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diff --git a/published/amazonmx-apache.txt b/published/amazonmx-apache.txt
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+The MXNet Machine Learning project was recently accepted to the Apache Software Foundation's incubator for open source projects. What's surprising about the announcement isn't that the ASF is accepting yet another machine learning tool -- it's hard to turn around the in software world these days without tripping over a couple of ML tools -- it's that MXNet developers, most of whom come from Amazon, still think the ASF is relevant.
+
+MXNet is an open-source "deep learning" framework that allows you to define, train, and deploy so-called neural networks on a wide array of devices. It also happens to be the machine learning tool of choice at Amazon.com and is available today via ready-to-deploy EC2 instances.
+
+Deep learning is the currently very popular subset of machine learning that focuses on hierarchical algorithms with non-linearities, which help find patterns and learn representations within data sets. That's a fancy way of saying it learns as it finds. Deep learning tools are currently popular thanks to their success in applications like speech recognition, natural language understanding and recommendation systems (think Siri, Alexa, et al). Every time you sit on your couch yelling at Alexa you're using a deep learning system.
+
+What makes MXNet interesting at this stage is Amazon claims it's the most scalable tool the company has and Amazon is a company that knows a thing or two about what scales and what doesn't.
+
+MXNet is far from the only kid on the deep learning block. In fact it's a bit late to the game. Other popular tools in the deep learning world include Torch -- used at Facebook, Google and NYU -- and Microsoft's "Adam", but perhaps the biggest direct competitor is Google's TensorFlow. TensorFlow is open source, using the Apache License as well.
+
+If you're new to the open source world -- and machine learning tools and developers often are -- you'd be forgiven for having no real idea what the Apache Software Foundation is. Even if you're very familiar with the ASF you might still wonder why a multibillion dollar company like Amazon would be so excited to have its pet project adopted by an all volunteer group that somehow manage to run the ASF on barely $500k a year?
+
+In a word, community.
+
+The purpose of the ASF incubator is to help external projects improve the quality of their code and participate in the larger community. It is in other words, a kind of seal of approval for an open source project that it is truly open source and uses the ASF voting procedures and all the rest of the quasi-democratic governance system the ASF has developed, known among the anointed as "The Apache Way".
+
+Given a choice between that sort of community and the TensorFlow community, which, while open source is very heavily managed by Google, MXNet starts to look more appealing. And the more appeal it has the more developers that get involved and the better the code gets. If you want to think of it in terms of machine learning, the ASF is a learning network for developers.
+
+It's worth noting that not every project that enters the ASF incubator manages to escape its parents. But officially projects don't get to move past the incubation stage until they demonstrate independence from any one contributor or sponsoring or entity.
+
+Incubation is the first step for a project that wants to become an official ASF project. It is in sort, no guarantee that a project will either succeed or end up in the auspices of the ASF. Among the incubator's successes are SpamAssassin and of course the Apache web server, which despite being bested by half a dozen newer, lighter weight, faster web servers, somehow still manages to power about half of the web. Then there's OpenOffice, another incubator graduate, but one that has largely been eclipsed by LibreOffice.
+
+Now Amazon is hoping that MXNet can learn a few tricks from the ASF and maybe build a community that can help it catch up to competitors. 
+
+As Amazon's Dr. Matt Wood writes on the AWS blog, the reason the project wants to be part of the Apache Incubator is to "take advantage of the Apache Software Foundation’s process, stewardship, outreach, and community events". In short it wants to use the ASF's clout to attract more developers.
+
+It's tempting to see Amazon's move as entirely self-serving, and indeed it is, but that's just the beginning of the story. The ASF may not be the household name it once was, but it still has considerable clout and its governance and so-called "Apache Way" really do turn out some impressive, well-developed community projects. With that behind MXNet its odds of besting TensorFlow and others does go up considerably.
+
+And of course the ASF gets what's probably its best ML project to date. MXNet is certainly one of the easiest to deploy, given that there's already a AWS Deep Learning AMI available, complete with MXNet, and plenty of example code pre-compiled and ready to use. That that server instance you just spun up happens to be closely tied into other AWS services, which you might want to invest in as well, is just coincidence I'm sure.
diff --git a/published/fedora25review.txt b/published/fedora25review.txt
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+The Fedora project recently pushed out Fedora 25, which is the first of the major Linux distros to use the new Wayland graphics stack by default.
+
+What's perhaps most remarkable about Fedora 25 is that the move to Wayland, which is one of the biggest low level changes for Linux distros in recent memory, is almost totally transparent. Provided your graphics card is supported you're unlikely to even notice that you're using Wayland.
+
+That's partly a testament to the Wayland project's efforts, but also, with Fedora in particular, a result of the Fedora developers' decision to wait before making the switch. It's been disappointing to see Wayland postponed time after time for the past few Fedora releases, but the waiting has paid off in stability and seamlessness.
+
+Suffice the say that the move to Wayland has been, for me anyway, almost totally unnoticeable in any negative sense. I haven't hit any major bugs or had any apps that won't work (some of this is no doubt due to XWayland, which is the fallback X server that runs in situations where Wayland isn't supported). I have, on the other hand, noticed that the default GNOME desktop in Fedora is considerably snappier, particularly animations.
+
+That doesn't mean everything is perfect under Wayland. I like to use Redshift or f.lux to tint-shift my screen at night as I find that much easier on my eyes. Neither application seems to work under Wayland thanks to changes in the security model of Wayland versus X. Fortunately it looks like Redshift-like features may be coming straight to GNOME itself. In the mean time if you want to get tint-shifting working in Fedora 25 with GNOME there's a COPR repo available that adds some new color profiles to GNOME and a dawn/dusk timer to switch between then. There's some good instructions <a href="http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/redshift-functionality-on-fedora-25-gnome-wayland-yes-its-possible">here</a>.
+
+Other than the tint-shift problem my transition to Wayland has been smooth and largely uneventful. Some people with other graphic card/driver combos have reported problems with video playback but I haven't run into that in my testing (mplayer works fine on my Lenovo and a Dell XPS 13 I happened to be testing when Fedora 25 came out).
+
+While the move to Wayland is definitely the big news in Fedora 25, it's not the only thing that's new by any means. There's a major GNOME update, a brand new kernel and the some changes in Fedora Next lineup.
+
+The most visually noticeable thing in this release is the update to GNOME 3.22, which has some nice new features in the Files app (the application formerly known as Nautilus). There's a new batch renaming tool that makes it easy to add a prefix, suffix or do date-based renaming of files. Files also now includes a built in file compression tool so when you double-click a .zip file it just extracts the contents to a folder with opening File Roller. 
+
+This release also sees the GNOME extensions API being declared "stable". That's mostly good news for extension developers, but it also means that updates will no longer run the risk of breaking all the extensions you rely on to customize GNOME Shell.
+
+The GNOME Software app continues to improve as well. GNOME 3.22 sees Software adding better support for Flatpak apps. If you haven't had a chance to dive into the world of Flatpak apps yet, Fedora 25 makes a good platform to experiment on. Not only can you install Flatpaks using the GNOME Software app, with Fedora 25 you can even search or browse specifically for Flatpaks via Software. You'll now be able to see the source information and sandboxing status of Flatpaks before you install them. 
+
+Flatpaks are still a bit rough around the edges and the very tight sandboxing model that governs them can mean that Flatpak versions of your favorite apps are missing a few features, but they're getting closer to usable status.
+
+The other big news in GNOME Software actually arrived in the previous Fedora release -- system upgrades from the Software apps. I was able to upgrade from Fedora 24 to 25 by clicking a button in Software and everything just worked. Long time Fedora users will know that this is nothing short of a miracle. I should note that I run a mostly stock install of Fedora with few GNOME extensions or other customizations. Most of the system update problems I've seen people mentioning on forums and bug reports around the web come from library conflicts so the more stuff you have installed the greater the chances GNOME Software won't work. Still, it's worth a try. From what I've seen its one weak point is a lack of debugging messages when thing do go wrong. If it doesn't work I'd jump over to the terminal and try using DNF to see what's causing the problem before you resort to the old Fedora nuke and pave upgrade path.
+
+Along with Wayland and a new version of GNOME, Fedora 25 is notable for the update to Linux kernel 4.8.6, which should go a long way to fixing many of the [Skylake bugs](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1353103) that cropped up with Fedora 24. Kernel 4.8 was a major update with improvements for GPUs, networking, ARM support and file systems updates among other things. It was disappointing that Fedora 24 missed out by a couple of weeks, but at least it's here now.
+
+It's also worth noting that Fedora 25 ships with MP3 support straight out of the box. Fedora probably won't be the last distro to do this since the United States patents covering the MP3 codecs expired earlier this year. Aside from possibly making you feel old -- yes, you've (possibly) been using Linux for longer than the lifespan of a U.S. patent -- that means you can play MP3s without a trip to the Fedora repos. There's no encoding support yet though, for that you'll need to install some software.
+
+The final change worth mentioning in Fedora 25 is that the Fedora Next line up has been revised. Past release had three editions Fedora WorkStation, Fedora Server and Fedora Cloud. Fedora Cloud has evaporated and been replaced by Fedora Atomic. As the name suggests Fedora Atomic is built around Fedora's Atomic project and is tailored for those running container-based server systems. There's too much new to cover here, but suffice to say that there may be some very cool stuff headed toward CentOS in the near future, including a really nice GUI to manage SELinux.
+
+Fedora 25 WorkStation is hands down the best desktop distro I tested in 2016. With Wayland, GNOME 3.22 and the excellent DNF package manager I'm hard-pressed to think of anything missing. The only downside is that Fedora lacks an LTS release, but now that updating is less harrowing that's less of a concern. I still run Arch on my main machine, but for people I'd recommend Fedora. And note that if you just can't stand GNOME, there's a MATE-based Fedora spin that's worth checking out. 
+
+Screenshots:
+
+fedora25-batch-rename.jpg - The new batch file renaming tools in GNOME 3.22
+fedora25-desktop.jpg - Fedora 25's stock GNOME desktop
+fedora25-firefox.jpg - Fedora 25 ships will all the latest version of GNOME's stock apps, including Firefox 50.
+fedora25-gnome-software.jpg - GNOME 3.22 Software now offers better support for Flatpak apps.
diff --git a/published/microsoft-linux.txt b/published/microsoft-linux.txt
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+There has been a great disturbance in the force lately. Microsoft, once the second biggest enemy of Linux (SCO Group takes top honors there), has been positively giddy about not just supporting Linux but actually building tools to run Linux in Windows and Windows software in Linux. 
+
+You can run <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/windows_10_with_ubuntu_now_in_public_preview/">Ubuntu inside Windows 10</a>, install CoreOS and Docker containers inside Azure, even fire up SQL Server on <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/23/microsofts_linux_lovein_continues_with_suse_support_in_sql_server/">SUSE Enterprise Linux</a>.
+
+It's a veritable Linux love fest up in Redmond, which is a distinct about face for a company whose CEO once called Linux a "cancer".
+
+But one thing I haven't heard a lot about is what it's like to actually use these new tools and more importantly is anyone using them? It's impossible to objectively answer the latter question, but one thing's for sure, Linux distros are betting that people will.
+
+Red Hat and Ubuntu were involved right out of the gate, but since then the SUSE project has rushed to bring support for Microsoft's SQL Server to openSUSE. When it launched SQL Server for Linux supported Ubuntu and was coming to Red Hat. That SUSE quickly picked it up as well says that at least some aspects of the enterprise are itching to get their hands on SQL Server without giving up their Linux infrastructure.
+
+All of Microsoft SQL Server's competitors are available on Linux, but until the recent announcement, SQL Server was not. That meant that if you wanted SQL Server you had to forgo Linux, which might mean losing all sorts of other tools you need. At the very least it meant that SQL Server had a cost above and beyond the financial. 
+
+Now that SQL Server is on the major enterprise distros that non-financial cost is gone. And while open source supporters might be loath to admit it, SQL Server actually does have some advantages over competing open source projects. Perhaps the best things about SQL Server is the plethora of tools that exist around it, particularly tools that allow those with little to no SQL knowledge to build powerful databases and run queries without learning how to do table joins. The level of abstraction that SQL server offers makes it more accessible than many similar tools.
+
+SQL Server on Linux eliminates the tight coupling with Windows and will most likely end up making Microsoft more money since it provides an in-road for SQL Server in all-Linux enterprise deployments, a place it would previously have been off the table. It also makes it easier to get SQL Server into the largely Linux based world of container computing.
+
+There's a lot of hype around container-based computing, but believe it or not some of that hype is deserved. Containers make it possible to run just about anything anywhere. The underlying OS becomes largely irrelevant. Red Hat's <a href="http://www.projectatomic.io/">Project Atomic</a> provides the best linguistic clue about what this means: right now, containers are the atomic unit of computing. 
+
+Once you have everything you need in individual containers you can deploy them on any platform you want. The only thing that matters is which set of tools you want to use to manage your containers. Microsoft's Azure platform happens to support all the popular choices right now: DC/OS, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes, which makes Azure a compelling option for a very un-Microsoft reason: choice.
+
+And believe it or not, Azure is actually pretty nice. My experience is limited to a single client, but Azure has been stable, has a wealth of management tools that don't require years of sysadmin experience to use and it supports just about every container management system you want to use. It's every bit as good as AWS and, frankly, it's the only real alternative out there. While AWS is a fantastic system it has a virtual monopoly on "cloud" based development and if you don't think that's bad (because AWS is good) you haven't been working in this field long enough. Azure may well turn out to be the best thing that's happened to the devops/sysadmin world if for no other reason than providing meaningful competition for AWS. 
+
+It should be no surprise that Azure has been the object of Microsoft's obsession lately, after all current CEO Satya Nadella previously ran the Azure group. While Steve Ballmer may be gone, it's clear that his "developers, developers, developers" chant still echos about in the halls of Redmond. Microsoft recognizes that it needs top developer tools to give to its top developers. And that's why you can now run Bash inside your Windows 10 install. That gets you a "native" experience in the shell with tools like awk, grep and all the other developer favorites.
+
+Technically speaking this is not Linux running in Windows, Linux is a kernel and there's no kernel here. Intrepid hackers have, however, managed to get <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4rsmzp/bash_on_windows_getting_dbus_and_x_server_working/">the bulk of Ubuntu running in Windows</a>. That's not officially supported yet, but clearly the underlying tools make it possible to really run Ubuntu in Windows. The official Bash plus Ubuntu under the hood make it more like GNU running in Windows, which is actually slightly more outrageous from a historical point of view.
+
+Whatever the case, while I'm not about to suffer Windows 10 on a regular basis, at least now I can use the basic set of Bash tools I'm used to without running a virtual machine, which means everything is faster and there's less frustration. 
+
+Still, every time I use it I can't help wondering, why not just run Ubuntu and put Windows in the virtual machine? Part of me thinks this move was -- in addition to a PR play -- mostly aimed at Microsoft's own developers. The company probably isn't quite ready to hand out laptops running Linux to employees, but it does need those tools available for developers and it also seems to grasp that improving the dev tools in Windows is not good enough. Bring Linux into Windows and your problems are solved.
+
+There's also the developer mind share to consider. Let's face it, it's been a long time since anyone really cared about Windows. When was the last time you heard about a hot new technology for Windows that was developed by someone other than Microsoft? When was the last time you heard about a hot new startup building its infrastructure on Windows? 
+
+Even if Windows soldiers on in the established enterprise market, it lost developer mind share and enthusiasm years, if not decades, ago. Azure though, it does have some of that new hotness around it. That's part of why it already has a significant share of the so-called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market. With SQL Server available on Linux and all the basic shell utilities running in Windows 10, many a sysadmin's life just got a whole lot more bearable.
+
+It does have one big feather to put in its cap though: Azure is well ahead of Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft is clearly hoping that the Linux-backed announcements over the past year will propel it even closer to Amazon's heels.
diff --git a/published/mint181review.txt b/published/mint181review.txt
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+The Linux Mint project dropped a last minute holiday gift on the world in the form of Linux Mint 18.1.
+
+As with the previous cycle of Mint 17.x releases, Mint 18.1 builds on the same Ubuntu LTS release base as Mint 18.0. The result is a smooth upgrade path for 18.0 users and the relative stability of Ubuntu's latest LTS effort, 16.04. 
+
+Mint's goal in sticking with Ubuntu's LTS releases is that instead of chasing Ubuntu updates, the project can focus on its own efforts like the homegrown Cinnamon and MATE desktops, as well as the new X-Apps set of default applications. This process worked quite well throughout the Mint 17.x release cycle, but with Mint 18 we're starting to see some of the downsides. Mint 18.1 is a nice enough update for the Mint-specific parts of the stack, but it definitely lags a bit in some other areas. 
+
+The most obvious lag is in the kernel which is 4.4 out of the box, though 4.8 is available through the Mint repos. It's unclear to me whether Mint 18.1 fully supports kernel 4.8. It's available in the repos, and I've successfully updated one install on a Lenovo x240, but n=1 evidence is not the best support for running off to update your kernel. 
+
+Frankly I would have to assume that since Mint 18.1 ships with 4.4 you should probably stick with 4.4. If you feel out of date with 4.4, maybe install Debian 8 in a virtual machine and marvel at the fact that it still uses 3.16. Of course if you don't have newish hardware -- particularly Skylake or Kaby Lake based machines -- the older kernel might not matter to you.
+
+Provided the older kernel doesn't bother you, or you're okay attempting a kernel update, Mint 18.1 does a nice job of continuing to refine the Linux Mint experience for both its primary desktops -- Cinnamon and MATE.
+
+On the Cinnamon side you'll get Cinnamon 3.2, which is notable for some nice new UI features, including support for vertical panels and sound effects, along with your displaying notifications and some new menu animations. Cinnamon also dispenses with a visual element called box pointers. Essential menus that load from a button or other menu no longer visual "point" back to the menu. This makes more sophisticated themes possible since developers don't have to overcome the pointer visual cue if they want to completely relocate a menu.
+
+The vertical panels support is also welcome for anyone working on a cramped laptop screen, since they're typically more unused space horizontally than vertically.
+
+Cinnamon 3.2 also has a completely re-written screensaver and, my personal favorite, the ability to run apps with optirun if Bumblebee is installed. That is, if you have dual graphics cards and Bumblebee installed you can set the default to the less powerful card, but then right-click an item in the menu and launch it with the more powerful card, for example GIMP, a video editor, or graphics-intensive game. 
+
+While Cinnamon is the flashier of Linux Mint's two desktops, MATE is every bit as good in my experience and with Linux Mint 18.1 MATE has been updated to MATE 1.16. Most of what's new in MATE 1.16 is under the hood, particularly the fact that MATE has nearly finished the transition to GTK+ 3 components, which goes a long way to improving some of the lingering little UI problems of previous releases. 
+
+The GTK+ 3 support also means third-party themes should be easier to build, though in the mean time it may break some of your old favorites so proceed with caution if you use a custom theme.
+
+There are also a number of changes in this release that apply to both desktops, including updates to Linux Mint's X-apps set of default applications that have been customized and integrated into both desktops. Xed the default text editor -- better known as "Text Editor" within Mint -- gains a new search-as-you-type feature that now opens at the bottom of the windows and is comparable to the search features in Firefox. Xed also now supports dark themes, like the Mint Y theme.
+
+Mint's Update Manager has been updated as well with a new column that shows the origin of a package. Out of the box that means primarily Mint's repos along with Ubuntu's for things that pull directly from upstream. Any third-party repos you add will show up as such here as well.
+
+The last release of Mint saw an addition to the Update Manager that lets you set a default update practice ranging from the very conservative to "update all the things" with a middle ground option being the default. While there's nothing wrong with this in itself, Mint's wording is a little loaded to say the least. The most conservative setting is called "don't break my computer!", which implies that the others will, which is completely untrue and does a disservice to new users, particularly users completely new to Linux, of which Mint likely has no shortage.
+
+While "don't break my computer" is not the default setting, labeling it as such and combining it with the further encouragement: "recommended for novice users" almost guarantees that new users -- those who would likely most benefit from an update-to-date and secure system -- will opt for this setting.
+
+Here's the bottom line: out of the box Mint effectively blocks some updates to the system, which means Mint users may well be running software with known security vulnerabilities, which could theoretically be exploited. From a security purist standpoint Mint is a step down from Ubuntu. Practically speaking though vulnerabilities in Xorg or the kernel are more difficult to exploit using a browser (the most common source of attacks) and Mint does a good job of keeping web browsers up-to-date even with the default settings.
+
+At the end of the day I suggest you enable the "always update everything" setting, which, for the record, is roughly the same as what you'd get out of the box with Ubuntu. You're still always able to chose what you'd like to update and when. While I understand Mint's stance on regressions and the reasons why it doesn't want to update everything out of the box (increased stability being the main reason) I hope that in the future Mint will at least consider changing the wording on its Update Manager splash screen to something more neutral than "don't break my computer!" 
+
+Should you update to Mint 18.1? If you're already on 18.0 then by all means the bug fixes alone are well worth the update. MATE users particularly will benefit from the additional GTK+ 3 support and Cinnamon's vertical panel support is a welcome change. 
+
+It's worth noting that there are other desktops available for Linux Mint, including Xfce and KDE, but at the time of writing neither of them had been updated to Mint 18.1. Typically the Xfce version comes about a month after MATE and Cinnamon and then the KDE version after that.
+
+No matter which version you end up with Linux Mint 18.1 is an LTS release and will fully supported until 2021.
+
+Screenshots:
+
+mint18-cinn-desktop.jpg - Mint 18.1 Cinnamon Edition.
+mint18-mate-desktop.jpg - Mint 18.1 MATE Edition.
+mint18-update-manager.jpg - Mint 18.1 Update Manager now offers a new "sources" column to see where a package update is coming from.
+mint18-update-splash.jpg - Mint 18.1 uses this splash screen when you first open Update Manager. The unfortunate wording seems likely to scare new users into blocking updates.
+mint18-xed.jpg - Mint 18.1 adds a new Firefox-style search-as-you-type tool to its Xed text editor.
diff --git a/published/open-source-insider-1701.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1701.txt
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+The venerable Vim text editor recently turned 25 years old. The first public release of Vim was November 2, 1991, just a couple of weeks after Linus Torvalds announced Linux. To celebrate Vim's anniversary, creator Bram Moolenaar recently dropped version 8.0. 
+
+Ordinarily the update of a text editor wouldn't necessarily be worth mentioning, but this the first major Vim release in ten years. In today's world, where web browsers drop major point updates (what they consider major anyway) several times a year, Vim's lack of major updates is not just refreshing, but speaks of an entirely different approach to developing software. 
+
+Even leaving aside the absurd version system of today's web browsers, 8 releases in 25 years would be considered slow by today's software development standards. Interestingly though, Vim's biggest rival, GNU Emacs, has a roughly similar development pace. GNU Emacs began life in the 1970s and is currently at version 25, which means it averages two releases to Vim's one, but still definitely on the slow side.
+
+Yet Vim and Emacs taken together may well be the most used software in the software developer's toolkit.
+
+As a long time Vim user (since 2005 or so) Vim's lack of updates may well be my favorite feature. Vim is Vim. It does what I need it to do and it doesn't try to completely reinvent itself every six months. In fact, I had been using version 8 for several weeks without even realizing it, which at this point is pretty close to my definition of great software -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
+
+Contrast this with your favorite web browser, which pushes out updates every six weeks. I don't even need to know what your favorite browser is to make this generalization because they all do it. Now some of this frantic update pace can be attributed to the fact that the browser is a newer idea, there are more bugs to work out. That sounds good. Until you think about what Vim, and even more so, Emacs, are capable of, which includes, in Emacs case... being able to render HTML using WebKit. 
+
+So much of software development these days feels like re-inventing the wheel for the sake of re-inventing the wheel. I recently took on a new client with a code base written in Symfony 1.0, which is old enough that I had to use Archive.org just to find an overview of it. And I'll admit my first instinct was to rewrite the code in something more modern. But then I stopped myself and stepped back and looked at the actual code. Is there anything wrong with it? Well, in a couple of places yes, but by and large, no. It works. It does what the client wants to do well enough that they want me to port it to another part of their business. It ain't broke, why am I trying to fix it? I put down the shiny new stuff and got back to work.
+
+The desire for the latest and greatest is a mental trap we all fall into to some degree. New ideas come along and in many cases they're good ideas, better than what was there before. To stick with Vim as an example, version 8 does have a bunch of cool new stuff, like support for asynchronous I/O, channels, JSON, jobs, timers and GTK+ 3 among other things. None of that is immediately, obviously useful on its own, but all of which opens the door for some new and potentially very powerful Vim extensions.
+
+There's nothing wrong with helpful new features, but too often those helpful new features come with a price. They require re-learning how to do things that you did reliably the day before. And even the most helpful features cease to be helpful if they require me to completely change my existing workflow. Vim 8 was a totally transparent update. It didn't require me to learn some new way of working, it didn't completely break extensions I rely on just so it could round off some corners in the UI (okay, Vim doesn't really have a UI, but if it did I feel pretty confident that it wouldn't waste time rounding corners on tabs, cough, Firefox).
+
+A common defense of the rapid release cycles common in today's software, graphical and otherwise, is that things must progress. To not progress is to deny ourselves the birthright of, uh... progress?
+
+Stagnation is the equivalent of death apparently, which is as much a cultural value as one of the software produced by that culture, but either way it might be worth remembering that there is something else that pursues growth at all costs, dividing over and over again in a ceaseless headlong rush -- cancer cells.
+
+The more time I spend meditating on this analogy the more accurate it feels. To be clear, I am not talking about security updates. Security updates improve software and are a good thing. What I'm talking about are the needless UI rewrites that don't actually do anything for users (web browsers seem to be the most egregious example of this), the development frameworks that re-invent themselves with every point update, or the latest trend: abstractions that promise to simplify everything but end up increasing the complexity of everything.
+
+To pick what I think is the most absurd example of this trend, look at CSS, an incredibly simple syntax for styling web pages. But no, it turns out that CSS is too complex, so we get Sass. But then Sass doesn't quite do what we want so we get Compass and now what used to be something so simple few would call it programming, requires two interdependent frameworks, Ruby and half a dozen Gems to output CSS we could have just written in Vim. 
+
+Then there's the insanity of deployment. Deployment toolchains are the most aggressive cancer around right now. All to save you from being a complete Philistine who just pushes and pulls to a git repo, or, festivus help you, uploads files over scp. 
+
+Alas I don't expect things to change from their current course. If anything the future looks to be full of more abstractions, more pointless UI re-writes, more frameworks that break backwards compatibility, and more cancer like growth. Which is why Vim is so important. At least our text editors will still be there, stalwart unchanging places to reliably weather the storm. Thanks Vim, I quite literally could not do what I do without you. Happy 25th birthday and here's to another ten years before Vim 9 rolls around.
diff --git a/published/open-source-insider-1702.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1702.txt
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+The Mozilla Foundation recently announced it will refocus its development efforts on Firefox. Again.
+
+I know what you're thinking, what the heck else does Mozilla have to focus on? Well, you'd be hard pressed to find any evidence of it, but the company has been focused on building Firefox OS which was supposed to be a mobile OS and then maybe a television and devices platform. Honestly it's hard to say, the, ahem, focus was always a bit lacking.
+
+Mozilla recently axed the last 50 employees working on that effort though it claims its still working on an open source Alexa of some kind and couple of other bad ideas that most likely no one wants. Apparently, press statements not withstanding, focus may still be a little lacking.
+
+Here's the thing Mozilla: Firefox is and likely will be the only viable product you're going to have.That you've lost focus of your only viable product tells us a lot about the leadership of Mozilla in recent years, or lack thereof.
+
+Before I completely eviscerate Mozilla though, let me be clear about something: I like Firefox. I use it everyday. I find it to be not quite as fast as Chrome, but easier on the RAM. 
+
+That's anecdotal of course and based on the Developer Edition, which is my daily browser. I also use and really like Mobile Firefox for Android, though I freely concede that it's much slower than Chrome for Android. 
+
+My point is that I really want Mozilla to succeed. I even support the attention Mozilla gives to "defending" the open web because they're one of the only companies out there that doesn't have much in the way of ulterior motives for doing so.
+
+But in the last three years Mozilla has gone from a company at the top of its game, with a web browser that constantly pushed the envelope of standards support and kept pace with Chrome in terms of performance to a shattered smoldering heap of embarrassment that clings to life via a browser that can barely keep pace with today's web. 
+
+Even Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and one of Mozilla's founders -- who was later forced out of the company after it came out that he had donated money to support anti-gay rights legislation in California -- has gone on to create a new web browser dubbed Brave. Guess what codebase Brave is based on? Hint, not Firefox. 
+
+Brave will fizzle before the year's over -- its value proposition is that it swaps out ads your favorite websites are earning good money with and replaces them with ads your favorite sites will earn little to no money from... uh, okay -- but it's telling that even Mozilla's founder have lost faith in the Firefox codebase.
+
+Given this state of affairs, you'd think that Mozilla's announcement, which amounts to the company saying, "hey, sorry, we screwed up and we're going to try fixing this", would make me happy, but honestly, it makes me more nervous than happy. 
+
+If the ill-advised thinking that led to three years wasted on head scratching ideas like Firefox OS turns its attention to the web browser proper, what sort of disaster is coming to Firefox?
+
+Last month I wrote about Vim and the value of software that doesn't update unless it really needs to. 
+
+I'd like to see Mozilla embrace that sort of thinking. I'd like to see Mozilla continue to forget about the Firefox UI and focus their attention lower down in the stack. The Firefox UI isn't broken, it works quite well, it's stable, don't go messing with it. Don't go "innovating", don't add something stupid like rounded tabs just because you hired some new designer who needs something to do.
+
+Some people objected to last month's column comparing Vim and Firefox, saying that Firefox has to update because the web is a moving target while text files really haven't changed since Bram Moolenaar released Vim in 1991. That's a valid argument and I never suggested that Firefox shouldn't update, rather that it shouldn't go changing its base feature set and user interface all the time. It shouldn't add Pocket support for no discernible reason; it shouldn't round tabs for no discernible reason.
+
+It should update to get separate processes for each tab, which took an embarrassingly long time to be released. It should also start developing a rendering engine that's faster than Gecko since it seems plain at this point that Gecko isn't getting any faster than it is now. The good news is that appears to be happening with <a href="https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/a-quantum-leap-for-the-web-a3b7174b3c12#.sas419jjm">Quantum</a>.
+
+But here's why I'm nervous about Mozilla "refocusing" on Firefox, developers are already <a href="https://medium.com/@osunick/context-graph-its-time-to-bring-context-back-to-the-web-a7542fe45cf3#.f2ssglw9o">talking about messing with the Firefox UI again</a>. This is exactly the sort of thinking that got Mozilla where it is: "What if there was a better forward button?". Wait, isn't that the button no one uses so Firefox made it tiny? Right, problem solved. Next.
+
+Even more alarming is this thinking later on in that piece: "What if web browsers were immediately useful instead of demanding input when you launched them?"
+
+Well, what if Mozilla made a browser that was immediately useful when it launched because it was fast enough to accept input right away? 
+
+What if Firefox didn't hang immediately on launch because it was processing through a bunch of tabs (which aren't even loading, just displaying page titles)?
+
+I feel pretty safe speaking for the masses here: we don't need a web browser that does any thinking for us. Web browsers are task driven software, when people open a web browser it's because they want to do something on the web. They don't want a better forward button. They want a faster web browser and currently 85 percent of them have solved that problem by choosing something other than Firefox.
+
+That is your problem Mozilla. Your bug number one is that Firefox is slower than Chrome. Refocus on fixing that and spare us the ill-advised UI "improvements". Who knows, people might start using Firefox again.
diff --git a/published/open-source-insider-1703.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1703.txt
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+Mozilla has been slowly rolling out a major change for Firefox over the last year, the results of what the company calls its <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis">Electrolysis project</a>. Electrolysis gives Firefox something Chrome has had for years now -- multiple processes (in the best case scenario that's per-tab). The change is a boon for speed -- some place Firefox has been lagging lately -- and it improves stability and security.
+
+The problem with per-tab processes in Firefox is that it's not exactly ground breaking. In fact this is a case of Firefox just now catching up to where Chrome was when it launched in 2008 -- welcome to the future Mozilla.
+
+Still, while it's easy to make fun of Firefox for playing catch up, Electrolysis was no small feat. Chrome had the advantage of being designed for process-isolation from the ground up while Firefox had to work it in to its existing code base.
+
+The good news for Firefox users is that Electrolysis isn't the only major change coming to Firefox this year. Despite these seemingly tumultuous times at Mozilla, Firefox engineers have outlined a plan to re-write the engine behind Firefox.
+
+The company calls this effort <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum">Project Quantum</a> and, despite the name, it looks to be a major change for Firefox. Indeed perhaps the biggest change since Firefox first launched.
+
+The major goal is to create a new rendering engine that's able to exploit the full power of today's hardware, which is a kind of marketing-speak for "we're going to isolate every process and offload more rendering tasks to the GPU".
+
+A large portion of Quantum will be pulled from the existing <a href="https://servo.org/">Servo project</a> which is a low-level re-write of Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. Servo remains an independent project and covers a lot more ground (for example it provides an API for using Servo inside other projects and it's been ported to Android by Samsung). Quantum takes what's good about Servo -- independent processes for all the things, the Rust programming language -- and brings it to Firefox.
+
+But that's not all Quantum plans to do. Mozilla's David Bryant, Head of Platform Engineering, <a href="https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/a-quantum-leap-for-the-web-a3b7174b3c12#.l322x8dk5">writes</a> that Quantum will also see Mozilla going back to the drawing board to "rethink many fundamental aspects of how a browser engine works". That means potentially "re-engineering foundational building blocks, like how we apply CSS styles, how we execute DOM operations, and how we render graphics to your screen".
+
+Right now, for example, any CSS file in the head of an HTML document must be downloaded and rendered before a page can be displayed. That slows down the rendering of pages, especially on sites that use poorly-coded blogging tools that pile in stylesheets like they're delicious candy -- I'm looking at you WordPress plugin developers. They're not candy, they're a rendering nightmare.
+
+But since it seems there's just no way to stop the web-slowing world of crappy blogging tools, perhaps the browser can figure out a way around this by re-thinking the rendering process. Perhaps not stopping for every stylesheet, but instead spinning off a new process for each stylesheet would help mitigate the problem (or we could all rediscover lynx and w3m, problem solved).
+
+In fact, this is already part of Servo and by extension Quantum. It's one of the <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum">four core components</a> of Quantum which are Quantum CSS, Quantum Render, Quantum Compositor, and Quantum Flow. Quantum Render is where Servo's process isolation and GPU offloading come in and Quantum Compositor builds on Gecko's existing compositor, but moves it to its own process (notice a running theme here?). The last bit is the least developed right now, but it will encompass other things like UI speed improvements.
+
+If all this sounds like an overly large project that may never actually ship code, well, I share your concern. Bryant's article is from late 2016 and claims that Mozilla is "going to ship major improvements next year", though there is no specific date. In a recent post about Firefox's new Web Assembly feature Bryant <a href="https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/why-webassembly-is-a-game-changer-for-the-web-and-a-source-of-pride-for-mozilla-and-firefox-dda80e4c43cb#.d6nrwt5du">says</a> that "Project Quantum is well underway". 
+
+In light of recent changes and, frankly, what feels like disarray at Mozilla, it's tough to get too excited about anything. Still Quantum looks promising and may be the thing Mozilla needs to get it back on track and provide a bit a focus in the midst of its current disarray. 
diff --git a/published/ubuntu1704-desktop.jpg b/published/ubuntu1704-desktop.jpg
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+Canonical has turned out its beta preview of the coming Ubuntu 17.04, nicknamed Zesty Zapus. 
+
+If you're anxious to kick the tires you can grab the beta from Canonical's site, but be forewarned there's not much difference from 16.10, visually speaking. Unity is almost entirely the same with some minor updates for a few core apps. Most of what's new comes from the move to GNOME 3.24 for a few apps and core components.
+
+Under the hood though there's a good bit of new stuff that will make the final version well worth the update.
+
+With 17.04 Ubuntu's Software Center gains some new powers, thanks to the underlying GNOME Software apps' new support for Snap URLs. The URL support means that if you'd like to tell someone to install a Snap application you can simply give them a URL. That makes sharing Snap applications considerably easier.
+
+When you click a new Snap URL the Ubuntu Software app will open and offer to install the application, mirroring what happens if you link to a regular Ubuntu repo app. The only real difference is the protocol in use -- for Ubuntu repos you'll still use the <code>apt:</code> prefix. For Snap packages there's a new <code>snap:</code> protocol.
+
+It's a small change -- and one that comes from upstream GNOME -- but it helps bring Snap packages to near complete feature parity with the installation process Ubuntu users are accustomed to. With 17.04 there will be no discernible difference between Snap and traditional application installs, though of course the tightly sandboxed nature of Snap apps does mean there are other limitations in some cases. At the moment Snaps seem best suited for smaller apps that don't need a lot of outside libraries (which can cause sandboxing issues), while the repos remain the best way to get bigger, more complex apps. 
+
+For example if you want the latest version of Firefox Developer Edition -- which is updated every night -- the Snap package is the best bet. If you need LibreOffice, stick with the version in the Ubuntu repos.
+
+As noted above, the perennially not-quite-ready Unity 8 is still, well, not quite ready. That doesn't mean you can't install and try it out though and in fact, once it's installed Unity 8 in 17.04 is the most stable version I've tested. That's still not saying much -- application crashes are still frequent and known issues abound -- but it does seem to show that Canonical is still hard at work on Unity 8.
+
+While Unity 7 gets mostly bug fixes and security updates in this release, there are some noteworthy updates from upstream. Most of the underlying GNOME apps have been updated to the GNOME 3.24 version. The exceptions to that are Files (Nautilus) and Terminal, which are still stuck at GNOME 3.20. No <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/27/gnome_finds_its_footing/">faster file searches</a> or advanced filtering option for you Ubuntu. Ubuntu will, however, get some of the updates that came along for Calendar and Maps (though the latter is not installed by default in Ubuntu). 
+
+Another change worth noting that's coming in Ubuntu 17.04 is the disappearance of the swap partition from default installs. Yes, Ubuntu is dropping swap partitions in favor of swap files which generally use far less disk space and depending somewhat on the use case, may be faster. If you opt to encrypt via LVM, you'll still need a swap partition, but if you stick with the installer defaults you'll get a swap file. In most cases this will probably be completely transparent, though there's a <a href="http://blog.surgut.co.uk/2016/12/swapfiles-by-default-in-ubuntu.html">detailed explanation</a> of the change from one of the developers working on it if you'd like to learn more.
+
+
+Other changes include the removal of gconf. Once the go-to means of customizing your Ubuntu/Unity experience, it's long since been surpassed by gsettings, though until now it has been hanging around by default.
+
+Under the hood the stars have aligned to get Ubuntu 17.04 the shiny new Linux kernel 4.10. This release has the usual slew of updated hardware support and compatibility, but it also has some impressive improvements to power consumption in laptops. I've been using 4.10 for some time (in Arch) and have found that I get at least about 5 percent more out of my battery than I did with 4.9. Whether or not that translates directly to a default Ubuntu install is nearly impossible to say -- I've only tested the beta in a virtual machine -- but one can hope.
+
+Part of the reason I've only tested 17.04 in a virtual machine is that I've found this beta release to be a bit unstable in the virtual machine. Sometimes that can be due to installing in a VM, but this one has been unstable enough to stop me from going further. For that reason, unless you have a really good reason to install it, I'd suggest waiting a for the bugs to get fixed and the final version polished up a bit more before taking the leap to 17.04. The final release will be along April 13.
+