News Briefs

• Opera announced the launch of a built-in cryptocurrency wallet for Android. According to The Verge, "The wallet will first support ethereum, with support for other coins likely to come later. Ether investors using Opera would potentially be able to more easily access their tokens using the feature." You can get Opera for Android here.
• Valve's Steam link app for Raspberry Pi 3B and 3B+ is now officially available. Phoronix reports that "This app provides similar functionality to the low-cost Steam Link dedicated device that's been available the past few years for allowing in-home streaming of games on Steam from your personal PC(s) to living room / HTPC type setups using Steam Link." You can get the app here.
• Qt introduced Qt for Python. This new offering allows "Python developers to streamline and enhance their user interfaces while utilizing Qt's world-class professional support services". According to the press release, "With Qt for Python, developers can quickly and easily visualize the massive amounts of data tied to their Python development projects, in addition to gaining access to Qt's world-class professional support services and large global community." To download Qt for Python, go here.
• As of January 1, 2019, all works published in the US in 1923 will enter the public domain. The Smithsonian reports that it's been "21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S." The article continues: "The release is unprecedented, and its impact on culture and creativity could be huge. We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age. The last one—in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond—predated Google. 'We have shortchanged a generation,' said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. 'The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.'"
• KStars v3.0.0 was released in January after four months of development. Jasem's Ekosphere blog post lists all the new features, including the XPlanet Solar System View developed by Robert Lancaster, significant improvements to FITS viewer GUI, scheduler improvements and more.
• Malware targeting IoT devices is growing. BetaNews reports that according to McAfee Labs, "new malware targeting IoT devices grew 72 percent with total malware growing 203 percent in the last four quarters". The growth is partly attributed to devices being harnessed for cryptomining. See the McAfee Labs Threats Report, December 2018 for all the details.
• Mozilla announced the latest release of Firefox Focus, introducing enhanced privacy settings. According to the Mozilla blog, "You can choose to block all cookies on a website, no cookies at all—the default so far—third party cookies or only 3rd party tracking cookies as defined by Disconnect's Tracking Protection list. If you go with the latter option, which is new to Firefox Focus and also the new default, cross-site tracking will be prevented." You can get the latest version of Firefox Focus from Google Play and in the App Store.
• Google's Fuchsia OS will have Android app support via Android Runtime. According to 9To5Google, it was expected that Fuchsia would support Android apps, and now "that suspicion has been confirmed by a new change found in the Android Open Source Project, and we can say with confidence that Fuchsia will be capable of running Android apps using the Android Runtime." The article also notes that "How exactly Fuchsia will use the Android Runtime from there is still unclear. This includes whether the Android Runtime is able to work as expected to replace Linux kernel calls with equivalents from Fuchsia's Zircon kernel or if ART will run inside of a Linux virtual machine using Machina, Fuchsia's virtual machine system."
• Linux servers equipped with poorly configured IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) cards are prone to attack. ITPro Today reports that "since November, black hat hackers have been using the cards to gain access in order to install JungleSec ransomware that encrypts data and demands a 0.3 bitcoin payment (about $1,100 at the current rate) for the unlock key". The post recommends that to secure against these attacks, make sure the IPMI password isn't the default and "access control lists (ACLs) should be configured to specify the IP addresses that have access the IPMI interface, and to also configure IPMI to only listen on internal IP addresses, which would limit access to admins inside the organization's system."
• LinuxGizmos has published its 2019 catalog of open-spec Linux hacker boards. These are all "hacker-friendly, open-spec SBCs that run Linux or Android", and LinuxGizmos provides "recently updated descriptions, specs, pricing, and links to details for all 122 SBCs."
• Linux 5.0-rc1 was released last month. Linus Torvalds wrote: "The numbering change is not indicative of anything special. If you want to have an official reason, it's that I ran out of fingers and toes to count on, so 4.21 became 5.0. There's no nice git object numerology this time (we're _about_ 6.5M objects in the git repo), and there isn't any major particular feature that made for the release numbering either. Of course, depending on your particular interests, some people might well find a feature _they_ like so much that they think it can do as a reason for incrementing the major number. So go wild. Make up your own reason for why it's 5.0."
• MIT recently released Scratch 3, the latest version of its visual programming language. The Raspberry Pi blog announced it has upgraded to make this a smooth transition for those who use its free project resources, "whether that be at a Code Club, CoderDojo, Raspberry Jam, or at home, so we've been busy upgrading our resources to work with Scratch 3". In addition, "Scratch 3 versions of all projects in the Code Club Scratch Modules 1–3 and the CoderDojo Scratch Sushi Cards are already live!" See the post for more details related to Scratch 3 on RPi.
• GitHub's CEO Nat Friedman announced that free accounts now can create private repositories (previously only paid accounts could have private repositories). Ars Technica reports that "Now every GitHub account can create an unlimited number of private repositories. These are still restricted—only three people can collaborate on these repositories—but a great many of those projects that once had no option but to be opened up might now be marked as private." The Ars Technica article also expresses concern that one possibility with this change is that "programs that would previously have been published as open source will now be closed up forever".
• Bash-5.0 was released recently. This release fixes several bugs and introduces many new features. From the release announcement: "The most notable new features are several new shell variables: BASH_ARGV0, EPOCHSECONDS, and EPOCHREALTIME. The `history' builtin can remove ranges of history entries and understands negative arguments as offsets from the end of the history list. There is an option to allow local variables to inherit the value of a variable with the same name at a preceding scope. There is a new shell option that, when enabled, causes the shell to attempt to expand associative array subscripts only once (this is an issue when they are used in arithmetic expressions). The `globasciiranges' shell option is now enabled by default; it can be set to off by default at configuration time."
• Purism announced the fourth version of its Librem laptops. The Librem 13 and 15 will be "now be upgraded with a 7th Gen Intel Core i7-7500U Processor with integrated HD Graphics that still works with coreboot. In addition, the Librem 15 display will be upgraded to 4K resolution. Upgraded models are available now for purchase whether you pick Librem 13: the road warrior or Librem 15: the desktop replacement." Note that the base cost will remain the same despite these updates (the Librem 15 starts at $1599, and the Librem 13 starts at $1399).