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• Canonical: Flutter Is The Default Choice For Future Ubuntu Apps — Along with the new installer, Ken Vandine, Engineering Manager, Ubuntu Desktop, Canonical revealed that the out-of-the-box experience for devices preloaded with Ubuntu will also be powered by Flutter.
• Ubuntu on Twitter — Flutter is the default choice for future Ubuntu apps. @kenvandine, Engineering Manager, is here to tell you about some of Canonical’s contributions to Flutter at #FlutterEngage.
• Getting started with Flutter on Ubuntu
• Version 2 of Google’s Flutter toolkit adds support for desktop and web apps
• The Linode network model — As we worked on expanding our global network, three things were non-negotiable: maintaining vendor diversity, balancing flexibility and control, and incorporating Linux starting at the network level as much as possible.
• Chrome (Chromium) release cycle shortened to 4 weeks, Chrome(ium) gets “Extended Stable” release every 8 weeks — We are excited to announce that Chrome is planning to move to releasing a new milestone every 4 weeks, starting with Chrome 94 in Q3 of 2021.
• Chrome Moving To A 4-Week Release Cycle
• (2019) Mozilla Shifting Firefox To A Four-Week Release Cycle
• Linux Mint may start pushing high-priority patches to users — Besides looking for available updates, the Manager will also track cases where updates are overlooked. This will include metrics on when updates were last applied; when were packages last upgraded; and how many days have passed since a particular update was made available.
• Linux Mint Finds Many Of Its Users Are Running Behind On Security Updates
• Linux Mint emits fix for memory-gobbling Cinnamon
• Update your computer! – The Linux Mint Blog
• A warning about 5.12-rc1 — This merge window, we had a very innocuous code cleanup and simplification that raised no red flags at all, but had a subtle and very nasty bug in it: swap files stopped working right. And they stopped working in a particularly bad way: the offset of the start of the swap file was lost. Swapping still happened, but it happened to the wrong part of the filesystem, with the obvious catastrophic end results.
• That Linux 5.12 Severe Data Corruption Bug Hits Intel CI Systems - Issue Caused By Swap File
• Watch Out For Possible Data Loss On Early Linux 5.12 Kernels
• Save the Date! | Container Plumbing Days — The Container Plumbing Days will be a 2-day event to investigate, discuss, hack, learn, and celebrate the “lower-level” open source container technologies, everything from the container runtime on down to the Linux kernel.

Plus new Matrix goodies, why AWS is investing in Blender, and more.

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• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!

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• Google kills Android Things, its IoT OS, in January — Google announced it had basically given up on the project as a general-purpose IoT operating system in 2019, but now there's an official shutdown date thanks to a new FAQ page detailing the demise of the OS.
• Android Things Shutdown FAQ
• Ron Amadeo on Twitter — Oof, Google promised three years of updates when Android Things launched in May 2018, the actual support it delivered? One year, three months.
• Google, Qualcomm partner to bring 4 OS Android updates to new chipsets — The new plan is three years of major OS updates and four years of security updates.
• Qualcomm promises three years of Android updates for its entire SoC lineup
• Google acquires CloudReady OS to make PCs Chromebooks — Neverware lets you turn old PCs and Macs into Chromebook-esque devices through its CloudReady OS. While primarily aimed at schools and enterprises, a free “Home” edition for everyone is available. Google has now acquired Neverware and CloudReady with plans to integrate it with Chrome OS.
• Native Steam (Borealis) on Chrome OS likely arriving mid-2021
• GTK 4.0 Officially Released After More Than 4 Years of Development — The GTK development officially released today the next generation of the GTK toolkit, GTK 4.0, after being in development for more than four years.
• GTK 4.0 Toolkit Officially Released
• GTK 4.0 – GTK Development Blog
• Matrix.to: Reloaded — A challenge we regularly face is all the factors which make Matrix flexible and powerful as an open, secure decentralised protocol also increase the difficulty of getting started.
• Matrix.to — Create shareable links to Matrix rooms, users or messages without being tied to any app
• Introducing Cerulean — Alongside all the normal business-as-usual Matrix stuff, we’ve found some time to do a mad science experiment over the last few weeks - to test the question: "Is it possible to build a serious Twitter-style decentralised microblogging app using Matrix?"
• Google AMP gets a shock to its system as advisor quits, lawsuit claims foul play — Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages technology, known as AMP among web publishers, took a beating this week as an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of Texas charged that the ad biz used AMP to hinder competition.
• I have resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee – Terence Eden’s Blog — I remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web.
• AWS joins the Blender Development Fund — AWS committed to a period of three years, specifically to support character animation tools development.

Plus Google Cardboard goes open source, and a neat machine-learning tool to pull songs apart.

Special Guest: Wes Payne.

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• Google gives most Chromebooks an extra year of software support — Seven Chromebooks from Lenovo recently had their support lifespan extended, and now Google has updated the EOL date for 135 more models from several manufacturers. Most models received another year of support, others only got another six months, and some now have two more years.
• What’s new in Chrome OS: Virtual Desks, simpler printing and more — Think of Virtual Desks as separate workspaces within your Chromebook. Use this feature to create helpful boundaries between projects or activities. If you’re working on multiple projects, you can dedicate a desk to each one. Open Overview and tap New Desk in the top right-hand corner of your screen to try out Virtual Desks.
• Google Enlists Outside Help to Clean Up Android's Malware Mess — Today Google is announcing a partnership with three antivirus firms—ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium—to create an App Defense Alliance.
• Open sourcing Google Cardboard — Today, we’re releasing the Cardboard open source project to let the developer community continue to build Cardboard experiences and add support to their apps for an ever increasing diversity of smartphone screen resolutions and configurations.
• Access ESM, now free to the community, via the updated Ubuntu Advantage client — Canonical is happy to announce that all community users are entitled to a free Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure account for access to Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) and Kernel Livepatch* for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) for up to three machines, and up to 50 machines for all official Ubuntu Members.
• Releasing Spleeter: Deezer Research source separation engine — We are releasing Spleeter to help the research community in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) leverage the power of a state-of-the-art source separation algorithm. It comes in the form of a Python Library based on Tensorflow, with pretrained models for 2, 4 and 5 stems separation.
• Microsoft Will Release Their Edge Web Browser For Linux — Microsoft announced at their Ignite conference in Seattle that their Edge web-browser will see a Linux release

Plus Red Hat's new desktop strategy, and what we think Mozilla is getting right.

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• Welcoming Android 10! — Today we're releasing the Android 10 source code to Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and making it available to the broader ecosystem. We’re also starting the official Android 10 rollout to all three generations of Pixel devices worldwide.
• Google Releases Android 10 With "Vulkan Everywhere", Privacy Improvements
• The Verge Android 10 Review
• Android 10 adds warnings for USB port contamination and overheating
• The PinePhone is real & shipping soon — I am hereby happy to announce that the first PinePhones have now entered production and will start shipping to developers this month.
• Firefox 69 released — As of today, Enhanced Tracking Protection will be turned on by default
• Tor Blog: Browser Fingerprinting - An Introduction and the Challenges Ahead
• Introducing Red Hat CodeReady Containers — CodeReady Containers brings a minimal, preconfigured OpenShift 4.1 or newer cluster to your local laptop or desktop computer for development and testing purposes.