August 2016 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Security Vulnerabilities In Wireless Keyboards
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Aug '16

03 Aug '16

You’d think they’d be encrypted, but apparently most of them are not <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/08/security_vulner_7.html>.

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FCC Demands TP-Link Support Open Source Third-Party Firmware On Its Routers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Aug '16

03 Aug '16

You may have heard that the US Federal Communications Commission has been updating its regulations concerning wi-fi routers. Some interpreted the new rules as meaning that companies should lock down their routers to prevent them running third-party open-source firmware. The FCC tried to make it clear that was not its intent, but nevertheless some companies did start to interpret things that way. Now, here is a case where, as part of a settlement against TP-Link for violating the regulations, the FCC has made it an explicit requirement that the company allow the running of third-party firmware <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160802/06073235135/fcc-demands-tp-link-…>.

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Linux Grabs More Than 2% of Desktop Market Share
by rowan schischka 03 Aug '16

03 Aug '16

>is another example of the kind of dubious stats I was referring to. >You?ll notice it has Android well behind IOS, at 17% versus 23%. This >simply does not make sense. i often get access to a customers web analytics or i get employed to set up on behalf. the way this information is presented makes it useless. web analytics is really fun and interesting because you get to see the country of origin, time of day, page click through etc. for example im still seeing large numbers of visits from ie6 on windows xp from china. there are so many variables all i can really add is that The Register is reporting on the number of perceived unique visitors to their web site, not the rise or fall of desktop software brands as they claim. -- Kind Regards Rowan Schischka

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Chrome 52 for Android Arrives With Smoother Video Playback, Faster Load Times, and Better Battery Life
by Peter Reutemann 02 Aug '16

02 Aug '16

'Following the release of Chrome 52 for desktop two weeks ago, Google last week also launched Chrome 52 for Android. For whatever reason, the company didn't share what's new until today. You can download the new version from Google Play. Chrome 52 for Android makes video playback feel smoother, load faster, and consume less battery. More specifically, video playback has been improved for speed and power efficiency, meaning you should expect smoother playback and faster load times (so videos will start playing sooner, instead of pausing briefly before starting). Your Android device's battery should also last longer if you consume a lot of videos online. Last but not least, video in Chrome for Android also now works with Data Saver Mode. This means a lightweight version of the video will be downloaded and played if you have Data Saver Mode on, saving you as much as 50 percent in data downloads, by Google's estimation.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/08/02/1713202 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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Firefox 48 Released With Multi-Process Support, Mandatory Add-On Signing
by Peter Reutemann 02 Aug '16

02 Aug '16

'Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox v48, touted as one of the most important updates the browser has ever received. With the new version, Firefox starts migrating users to using mullti-process threads (e10s, Electrolysis), and it is also the first version to ship with Rust component. In addition, Firefox is now also making add-on signing mandatory. >From a Softpedia article: Announced last year, Electrolysis, e10s, or multi-process support is Firefox's ability to process core browser operations separately from the content viewed on a Web page. Multi-process support allows a page to crash without bringing the entire browser down with it and improves the browser's overall performance. e10s rollout will take place in two phases, first in Firefox 48, and it will finish in Firefox 49, set for release on September 13, 2016. Mandatory add-on signing refers to Firefox preventing users from installing any add-ons that have not been approved by Mozilla's testers. This is something similar to what Chrome employs, but Firefox users have been spoiled all these years, always having the capability of installing any add-on they've desired. Rust is a programming language that's a revamped and improved version of C++ but that protects developers from accidentally including dangerous memory bugs in their code. It achieves this by how the language was constructed and by how developers write the code.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/02/1646255 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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Linux Grabs More Than 2% of Desktop Market Share
by Peter Reutemann 02 Aug '16

02 Aug '16

'W3Counter's stats for June 2016 are in, and Linux desktop accounts for 2.48% of all web visits from tracked websites... (Android is counted separately from "Linux desktop.") Meanwhile, NetMarketShare shows Linux with a 2.02% share of the desktop market. And StatCounter shows a more detailed breakdown of the top 7 operating systems, with Windows 7 at 42.02%, Windows 10 at 21.88%, OSX at 9.94%, Windows 8.1 at 8.66%, Windows XP at 6.5%, and another 4.06% for "Unknown" (which is roughly tied with "Other") -- beating Windows 8.0 at 3.52%. In May they also reported another thought-provoking statistic: that Firefox's browser usage had surpassed that of IE and Edge combined for the first time.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/07/02/184229 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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There Is A Saying In Computer Science ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '16

01 Aug '16

... that any problem can be solved by adding yet another level of indirection. (Might have been Butler Lampson who said that.) What brought that to mind was this report <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Netplan-YAML-Network> of a new Ubuntu project to add a common front end for generating network confgurations for all the different network-control backends. What, you mean there are setups that don’t use NetworkManager? Or even networkd?

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Seymour Papert Has Died
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '16

01 Aug '16

I remember I first heard of Seymour Papert when I picked up a copy of his book “Mindstorms” at the University library. This was based around the radical idea that young children could not only learn advanced concepts about mathematics and programming, but they could have fun doing so. For example, to draw a circle, you repeat the following some x number of times: * turn a little bit to one side * move a little bit forward (The larger the “x”, and the correspondingly smaller the “little bit” becomes, the better the approximation to a circle.) This comes straight out of a child’s intuitive idea of how they would walk in a circle (i.e. turtle graphics). But it is also a differential-geometric formulation of a circle! And today I discovered that Papert had suffered a serious traffic injury in Hanoi a decade ago. No word on whether he ever recovered, and now he has passed away, with no mention of the cause. <http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/08/seymour-papert-theorist-behind-one-…>

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