December 2015 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock
by Peter Reutemann 31 Dec '15

31 Dec '15

"With a heavy heart Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock, stalwart proponent of Free Open Source Software, Father, Son, and the 'ian' in Debian." source: https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz

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Inside Red Star OS
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Dec '15

30 Dec '15

North Korea has developed its own Linux distro, chock-full of features to allow every action of its users to be tracked. Some researchers have been taking it apart to see how these features work. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/29/north_korea_red_star_os/>

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The Guardian Project
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Dec '15

25 Dec '15

Just been watching the latest in the “Rebel Geeks” series on Al Jazeera. Today the episode was called “A Bigger Brother” <http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelgeeks/2015/12/bigger-brother-15121…>, centred around the use of an open-source Android app called CameraV. The aim of this app is to record video along with a whole heap of corroborating metadata (GPS coordinates, local wi-fi networks etc) to make the footage credible enough, in particular proof enough against accusations of tampering, to be used as evidence in court. This is particularly important where the video is documenting crimes committed by people in positions of power and trust, such as the police. They used a nice term for this: “sousveillance” (watching done by ordinary people from below), as compared to the more usual “surveillance” (watching by those in privileged positions from above). One interesting comment made in the program was that the phone needs to look like it is not capturing video while the app is running, because in a place like Rio De Janeiro, the cops will grab phones away from people who they think are filming them. I did some digging around on GitHub, and found that this app is part of the Guardian Project, and they have a whole bunch of other useful-looking tools related to encryption, privacy and so on <https://github.com/guardianproject> They also have a website <https://guardianproject.info/>.

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HTTP Error Code 451 Approved For Censored Web Pages
by Peter Reutemann 21 Dec '15

21 Dec '15

'The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) has finally approved the new 451 status code for HTTP error messages involving web pages which have been repressed or removed for legal or political reasons. The initiative was proposed in 2013, and gained interest from various groups, such as Lumen (formerly Chilling Effects), who see the potential of the Bradbury-inspired code to help develop comprehensive indexes of censorship on the internet. Mark Nottingham, chair the IETF HTTP Working Group, says, "It'll be an RFC after some work by the RFC Editor and a few more process bits, but effectively you can start using it now."' -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/12/21/1549258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Raspbian Levels the Field With Latest Update
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '15

18 Dec '15

"During all the Pi Zero hype and showcasing, most of us probably didn't realize that the Raspbian OS got a much needed update. While this update isn't a major release, it still contained some amazing features. If you are running Raspbian Jessie, then take a moment to read over this article so you won't be left out in the cold. I'll go over the best parts of the update and also provide install instructions on how to get all this on your current Raspbian install." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/raspbian-levels-the-field-with-lat… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Items From Blender Conference 2015
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

I saw from Peter’s posting that Blender got one of the “top 10 open source projects” awards on opensource.com this year. And they had their Blender Conference 2015 about a month ago. A couple of notable related articles I found on opensource.com are “Teaching Teens 3D Animation With Blender” <https://opensource.com/life/15/12/blender-interview-tom-haines-3dami> where this nonprofit called 3Dami offers a free, intensive 7-day course to selected students. Quote on the (much-maligned) Blender interface: Many do prefer to use Blender outside our events. Once you have got over the bump of its interface being different to other software, you soon learn just how insanely fast it is—its interface is different for a very good reason, and its hard to accept the slow down of using other software. Some students actually learn that lesson during our event: More than a few have turned up moaning that we aren't using a certain piece of software beginning with "M," but they usually get why we use Blender by the time they leave. I do know that one of our students is making money using Blender, and I expect others to join them given time. Another one, relevant to a University research setting, is “Visualize Astrophysics Data With Blender” <https://opensource.com/life/15/11/blender-conference-interview-jill-naiman-…>. Besides Blender, this also builds on a Python-based astrophysics simulation framework called “yt”. (Aside: the more we become accustomed to being able to use keyword searches to find everything online, the more annoyed some of us become with short names that are hard to search for. Is this good or bad? Discuss.) I suspect there are bits there that could be adapted to other kinds of physical simulation. More presentations to see here: <https://www.youtube.com/user/BlenderFoundation/videos>

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end of year: best of open source
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '15

16 Dec '15

Top 10 open source projects of 2015 https://opensource.com/business/15/12/top-10-open-source-projects-2015 Bossies 2015: The Best of Open Source Software Awards http://www.infoworld.com/article/2984437/open-source-tools/bossies-2015-the… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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AMD Goes Open Source, Announces GPUOpen Initiative, Linux Compiler, Drivers
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '15

15 Dec '15

'AMD announced today that the company is releasing a slew of open-source software and tools to give game developers, heterogeneous applications, and HPC applications deeper access to the GPU and GPU resources. AMD and their Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) are looking for ways to ease game development, so developers can more easily re-use code and port their games from consoles over to the PC. With GPUOpen, game developers will have direct access to GPU hardware, as well as access to a large collection of open source effects, tools, libraries and SDKs, which are being made available on GitHub under an MIT open-source license. As part of the effort, the company is also releasing a new HCC C++ compiler which will be a tool in enabling developers to more easily leverage the resources of discrete GPU hardware in heterogeneous systems. The HCC complier also allows developers to convert CUDA code to portable C++. According to AMD, internal testing shows that in many cases 90 percent or more of CUDA code can be automatically converted into C++ with the final 10 percent converted manually in the widely popular C++ language. An early access program for the "Boltzmann Initiative" tools is planned for Q1 2016.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/12/15/1429257 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Collabora and OwnCloud Announce LibreOffice Online
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '15

15 Dec '15

'Collabora Productivity, a UK-based consulting company, has collaborated with ownCloud Inc. to release a developer edition of online LibreOffice, which they call CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition). "The office suite implementation runs on ownCloud server. That's where all the processing and heavy lifting is done. The rendering happens at the client side. Currently there are three apps: writer (equivalent to MS Word), spreadsheet (Excel) and presentation (PowerPoint). At the moment users can create new documents and edit them. Other functionality, such as collaborative editing, is in the pipeline."' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/12/15/1849234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Finding Differences Between Binary Files
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

Hi folks. As mentioned in passing last night, diff(1) isn’t much help for tracking down differences between two non-text files: all it will say is the files differ. However, there is a way to get detail on the differences, and that is to use a hex dump command like xxd(1) to produce text output from those binary files, and diff that text output instead. Thus, instead of diff binfile1 binfile2 you do diff <(xxd binfile1) <(xxd binfile2) This will quickly narrow down runs of changed bytes, and possibly even small sections of inserted or deleted bytes as well.

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