The Arizona House of Representatives just passed landmark app store legislation in a 31-29 vote on Wednesday that could have far-reaching consequences for Apple and Google and their respective mobile operating systems. From a report: The legislation, a sweeping amendment to Arizona’s existing HB2005 [PDF], prevents app store operators from forcing a developer based in the state to use a preferred…
Tag: Operating systems
Did Linux Kill Commercial Unix?
When Dave McKay first used computers, punched paper tape was in vogue, “and he has been programming ever since,” according to his biography page at How-To Geek. It adds that “His use of computers pre-dates the birth of the PC and the public release of Unix.” Now long-time Slashdot reader sbinning shares McKay’s “short history of UNIX and how Linux got…
To Re-Enable Flash Support, South Africa’s Tax Agency Released Its Own Web Browser
“The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has released this week its own custom web browser,” reports ZDNet, “for the sole purpose of re-enabling Adobe Flash Player support, rather than port its existing website from using Flash to HTML-based web forms.” To prevent the app from continuing to be used in the real-world to the detriment of users and their security, Adobe…
How DNSpooq Attacks Could Poison DNS Cache Records
Earlier this week security experts disclosed details on seven vulnerabilities impacting Dnsmasq, “a popular DNS software package that is commonly deployed in networking equipment, such as routers and access points,” reports ZDNet. “The vulnerabilities tracked as DNSpooq, impact Dnsmasq, a DNS forwarding client for *NIX-based operating systems.” Slashdot reader Joe2020 shared Help Net Security’s quote from Shlomi Oberman, CEO and researcher…
BeagleV is a $150 RISC-V Computer Designed To Run Linux
New submitter shoor writes: Seeed Studios — the makers of the Odyssey mini-PC — have teamed up with well-known SBC vendor BeagleBoard to produce an affordable RISC-V system designed to run Linux. The new BeagleV (pronounced “Beagle Five”) system features a dual-core, 1GHz RISC-V CPU made by StarFive — one of a network of RISC-V startups created by better-known RISC-V vendor…
Rediscovering RISC-V: Apple M1 Sparks Renewed Interest in Non-x86 Architecture
“With the runaway success of the new ARM-based M1 Macs, non-x86 architectures are getting their closeup,” explains a new article at ZDNet. “RISC-V is getting the most attention from system designers looking to horn-in on Apple’s recipe for high performance. Here’s why…” RISC-V is, like x86 and ARM, an instruction set architecture (ISA). Unlike x86 and ARM, it is a free…
Wasmer 1.0 Can Run WebAssembly ‘Universal Binaries’ on Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android, and iOS
The WebAssembly portable binary format will now have wider support from Wasmer, the server-side runtime which “allows universal binaries compiled from C++, Rust, Go, Python, and other languages to run on different operating systems and in web browsers without modification,” reports InfoWorld: Wasmer can run lightweight containers based on WebAssembly on a variety of platforms — Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android, iOS…
A Year After Microsoft Ended All Support for Windows 7, Millions of Users Are Still Not Upgrading
Ed Bott, writing at ZDNet: With a heartfelt nod to Monty Python, Windows 7 would like you all to know that it’s not dead yet. A year after Microsoft officially ended support for its long-running OS, a small but determined population of PC users would rather fight than switch. How many? No one knows for sure, but that number has shrunk…
California Partners With Apple and Google For COVID-19 Contact Tracing On Phones
California is partnering with Apple and Google on an app to let people use their phones to track potential exposure to COVID-19. CNET reports: The digital system uses Bluetooth signals from people’s phones to alert them if they’ve been in contact with someone who’s tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The project takes advantage of two of the world’s most popular…
Greg Kroah-Hartman: ‘Don’t Make Users Mad’
From a recent report:
Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux Foundation fellow currently responsible for stable Linux kernel releases, shared the lessons he’s learned as a kernel developer that are applicable to other developers at this year’s Linux App Summit. He started by showing how he could succinctly distill the essence of the talk into a single four-word slide: “Don’t make your users mad….”…