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In this edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at the rebirth of Mapzen, two new projects to bolster PyTorch, new open source object detection software, and more!

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A new study meant to investigate energy conservation of free and open source ad blockers has unexpectedly shown that Internet ads are wasting shocking amounts of your time.

Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Lite can be very versatile to install a number of useful services (see also my Raspberry Pi projects article). Some addictive features can be achieved by searching for open source software and testing it with this fantastic device. An interesting example is installing a complete open source hotel reservation and booking system with Raspberry Pi and Qloapps.

It's thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic that I, like so many of you, have had to rapidly adjust to a life lived almost entirely at home.

It's not an ideal situation, but I've had some real consolation—there has never been a better time to play games on Linux.

Don't take my word for it. Check this out:

As part of my role as a senior product marketing manager at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are five of my and their favorite articles from that update.

There are many benefits of using open source solutions for your projects. They're flexible, agile, cost-effective, and highly customizable. Most offer reliable information security thanks to the responsiveness of the open source community. In addition, you can start small and then scale up to shorten the development cycle and achieve results quickly.

However, implementing open source software may require specific expertise you don't have in-house. Should you outsource your next open source project, or assemble an in-house team?

Witnessing the ongoing global impact of COVID-19 is a profoundly affecting experience that continues to humble us all in ways we couldn't have anticipated. Technology organizations are quickly evolving within this new reality, in which all of our human interactions are virtual until further notice.

The first thing we usually do after waking up in the morning is to check our cellphone to see if there are important messages from our colleagues and friends. Whether or not it's a good idea, this behavior has become part of our daily lifestyle.

"Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe."
– Anatole France

Our dear ole' Earth is breathing a heavy sigh as of late, and April 22 is the day we humans have designated for celebrating our home on the planet.

Let's talk about ways we can observe, conserve, reuse, and repurpose with open source. And, let's end with two stories about refreshing an older system and saving energy at home with low-tech solutions. 

Not every website is a blog, where the main feature is a list of posts, each with a specific timestamp that indicates how "fresh" it is. Sometimes, you just want a website.

Maybe you are an amateur (or professional!) cook and want to show off your recipes. Maybe you are a poet and want a site to publish all your poems. Maybe you have strong opinions and want a place to store your rants, each in its timeless perfection. Here's where Sphinx comes in.

Git is the standard source code repository manager for open source projects and many closed source projects. This article shows new Git users how to do something slightly advanced but fundamental to its purpose: resolving a git-merge conflict.

People love Markdown text with good reason—it is easy to write, easy to read, easy to edit, and it can be converted to a wide range of other text mark up formats. While Markdown text is very good for content creation and manipulation, it imposes limitations on the options for content display.

Using Python and some graphing libraries, you can project the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, and also display the total number of deaths for a country (this article uses India as an example) on a given date. Humans sometimes need help interpreting and processing the meaning of data, so this article also demonstrates how to create an animated horizontal bar graph for five countries, showing the variation of cases by date.

This is done in three steps.

The spread of disease is a real concern for a world in which global travel is commonplace. A few organizations track significant epidemics (and any pandemic), and fortunately, they publish their work as open data. The raw data can be difficult for humans to process, though, and that's why data science is so vital. For instance, it could be useful to visualize the worldwide spread of COVID-19 with Python and Pandas.

In 2005, Linus Torvalds created Git to replace the proprietary distributed source control management solution that he had previously used to maintain the Linux kernel. Since then, Git has become a dominant version-control solution for open source and cloud-native development teams.

Spatial data from geographic information systems (GIS) is all around us. From smartphones that make our lives better and more convenient to precision agriculture that is increasing the amount of food farmers can produce while reducing the cost, whether or not we realize it, almost every part of our lives is touched by spatial data.

Every day, millions of people all over the world access the OpenStack Foundation's (OSF) web properties to learn about open infrastructure. This level of usage requires a platform and toolsets that are fast, flexible, and affordable—and this is where open source comes in. Not only that, but given that we work for an open source software foundation, we naturally incorporate open source technologies into everything we do, including web development.

Websites are an excellent resource for open source software projects. A website provides an ideal opportunity for users to learn more about your project. Project websites can share additional information, screenshots, sample code, videos, and other resources that developers and users will find useful.

If you are interested in starting your own website, this article is for you.

We all know how important it is to keep WordPress sites updated. New updates provide the latest bug and security fixes against any nasties lurking on the web. But, more critically, an outdated site can also lead to poor performance, such as slow loading speed or an outdated look and feel.

Many activities these days, be they sports, social work, arts or free and open source software, are organized in some sort of community. If backed by a respective legal entity, this not only helps with getting donations and entering contracts but also puts statutes and rules in place that establish the values and ideals all contributors share and abide by.