International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has completed its acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion, thus making it the world’s second-biggest technology acquisition ever. IBM has been struggling to adopt cloud-related technologies. With this deal, IBM will try to go after the market leaders like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

ROCm 2.6 was released overnight and when initially seeing this new Radeon Open Compute support come right after the Radeon RX 5700/5700XT launch, I was hopeful it would bring Navi support but sadly there are no signs of it in this release. But at least ROCm 2.6 is bringing other features.

Radeon ROCm 2.6 brings various information reporting improvements, the first official release of rocThrust and hipCUB, MIGraphX 0.3 for reading models frozen from Tensorflow, MIOpen 2.0 with Bfloat16 support and other features, BFloat 16 for rocBLAS/Tensible, AMD Infinity Fabric Link support, RCCL2 support, rocFFT improvements, ROCm SMI fixes, and other enhancements.

Supraland released for Linux on Steam on July 2nd and it just released on GOG today but it seems the Linux version will not be heading to GOG.

What is Supraland? It's a very highly rated first-person action and puzzle game, inspired by the likes of Zelda, Metroid and Portal. It's popular, with an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam from over two thousands user reviews and from my time spent in the demo, I can see why as it was pretty sweet.

QComboBox::currentIndexChanged(QString) used to have (i.e. in Qt 5.13.0) a deprecation warning that said "Use currentTextChanged() instead".

That has recently been reverted since both are not totally equivalent, sure, you can probably "port" from one to the other, but the "use" wording to me seems like a "this is the same" and they are not.

The calendar is a fresh new take on the previous one; the individual online accounts rows were removed in favor of delegating it all to GNOME Settings’ Online Accounts panel, navigation is easier and simpler, adding new calendars is a more intuitive operation, and it’s possible to toggle calendars right from the first page.

I’m pretty happy with the rework itself, and splitting it in pages and a controller was definitely the right choice. It allowed implementing the same functionality in a much more well organized way.

After a non-security-critical installation-time bug was found due to expired repository signing keys in the old BL Helium installation ISOs, we just published a new set of Helium install ISOs that have been fixed. The ISO image files are available for direct download or via BitTorrent at the usual place.

This issue only affected brand-new installations. If you already worked around the issue as suggested in our previous announcement, you don't have to do anything. Existing users of BL also do not need to do anything.

Thanks to all users who reported the issue.

We are pleased to announce that the Android Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! Android has a long history at Linux Plumbers and has continually made progress as a direct result of these meetings. This year’s focus will be a fairly ambitious goal to create a Generic Kernel Image (GKI) (or one kernel to rule them all!). Having a GKI will allow silicon vendors to be independent of the Linux kernel running on the device. As such, kernels could be easily upgraded without requiring any rework of the initial hardware porting efforts. This microconference will also address areas that have been discussed in the past.

Dave kicks things off with a report from FOSS Talk Live 2019. Fab couldn’t make it but says he’s planning to go to this year’s OggCamp. We than discuss the news that Larian is doing Baldur’s Gate III.

Naturally, we must also talk about Magic The Gathering, because it is the best game ever made. The new Core Set comes out this week!

Thirty-five volunteers joined FSF staff over the course of three days to get all the Bulletins stuffed in envelopes and mailed out. This was a great opportunity to catch up on free software issues with some of our most dedicated free software enthusiasts here in Boston. We are grateful to have such a strong core of supporters that keep the movement growing, and thanks to your generous contribution, we will be even stronger.

Please be vocal about your support for free software. Read and share the Bulletin articles online using the #ISupportFreeSoftware hashtag, use our fundraiser support images, and talk to your community about why you support the FSF. It makes a difference.

Throughout our spring fundraiser, we have been enjoying both the public posts from supporters using the hashtag on social media, as well as answers to the "What inspired you to join today?" question we ask new members. Here are some of our favorites.

Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman (RMS) was in Brno, Czech Republic on June 6, 2019, to give two speeches.

In the morning, he took part in the URBIS Smart City Fair, at the Brno Fair Grounds, giving his speech "Computing, freedom, and privacy."1

The SMD Challenge was born from an insight into the human condition, as its creators explain:

"Making LEDs blink is what people think make Makers happy, but they are wrong. Makers want to be miserable. They like to make mistakes and to have to try things over and over again. That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. This project will make you strong!"

The SMD challenge is a badge you make yourself. This project starts with a relatively easy to solder resistor and LED. It then moves into increasingly tiny resistors and LEDs. Coming in both "Regular Edition" and "Misery Edition," the SMD challenge is designed to challenge—and break—all but the most determined solderers.

If you do manage to make it all the way to the end (and can document your success), you can enter the prestigious 0201 Club. If you prefer to experience the misery (and success) secondhand, the club also features links showing many of the successful attempts.

Over the years, UK ISPs have been forced by the government to censor an increasing array of "controversial" content, including copyrighted material and "terrorist content." In fits and spurts, the UK has also increasingly tried to censor pornography, despite that being a decidedly impossible affair. Like most global censorship efforts, these information blockades often rely on Domain Name Server (DNS) level blacklists by UK ISPs.

Historically, like much of the internet, DNS hasn't been all that secure. That's why Mozilla recently announced it would begin testing something called "DNS over HTTPS," a significant security upgrade to DNS that encrypts and obscures your domain requests, making it difficult to see which websites a user is visiting. Obviously, this puts a bit of a wrinkle in the government, ISP, or other organizational efforts to use DNS records to block and filter content or track user activity.

GitHub has removed code that is based on DeepNude — an app that uses AI to digitally undress pictures of women and create fake nudes.

While the maker of DeepNude has already shut down the project and made it illegal to use or possess copies of the app, multiple repositories based on the DeepNude algorithm have cropped up on GitHub and also on other platforms.

The proliferation of deep fake videos is going to start having an effect on First Amendment protections. Hint: it's not going to make these protections any stronger.

"Deep fake" may be easier to define than "fake news," but that doesn't mean there won't be collateral damage. The issue isn't a new one. Faking reality has been around nearly as long as reality itself. Cheap tools that make this anyone's game is the only thing new. Before we had deep fakes, we had Photoshop and its imitators.

Video used to be the last bulwark of truth. It couldn't be faked easily. But this too has been abused for years. Editing video to make it show what the editor wants it to show is a tactic that has been used for years. Now, however, tools make it possible to put new words in peoples' mouths, as was demonstrated to devastating satirical effect when a video of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was tricked out to make it appear as though Zuckerberg was promising to swallow every user's data and privacy.