Multiprocessing Smart-Home Vendor Lock-In in Python Hacks and the Cloud Since 1994: The original magazine of the Linux community DEEP DIVE INTO THE CLOUD PLUS CLOUD HARDENING TIPS Basic Principles for Securing Your Cloud Environment OPEN SOURCE HISTORY A Talk with OSI President Simon Phipps INTRODUCING ONNX The Open Neural Network Exchange Format ISSUE 285 | APRIL 2018 www.linuxjournal.com APRIL 2018 CONTENTS ISSUE 285 82 DEEP DIVE: INTO THE CLOUD 83 Everything You Need to Know about the Cloud and Cloud 111 The Agony and Computing, Part I the Ecstasy of by Petros Koutoupis Cloud Billing An in-depth breakdown of the by Corey Quinn technologies involved in making up the cloud and a survey of Cloud billing is inherently complex; cloud-service providers. it’s not just you. 95 Everything You Need 115 Vendor Lock-in: to Know about the Now in the Cloud! Cloud and Cloud by Kyle Rankin Computing, Part II: Vendor lock-in has moved from corporate infrastructure into the Using the Cloud cloud, only this time many are all by Petros Koutoupis too happy to embrace it. How to get started with AWS, install Apache, create an EFS volume and much more. 2 | April 2018 | http://www.linuxjournal.com CONTENTS 6 From the Editor—Doc Searls How Wizards and Muggles Break Free from the Matrix 15 Letters UPFRONT 22 The Road Less Traveled: Certifications Can Chart a Great Career in Linux and Open Source by Taz Brown 26 Readers’ Choice Awards 30 FOSS Project Spotlight: Ravada by Francesc Guasch 32 Why Do We Do It? by Petros Koutoupis 33 A Good Front End for R by Joey Bernard 40 News Briefs COLUMNS 42 Kyle Rankin’s Hack and / Simple Cloud Hardening 46 Reuven M. Lerner’s At the Forge Multiprocessing in Python 58 Shawn Powers’ The Open-Source Classroom Smart-Home Lightning Hacks 68 Zack Brown’s diff -u What’s New in Kernel Development 77 Dave Taylor’s Work the Shell Tackling L33t-Speak 174 Glyn Moody’s Open Sauce How the EU’s Copyright Reform Threatens Open Source—and How to Fight It LINUX JOURNAL (ISSN 1075-3583) is published monthly by Linux Journal, LLC. Subscription-related correspondence may be sent to 9597 Jones Rd, #331, Houston, TX 77065 USA. Subscription rate is $34.50/year. Subscriptions start with the next issue. 3 | April 2018 | http://www.linuxjournal.com CONTENTS ARTICLES 120 OSI’s Simon Phipps on Open Source’s Past and Future by Christine Hall With an eye on the future, the Open Source Initiative’s president sits down and talks with Linux Journal about the organization’s 20-year history. 128 Create Dynamic Wallpaper with a Bash Script by Patrick Whelan Harness the power of bash and learn how to scrape websites for exciting new images every morning. 144 Creating an Adventure Game in the Terminal with ncurses by Jim Hall How to use curses functions to read the keyboard and manipulate the screen. 157 ONNX: the Open Neural Network Exchange Format by Braddock Gaskill An open-source battle is being waged for the soul of artificial intelligence. It is being fought by industry titans, universities and communities of machine-learning researchers world-wide. This article chronicles one small skirmish in that fight: a standardized file format for neural networks. At stake is the open exchange of data among a multitude of tools instead of competing monolithic frameworks. 162 Oracle Patches Spectre for Red Hat by Charles Fisher Red Hat’s Spectre remediation currently requires new microcode for a complete fix, which leaves most x86 processors vulnerable as they lack this update. Oracle has released new retpoline kernels that completely remdiate Meltdown and Spectre on all compatible CUPs, which I show how to install and test on CentOS here. AT YOUR SERVICE SUBSCRIPTIONS: Linux Journal is available as a digital magazine, in We've wiped off all old advertising from Linux Journal and are starting with PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats. Renewing your subscription, changing your a clean slate. 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Subscribe for free today: SPONSORSHIP: We take digital privacy and digital responsibility seriously. http://www.linuxjournal.com/enewsletters. 4 | April 2018 | http://www.linuxjournal.com EDITOR IN CHIEF: Doc Searls, [email protected] EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Jill Franklin, [email protected] TECH EDITOR: Kyle Rankin, [email protected] ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Shawn Powers, [email protected] CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Petros Koutoupis, [email protected] CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Zack Brown, [email protected] SENIOR COLUMNIST: Reuven Lerner, [email protected] SENIOR COLUMNIST: Dave Taylor, [email protected] PUBLISHER: Carlie Fairchild, [email protected] Join a ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Mark Irgang, [email protected] community DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL EXPERIENCE: Katherine Druckman, [email protected] GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Garrick Antikajian, [email protected] with a deep ACCOUNTANT: Candy Beauchamp, [email protected] appreciation COMMUNITY ADVISORY BOARD John Abreau, Boston Linux & UNIX Group; John Alexander, Shropshire Linux User Group; Robert Belnap, Classic Hackers UGA Users Group; Aaron Chantrill, Bellingham Linux Users Group; for open-source Lawrence D’Oliveiro, Waikato Linux Users Group; David Egts, Akron Linux Users Group; Michael Fox, Peterborough Linux User Group; Braddock Gaskill, San Gabriel Valley Linux Users’ Group; Roy Lindauer, Reno Linux Users Group; Scott Murphy, Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group; Andrew Pam, Linux Users of Victoria; Ian Sacklow, Capital District Linux Users Group; philosophies, Ron Singh, Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group; Jeff Smith, Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group; Matt Smith, North Bay Linux Users’ Group; James Snyder, Kent Linux User Group; Paul Tansom, Portsmouth and South East Hampshire Linux User Group; Gary Turner, Dayton Linux Users Group; Sam Williams, Rock River Linux Users Group; digital Stephen Worley, Linux Users’ Group at North Carolina State University; Lukas Yoder, Linux Users Group at Georgia Tech freedoms Linux Journal is published by, and is a registered trade name of, Linux Journal, LLC. 4643 S. Ulster St. Ste 1120 Denver, CO 80237 and privacy. SUBSCRIPTIONS E-MAIL: [email protected] URL: www.linuxjournal.com/subscribe Mail: 9597 Jones Rd, #331, Houston, TX 77065 Subscribe to SPONSORSHIPS Linux Journal E-MAIL: [email protected] Contact: Publisher Carlie Fairchild Digital Edition Phone: +1-281-944-5188 for only $2.88 an issue. LINUX is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. SUBSCRIBE Private Internet Access is a proud sponsor of Linux Journal. TODAY! 5 | April 2018 | http://www.linuxjournal.com FROM THE EDITOR How Wizards and Muggles Doc Searls is a veteran journalist, author and part-time Break Free academic who spent more than two decades elsewhere on the Linux Journal masthead before from the Matrix becoming Editor in Chief when the magazine was reborn in January 2018. His two books First we invented a world where everyone could are The Cluetrain Manifesto, which he co-wrote for Basic be free. Then we helped build feudal castles on Books in 2000 and updated it, where everyone now lives. Now it’s time to in 2010, and The Intention Economy: When Customers blow up those castles by giving everybody much Take Charge, which he wrote for Harvard Business Review Press better ways to use their freedom than they ever in 2012. On the academic front, would enjoy in a castle. Doc runs ProjectVRM, hosted at Harvard’s Berkman Klein By Doc Searls Center for Internet and Society, where he served as a fellow from 2006–2010. He was also I’m going to mix movie metaphors here. You’ll see why. a visiting scholar at NYU’s graduate school of journalism from 2012–2014, and he has In April 1999, a few weeks after The Matrix came out, been a fellow at UC Santa the entire Linux Journal staff watched it in a theater Barbara’s Center for Information Technology and Society since not far from our headquarters at the time, in Seattle’s 2006, studying the internet as Ballard neighborhood. While it was instantly clear to us a form of infrastructure.