Source: Hacker News
Source: The Verge - All Posts
Google says it’s rolling back its decision to remove a section from the Play Store that listed which permissions an app uses. The company had more or less replaced that info with its Data Safety section, which is supposed to give you an idea of what data apps are collecting and how that data is used.
The problem, as several commentators pointed out, is that the information in the Data Safety section came from developers, whereas the app permissions section was generated by Google. By removing it, Google made it impossible for users to do a quick fact-check by comparing the two sections or to use the info from both to get a more complete picture of what an app is up to and what it has access to.
In a Twitter thread on Thursday spotted by...
Source: Hacker News
Source: Hack a Day
Well, that was fast! Last week, we wrote about a video by [Norbert Heinz] where he called out the Ortur laser engravers for apparently using the GPL-licensed grbl firmware without providing the source code and their modifications to it, as required by the license. Because open source and grbl are dear to our hearts and CNC machines, we wrote again about Norbert’s efforts over the weekend, speculating that it might just be unfamiliarity with the open source license requirements on Ortur’s part.
Because of [Norbert]’s persistance and publicity around the issue, the support ticket finally reached the right person within Ortur, and within two or three days [Gil Araújo], Support Admin at Ortur, managed to convince the company that going fully open source was the right thing to do. What remains is the question of how to do it, operationally.
So [Gil] asked [Norbert] to ask Hackaday: what do you want from Ortur on this, and how should they proceed? Via e-mail, he asked in particular for best practices on setting up the repository and making the code actually useful to non-programmer types. He said that he looked around at the other laser engraver companies, and didn’t find any good examples of others doing the Right Thing
, so he asked [Norbert] to ask us. And now we’re asking you!
Have you got any good examples of companies using open-source firmware, modifying it, and making it available for their users? Is a simple Github repo with a README enough, or should he spend some time on making it user-friendly for the non-coders out there? Or start with the former and work toward the latter as a goal? I’m sure [Gil] will be reading the comments, so be constructive! You’ll be helping a laser engraver company take its first steps into actually engaging with the open source community.
We said it before, and we’ll say it again. Good job [Norbert] for taking Ortur to task here, but also by doing so in a way that leaves them the option of turning around and doing the right thing. This also highlights that companies aren’t monolithic beasts – sometimes it takes getting your cause heard by just the right person within a company to change the response from a “this is a business secret” to “how should we set up our Github?” And kudos for [Gil] and Ortur for listening to their users!
Source: Hacker News
Source: Hacker News
Source: Ars Technica
Enlarge / Intel's 12th-generation Core CPUs use different types of CPU cores for different tasks. That hybrid architecture continues to cause problems for some software. (credit: Intel)
Earlier this week, some people waiting to take the bar exam received a message from ExamSoft, the company that makes the Examplify software that many states use to administer the exam: PCs with Intel's latest 12th-generation Core processors are "not currently supported" because they were "triggering Examplify's automatic virtual machine check." The company's suggested solution was that people find another device to take the test with, a frustrating and unhelpful "workaround" for anyone with a new computer.
As pointed out by The Verge, Examsoft's system requirements page for its software provides no additional detail, simply reiterating that 12th-gen CPUs aren't currently supported and that you aren't allowed to run the Examplify software within a virtual machine. But it's not the first time a problem like this has surfaced, and the culprit is almost certainly the hybrid CPU architecture that Intel is using in most 12th-gen chips.
In previous generations, all of the cores in a given Intel CPU have been identical to one another: same design, same performance, same features. Clock speed and power usage would ramp up and down based on what the computer was doing at any given time, but the cores themselves were all the same and could be treated that way by the operating system. In 12th-gen chips, CPUs come with a mix of completely different processor cores: large, fast performance cores (or P-cores) handle the heavy lifting, while smaller, low-power efficiency cores (or E-cores) handle lighter tasks. But because operating systems and most apps are used to assuming that all CPU cores in a given system are the same, software has needed to be modified to tell the difference between the two.
Source: Hacker News
