March 2018 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ Benchmarks Show Significantly Improved Performance
by Peter Reutemann 25 Mar '18

25 Mar '18

'Pi Day was marked this year by the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ as the next evolution to this $35 ARM single-board computer. Phoronix has now put out Raspberry Pi 3 B+ benchmarks showing that the Ethernet performance is indeed much faster now but still doesn't stack up to other high performance boards, the SoC temperature is noticeably lower than the very warm Raspberry Pi 3, and the overall performance is a nice upgrade while retaining the same price point as its predecessors. Follow up tests looking at the Wi-Fi performance also show the new 802.11ac dual-band wireless to be much faster as well.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/03/25/0556258 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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Hate-Speech Laws In Europe
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Mar '18

24 Mar '18

<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180321/17581339475/spanish-hate-anti-te…>: People are being arrested and charged with speech having nothing to with promoting hate or terrorism. ... It's gotten so bad Amnesty International -- an entity that usually spends its time decrying the acts of dictators and brutal authoritarians -- has felt compelled to speak up about Spain's terrible speech laws. ... The report also notes several other European countries are also beginning to curtail the rights of their citizens in their quest to target hate speech and international terrorism. Germany's hate speech law roll out has been an unmitigated disaster and other countries like France and Italy seem all too willing to join Spain and Germany in killing satire, parody, and content they just don't agree with. All of this is being done under the heading of "public safety," but in reality, the public is no safer and will develop an unhealthy fear of their own governments.

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TLS 1.3 Has Been Approved
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Mar '18

24 Mar '18

The latest version of TLS (the official name for what used to be called “SSL”, i.e. the protocol that your browser uses for URLs beginning “https://”) is now an official IETF standard <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/23/tls_1_3_approved_ietf/>. This should not only make the setup of secure connections quicker, but also harder to crack. ... banks and businesses complained that, thanks to the way the new protocol does security, they will be cut off from being able to inspect and analyze TLS 1.3 encrypted traffic flowing through their networks, and so potentially be at greater risk from attack. Unfortunately, that self-same ability to decrypt secure traffic on your own network can also be potentially used by third parties to grab and decrypt communications. An effort to effectively insert a backdoor into the protocol was met with disdain and some anger by internet engineers, many of whom pointed out that it will still be possible to introduce middleware to monitor and analyze internal network traffic. Note the key phrase “forward secrecy”. This means that, even if your private key should become compromised down the track, this will still not help attackers decrypt any records they may have kept of your secure communications prior to that. And yes, you can expect the usual suspects to be unhappy about the introduction of such a feature.

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Firefox In 2018: We'll Tackle Bad Ads, Breach Alerts, Autoplay Video, Says Mozilla
by Peter Reutemann 24 Mar '18

24 Mar '18

'Firefox maker Mozilla has outlined its 2018 roadmap to make the web less intrusive and safer for users. First up, Mozilla says it will proceed and implement last year's experiment with a breach alerts service, which will warn users when their credentials have been leaked or stolen in a data breach. Mozilla aims to roll out the service around October. Breach Alerts is based on security consultant Troy Hunt's data breach site Have I Been Pwned. Firefox will also implement a similar block on autoplay video to the one Chrome 66 will introduce next month, and that Safari already has. However, Dotzler says Firefox's implementation will "provide users with a way to block video auto-play that doesn't break websites". This feature is set to arrive in Firefox 62, which is scheduled for release in May. After Firefox 62 the browser will gain an optional Chrome-like ad filter and several privacy-enhancing features similar to those that Apple's WebKit developers have been working on for Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention. By the third quarter of 2018, Firefox should also be blocking ad-retargeting through cross-domain tracking. It's also going to move all key privacy controls into a single location in the browser, and offer more "fine-grained" tracking protection. Dotzler says Mozilla is in the "early stages" of determining what types of ads Firefox should block by default. Also on the roadmap is a feature that arrived in Firefox 59, released earlier this month. A new Global Permissions feature will help users avoid having to deny every site that requests permission for location, camera, microphone and notifications. Beyond security and privacy, Mozilla plans to build on speed-focused Quantum improvements that came in Firefox 57 with smoother page rendering.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/03/23/2110244 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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Windows Server 2019 Will Feature Linux and Kubernetes Support
by Peter Reutemann 22 Mar '18

22 Mar '18

'Microsoft announced this week that it will launch the next major release of Windows Server later this year with better support for hybrid workloads, Linux workloads, and hyper-converged infrastructure. >From a report: This release will succeed Windows Server 2016, which was made generally available in October 2016. While Microsoft moved to twice-yearly updates for Windows Server starting last year, the company bundles those changes into a long-term servicing channel once every two or three years for administrators who prefer less frequent releases. Those companies that haven't moved over to the semi-annual channel will get their first taste of Windows Server's Linux and Kubernetes support, which are currently in beta.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/03/22/1647243 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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NVidia Titan V GPUs Giving Wrong Answers To Scientific Simulations
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Mar '18

21 Mar '18

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/21/nvidia_titan_v_reproducibility/>: Nvidia’s flagship Titan V graphics cards may have hardware gremlins causing them to spit out different answers to repeated complex calculations under certain conditions, according to computer scientists. ... Gamers and casual users will not notice any errors or issues, however folks running scientific software may encounter the glitches.

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Artificial Intelligence And The Future of Online Content Moderation
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Mar '18

21 Mar '18

Report on a workshop on the use of artificial intelligence in governing communication online <https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/03/21/artificial-intelligence-and-the-fu…>: Over the course of the day, [the writer] learned many things about automated filtering that [he] hadn’t previously thought about. • Regulators and platforms are under tremendous pressure to act, based on the assumption that the technical problems are easy. • Takedown requests are a frequent instrument for censorship. • The larger platforms share content hashes of unwanted content, but the database and process are opaque. • Different countries have very different definitions of unlawful content. • Norms and speech evolve over time, often rapidly. In other words, it seems to me that, whether they are doing it deliberately or not, the regulators are pushing more and more power into the hands of the social-media platforms.

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Mozilla Launches a Petition Asking Facebook To Do More For User Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 21 Mar '18

21 Mar '18

'After it was revealed that the personal data of 50 million Facebook users was shared without consent, Mozilla is calling on the social network to ensure that user privacy is protected by default, particularly when it comes to apps. Ashley Boyd, Mozilla's vice president of advocacy, says that billions of Facebook users are unknowingly at risk of having their data passed on to third parties. He says: "If you play games, read news or take quizzes on Facebook, chances are you are doing those activities through third-party apps and not through Facebook itself. The default permissions that Facebook gives to those third parties currently include data from your education and work, current city and posts on your timeline."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/03/21/182253 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 promises firmware fixes for security processor bugs
by Peter Reutemann 20 Mar '18

20 Mar '18

'AMD has responded to the reports last week of a range of security flaws affecting its Platform Security Processor (PSP) and chipset. The company acknowledges the bugs and says that, in coming weeks, it will have new firmware available to resolve the PSP bugs. These firmware fixes will also mitigate the chipset bugs.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/amd-promises-firmware-fixes-for-sec… 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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IBM Unveils the 'World's Smallest Computer'
by Peter Reutemann 19 Mar '18

19 Mar '18

'On the first day of IBM Think 2018, the company's flagship conference, IBM has unveiled what it claims is the world's smallest computer. It's smaller than a grain of salt and features the computer power of the x86 chip from 1990. Mashable first spotted this gem: The computer will cost less than ten cents to manufacture, and will also pack "several hundred thousand transistors," according to the company. These will allow it to "monitor, analyze, communicate, and even act on data." It works with blockchain. Specifically, this computer will be a data source for blockchain applications. It's intended to help track the shipment of goods and detect theft, fraud, and non-compliance. It can also do basic AI tasks, such as sorting the data it's given. According to IBM, this is only the beginning. "Within the next five years, cryptographic anchors -- such as ink dots or tiny computers smaller than a grain of salt -- will be embedded in everyday objects and devices," says IBM head of research Arvind Krishna. If he's correct, we'll see way more of these tiny systems in objects and devices in the years to come. It's not clear yet when this thing will be released -- IBM researchers are currently testing its first prototype. ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/03/19/210245 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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