EFF Celebrating 29th Birthday with $20 Membership, Linode Launches New GPU-Optimized Cloud Computing Instances, Syncthing 1.2.0 Released, Kali Linux Now Available for RPi 4 and GNOME Devs to Disable Snap Plugin for GNOME Software

News briefs for July 11, 2019.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is celebrating its 29th birthday "by building a future where tech respects and empowers users". From now until July 24, 2019, the EFF is offering a $20 membership, which includes a set of limited-edition enamel pins. (Note also that the EFF is a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law.)

Linode yesterday launched new GPU-optimized cloud computing instances, specifically for developers and business that need massive parallel computational power. From the press release: "The new instances are built on NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 GPU cards with all three major types of processing cores (CUDA, Tensor, and Real-Time Ray Tracing) available to users. Linode is one of the first cloud providers to deploy NVIDIA's latest GPU architecture." For more information, see linode.com.

Syncthing 1.2.0 was released recently. Linux Uprising reports that this version of the open-source peer-to-peer synchronization tool "adds QUIC with NAT traversal as a new transport protocol, fixes some bugs and enables automatic error reporting." The article notes Syncthing's emphasis on privacy: "None of your data is ever store anywhere else other than your own computers (no central server); all communication is secured using TSL and authenticated using a strong cryptographic certificate. Basically, it can replace Dropbox and other similar services with something decentralized, where your data is your data alone." Go here to download.

Kali Linux for Raspberry Pi 4 was released recently, "complete with on-board wifi monitor mode & frame injection support!" You can download it from the Kali Linux ARM Images page. Currently there is support only for 32-bit, but 64-bit is coming soon.

GNOME developers plan to disable the Snap plugin for GNOME Software, as Canonical has started creating its own Snap Store and won't be using GNOME Software in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. According to Phoronix, "Canonical's in-development Snap Store will obviously be focused just on their own Snap effort and not supporting the likes of Flatpak. Due to the likelihood that the GNOME Software Snap plug-in will quickly suffer from bit-rot and pose a maintenance burden to GNOME developers with little to no return, it's certainly reasonable that they would at least disable this plug-in."

Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.

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