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Raspberry Pi Launches Higher Resolution Camera Module, Now With Autofocus
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jan '23

10 Jan '23

'Raspberry Pi is launching a new camera module for use with its diminutive DIY computers -- the Camera Module 3. Its upgraded Sony IMX708 sensor is higher resolution, but perhaps more important is that the new module supports high dynamic range photography and autofocus. Alongside it, Raspberry Pi is also releasing a new camera board for use with M12-mount lenses. From a report: Combined, the new features mean the Camera Module 3 should be able to take more detailed photographs (especially in low light), and can focus on objects as little as 5cm away. The autofocus uses a Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) system, with Contrast Detection Autofocus used as a backup. In contrast, previous versions of the camera module had fixed-focus lenses, which Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton writes were "optimized to focus at infinity" and could only take a "reasonably sharp image" of objects around a meter away. The new module's sensor has a resolution of 11.9 megapixels (compared to 8.1 megapixels for the last version), and has a higher horizontal resolution that should allow it to film HD video. HDR support means the Camera Module 3 can take several exposures of the same scene, and combine them so that both darker and lighter parts of an image are properly exposed (at the expense of some resolution) -- a trick commonly performed by just about every smartphone. Prices start at $25 for the Camera Module 3 with a standard field-of-view, while the ultra-wide angle version with a 102-degree field of view is $35.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/01/09/1647247 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Google wants RISC-V to be a “tier-1” Android architecture
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jan '23

04 Jan '23

'Over the holiday break, the footage from the recent "RISC-V Summit" was posted for the world to see, and would you believe that Google showed up to profess its love for the up-and-coming CPU architecture? We've been trying to nail down how the Android team feels about RISC-V (reduced instruction set computer) for a while. We last heard a comment from the team six months ago, where our Google I/O question about RISC-V was answered only with "we're watching, but it would be a big change for us." Some external RISC-V porting projects exist, and various RISC-V commits have been landing in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), but since anyone can submit code to AOSP, it has been hard to make any bold proclamations about RISC-V's Android status. Google's keynote at the RISC-V Summit was all about bold proclamations, though. Lars Bergstrom, Android's director of engineering, wants RISC-V to be seen as a "tier-1 platform" in Android, which would put it on par with Arm. That's a big change from just six months ago. Bergstrom says getting optimized Android builds on RISC-V will take "a lot of work" and outlined a roadmap that will take "a few years" to come to fruition, but AOSP started to land official RISC-V patches back in September. The build system is up and running, and anyone can grab the latest "riscv64" branch whenever they want—and yes, in line with its recent Arm work, Google wants RISC-V on Android to be 64-bit only. For now, the most you can get is a command line, and Bergstrom's slide promised "initial emulator support by the start of 2023, with Android RunTime (ART) support for Java workloads following during Q1."' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/google-announces-official-android-s… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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X11 Server Development Pace Hits a Two Decade Low
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jan '23

04 Jan '23

'Michael Larabel writes via Phoronix: While Mesa's development has been very vibrant this year, the X.Org Server development pace has continued pulling back greatly from its late 00's and early 10's highs. This year saw just 156 commits to the xserver Git master branch, down from 331 last year and well off the highs of 2,114 as the most ever back in 2008. This jives with the downward pace over the past decade of the number of new commits continuing to slide. But it's not just on a commit basis but in overall code churn, 2022 was another low for the X.Org Server. With the 156 commits this year, there were just 3,618 lines of new code added and 888 lines removed.... Compared to last year with its 331 commits seeing 31.4k new lines and 179k lines removed. The X.Org Server development this year on a commit basis hasn't been as low since 2003 when there were just 125 commits under their old development model and even back then meant there was +865k lines /680k lines removed across that span of commits. There hasn't been so little code churn to the X Server since 2002. [...] This year saw commits from just 32 different email addresses, down from 48 in prior years and that number of different authors hasn't been so low since 2003 when there were just 10 recorded. Olivier Fourdan of Red Hat was the most prolific committer to the X.Org Server this year with nearly a quarter of the commits. Following Olivier was Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia, Peter Hutterer, Michel DÃnzer, Alan Coopersmith, and Sultan Alsawaf. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/01/03/2248209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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HandBrake video transcoder adds official AV1 codec support in latest release
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '23

03 Jan '23

'Hardware and software support for the royalty-free AV1 video codec has been steadily building over the last couple years. Hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding is becoming standard in more GPUs, phone SoCs, and other hardware, while streaming video services like YouTube and Netflix have begun serving AV1-encoded video to devices that support it. Open-source software projects are beginning to follow suit, too. The Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) package has been expanding its AV1 capabilities in recent releases, and now the HandBrake video transcoding app has added AV1 support as well. Version 1.6.0, released yesterday, has added support for encoding AV1 video using both CPU-based SVT-AV1 software encoding as well as via Intel's AV1-capable QuickSync video encoder included in its Arc GPUs.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/handbrake-video-transcoder-adds-off… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Ellen Ullman: “The Dumbing Down Of Programming”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Dec '22

24 Dec '22

Found this two-part article from Salon magazine of 1998 <https://www.salon.com/1998/05/12/feature_321/>, <https://www.salon.com/1998/05/13/feature_320/>. Choice quotes: My intention had been to buy an upgrade to Windows NT Server, which was a completely sensible thing for me to be doing. ... But somehow I left the store carrying a box of Linux from a company called Slackware. ... In six clicks of a wizard, the Microsoft C++ AppWizard steps me through the creation of an application skeleton. ... Of course, I could look at the code that the Wizard has generated. ... But everything in the environment urges me not to. ... In this programming world, the writing of my code has moved away from being the central task to become a set of appendages to the entire Microsoft system structure. I'm a scrivener here, a filler-in of forms, a setter of properties. ... I once worked on a project in which a software product originally written for UNIX was being redesigned and implemented on Windows NT. Most of the programming team consisted of programmers who had great facility with Windows, Microsoft Visual C++ and the Foundation Classes. In no time at all, it seemed, they had generated many screenfuls of windows and toolbars and dialogs, all with connections to networks and data sources, thousands and thousands of lines of code. But when the inevitable difficulties of debugging came, they seemed at sea. In the face of the usual weird and unexplainable outcomes, they stood a bit agog. It was left to the UNIX-trained programmers to fix things. ... In an ideal world, I would not have to choose between the extreme polarities of dialog box and source code. My dream system interface would allow me to start hesitantly, unschooled. Then, as I used the facility that distinguishes me from the machine -- the still-mysterious capacity to learn, the ability to do something the second time in a way quite different from the first -- I could descend a level to a smarter, quicker kind of "talk." I would want the interface to scale with me, to follow me as my interest deepened or waned.

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Visual Effects Society 2021 Studio Platform Report
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Dec '22

23 Dec '22

Came across this interesting survey report <https://drive.google.com/file/d/15b-4GMTSEE9tyqeQdBfy_LZnxQIdp38Y/view> (Google Drive link to a downloadable PDF file), linked from this opinion piece <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/it-might-be-time-for-apple-to-throw…>. The report was released early this year from the Visual Effects Society Technology Committee, and looks at how companies working in the VFX industry are using different computing platforms. Interesting fact: three-fifths of the workstations at these companies run Linux, and this share looks to increase in the future. There is a mix of distros, but the largest share are running CentOS. This seems to be dictated by the vendors of the proprietary apps, who will only support certain distros and not others. And of course this leads to worries like where do they go after the end of CentOS. By the way, the “VFX Reference Platform” is a set of baseline technical specs which gets updated every year <https://vfxplatform.com/>, hence designations like “CY2021”. Some interesting comments are recorded in the report: Windows continues to be seen as “working out of the box”, yet the comments describe many ongoing headaches with managing Windows systems, including technical limitations like “character limits, limitations of Active Directory management”. Sometimes it looks like the users can be part of the problem: All our artists refuse to work with Linux and we chose to keep on Windows for their comfort. But sometimes it's hard to manage. (Not a peep about the famous brand loyalty of Mac users?) Seems like there is a definite long-term preference for greater Linux adoption, with pleas like Support for Enterprise Software (Video and Chat Platforms) on Linux. Support for realtime tech (NVIDIA, Epic) on Linux. and We could have only Linux if it was not for Adobe After Effects and a couple of other Adobe Creative Cloud Apps.

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Microsoft discovers Windows/Linux botnet used in DDoS attacks
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '22

16 Dec '22

'Microsoft researchers have discovered a hybrid Windows-Linux botnet that uses a highly efficient technique to take down Minecraft servers and performs distributed denial-of-service attacks on other platforms. Dubbed MCCrash, the botnet infects Windows machines and devices running various distributions of Linux for use in DDoS attacks. Among the commands the botnet software accepts is one called ATTACK_MCCRASH. This command populates the user name in a Minecraft server login page with ${env:random payload of specific size:-a}. The string exhausts the resources of the server and makes it crash. “The usage of the env variable triggers the use of Log4j 2 library, which causes abnormal consumption of system resources (not related to Log4Shell vulnerability), demonstrating a specific and highly efficient DDoS method,” Microsoft researchers wrote. “A wide range of Minecraft server versions can be affected.”' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/microsoft-discovers-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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AGM next month
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

Hi everyone Our AGM (Annual General Meeting) is scheduled for next month on January 23rd with the following agenda: • President's Report • Treasurer's Report • Election of 2023 Committee • Retirement of WLUG servers • General business • Consumption of pizza (if not online) Details: https://www.meetup.com/waikatolinuxusersgroup/events/290343641/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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You Can Hook Your MIDI Keyboard Up To a Website With Firefox 108
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

'A new feature in Firefox version 108 that may please musicians is the improved support for the Web MIDI API. "The MIDI standard is very close to a remarkable 40 years old, and Web MIDI does just what the name implies: it allows web apps to send and receive MIDI signals to and from musical instruments," reports The Register. "In principle this will allow sequencer apps to be implemented in Javascript." From the report: Amusingly, the last time The Reg mentioned Web MIDI, it was because Apple was taking it off Safari users, allegedly because of security concerns. Firefox 108 addresses that with a new security mechanism for preventing, and optionally permitting, apps inside browser tabs to access hardware resources -- in this instance, your MIDI ports. No, this does not mean that you can listen to CANYON.MID directly within Firefox. .MID files are not the same as General MIDI. But if you are nostalgic for that for some reason, help is at hand. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/12/14/2133258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Ask Slashdot: What Should Mozilla Do To Boost Firefox's Market Share?
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

'Mozilla's Firefox once commanded a large chunk of the browser market share, but now it stands under a pitiful 5 percent. Google money removes need to compete from a management POV as they'll get paid either way but they're still leaving money on the table. What should Mozilla do to help Firefox regain its lost market share? Not so long ago Internet Explorer was only used to download Firefox when geeks reloaded Windows machines for others. Today, Edge, however pathetic, still outranks Firefox. Were FF not arguably the best available browser for Linux, share would be even less. Were you the king for a day what would you do to make Firefox great again? If you dropped or deprecated Firefox what shooed you off? This is not about Firefox being good or bad but about regaining casually discarded market share. ' -- source: https://ask.slashdot.org/story/22/12/14/1626235 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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