KStars v3.0.0 Now Available, Malware Targeting IoT Devices Is Growing, Enhanced Privacy Settings for Mozilla's Latest Firefox Focus, Coreboot 4.9 Released and Pivotal Announces Pivotal Cloud Foundry Platform Version 2.4
News briefs for December 21, 2018.
KStars v3.0.0 was released today 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 announces 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.
Coreboot 4.9 was released this week sporting more than 2,600 changes and ports to 56 new motherboards. According to Phoronix, Coreboot 4.9 "features a number of code clean-ups to the different motherboard ports and all over, the Coreboot documentation is now hosted within the repository, the Intel FSP binaries are now integrated within the build system, and a number of older boards have been deprecated". See the release notes for more details.
Pivotal yesterday announced the release of version 2.4 of its Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) platform, which is a commercial distribution, based on the open-source Cloud Foundry project. New to this version, according to eWeek is "zero downtime updates for application deployments, enabling organizations to roll out upgrades without downtime. PCF 2.4 also introduces a new compliance scanner in beta that will enable organizations to validate that the configuration of PCF deployments meets best practices".
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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