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In a study published in Nature Machine Intelligence, researchers discovered that in some cases of machine learning it cannot be proved whether the system actually ‘learned’ something or solved the problem. They explore machine learning learnability. Axioms leading to axioms in arithmetic models We already know that machine learning systems, and AI systems in general are black boxes. You feed the system some data, you get some output or a trained system that performs some tasks but you don’t know how the system arrived at a particular solution. Now we have a published study from Ben-Davis et al that shows learnability in machine learning is undecidable. In the 1930s, Austrian logician Kurt Gödel showed that a set of axioms forming an arithmetic model lead to more axioms. In the following decades it was demonstrated that the continuum hypothesis can neither be proved nor refuted using standard mathematical axioms. The hypothesis states that no set of objects is larger in size than integers or smaller in size than real numbers. What does this have to do with machine learning? In machine learning, algorithms are designed to improve performance of certain actions with the data they are trained on. Some problems like facial recognition or recommendation engines cannot be created with regular linear programming. These are problems that can be solved today by machine learning. Machine learning learnability can be defined. A system can be considered learnable if the machine learning model can perform as the best predictor in a family of functions. This needs to be achieved under some reasonable constraints. Typically learnability in a model can be explained by analysing dimensions. But this new research shows that this is not always the case. A learning model introduced in the paper is the focus of the research: estimating the maximum (EMX) which is similar to PAC learning. The authors of the paper discover a family of functions whose learnability in EMX cannot be proved with standard mathematics. What is the EMX problem? As described in the paper, the EMX problem is: “Let X be some domain set, and let F be a family of functions from X to {0, 1} (we often think of each function f∈F as a subset of X and vice versa). Given a sample S of elements drawn i.i.d. from some unknown distribution P over X, the EMX problem is about finding a function f ∈ F that approximately maximizes the expectation EP(f) with respect to P.” In the paper, the authors present an example problem—displaying specific ads to the most frequent visitors of a website. The catch is, which visitors will visit the website is unknown. Now the EMX problem is formed as a question—what is a learner’s ability to find a function whose expected value is the largest. They show a relation between machine learning and data compression. If training data labelled by a function can be compressed, then the family from which the function originates has low complexity. Such a function is considered learnable. Monotone compression Algorithms can be used to compress data. A new one called monotone compression is introduced. They show that this compression is suitable to describe the learnability of function families in the EMX problem. A weak monotone compression is associated with the cardinality of particular infinite sets. The authors use the interval [0, 1] which contains real numbers. The results show that the finite subsets in the interval [0, 1] have monotone compression and are therefore considered learnable in EMX. But, this applied only if the continuum hypothesis is true which stands to be unprovable to date. The problem is how you define learnability In the concluding points, the paper points out an interesting perspective as to why current machine learning models get off easy without any questions about learnability. Or do they? The problem lies in how learnability is defined—as functions or as algorithms?. Current standard definitions focus on the theoretical aspect without considering computational implications. This approach in viewing learnability levies a high cost when more general types of learning is involved. You can read the research paper by Shai Ben-David and others about learnability being undecidable at the Nature journal website. Technical and hidden debts in machine learning – Google engineers’ give their perspective The US Air Force lays groundwork towards artificial general intelligence based on hierarchical model of intelligence NVIDIA demos a style-based generative adversarial network that can generate extremely realistic images; has ML community enthralled

Yesterday, the U.S. News and World Report published its annual list of 100 best jobs of 2019 and the software developer role topped the list. Software developer job was also ranked #1 in its other lists like Best STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) Jobs and Best Technology Jobs in 2019. Source: U.S. News and World Report While opting for a job role depends on your interests and qualification, there are some common career qualities that everyone looks for in a job. For compiling this list, the U.S. News and World Report looked for the jobs with the highest number of openings from 2016 to 2026, as determined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then they considered seven of the career qualities, which were median salary, employment rate, 10-year growth percentage, future job prospects, stress level, and a good work-life balance. Talking about the salary aspect, on an average Software Developers made $101,790 in 2017, while the 25% best-paid made $128,960 that year and the lowest-paid 25% made $77,710. The role was rated average in opportunities for advancements and salary and stress level. In terms of work-life balance and working schedule, it was surprisingly rated above average. Rebecca Koening, who works as a careers reporter at U.S. News and World Report told USA Today, “Unlike some other jobs that do pretty well on the list, which are very demanding, software developer tends not to be a really stressful profession." Looking at advancements in the tech industry and its adoption in our day to day life it is not a surprise that software developers will have good future job prospects. They are employed not only in tech companies but in a range of industries like banking, manufacturing, and finance. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be a 30.7 percent growth in employment for software developers during the period 2016 to 2026 and an estimated 255,400 jobs will open up. The other top jobs in the list were Statistician, Physician Assistant, Dentist, Nurse Anesthetist, Orthodontist, Nurse Practitioner, Pediatrician, Obstetrician and Gynecologist, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon. And, if you are curious which was the least favorite job, it was Surgical Technologist. 15 millions jobs in Britain at stake with Artificial Intelligence robots set to replace humans at workforce Key trends in software development in 2019: cloud native and the shrinking stack 18 people in tech every programmer and software engineer needs to follow in 2019

At the ongoing CES 2019, IBM has unveiled what possibly is the world’s first standalone quantum computer. Dubbed, the IBM Q System One, it is a giant 50-qubit quantum computer that gives repeatable and predictable high-quality qubits. This is IBM’s first step forward in the commercialization of quantum computing as IBM Q System One steps out of the research lab for the first time. https://youtu.be/LAA0-vjTaNY IBM Q System One is comprised of a number of custom components. This includes a stable and auto-calibrated Quantum hardware. It has Cryogenic engineering for maintaining a cold and isolated quantum environment. The Quantum firmware manages system health and upgrades without downtime for users. Classical computation provides secure cloud access and hybrid execution of quantum algorithms. IBM is calling the Q System One as the future beyond supercomputing, capable of handling applications such as modeling financial data and organizing super-efficient logistics. “This new system is critical in expanding quantum computing beyond the walls of the research lab as we work to develop practical quantum applications for business and science,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice-president of hybrid cloud and director of IBM Research. In the second half of 2019, IBM is planning to open the IBM Q Quantum Computation Center to expand IBM’s commercial quantum computing program. This new center will be accessible to members of the IBM Q Network. You may go through IBM’s Q-Experience FAQs and Beginner's guide to working with System Q for a much substantive understanding. The US to invest over $1B in quantum computing, President Trump signs a law UK researchers build the world’s first quantum compass to overthrow GPS Italian researchers conduct an experiment to prove that quantum communication is possible on a global scale

Yesterday, GitHub, a platform to build and share software, announced it will give users of its free plan, an access to unlimited private repositories. The platform initially had a major drawback that software projects weren’t visible to the broader public and were shared only with a handful of pre-defined collaborators, specifically, the users who paid. With this new update, developers can now use GitHub for their private projects with up to three collaborators per repository, and for free. A lot of developers want to use private repositories to apply for a job, try something out in private before releasing it publicly, or work on a side project. All this is now possible with the new update. No changes have been made to public repositories, they are still free and include unlimited collaborators. https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1082345111566970880 A good indication for Microsoft? This news sounds like a good indication for Microsoft as it closed its acquisition of GitHub last October, with former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman as GitHub’s new CEO. Though few developers were rather nervous about this deal they eventually came to terms with it. Also, GitHub’s model for monetizing the service is different from Microsoft’s. As Microsoft focuses on larger enterprises to use the service instead of smaller teams, this new change in strategy could give Microsoft a much better competitive position against rival services like BitBucket and GitLab. Last year, in June, during a Reddit AMA, GitHub's new chief Nat Friedman was asked if Microsoft ever planned to make private repositories free. Friedman said at that time, "It's too soon for me to know the answer to that. We want GitHub to be accessible to everyone in the world, and for everyone to have an opportunity to be a developer." A great news for GitHub users As private repositories on free accounts are limited to three collaborators a project, this might work well for a smaller project like a team competing in a hackathon. But it isn’t well-suited for commercial usage. It could also be a bit risky for the company, as the existing paid users might not be much happy with this move. Earlier, user’s incomplete projects were open to all. However, with this new update, users can easily cover it up under the name of private repos. Will this affect GitHub’s open culture? Users have given mixed reactions to this news. Few users are wondering if Microsoft would become more powerful after this latest move as they will have a stronger social graph. One of the users commented on HackerNews, “Microsoft has both LinkedIn and GitHub, meaning they have the social graph of the government, business, and the technology spheres. That social graph is arguably even more valuable in terms of revenue opportunities than Facebook's. Direct revenue of LinkedIn and GitHub might as well be irrelevant.”  Another user commented, “And Microsoft is in good relationship with the government and agencies. Guess how valuable is that data for them. And guess what they want... Private code to know what people are working on." This move has now led a few paid users to move away from paying. But most of the users are happy and excited about this news. https://twitter.com/slametan/status/1082507600447467526 As this news is already creating some buzz, the competition between GitHub and other similar platforms is going to be tough. One of the users (from GitLab) commented,“ I like to think that increased competition from us (GitLab) contributed to this change, we recently passed 10m repositories on GitLab.com. At GitLab we think that repositories will become a commodity and we're focussing on making a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle. I think Microsoft will try to generate revenue with people using Azure more instead of paying for repos.” GitHub also announced its new product, GitHub Enterprise which combines Enterprise Cloud and Enterprise Server. GitHub Inc. said in a post,"Organizations that want the flexibility to use GitHub in a cloud or self-hosted configuration can now access both at one per-seat price." These products can be securely linked and provide a hybrid option with GitHub Connect which would help developers to work seamlessly. GitHub introduces Content Attachments API (beta) GitHub plans to deprecate GitHub services and move to Webhooks in 2019 GitHub was down first working day of 2019, hacker claims DDoS

Yesterday there were discussions on Twitter about an Ethereum classic 51% attack which was a possible chain reorganization or double spend attack. However, Ethereum developers denied it and have shed some light on the incident. Ethereum classic is the original version of Ethereum which suffered a major hack in 2016. The developers then forked that and used it to create a new version where the hack was fixed. This new version was called Ethereum. https://twitter.com/eth_classic/status/1082045223310483457 A 51% attack rate is when one or more parties have more than 50% of compute power (hash rate) in the network. Such a party could mine a large amount of block in the network, double spend coins and reward themselves unfairly. Double spending is exactly what it sounds like, paying the same amount twice. In a chain reorganization, single or more miners have significantly more hashrate than others in the network. Such a miner can define a new transaction history on the network. Etherchain Tweeted that there was a successful 51% attack on Ethereum classic. https://twitter.com/etherchain_org/status/1082329360948969472 Cryptocurrency coin exchange Coinbase published a post noting the same: “On 1/5/2019, Coinbase detected a deep chain reorganization of the Ethereum Classic blockchain that included a double spend. In order to protect customer funds, we immediately paused movements of these funds on the ETC blockchain. Subsequent to this event, we detected 8 additional reorganizations that included double spends, totaling 88,500 ETC (~$460,000)”. Amidst the confusion, fear and lowering ETC value, the Ethereum team has responded to the incident. The latest update from Ethereum classic official sources contradict the Coinbase report. They said that this activity was a selfish mine and not a 51% attack. ‘No double spends were detected’. They said that an ASIC card manufacturer, Linzhi was testing their new ethash machines which had a power of 1,400/Mh. The tweet seems to be removed but the contents stated: Regarding the recent mining events. We may have an idea of where the hashrate came from. ASIC manufacturer Linzhi confirmed testing of new 1,400/Mh ethash machines #projectLavaSnow – Most likely selfish mining (Not 51% attack) – Double spends not detected (Miner dumped blocks) A more recent tweet from Ethereum Classic states that both angles of coinbase and ASIC card may be true. https://twitter.com/eth_classic/status/1082392663314202624 Currently, ETC is 18th on the market cap with a market capitalization of ~$540 million. Ethereum Constantinople hard fork to move Ethereum from PoW (proof-of-work) to PoS (proof-of-stake) model Origin DApp: A decentralized marketplace on Ethereum mainnet aims to disrupt gig economy platforms like Airbnb and Uber Vitalik Buterin’s new consensus algorithm to make Ethereum 99% fault tolerant

Today, Daniel Rosenwasser, the Program Manager of TypeScript, released a roadmap to be followed for TypeScript starting from January 2019 to June 2019. This roadmap outlines the priorities that the team will be focussing on, over the next 6 months, which will serve as a set of guidelines to accomplish the listed goals by June 2019. These goals (as listed on GitHub) include: Types on every desk, for every JS developer Using strong tooling to increase productivity Improved Approachability and UX More Community engagement Better Infrastructure and engineering systems In order to achieve these goals, the Typescript team will focus on tweaking the following domains: #1 Language design and innovation Under this domain, the team will focus on the core ‘type’ system. They plan to enable popular JS patterns in a type-safe way, while also proving relationships between types. The latter simply means generalizing patterns between type operators and encoding them in type relationships. They also plan to implement ECMAScript features with stricter settings. In terms of Committee representation, their goals include prioritizing forward compatibility with proposals/features adopted in the earlier stages of developing TS. They also want to be involved in other features like Class fields (public and private), decorators, ES/CJS module interop, and much more to ensure that ECMAScript grows to ‘make a developers' life easier’. #2 Developer productivity tools and integration The team plans to introduce ‘quick fixes’ that will be proactive in nature. This includes a class of code modifications and fixes that are applicable, which will be useful for teaching users about language features and patterns, making it more approachable to work with TypeScript/JavaScript. Proactive fixes also imply that TypeScript can analyze code and can surface suggestions and code changes for improvements rather than just fix an error. This is in contrary to most of the current quick fixes that are reactive in nature and are created and triggered after a user has seen a definite error. They also plan on focussing on more targeted workflows like ‘migration’. They will come up with ways to ease migration to TypeScript and typed JavaScript to improve the process of adding types. In the field of ‘Linting’, the team noticed architectural issues with the way TSLint rules operate that impacted performance. They will be working towards fixing these issues. Since ESLint already has the more-performant architecture, the TS team will be focusing on leveraging ESLint rather than duplicating work. For scenarios that ESLint currently doesn't cover, they will be sending contributions to bring ESLint's TypeScript support to parity with TSLint. To build co-located TypeScript projects, the team will be making improvements such as functionality for automatically swapping projects in and out to save memory. They will also investigate the emit-time regressions seen in the last few versions of TS. Finally, they plan to investigate surfacing language service operations on the command line. #3 Education and UX The team says that the documentation provided for TypeScript needs to be improved for a more seamless learning experience. They will be working on a new version of the handbook with  three different parts: Tailored introductions for the core handbook The core handbook for everyone Reference pages (eg. appendices) They believe the segmentation of this documentation will help developers from all backgrounds--right from complete novices to experienced developers--to learn TypeScript without any hassle. They will also be improving their error UX to make it more ‘approachable’ for inexperienced users. Their website will also be undergoing an upgrade along with the examples mentioned on the same. #4 Community investment TypeScript's 'DefinitelyTyped' is the 10th most popular open source project on GitHub. The team will be focussing on weekly PR rotations--where members of the TS team review external PRs to DefinitelyTyped--and DefinitelyTyped's surrounding infrastructure such as the types publisher, dtslint, and dt-mergebot. They also plan to ease the process of external contributions to the documentation and investigate improving rich editing experiences. This year, users can also expect more public talks, meetups and blog posts on TypeScript. #5 Team Infrastructure The team will be focussing on faster builds by converting them to avoid bootstrapping themselves outside of CI, adding/migrating lint rules, and much more. This will, in turn, improve TS stability, productivity, and ease of contribution. Besides this, they also plan on providing internal guidance on TypeScript-first API designs, assisting internal partner teams with best practices for projects and addressing major Microsoft-internal build regressions. You can head over to TypeScript’s GitHub page for more insights on this announcement. npm JavaScript predictions for 2019: React, GraphQL, and TypeScript are three technologies to learn TypeScript 3.2 released with configuration inheritance and more Vue.js 3.0 is ditching JavaScript for TypeScript. What else is new?    

CES 2019 is kicking off in Las Vegas, Nevada today, January 8, Monday for 3 days. The conference unofficially kicked off on Sunday, January 6 and you may have a look at the announcements made on that day. Yesterday was the main press day when the majority of the announcements were made with a lot of companies showcasing their latest projects and announcing new products, software, and services. HTC HTC announced their partnership with Mozilla, bringing Firefox’s virtual reality web browser to the Vive headset. Mozilla first announced Firefox Reality as a dedicated VR web browser in April. In September, they announced that the browser is now available on Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream. Now, it is available for the HTC Vive headset. As part of the deal, HTC is also teaming up with Amazon to make use of Amazon Sumerian. HTC also announced the Vive Pro Eye virtual reality headset with native, built-in eye tracking. It uses “foveated rendering” to render sharp images for wherever the human eye is looking in a virtual scene and reduces the image quality of objects on the periphery. Intel Intel made a number of announcements at CES 2019. They showcased new processors and also released a press release with updates on Project Athena. With this project, they are getting PC makers ready for “a new class of advanced laptops.” These laptops will be Ultrabooks part two with 5G and artificial intelligence support. New Intel processors: New 9th Gen Core processors for a limited number of desktops and laptops. A 10nm Ice Lake processor for thin laptops. A 10nm Lakefield processor using 3D stacking technology for very small computers and tablets. A 10nm Cascade Lake Xeon processor for data processing. 3D Athlete Tracking tech which runs on the Cascade Lake chip and shows data about how fast and far athletes are traveling. Intel’s 10nm Snow Ridge SOC for 5G base stations. Lenovo Lenovo has made minor updates to their ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga laptops with new designs for 2019. They are mostly going to have a material change, and are also going to be thinner and lighter this year. Lenovo has also released two Lenovo is two large display monitor. The first is Lenovo’s ThinkVision P44W, which is aimed at business users, and the second is the Legion Y44w Gaming Monitor. They both have a 43.4-inch panel. Uber One of Uber’s partners in the air taxi domain, Bell, has revealed the design of its vertical takeoff and landing air taxi at CES 2019. Their flying taxi, dubbed the Bell Nexus, can accommodate up to 5 people and is a hybrid-electric powered vehicle. CES 2019 also saw the release of the game Marvel's Avengers: Rocket's Rescue Run. This is the first demo product from startup Holoride, which has Audi as one of its stakeholders. It's the result of Audi and Disney's new media format, which aims to bring virtual reality to passengers in cars, specifically to Uber. More announcements: Harley-Davidson gave a preview of their first all-electric motorcycle. It will launch in August 2019 and will cost $29,799 TCL announced its first soundbars and a 75-inch version of the excellent 6-Series 4K Roku TV Elgato announced a professional $199 light rig for Twitch streamers and YouTube creators Hisense announces its new 2019 4K TV lineup and the Sonic One TV Griffin introduces new wireless chargers for the iPhone and Apple Watch Amazon is planning to let people deliver packages inside your garage Kodak’s release a new instant camera and printer line GE announced a 27-inch smart display for the kitchen that streams Netflix. Google Assistant will soon be on a billion devices. Their next stop - feature phones Vizio announces the most advanced 4K TV ever and support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 Toyota shared details of it’s Guardian Driver-Assist System which will mimic a technique used in fighter jets to serve as a smart intermediary between driver and car. CES 2019: Top announcements made so far HTC Vive Focus 2.0 update promises long battery life, among other things for the VR headset Intel unveils the first 3D Logic Chip packaging technology, ‘Foveros’, powering its new 10nm chips, ‘Sunny Cove’

Yesterday, Lorenzo Sciandra, a React Native developer shared his experience on how the React Native Community took an added ownership over the development of React Native and also enhanced collaboration with Facebook in 2018. In 2019, the community will be sharing guidelines for ensuring quality code that complies to community-agreed standards. Here are the three channels they created for better transparency and sharing the recent happenings in React Native Community: react-native-releases As the name suggests, the react-native-releases repository was created to keep everyone up-to-date about new releases of React Native in a more collaborative manner and get a clear idea of what features would be a part of a certain release. This allowed the team to follow a long-term support approach instead of the monthly release cycle, which they are using in version 0.57.x. discussions-and-proposals The discussions-and-proposals repository was aimed at providing a more open environment for discussing new features or enhancements to React Native. It provided better transparency from the Core and Facebook teams and acted as a communication channel for all the members of the community. The team wanted to adopt an RFC (request for comments) approach instead of having all the discussion and proposals on the main repository. This repository provides a consistent and controlled path for new features to be proposed. Also, the Facebook team is using the RFC process to discuss what could be improved in React and is co-ordinating their efforts around the Lean Core project. @ReactNativeComm The team has created this new Twitter account to give users regular updates on everything going on in the React Native Community i.e. from releases to active discussions. In addition to enhancing the collaboration in the community, the team is also aiming for creating a formal structure. For this, they are planning to enforce a set of standards for all the packages and repos. With these guidelines in place, they will be able to help each other and contribute quality code that conforms to community-agreed standards. In his blog post,  Lorenzo also said, ”This organization can set the example for everyone in the larger developer community by enforcing a set of standards for all the packages/repos hosted in it, providing a single place for maintainers to help each other and contribute quality code that conforms to community-agreed standards.” JavaScript mobile frameworks comparison: React Native vs Ionic vs NativeScript The React Native team shares their open source roadmap, React Suite hits 3.4.0 React Native 0.57 released with major improvements in accessibility APIs, WKWebView-backed implementation, and more!

GNU project made version 5.0 of its popular POSIX shell Bash ( Bourne Again Shell) available yesterday. Bash 5.0 explores new improvements and features such as BASH_ARGV0, EPOCHSECONDS, and EPOCHREALTIME among others. Bash was first released in 1989 and was created for the GNU project as a replacement for their Bourne shell. It is capable of performing functions such as interactive command line editing, and job control on architectures that support it. It is a complete implementation of the IEEE POSIX shell and tools specification. Key Updates New features Bash 5.0 comes with a newly added EPOCHSECONDS variable, which is capable of expanding to the time in seconds. There is another newly added EPOCHREALTIME variable which is similar to EPOCHSECONDS in Bash 5.0. EPOCHREALTIME is capable of obtaining the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch, the only difference being that this variable is a floating point with microsecond granularity. BASH_ARGV0 is also a newly added variable in Bash 5.0 that expands to $0 and sets $0 on assignment. There is a newly defined config-top.h in Bash 5.0. This allows the shell to use a static value for $PATH. Bash 5.0 has a new shell option that can enable and disable sending history to syslog at runtime. Other Changes The `globasciiranges' option is now enabled by default in Bash 5.0 and can be set to off by default at configuration time. POSIX mode is now capable of enabling the `shift_verbose' option. The `history' builtin option in Bash 5.0 can now delete ranges of history entries using   `-d start-end'. A change that caused strings containing + backslashes to be flagged as glob patterns has been reverted in Bash 5.0. For complete information on bash 5.0, check out its official release notes. GNU ed 1.15 released! GNU Bison 3.2 got rolled out GNU Guile 2.9.1 beta released JIT native code generation to speed up all Guile programs

Hosted by Will Hayes Principal engineer at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a podcast was aired last month about Blockchain research at the CMU, governance, and applications of blockchain beyond finance. The participants of the discussion were Dr. Eliezer Kanal from SEI, CMU and Eugene Leventhal a Masters degree student from Heinz college in CMU. What is the discussion about? The main discussion is around these points: Is blockchain actually better than the currently existing solutions? If it is, what are the costs? Are there things that we can take from it to make existing solutions better? About some central blockchain governance even though it is a distributed system. Blockchain at CMU There is a lot of interest for Blockchain at CMU, they even have a Blockchain Group. Blockchain was discussed for digital currency even before it was called blockchain. Aside from all the digital currency and infinite coin offerings, the underlying technology in blockchain is a distributed ledger. Ledgers are present in various businesses record keeping, health data, licenses etc. The power of blockchain comes from its distributed nature where nothing is deleted and there is a lot of visibility in what is going on. At the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, research is going on in two major aspects: Ensuring blockchain is a secure environment that people can operate, it is difficult to do. Advising government, there is confusion on what a use case in blockchain is about. They are trying to play the role of a trusted advisor. Blockchain and open source Blockchain can be somewhat compared to open source. In version control systems, users can go to a specific version and use it if the current version does not work for them, so the changes are publicly visible. Blockchain beyond finance Blockchain is democratized banking, there is no need for a central entity that clears the transactions. But this is the sole application that has thrived in the market. The application of Blockchain as a distributed computer has not really picked up. There is a general reluctance in the industry to pick up Blockchain for other applications. It will be interesting to see some research on the potential applications where it is pure research, not some time constrained goal to make money. The hype to make quick money on blockchain has started to die out, and interesting research is upcoming. For example, proof-of-stake versus proof-of-work model. There has been a lot of discussion on using blockchain for name servers, DNS servers etc that underlie the entire Internet and for public key infrastructure (PKI). “How can I both have the benefits that I could gain, and simultaneously enable technology, or enable a policy that requires me to not have something, which is fundamental to the technology.” For this question, there is no good answer yet. This is part of what makes blockchain such a fascinating field. Central control of blockchain, blockchain governance? Git is now offered by Microsoft, Hayes says that this is how government organizations are getting access to it. Are there things happening in the blockchain world where the decision of some influential authority is opening up the ecosystem for a wider array of audience? Even though the idea of blockchain is to be decentralized, it can benefit from some level of centralization. An example is Hyperledger, it has some blockchain concepts but most of Hyperledger is towards centralization. Public visibility is good for audit purposes but not if some personal information is attached to a transaction. GDPR comes into the picture as it includes the right to be forgotten; this is a clash. One of the older papers where Dr. Kanal is researching the legal aspects of blockchain argues that blockchain is the most vulnerable way to structure any kind of organization. There is maximum exposure and fraud protection is not present. Blockchain as a truly decentralized platform has a challenge - where does the governance come from? If someone plays around with it, people from the outside are likely to be drawn away from using it pointing out the flaws. Blockchain governance is a serious issue and challenge to work on a for the technology to be accepted by a wider audience. Blockchain would make a lot of sense in areas where you can’t trust your government, where you don’t have access to a bank but have access to a mobile phone. Blockchain can be of help in such an environment. They also talk about  Zk-SNARKS where the proof exists but there is zero knowledge of the transaction and no interaction is required between the transaction provider and verifier. There is greater privacy is such a system but no visible verifiability other than the set rules it may have. These were the highlights of the main concepts of the podcast, for more discussion you can view the podcast on YouTube. IBM launches blockchain-backed Food Trust network which aims to provide greater transparency on food supply chains Microsoft Azure’s new governance DApp: An enterprise blockchain without mining LedgerConnect: A blockchain app store by IBM, CLS, Barclays, Citi and 7 other banks is being trialled

Last week, GNU ed, a line-oriented text editor, released GNU ed 1.15. GNU ed is used to create, display, modify and otherwise manipulate text files, both interactively and via shell scripts. Red, a restricted version of ed, can only edit files in the current directory and cannot execute shell commands. Ed is the "standard" text editor and the original editor for Unix. For most purposes, however, it is superseded by full-screen editors such as GNU Emacs or GNU Moe. Changes in GNU ed 1.15 The list command has been fixed to print a backslash before every '$' character within the text. Address ',,' has been fixed to mean '$,$' instead of '1,$'. A 's' command that is part of a 'g' or 'v' command-list can again split a line by including a newline escaped with a backslash '\' in the replacement string. For this, the closing delimiter of the replacement string can't be omitted unless the 's' command is the last command in the list because otherwise, the meaning of the escaped newline would become ambiguous. Due to a recent change in the POSIX standard, the 'c' command no longer accepts an address of 0, and the documentation for the 'i' command now explains that it treats address 0 as meaning "at the beginning of the buffer", instead of as a synonym for address 1. Minor fixes have been made to the manual. The configure script now accepts appending options to CFLAGS using the syntax 'CFLAGS+=OPTIONS'. To know more about this release, visit GNU ed’s email thread. GitHub now supports the GNU General Public License (GPL) Cooperation Commitment as a way of promoting effective software regulation GNU Bison 3.2 got rolled out Following Linux, GNU publishes ‘Kind Communication Guidelines’ to benefit members of ‘disprivileged’ demographics

Last week, Automotive Grade Linux, a collaborative project for developing an open platform for the connected car announced that Hyundai joined Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) and the Linux Foundation for innovation through open source. It is a cross-industry effort that brings together automakers, suppliers and technology companies to accelerate the development and adoption of an open software stack for the connected car. Automotive Grade Linux Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux at the Linux Foundation said, “Hyundai has been active in open source for years, and their experience will benefit the entire AGL community.”  He further added, “This is a significant milestone for us, as the rapid growth of AGL proves that automakers are realizing the business value that open source and shared software development can provide. We look forward to working with Hyundai as we continue on our path to develop open source solutions for all in-vehicle technology.” With Linux being at its core, AGL is focused on In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI). It is the only organization, which is planning to address all software in the vehicle, including heads-up display, instrument cluster, telematics, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. The Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects which power collaborative development to bring in innovation across industries and ecosystems. AGL Unified Code Base The AGL Unified Code Base (UCB) platform is an open source software platform for telematics, infotainment, and instrument cluster applications. It provides 70% of the starting point for a production project and also includes a middleware, an operating system, and application framework. Suppliers and automakers can easily customize the platform with features and service to meet their product and customer needs. The AGL Unified Code Base has been recognized as the CES 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree in Software and Mobile Apps category. Paul Choo, Vice President and Head of Infotainment Technology Center at Hyundai Motor Company, said, “Open collaboration is essential as we realize our connected car vision. AGL has built a robust platform that offers the flexibility to design and build new services on top of it, and quickly bring them to market.” In 2019, the  AGL booth will feature open source technologies from AGL members AISIN AW, Audiokinetic, DENSO, Cognomotiv, DENSO TEN, EPAM Systems, Fiberdyne Systems, SafeRide Technologies, Tuxera, and VNC Automotive and many more. This booth will be open during CES show hours from January 8-11, 2019. Read more about this news on Linux Foundation website. Chromium blacklists nouveau graphics device driver for Linux and Ubuntu users An update on Bcachefs- the “next generation Linux filesystem” The Linux and RISC-V foundations team up to drive open source development and adoption of RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA)  

According to the tweet posted by official Gab account, last week, Coinbase banned Andrew Torba’s (Founder at Gab, the social media platform), Coinbase merchant account. Gab’s business account on Coinbase was already closed in December, as per the report by blockchain blog Breaker. In November Gab was banned by BitPay, the cryptocurrency payment processor. In August 2017, Gab was banned by Google and the company removed the app from the Google Play store for violating the company’s hate speech policy. Last year in July, Microsoft threatened to stop hosting the site after a pair of anti-Semitic posts were published on the website. In 2017, Gab was banned by Apple and removed from Apple store because of the objectionable content. Just two months ago, even GoDaddy banned Gab for breaking the domain registrar’s rules against hosting violent content. Other companies like Medium, Stripe and Shopify have also banned Gab. Possible reasons for getting banned Gab has described itself on its website as a “social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online. All are welcome.”According to blockchain blog Breaker, one of the major reasons why it is hard for Gab to get a payment processor is its reputation for being the social network for users banned from mainstream platforms because of hate speech. As per a report by the New York Times, last year in October the alleged shooter, Robert Bowers in Pittsburgh used Gab to post a final message before attacking the synagogue. Post which, Torba stated that the Pittsburgh shooter doesn’t represent the broader user base of Gab. Paypal also banned Gab after the Pittsburgh incident. The official logo of Gab also got some controversies around it because of the green frog which is similar to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that became popular for racist memes. As per a post by Cointelegraph, last year, in April, the Coinbase merchandise shop of the anonymous international publishing nonprofit WikiLeaks had been closed due to a terms of service violation. Users have given mixed reaction to this news. Few users are not happy about this and are questioning Coinbase on restricting freedom via censorship. Many users got banned and are unhappy because of that, they are now comparing Coinbase with other platforms like Gemini and Cex.io. https://twitter.com/TallHandsomeOne/status/1081277877184802820 https://twitter.com/Hashmandu/status/1081261838568996866 Coinbase users are now agitated and even planning to close their accounts on Coinbase. Some are also planning to get their bitcoins off Coinbase. https://twitter.com/caballoantares/status/1081563003240308741 https://twitter.com/_Fruhmann_/status/1081409047679643648 According to few users the idea of bitcoin is freedom and the whole idea of bitcoin exchange would get ruined with Coinbase’ strategies and is anti-freedom. Users are are now looking forward to Decentralized Exchange, a cryptocurrency exchange without the central authority. Users are awaiting Skycoin’s first working decentralized exchange which is built directly into their software wallet. Skywire, Skycoin's flagship app is expected to launch sooner. Skywire will build a decentralized internet that will be fully encrypted and censorship proof. Users are also angry at Brian Armstrong, the founder of Coinbase and they are labelling him as a hypocrite as he talked about economic freedom and his latest move differs from it. Few users think that the decision taken by Coinbase was wise enough and it makes sense to ban platforms like Gab. https://twitter.com/livingrightco/status/1081578325104095233 Check the official announcement on Twitter. Social media platforms, Twitter and Gab.com, accused of facilitating recent domestic terrorism in the U.S. Coinbase Commerce API launches Coinbase looking to replicate Facebook’s platform strategy with support for more digital assets

The National Security Agency (NSA) will be publicly releasing their reverse engineering framework called GHIDRA, for the first time at the RSA Conference (Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman security conference) to be held in March 2019. According to the official announcement on the RSA blog, the framework will be introduced by NSA’s Senior Advisor Robert Joyce. According to NSA, GHIDRA has ‘an interactive GUI capability that enables reverse engineers to leverage an integrated set of features that run on a variety of platforms including Windows, Mac O, and LINUX and supports a variety of processor instruction sets’. This is what we know about GHIDRA so far: In March 2017, WikiLeaks leaked CIA Vault 7 documents which highlighted the various tools utilized by the CIA. The leaked documents included numerous references to a reverse engineering tool called ‘GHIDRA’ that was developed by the NSA at the start of the 2000s. For the past few years GHIDRA has been shared with other US government agencies with cyber teams that look at the inner workings of malware strains or suspicious software. GHIDRA is a ‘disassembler’ that breaks down software into its assembly code so that humans can analyze malware and other suspected malicious software. GHIDRA is built in Java, that runs on Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems and has a graphical user interface. With GHIDRA, developers can analyze the binaries of all major operating systems, including mobile platforms like Android and iOS. NSA is expected to add GHIDRA on NSA's code repository hosted by Github where the spy agency has released several other open source programs. Some people who are familiar with this tool and have shared opinions on HackerNews, Reddit, and Twitter. They have compared GHIDRA with IDA, another well-known reverse engineering tool. Source: HackerNews Head over to RSA’s official blog to check out the announcement. Alternatively, check out Siliconangle for more insights on this news. NSA’s EternalBlue leak leads to 459% rise in illicit crypto mining, Cyber Threat Alliance report NSA researchers present security improvements for Zephyr and Fucshia at Linux Security Summit 2018

The Internet Governance Project (IGP) did some research last year to understand the factors affecting decisions of network operators for IPV6 adoption. The study was done by Georgia tech’s IGP in collaboration with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) office. A study was commissioned as both IGP and ICANN believed that the internet community needs a better understanding of the motives to upgrade IPV4 to IPV6. The study titled The Hidden Standards War: Economic Factors Affecting IPv6 Deployment should be out this month. IPV6 is a different type of internet protocol with a larger address space. As IPV4 addresses are limited, about 4 billion, they may get depleted in the future. Hence IPV6 adoption will happen sometime. it can hold 2^128 addresses which is more than enough for the foreseeable distant future. IPV6 addresses are also longer than IPV4 and contain both numbers and letters in a hexadecimal form. Initial results of the study The report by IGP is still in the draft stage but they have shared some initial findings. It was found that IPV6 is not going to be disregarded completely after all. Especially in mobile networks where both the hardware and the software support the use of IPV6. Although IPV6 capability is mostly turned off due to lack of compatibility, it still remains. The initial findings show that 79% of the countries, a total of 169, did not have any noteworthy IPV6 deployment. The deployment percentage remained at or even below 5% when the study was conducted last year. 12% of the countries summing up to 26 had an increasing deployment. 8% or 18 countries had shown a plateau in growth where IPv6 capability growth stopped between 8% and 59%. Why the slow adoption? They say that it is all about the costs and benefits associated with upgrading. As economic incentives were investigated, it was found that there is no real need for operators to actually upgrade their hardware. No one uses IPv6 exclusively, as all public and almost all private network service providers have to offer full compatibility. With this condition in place, operators have only three choices: Stick to IPv4 Implement dual stack and provide both Run IPv6 where compatible and run some tunneling for IPv4 compatibility. To move towards IPv6, dual stack is not economical. The third option seems to be the only viable one. There are no benefits for the operators to shift to IPv6. Even if one operator migrated, it puts no pressure on the others to shift. The network operators exclusively bear the maintenance costs. Hence, a wealthier country can deploy more IPv6 networks. Even though it was introduced in 1994, a big problem for forwarding adoption is that IPv6 is incompatible with IPv4. IPv6 adoption can make sense if a network needs to grow, but most networks don’t need to grow. Hence, instead of buying new hardware/software to run IPv6, operators would rather just buy new IPv4 addresses as they are cheaper. Bottom line is, there is no considerable incentive to make a move to change protocol until the remaining IPv4 pool in near depletion. IPv6 support to be automatically rolled out for most Netify Application Delivery Network users Oath’s distributed network telemetry collector- ‘Panoptes’ is now Open source! 5G – Trick or Treat?