM RXN is a completely free tool and available in the IBM cloud. For more information, check out the official IBM blog post. IBM’s DeepLocker: The Artificial Intelligence powered sneaky new breed of Malware Four IBM facial recognition patents in 2018, we found intriguing IBM unveils world’s fastest supercomputer with AI capabilities, Summit