Roaring Elephant Dave Russell & Jhon Masschelein

A cry for help or wanton vandalism by Open Source Project maintainers? Last week, the maintainer of the popular NPM package manager was responsible for breaking compatibility far and wide. As it turns out, this was a cry for attention for the plights of small but important OSS projects that are used widely by "Billion Dollar mega corporations" while the few (or even single) maintainers are merely scraping by to pay the bills.







A little bit of research proves that this is far from a solitary issue an neither is it a recent development. Over the last decade, many projects that you and I use every day have almost disappeared because the maintainer just could not spend the time for free anymore. How did it get this far and how could this possibly be improved? Listen to this episode to hear our thoughts on the matter.























Here are the articles we used in this episode:







* https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dev-corrupts-npm-libs-colors-and-faker-breaking-thousands-of-apps/* https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer-projects/* https://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke* https://www.informationweek.com/it-life/ntp-s-fate-hinges-on-father-time- * https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-giants-chastened-by-heartbleed-finally-agree-to-fund-openssl/























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Cloud Computing is everywhere and apparently more companies feel it's a good idea to claim a piece of that fluffy pie. Recently, the parent company of the well know supermarket chain Lidl decided to join in the fun and they have now solidified their initiative by gobbling up a cloud security firm.... Is this a sign of things to come, or is the new Lidl cloud destined to stay... little?







We also take a quick look at how the UK government is going to penalize unsafe password policies... A good thing, for sure, but why is the suggested law already full of security holes?































Here are the articles that were referenced in this episode:







* Lidl parent company becomes cloud provider | Computable.nl* Schwarz Group Acquires Israeli Hybrid Cloud Cybersecurity Innovator XM Cyber (prnewswire.com)* Huge fines and a ban on default passwords in new UK law - BBC News















Please use the Contact Form on this blog or our twitter feed to send us your questions, or to suggest future episode topics you would like us to cover.

The yearly job report from The Linux Foundation was releases in cooperation with Edx. In last week's first part we went over the findings of the Linux Foundation and in this episode, we'll cover the Edx angle a bit more.







































Please use the Contact Form on this blog or our twitter feed to send us your questions, or to suggest future episode topics you would like us to cover.

The yearly job report from The Linux Foundation was releases in cooperation with Edx. In this first part we'll go over the findings of the Linux Foundation and in next episode, we'll cover the Edx angle a bit more.







































Please use the Contact Form on this blog or our twitter feed to send us your questions, or to suggest future episode topics you would like us to cover.

When we saw IBM put up a "Guide to open source development in the Cloud" website, we were expecting so much.... And we got so little... While we've often lauded IBM for their open source initiatives, this "guide" reads incomplete and pretty much a waste of space. See if you agree with us?







































Please use the Contact Form on this blog or our twitter feed to send us your questions, or to suggest future episode topics you would like us to cover.

Today we are going deeper, higher, farther and better than we ever went before: it's HPC time at the Roaring Elephant and since we definitely do not qualify as experts on that particular matter, we are overjoyed to welcome Walter Lioen and Valeriu Codreanu who are Surf's rocket scientists, when it comes to High Performance Computing!

































Snellius Top500 & Green500







Since this episode was recorded, the new TOP500 and Green500 have been announced and the newly launched Dutch supercomputer Snellius scored a respectable 313st and 403rd place on the top500 and an absolutely incredible 6th spot in the Green500!







Huge congratulations to Walter and Valeriu and the entire team at Surf for this outstanding result!

















Please use the Contact Form on this blog or our twitter feed to send us your questions, or to suggest future episode topics you would like us to cover.