Mozilla Releases Common Voices, KStars v3.1.0 Is Out, LibreELEC 9.0.1 (Leia) Now Available, System76's New Oryx Pro Laptops Slated to Arrive and Security Flaw in Google Chrome
News briefs for February 28, 2019.
Mozilla today released Common Voices, the "largest to-date public domain transcribed voice dataset". The dataset includes 18 languages and almost 1,400 hours of recorded voice from more than 42,000 people. From the Mozilla blog: "With this release, the continuously growing Common Voice dataset is now the largest ever of its kind, with tens of thousands of people contributing their voices and original written sentences to the public domain (CC0). Moving forward, the full dataset will be available for download on the Common Voice site."
KStars v3.1.0 was released today, marking the first release of 2019. This release focuses on stability and performance improvements—for example, some bugs in the Ekos Scheduler, Ring-Field Focusing was added to the Focus module, and the LiveView window now enables zooming and panning for supported DSLR cameras. See the Jasem's Ekosphere blog for all the details, and go here for download links and other resources.
LibreELEC 9.0.1 (Leia) is now available. This release of the Linux-based open-source operating system for embedded devices "contains many changes and refinements to user experience and a complete overhaul of the underlying OS core to improve stability and extend hardware support. Kodi v18 also brings new features like Kodi Retroplayer and DRM support that (equipped with an appropriate add-on) allows Kodi to unofficially stream content from services like Netflix and Amazon." In addition, "Changeable SSH passwords and a default firewall configuration have been added to combat the increasing number of HTPC installs that can be found on the public internet." Go here to download.
System76's new Oryx Pro laptop with RTX 20-Series GPUs is slated to arrive today. Features include "super thin aluminum alloy design, switchable NVIDIA and Intel GPUs, performance 8th-gen CPus, 15" and 17" IPS display options and up to 32GB of memory", and comes with Pop!_OS 18.04 LTS (64-bit) or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (64-bit) for the OS.
Softpedia News reports that the security flaw discovered by EdgeSpot is "already being exploited in the wild and an official fix would only be released by Google in late April." In addition, "The PDF documents do not appear to leak any personal information when opened in dedicated PDF readers like Adobe Reader. However, it seems the malicious code specifically targets a vulnerability in Google Chrome, as opening them in the browser triggers outbound traffic to one of two different domains called burpcollaborator.net and readnotify.com." To protect yourself, don't open any PDFs in Google Chrome, especially from untrusted sources.
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.
Recent Articles
