It’s October! That means its time for the annual Hacktoberfest presented by DigitalOcean and DEV. Hacktoberfest is a month-long event that encourages contributions to open source software projects. Participants who register and submit at least four pull requests to GitHub-hosted repositories during the month of October will receive a free t-shirt.
In a recent Fedora Magazine article, I listed some areas where would-be contributors could get started contributing to Fedora. In this article, I highlight some specific projects that provide an opportunity to help Fedora while you participate in Hacktoberfest.
Fedora infrastructure
Bodhi — When a package maintainer builds a new version of a software package to fix bugs or add new features, it doesn’t go out to users right away. First it spends time in the updates-testing repository where in can receive some real-world usage. Bodhi manages the flow of updates from the testing repository into the updates repository and provides a web interface for testers to provide feedback.
the-new-hotness — This project listens to release-monitoring.org (which is also on GitHub) and opens a Bugzilla issue when a new upstream release is published. This allows package maintainers to be quickly informed of new upstream releases.
koschei — koschei enables continuous integration for Fedora packages. It is software for running a service for scratch-rebuilding RPM packages in Koji instance when their build-dependencies change or after some time elapses.
MirrorManager2 — Distributing Fedora packages to a global user base requires a lot of bandwidth. Just like developing Fedora, distributing Fedora is a collaborative effort. MirrorManager2 tracks the hundreds of public and private mirrors and routes each user to the “best” one.
fedora-messaging — Actions within the Fedora community—from source code commits to participating in IRC meetings to…lots of things—generate messages that can be used to perform automated tasks or send notifications. fedora-messaging is the tool set that makes sending and receiving these messages possible.
fedocal — When is that meeting? Which IRC channel was it in again? Fedocal is the calendar system used by teams in the Fedora community to coordinate meetings. Not only is it a good Hacktoberfest project, it’s also looking for a new maintainer to adopt it.
In addition to the projects above, the Fedora Infrastructure team has highlighted good Hacktoberfest issues across all of their GitHub projects.
Community projects
bodhi-rs — This project provides Rust bindings for Bodhi.
koji-rs — Koji is the system used to build Fedora packages. Koji-rs provides bindings for Rust applications.
fedora-rs — This project provides a Rust library for interacting with Fedora services like other languages like Python have.
feedback-pipeline — One of the current Fedora Council objectives is minimization: work to reduce the installation and patching footprint of Fedora releases. feedback-pipeline is a tool developed by this team to generate reports of RPM sizes and dependencies.
And many more
The projects above are only a small sample focused on software used to build Fedora. Many Fedora packages have upstreams hosted on GitHub—too many to list here. The best place to start is with a project that’s important to you. Any contributions you make help improve the entire open source ecosystem. If you’re looking for something in particular, the Join Special Interest Group can help. Happy hacking!
Poll: Box Art Brawl #13 – Goemon’s Great Adventure
Smell that? Yes, that aroma of blood, sweat and tears can only mean one thing: it’s time for Box Art Brawl, the series where we lock box art variants of the same game in a cage and see which one survives to the bitter end according to votes from you bloodthirsty lot.
Last week North American Trevor Belmont triumphed over his European and Japanese selves with that version of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse comfortably winning approval. To be honest, we thought round 12 was going to be much closer, but NA bagged over two-thirds of the vote and left Japan and Europe to depart with bloody tears in their eyes.
This week we’re sticking with Konami but jumping to the Nintendo 64 with Goemon’s Great Adventure, or Mystical Ninja 2 Starring Goemon as it was known in Europe. The Ganbare Goemon series has a loyal fanbase, but it’s been a long while since we last saw the mystical ninja and he’s arguably slipped off the radar a bit. Well, we’re here to remember his heyday with the cover of this 2.5D side-scrolling sequel.
Let’s take a look and see which mystical ninja has the stealthiest skills…
North America
With Goemon centre-stage and striking a similar pose to the one on his first N64 game cover, Ebisumaru and the pre-rendered gang gather behind him as red, fiery shards of energy burst from the rear of the group. It’s big, dynamic and uses practically every colour on the spectrum. The logo arguably gets a bit lost and we found our eyes constantly drawn to Goemon’s odd-looking feet.
Europe
The European version eschews the rendered look for a more traditional ensemble piece of art. It’s similarly colourful, but more characters equal more action and the logo stands out a bit better, despite having some odd colouring going on in the diamond behind the text. The black info strip down the side provides a calm counterpoint to the energy of the main image, but that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Normally it’s the North American and European covers which share the same key art, but this time it’s Europe and Japan…
Japan
Yep, Europe used the same key image as the JP cover, although the portrait orientation means we get a better look at the moon above the mountains. We see more of the art, although we’re not sure if that’s an improvement on the landscape perspective of the PAL version. The Konami logo in the top left is joined by a red strip across the bottom that repeats the company’s name and once again the title is a mishmash of colours and elements.
If we could mix-and-match the parts we wanted, there’s surely a killer cover here somewhere – unfortunately, we’ve got to pick between them. Actually, that’s wrong – you’re doing the picking! Once you’ve decided which ninja deserves your undying loyalty, give him a click below and hit that ‘Vote’ button:
A disciplined professional in combat and self-defence, it’ll be fascinating to see how the ninja performs against himself. Box Art Brawl will return next week for another round – we hope to see you then!
Wild West FPS Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger Rated For Switch By The ESRB
Update – Sun 20th Oct, 2019 13:05 BST: Following a rating by the ESRB earlier this month, Techland has seemingly started teasing Call of Juarez: Gunslinger for Switch.
It recently sent out a postcard to select media (thanks, VG247), showing a picture of a gunslinger playing what appears to be the recently rated game on the Nintendo Switch. The back of this postcard says “more” will be revealed on 24th October. Take a look below:
Keep an eye out for a more official announcement next week.
Original Story – Wed 9th Oct, 2019 04:15 BST: A Nintendo Switch version of the western-themed first-person shooter Call of Juarez: Gunslinger has been rated by North America’s Entertainment Software Rating Board.
This game was first released in 2013 by publisher Ubisoft and was acquired by Techland in 2018. It’s the fourth entry in the Call of Juarez series and received positive reviews by critics when it was originally released.
There’s been no mention before now about Call of Juarez: Gunslinger coming to the Switch, so we’re guessing a more official announcement is on the way. In the meantime, take a look at one of the original trailers for the game:
Is this a game you’ve been wanting to see released on the Switch? Comment below.
Box Office Report: Maleficent 2 Is Disney's Worst Opening Of 2019
The latest box office numbers have arrived, and Disney's Maleficent sequel, Mistress of Evil, was a disappointment. Entertainment Weekly reports that the film made an estimated $36 million in the Friday-Sunday period in the US and Canada, which is below the $40 million it was predicted to make.
Additionally, that's just over half of the $69.4 million that the first Maleficent movie made over its first weekend back in 2014.
At $36 million, Mistress of Evil had the lowest opening weekend for for any Disney movie so far in 2019. The film pulled in a further $117 million from overseas markets over the weekend to push its total to $153 million. Still, the movie had a budget of $185 million (before marketing), so this shows "audiences weren't invested in a sequel," EW said.
Mistress of Evil has a very good A rating on Cinema Score, which is a measurement of audience scores. The movie stars Elle Fanning and Angelina Jolie. It was directed by Joachim Ronning, who previously made Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Mistress of Evil did well enough to unseat Joker from the No. 1 position its held since it debuted on October 4. The Todd Phillips/Joaquin Phoenix movie made $29.2 million at the box office in the US/Canada this weekend. The movie has made more than $730 million globally so far, which makes it a huge success given it was made on a $55 million budget.
Another new movie that premiered this weekend was Zombieland 2: Double Tap. It earned $26.7 million in the domestic market, which is ahead of the $24.7 million that the first movie made over its opening weekend in 2009 (not adjusted for inflation).
Huawei To Help Create Nation’s First Open-Source Foundation
Huawei Technologies Co said it plans to partner with other companies to set up China’s first open-source software foundation, which is expected to begin to operate in a month or two to expand the nation’s software community. The plan for the software foundation came after GitHub, the world’s largest host of source code, prevented in July users in Iran and other nations sanctioned by the United States government from accessing portions of its service. The incident highlights increasing geopolitical interference with global open-source tech communities, which are supposed to be fair and open to all, analysts said. (Source: China.org)
Phaser 3.20 was released today. The open source 2D game framework gains a few new features including improved Spine support, a more consistent Pixel Art game mode configuration as well as support for video playback. Additionally the release contains several smaller new features, dozens of fixes and improvements.
Hey, it me – throwing more things at the wall to see what sticks. Reddit’s a great (also: terrifying) platform, and often an interesting source of news and insight into what people are interested in at any given moment. In the past I’ve used it as for a variety of things, but today I thought I’d take that a step further.
While browsing r/iOSGaming I happened to come across a thread talking about child-friendly games on Apple Arcade. As a new parent myself (even though I don’t use iOS specifically) these kinds of things interest me, as my daughter is already showing interest in phones and has some idea of how they work. Introducing her to games is the next logical step.
But where to start? That’s something I think I’ll tackle further down the line but for any parents out there wondering the same, and since Apple Arcade is currently the new shiny thing, I thought I’d share a distillation of the reddit thread (OP – u/yworker) for your convenience. I’m listing them by post and whether or not anyone concurred – some posters recommended several games in one go.
To clarify, the OP was specifically asking about games for three-year olds, so YMMV on some of these recommendations:
Sneaky Sasquatch (Seconded)
Frogger in Toy Town and Painty Mob
Dodo Peak, Fledgling Heroes
Cricket Through the Ages
Assemble with Care (Seconded)
There were some non-Arcade suggestions in that thread as well, but I wanted to try and remain on message. Let me know what you think or whether you have any suggestions of your own – kids are growing up with an unprecedented level of access to technology, and anything we can do to help each other out is appreciated.
Redesigning Configuration Refresh for Azure App Configuration
August 27th, 2019
Overview
Since its inception, the .NET Core configuration provider for Azure App Configuration has provided the capability to monitor changes and sync them to the configuration within a running application. We recently redesigned this functionality to allow for on-demand refresh of the configuration. The new design paves the way for smarter applications that only refresh the configuration when necessary. As a result, inactive applications no longer have to monitor for configuration changes unnecessarily.
Initial design : Timer-based watch
In the initial design, configuration was kept in sync with Azure App Configuration using a watch mechanism which ran on a timer. At the time of initialization of the Azure App Configuration provider, users could specify the configuration settings to be updated and an optional polling interval. In case the polling interval was not specified, a default value of 30 seconds was used.
public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args)
{ WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureAppConfiguration((hostingContext, config) => { // Load settings from Azure App Configuration // Set up the provider to listen for changes triggered by a sentinel value var settings = config.Build(); string appConfigurationEndpoint = settings["AzureAppConfigurationEndpoint"]; config.AddAzureAppConfiguration(options => { options.ConnectWithManagedIdentity(appConfigurationEndpoint) .Use(keyFilter: "WebDemo:*") .WatchAndReloadAll(key: "WebDemo:Sentinel", label: LabelFilter.Null); }); settings = config.Build(); }) .UseStartup<Startup>() .Build();
}
For example, in the above code snippet, Azure App Configuration would be pinged every 30 seconds for changes. These calls would be made irrespective of whether the application was active or not. As a result, there would be unnecessary usage of network and CPU resources within inactive applications. Applications needed a way to trigger a refresh of the configuration on demand in order to be able to limit the refreshes to active applications. Then unnecessary checks for changes could be avoided.
This timer-based watch mechanism had the following fundamental design flaws.
It could not be invoked on-demand.
It continued to run in the background even in applications that could be considered inactive.
It promoted constant polling of configuration rather than a more intelligent approach of updating configuration when applications are active or need to ensure freshness.
New design : Activity-based refresh
The new refresh mechanism allows users to keep their configuration updated using a middleware to determine activity. As long as the ASP.NET Core web application continues to receive requests, the configuration settings continue to get updated with the configuration store.
The application can be configured to trigger refresh for each request by adding the Azure App Configuration middleware from package Microsoft.Azure.AppConfiguration.AspNetCore in your application’s startup code.
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
{ app.UseAzureAppConfiguration(); app.UseMvc();
}
At the time of initialization of the configuration provider, the user can use the ConfigureRefresh method to register the configuration settings to be updated with an optional cache expiration time. In case the cache expiration time is not specified, a default value of 30 seconds is used.
public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args)
{ WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureAppConfiguration((hostingContext, config) => { // Load settings from Azure App Configuration // Set up the provider to listen for changes triggered by a sentinel value var settings = config.Build(); string appConfigurationEndpoint = settings["AzureAppConfigurationEndpoint"]; config.AddAzureAppConfiguration(options => { options.ConnectWithManagedIdentity(appConfigurationEndpoint) .Use(keyFilter: "WebDemo:*") .ConfigureRefresh((refreshOptions) => { // Indicates that all settings should be refreshed when the given key has changed refreshOptions.Register(key: "WebDemo:Sentinel", label: LabelFilter.Null, refreshAll: true); }); }); settings = config.Build(); }) .UseStartup<Startup>() .Build();
}
In order to keep the settings updated and avoid unnecessary calls to the configuration store, an internal cache is used for each setting. Until the cached value of a setting has expired, the refresh operation does not update the value. This happens even when the value has changed in the configuration store.
Try it now!
For more information about Azure App Configuration, check out the following resources. You can find step-by-step tutorials that would help you get started with dynamic configuration using the new refresh mechanism within minutes. Please let us know what you think by filing issues on GitHub.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-21-2019, 12:08 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
How AI is helping children overcome their speech disabilities
The idea immediately appealed to brothers Alex and Cosmin, who founded Ascendia after seeing how their mother, a teacher, struggled to meet all her students’ needs with limited resources. What started as a personal passion project has flourished in the last decade to become a multinational company operated by 33 staff in nine countries. So far, Ascendia has created over 1,100 hours of educational content supporting students, parents and teachers alike. As Cosmin Malureanu puts it, “our goal is to get teachers comfortable with new technologies, so they can prepare the next generation for the jobs of the future, not those of the past.”
With the support of Alex and Cosmin, Daniela and her team set about creating a solution to help children working to overcome their speech disabilities – a solution now known as Timlogo.
Timlogo is an interactive, digital speech development tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse children’s pronunciation and diagnose their specific speech issues, and then recommend the most relevant course of exercises to correct these. The tool’s offering also learns and adapts over time, meaning that as children improve, the suggested exercises evolve too.
Most importantly, Timlogo is designed to be fun, integrating games, characters and stories that spark a child’s imagination and hold their attention. Teacher and speech therapist Dragan Georgeta explains: “Many children become anxious when they struggle to pronounce certain sounds. But in Timlogo, they are introduced to cartoon characters who tell a story around each sound and encourage them to join in and attempt to pronounce it.” This gamification creates a feeling of inclusion and boosts children’s confidence, something that is key when it comes to overcoming speech difficulties.
Contribute at the kernel and IoT edition Fedora test days
Fedora test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora before, this is a perfect way to get started.
There are two upcoming test days in the upcoming week. The first, starts on Monday 30 September through Monday 07 October, is to test the Kernel 5.3. Wednesday October 02, the test day is focusing on Fedora 31 IoT Edition. Come and test with us to make the upcoming Fedora 31 even better.
Kernel test week
The kernel team is working on final integration for kernel 5.3. This version was just recently released and will arrive soon in Fedora. This version will also be the shipping kernel for Fedora 31. As a result, the Fedora kernel and QA teams have organized a test week for Monday, Sept 30 through Monday, October 07. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. The steps are clearly outlined in this document.
Fedora IoT Edition test day
Fedora Internet of Things is a variant of Fedora focused on IoT ecosystems. Whether you’re working on a home assistant, industrial gateways, or data storage and analytics, Fedora IoT provides a trusted open source platform to build on. Fedora IoT produces a monthly rolling release to help you keep your ecosystem up-to-date. The IoT and QA teams will have this test day for on Wednesday, October 02. Refer to the wiki page for links and resources to test the IoT Edition.
How do test days work?
A test day is an event where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed before, this is a perfect way to get started.
To contribute, you only need to be able to download test materials (which include some large files) and then read and follow directions step by step.
Detailed information about both test days are on the wiki pages above. If you’re available on or around the days of the events, please do some testing and report your results.
