Mozilla's New Privacy-Conscious Approach to Sponsored Content, Atari Announces Pre-Sale Date of Atari VCS, New Kali Linux Release and More

News briefs for May 1, 2018.

Mozilla announces its new privacy-conscious approach to sponsored content. Earlier this year Mozilla began experimenting with showing a sponsored story occasionally in Pocket. The company is preparing to go live with it later this month with the Firefox 60 release. Mozilla stresses that this new approach must not sacrifice user privacy: "All personalization happens on the client-side, without needing to vacuum up all of your personal data or sharing it with others." It also promises quality content, user control and transparency.

Atari announces that pre-sales of the Atari VCS will begin May 30, 2018 on Indiegogo, which will feature the time-limited Atari VCS Collector's Edition with the special retro-inspired wood front. In addition, there will be the option to pre-order an all-black Onyx edition for $199.

Kali today announces its Kali Linux 2018.2 release, the first to include the 4.15 kernel, which has the fixes for Spectre and Meltdown. It also includes "much better support for AMD GPUs and support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization, which allows for encrypting virtual machine memory such that even the hypervisor can't access it."

System76 released Pop!_OS Linux 18.04 recently, which is based on Canonical's Ubuntu 18.04, Softpedia News reports. This new version features "a brand new installer, new power management features, firmware notifications, and proper HiDPI support".

Porteus recently announced the immediate availability of Porteus-v4.0 final, which comes in seven desktop flavors: KDE, Xfce, LXDE, LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE and Openbox. This release also includes a new update-browser feature, support for EFI and Intel microcode available in the boot folder, among other things.

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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