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In this week's Top 5, we highlight tools for building great command-line UIs, an open source 2D game engine, mechanical keyboards, and more. Top 5 articles of the week 5. Mechanical keyboards for programmers and gamers Input Club's mechanical keyboards aren't just about producing exceptional products. They're also proof that open source can solve any problem. read more

Ever looked up at the night sky and tried to identify specific celestial bodies out of the millions you can see? Stellarium is an awesome open source planetarium application available in Fedora to help you identify and track objects in the... Continue Reading →

I originally got into systems administration because I loved learning about computers, and I figured that was a career that always would offer me something new to learn. Now many years later that prediction has turned out to be true, and it seems like there are new things to learn all the time.

When trying to make things work with the datetime module, most Python users have faced a point when we resort to guess-and-check until the errors go away. datetime is one of those APIs that seems easy to use, but requires the developer to have a deep understanding of what a few things actually mean. Otherwise, given the complexity of date- and time-related issues, introducing unexpected bugs is easy. read more

Machine learning and natural language processing are transforming our relationship with our devices by giving them a human voice. People with visual impairments have especially benefited from these technologies, but those who speak languages like my native Odia have largely been left behind by most voicebanks. read more

Wrestling with Google's machine learning framework Hands-on Occasionally a technology comes along that changes the way that people work. Docker has had a profound effect on how applications are deployed in the cloud, Hadoop changed how analysis of big data was done and the R language has disrupted the statistics market.…

Text editors aren't just something developers use to crank out code. Writers use them, too. A good text editor enables writers to focus on their words, but also packs other features that help them craft and publish their work more efficiently. While popular among the techies, GitHub's Atom text editor has evolved into a solid editor for writers, too. That's thanks to Atom's 6,100+ packages, which greatly extend the editor's capabilities. read more

Brad Fitzpatrick, a software engineer at Google working on the Go programming language, is a life-long nerd. Fitzpatrick's keynote at OSCON this year was based on bits of wisdom from half a life in open source.

A remote hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips for seven years was more severe than many people imagined, because it allowed hackers to remotely gain administrative control over huge fleets of computers without entering a password.

Have you launched an open source project or are you considering doing so? Making a success of your project can involve everything from evaluating licenses to community outreach. The good news is that there are many free resources that can help you advance and protect your project.

When last we met we reviewed some iptables fundamentals. Now you'll have two example firewalls to study, one for a single PC and one for a LAN. They are commented all to heck to explain what they're doing. This is for IPv4 only, so I'll write up some example firewalls for IPv6 in a future installment.

The lsof command in Linux displays in its output information about files that are opened by processes. In this article, we will discuss the tool using 10 easy to understand examples.

'You do not abandon your users' .NET Foundation chief tells El Reg. Build Microsoft will not, after all, restrict its open-source cross-platform web framework ASP.NET Core 2.0 from running on the Windows-only .NET Framework. There are now two distinct forms of Microsoft’s .NET platform. One is called .NET Framework and runs only on Windows, while the other is called .NET Core and is open source and cross-platform.

Intrinsyc’s “Open-Q 212” SBC runs Android 7 on a quad -A7 Snapdragon 212, and offers special audio features for developing voice controlled devices. Intrinsyc has released a 120 x 120mm, Nano-ITX single board computer specifically designed for adding voice control to embedded devices.

Developers looking to add GUIs to their embedded devices have a variety of open source and commercial options, with Qt generally leading the list. If you’re operating in severely constrained environments, however, especially for battery powered devices like wearables, the open source Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) should be given close consideration.

Keyboards are how we connect to our computers and very often to the rest of the world. The layout of keys is a physical representation of the languages we speak, and this simple tool gives us a limitless ability to communicate. A keyboard is a collection of mechanical and electrical relays that convert touch into digital signals. This allows it to exist both in our world of real objects and in the digital world of computers. read more

The Open Invention Network has protected Linux with strong patent consortium for more than a decade. Now, it's expanding its protection to other major open-source projects.

This easy (“at your own risk”) hack can unlock a Nest thermostat’s “Cool” mode in heater-only installations, allowing control of a heater’s ventilation fan as though it’s an A/C. The Nest Learning Thermostat is a terrific energy saving Linux gizmo, with lots of cool features. I’ve been using one since January of 2016, and have […]

Beleaguered email client team gets its 'Dear John' letter A little over a year ago, Mozilla started pondering the future of Thunderbird. And this week, it's decided the troubled open-source email client must sleep in the spare room.…

In Diane Marsh's keynote at OSCON, one of the biggest open source conferences in the US each year, the Director of Engineering at Netflix explained a tale of two systems. At Netflix, the Asgard continuous delivery platform was developed internally, then shared openly. Did this cause headaches? Yes. read more