News Briefs

• Groboards has launched a new "tiny, Adafruit Feather form-factor 'Giant Board' SBC that runs Linux on Microchip's SiP implementation of its Cortex-A5-based SAMA5D SoC and offers 128MB RAM, micro-USB, microSD and I/O including ADC and PWM", Linux Gizmos reports. There's no pricing or availability information at the time of this writing, but see the OSH Park blog and the Groboards site for specs and more info.
• A new open-source hardware project called Alias will keep Amazon and Google smart assistants from spying on you. According to the project's GitHub page, "Alias is a teachable 'parasite' that is designed to give users more control over their smart assistants, both when it comes to customisation and privacy. Through a simple app the user can train Alias to react on a custom wake-word/sound, and once trained, Alias can take control over your home assistant by activating it for you."
• A new major release of the open-source Metasploit Framework is now available. According to the Rapid7 blog post, version 5.0 of the penetration-testing tool is the first milestone update since version 4.0 came out in 2011. Along with a new release cadence, "Metasploit's new database and automation APIs, evasion modules and libraries, expanded language support, improved performance, and ease-of-use lay the groundwork for better teamwork capabilities, tool integration, and exploitation at scale."
• Orange Pi 3 SBC is now available. Linux Gizmos reports that the open-source hardware platform, Allwinner H6-based Orange Pi 3 SBC is now available for $30, or for $40 with 2GB of RAM and 8GB eMMC. Also, other highlights include "GbE, HDMI 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, WiFi-ac, and mini-PCIe." For more info, visit the Orange Pi 3 AliExpress page.
• Inkscape is finally reaching the 1.0 milestone after 15 years of development. Softpedia News reports that Inkscape 1.0 will feature "an updated user interface that offers better support for 4K/HiDPI screens and theming support, the ability to rotate and mirror canvases, new options for exporting to the PNG image format, variable fonts (requires pango 1.41.1 or higher), as well as much faster path operations and deselection of a large amounts of paths." You can download the pre-release alpha as an Appimage from here and see the release notes here.
• Creative Commons recently announced that 30,000 high-quality digital images from the Cleveland Museum of Art are now available. The free and open digital images are now under the CC0 and available via their API. The "CC0 allows anyone to use, re-use, and remix a work without restriction." Museum Director William M. Griswold said "Open Access with Creative Commons will provide countless new opportunities to engage with works of art in our collection. With this move, we have transformed not only access to the CMA's collection, but also its usability—inside as well as outside the walls of our museum."
• Dell launched its new XPS 13 9380 Developer Edition laptop, which runs Ubuntu out of the box. According to Forbes, highlights include Intel 8th generation i3, i5 and i7 processors; Ubuntu 18.04 LTS preloaded; InfinityEdge display with top camera placement; and much more. See Dell.com for more information.
• Raspberry Pi announces its Computer Module 3+ (CM3+) is now available for $25. The CM3+ is the "newest version of our flexible board for industrial applications and offers over ten times the ARM performance, twice the RAM capacity, and up to eight times the Flash capacity of the original Compute Module." The company also has released a refreshed Compute Module Development kit. The CM3+ will be available until at least January 2026.
• Firefox 65.0 was released to Channel users. New features include enhanced tracking protection, better experience for multilingual users, support for HandOff on macOS, better video streaming for Windows users, and improved performance and web compatibility, with support for the WebP image format. Go here to download Firefox.
• Lucern Custom Instruments from the UK teamed up with Tracktion Corporation of Seattle to create Spirit Animal, an electric guitar with a Raspberry Pi synthesizer built in. According to the Raspberry Pi Blog, the guitar "boasts an onboard Li-ion battery granting about 8 hours of play time, and a standard 1/4" audio jack for connecting to an amp. To permit screen-sharing, updates, and control via SSH, the guitar allows access to the Pi's Ethernet port and wireless functionality." See also the Gear News website and the Lucern Instruments Facebook page for more information.
• Kodi 18.0 "Leia" is now available for all supported platforms. This is a major release, reflecting nearly 10,000 commits, 9,000 changed files and half a million lines of code added. This new release features support for gaming emulators, ROMs and controls; DRM decryption support; significant improvements to the music library; live TV improvements; and much more. See the changelog for more details, and go here to download.
• ZaReason debuted its new Gamerbox 9400, "the ultimate Linux gaming PC". And, the Gamerbox is just the beginning, ZDNet reports, quoting ZaReason CEO Cathy Malmrose: "Our current team is mostly gamers so, not surprisingly, that is the direction we are going. We have a full line of gaming machines in R&D." The Gamerbox runs Ubuntu 18.04, with a 64-bit Pentium 3.8Ghz G5500 Coffee Lake processor and 8GB of DDR4 memory.
• Google announced two new audio apps for Android to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing: Live Transcribe and Sound Amplifier. Live Transcribe "takes real-world speech and turns it into real-time captions using just the phone's microphone". Live Transcribe will roll out gradually as a limited beta via the Play Store and pre-installed on Pixel 3 devices. You can sign up here to be notified when it's more widely available. Sound Amplifier makes "audio more clear and easier to hear. You can use Sound Amplifier on your Android smartphone with wired headphones to filter, augment and amplify the sounds in your environment. It works by increasing quiet sounds, while not over-boosting loud sounds." Sound Amplifier is available now via the Play Store and supports Android 9 Pie or later and comes pre-installed on Pixel 3.
• The Document Foundation announced the official release of LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar. This is a major new release that "features a radical new approach to the user interface—based on the MUFFIN concept—and provides user experience options capable of satisfying all users' preferences, while leveraging all screen sizes in the best way." This version has many new features, including substantial changes to icon themes, context menus are tidied up and interoperability with proprietary file formats has been improved. See this video for details on all the new features. Note that LibreOffice 6.1.5 also was released recently for enterprise-class deployments. You can download LibreOffice 6.2 or LibreOffice 6.1.5 from here.
• Raspberry Pi has opened a store in the Grand Arcade, Cambridge, UK. See this video for details and follow #RPiStore for more photos and info.