January 2017 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Mint 18.1 review: Forget about Wayland and get comfy with the command line
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '17

12 Jan '17

'For better or worse, the Wayland graphics stack is the future of Linux and will undoubtedly be the big story of 2017 (unless the Mir display server actually ships, in which case it might share the spotlight). What's more, once you've used Wayland in my experience, you'll want it everywhere. Sadly, only one of the major distros has Wayland today: Fedora. That doesn't mean Mint 18.1, which happened to arrive the same day that our Fedora review published, isn't a great release. But this new release doesn't have Wayland. Nor will the distro at large have Wayland until Linux Mint's upstream source, Ubuntu, ships Wayland as part of an LTS release. That likely won't happen until at least 2018, when the next Ubuntu LTS release comes out. By that time, theoretically, Ubuntu itself will be using Mir, and Ubuntu GNOME (and possibly other flavors) will move to Wayland. Then and only then will Mint be in a position to move to Wayland. And even then, it may not happen right away. That means there's no Wayland in Mint's near future, and it also means Mint will be a little out of the loop going forward. That's an interesting transition for the project given that it started out with a more aggressive development pace, adopting new features and iterating quickly compared to other Linux distros. All that changed a couple of years ago when Mint opted to stop chasing Ubuntu and built off the LTS cycle. Mint is no longer quite as cutting edge as it once was, which shows up in some important areas like the kernel (which is only at 4.4 even now). Mint is also still plagued by the some of the poorly implemented update and security issues that have dogged it for years. You can keep Mint up-to-date and secure, but Mint actively encourages users (especially inexperienced) users to avoid updates. That more than anything else would prevent me from picking Mint 18.1 over, well, any other distro. Although Mint 18.1 builds on the same set of base packages found in the previous release (Linux Mint 18.0), which are based on Ubuntu 16.04, there's still plenty of new stuff in 18.1 to make Mint fans happy. Most of what's new is not underlying system change; rather, it's higher level stuff (the stuff that makes Mint, well, Mint).' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/mint-18-1-review-forget-about-waylan… 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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Lawyer Rewrites Instagram's Privacy Policy So Kids and Parents Can Have a Meaningful Talk About Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jan '17

10 Jan '17

Not exactly Linux related, but nonetheless interesting to read a privacy policy in "plain English" rather than legal mumbo jumbo: 'Kids, of age between 12 and 15, are increasingly joining Facebook's Instagram service, but according to a research, they likely don't even understand what they are signing up for. Jenny Afia, a privacy law expert at Schillings, a UK-based law firm, rewrote Instagram's terms of service in child-friendly language, so that not only the kids but their parents are able to understand what things are at stake. Highlighted are the changes the lawyer has made: Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and ** *we will not pay you for that*. [...] We may keep, use and share your personal information with companies connected with Instagram. This information includes your name, email address, school, where you live, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use Instagram, and ** *any other personal information we find* such as your birthday or who you are chatting with, ** * including in private messages (DMs)*. [...] We might send you adverts connected to your interests which we are monitoring. ** *You cannot stop us doing this and it will not always be obvious that it is an advert*.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/01/09/1413215 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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You Know The Machines Are Taking Over When ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jan '17

07 Jan '17

... a San Diego TV station does a story about a young girl who asks her parents’ Amazon Echo to get her a dollhouse, which automatically causes an order to be placed for one; but the fun really begins when the voice of the TV presenter triggers additional Amazon Echo devices in the homes of those watching the news, causing them to try to place orders for dollhouses as well. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/07/tv_anchor_says_alexa_buy_me_a_dollh…>

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https://kite.com - Your programming copilot
by Chris O'Halloran 05 Jan '17

05 Jan '17

A utility that may be available to Linux users soon. https://kite.com/

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An SQL Injection Attack Is A Legal Company Name In The UK
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Jan '17

04 Jan '17

I wonder if any real-world databases will fall over trying to include this name. ;) <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/an_sql_injectio.html>

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Rutgers U In Financial Trouble From Cloud Failure
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Jan '17

04 Jan '17

Rutgers University in New Jersey has put its “Cornerstone” admin system on Oracle’s cloud services. Ongoing hiccups in this, going back to September, have caused it serious trouble trying to pay its bills, leading to unpleasant consequences like the electricity supply being cut off to some offices. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/03/rutgers_university_oracle_cloud_fou…>

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Cloudflare Leap-Second Panic
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

Cloudflare’s DNS proxy software misbehaved on New Year’s Day, because of the extra second that was added to December 31st: <http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2017/01/cloudflare-leap-second-software-p…>. Because they occur so rarely, it seems very difficult to test software to work correctly with leap seconds. This is one reason why some groups propose getting rid of them altogether.

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Photocopier Security
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/photocopier_sec.html>: A modern photocopier is basically a computer with a scanner and printer attached. This computer has a hard drive, and scans of images are regularly stored on that drive. This means that when a photocopier is thrown away, that hard drive is filled with pages that the machine copied over its lifetime. As you might expect, some of those pages will contain sensitive information. Some of the reader discussion veers into one or two only-semi-related, but interesting areas. For example, did you know that Xerox invented an image-compression technique (JBIG2) for its photocopiers that would actually introduce typos into documents?

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Is The Desktop CPU Dead?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intel-core-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-review/>: For yet another year, high-end desktop CPU performance remains at a standstill. With low-power laptops and all-in-ones continuing to outsell desktops—and with high-end workloads like video editing, 3D animation, and machine learning increasingly being offloaded to GPUs—perhaps it was inevitable that Intel would stop caring so much about its high-end consumer CPUs. Or maybe Intel's struggles with the 14nm process forced its hand, and the last few years of disappointing performance improvements are down to physics rather than passivity. Those laptop sales are declining, too...

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Listening To Streaming Radio
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jan '17

02 Jan '17

Currently listening to Sydney’s TripleJ radio station using the ffplay utility (part of FFmpeg). For anybody else who wants to listen without having to go through a web browser, ABC helpfully provide a list of direct-streaming URLs for their stations at <https://radio.abc.net.au/help/streams>. ffplay reports some interesting additional details about the stream: Metadata: icy-notice1 : <BR>This stream requires <a href="http://www.winamp.com">Winamp</a><BR> icy-notice2 : SHOUTcast DNAS/posix(linux x64) v2.4.7.256<BR> icy-name : Triple J NSW icy-genre : Misc icy-br : 64 icy-url : http://www.abc.net.au/radio icy-pub : 0 In other words, they seem to be streaming from a Linux server, but their recommendation is for a client that doesn’t run on Linux...

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