Yahoo! search! results!, recommendations!, ad! flinging! code! is! now! open! source! • The Register Forums

User topics

Article topics

Log in Sign up

Other stories you might like

Arrogant, subtle, entitled: 'Toxic' open source GitHub discussions examined

Developer interactions sometimes contain their own kind of poison

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 21:23 UTC

Analysis Toxic discussions on open-source GitHub projects tend to involve entitlement, subtle insults, and arrogance, according to an academic study. That contrasts with the toxic behavior – typically bad language, hate speech, and harassment – found on other corners of the web.
Whether that seems obvious or not, it's an interesting point to consider because, for one thing, it means technical and non-technical methods to detect and curb toxic behavior on one part of the internet may not therefore work well on GitHub, and if you're involved in communities on the code-hosting giant, you may find this research useful in combating trolls and unacceptable conduct.
It may also mean systems intended to automatically detect and report toxicity in open-source projects, or at least ones on GitHub, may need to be developed specifically for that task due to their unique nature.

Continue reading
Open source body quits GitHub, urges you to do the same

Paid-for Copilot trained on FOSS code final straw for Software Freedom Conservancy

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Thu 30 Jun 2022 // 23:28 UTC

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit focused on free and open source software (FOSS), said it has stopped using Microsoft's GitHub for project hosting – and is urging other software developers to do the same.
In a blog post on Thursday, Denver Gingerich, SFC FOSS license compliance engineer, and Bradley M. Kuhn, SFC policy fellow, said GitHub has over the past decade come to play a dominant role in FOSS development by building an interface and social features around Git, the widely used open source version control software.
In so doing, they claim, the company has convinced FOSS developers to contribute to the development of a proprietary service that exploits FOSS.

Continue reading
Linus Torvalds says Rust is coming to the Linux kernel 'real soon now'

Maintainer lack of familiarity won't be an issue, chief insists, citing his own bafflement when faced with Perl

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Thu 23 Jun 2022 // 19:30 UTC

At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, Linus Torvalds said he expects support for Rust code in the Linux kernel to be merged soon, possibly with the next release, 5.20.
At least since last December, when a patch added support for Rust as a second language for kernel code, the Linux community has been anticipating this transition, in the hope it leads to greater stability and security.
In a conversation with Dirk Hohndel, chief open source officer at Cardano, Torvalds said the patches to integrate Rust have not yet been merged because there's far more caution among Linux kernel maintainers than there was 30 years ago.

Continue reading
GitHub's AI code assistant Copilot takes flight. And that'll be $10 a month, please

You wanna bug fix and chill?

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Tue 21 Jun 2022 // 19:27 UTC

Microsoft's GitHub on Tuesday released its Copilot AI programming assistance tool into the wild after a year-long free technical trial.
And now that GitHub Copilot is generally available, developers will have to start paying for it.
Or most of them will. Verified students and maintainers of popular open-source projects may continue using Copilot at no charge.

Continue reading
RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well

1980s refugee, open source, and runs on modern kit

Liam Proven in Prague Tue 21 Jun 2022 // 17:30 UTC

RISC OS, the operating system of the original Arm computer, the Acorn Archimedes, is still very much alive – and doing relatively well for its age.
In June 1987, Acorn launched the Archimedes A305 and A310, starting at £800 ($982) and running a new operating system called Arthur. At the time, it was a radical and very fast computer. In his review [PDF] for Personal Computer World, Dick Pountain memorably said: "It loads huge programs with a faint burping noise, in the time it takes to blink an eye."
Arthur was loosely related to Acorn's earlier MOS, the BBC Micro operating system but looked very different thanks to a prototype graphical desktop, implemented in BBC BASIC, that could charitably be called "technicolor."

Continue reading
Jenkins warns of security holes in these 25 plugins

Relax, most of the vulnerabilities so far have, er, no fix

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Thu 30 Jun 2022 // 20:22 UTC

Jenkins, an open-source automation server for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), has published 34 security advisories covering 25 plugins used to extend the software.
Eleven of the advisories are rated high severity, 14 are medium, and 9 are said to be low.
The vulnerabilities described include: cross-site scripting (XSS); passwords, API keys, secrets, and tokens stored in plaintext; cross-site request forgery (CSRF); and missing and incorrect permission checks.

Continue reading
Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

It's good to highlight some alternatives, but security issues are overblown

Liam Proven in Prague Mon 27 Jun 2022 // 16:30 UTC

Analysis A blog post calling for a boycott of the well-known 7-Zip compression app is attracting some discussion on Reddit.
However, it seems criticism for Igor Pavlov and his FOSS compression app 7-Zip is somewhat overblown and may reflect the anti-Russian sentiment of the times.
7-Zip has been around since 1999 and during that two-decade span there have been more widely used Windows compression tools (WinZip and WinRAR, in particular) they are shareware, so try-before-you-buy versus free.

Continue reading
Startup rattles tin for e-paper monitor with display fast enough to play video

In grayscale, though. Optimistic plans for daylight-readable display and long-life laptop

Liam Proven in Prague Fri 24 Jun 2022 // 15:45 UTC

E-paper display startup Modos wants to make laptops, but is starting out with a standalone high-refresh-rate monitor first.
The initial plan is for the "Modos Paper Monitor," which the company describes as: "An open-hardware standalone portable monitor made for reading and writing, especially for people who need to stare at the display for a long time."
The listed specifications sound good: a 13.3", 1600×1200 e-ink panel, with a DisplayPort 1.2 input, powered off MicroUSB because it only takes 1.5-2W.

Continue reading
Thunderbird 102 gets a major facelift, Matrix chat support

Mozilla's messaging client appears to have benefited from sponsor shakeup

Liam Proven in Prague Thu 30 Jun 2022 // 11:58 UTC

Open-source cross-platform email and messaging client Thunderbird has hit version 102, with a new look and improved functionality, including Matrix chat support.
The latest release is the first major upgrade since version 91, which The Reg looked at last August. This is normal for the app – it follows the same approximately annual release cycle as Firefox's Extended Support Releases, the most recent of which was also version 91. From now until the next major release, Thunderbird 102 will get a regular stream of minor updates and bug fixes.
102 has a modernized look and feel. There's a new "Spaces" toolbar, which appears vertically on the left of the app window and lets users quickly flip between inbox, address book, calendar, task list, and chat tabs. All of these are built-in features – the former Lightning calendar add-on is now an integral part of the app, as is PGP support, which used to be an add-on called Enigmail. Thunderbird can talk to various groupware calendar and contact servers, including both private and corporate Google Mail accounts, Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, and others.

Continue reading
EndeavourOS Artemis: Arch Linux, but a bit friendlier

The Reg FOSS desk takes the latest release, 22.6, for a spin

Liam Proven in Prague Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 11:39 UTC

EndeavourOS is a rolling-release Linux distro based on Arch Linux. Although the project is relatively new, having started in 2019, it's the successor to an earlier Arch-based distro called Antergos, so it's not quite as immature as its youth might imply. It's a little more vanilla than Antergos was – for instance, it uses the Calamares cross-distro installer.
EndeavourOS hews more closely to its parent distro than, for example, Manjaro, which we looked at very recently. Unlike Manjaro, it doesn't have its own staging repositories or releases. It installs packages directly from the upstream Arch repositories, using the standard Arch package manager pacman. It also bundles yay to easily fetch packages from the Arch User Repository, AUR. The yay command takes the same switches as pacman does, so if you wanted to install, say, Google Chrome, it's as simple as yay -s google-chrome and a few seconds later, it's done.

Continue reading

ABOUT US

MORE CONTENT

SITUATION PUBLISHING

The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing

SIGN UP TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER

Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2022

Do not sell my personal information Cookies Privacy Ts&Cs