April 2018 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Stopping Alert Volume Going To 100%
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Jan '21

20 Jan '21

For quite a while now, I’ve been annoyed by the system notification volume going to 100% on my Debian systems, regardless of my attempts to set it to a lower level. For example, when I open the KDE System Settings app, change something, then try to close the window, the sound that accompanies the save/discard/cancel alert is always startlingly loud. I think I have finally found a fix: in your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, put in a line saying flat-volumes = no (You should find an existing comment “; flat-volumes = yes” that indicates the default.) You can make this new setting take effect in the current session immediately without having to logout or reboot, by executing the following as the currently-logged-in user: pulseaudio -k (This kills and restarts the PulseAudio daemon for your user session.) There are several discussions of the pros and cons of this issue online, going back some years. For example, here <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1265267>. Also a mention about the “flat-volumes” setting in the ever-reliable Arch Linux Wiki here <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio>.

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Does Wi-Fi Security Really Matter?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Apr '19

11 Apr '19

Seems the Wi-Fi Alliance is having yet another crack at coming up with a really secure protocol, this time to be called WPA3 <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/09/wi_fi_wpa3/>. Does anybody care? Remember that on the Internet, security is implemented between the endpoints, the protocols are designed not to care that everything in-between might be pawed through by eavesdroppers, or even active attackers trying to inject fake data.

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Aussie Law >> Maths
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Oct '18

02 Oct '18

"The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that," [Malcolm Turnbull] said on Friday. "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia." <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170714/10385237789/aussie-prime-ministe…>

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A first look at Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop
by Peter Reutemann 10 May '18

10 May '18

'Last week, Canonical released Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (codenamed "Bionic Beaver"), the latest long-term support version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ars is working on a full review of the release, but I wanted to share some first impressions of the desktop, which is a major advance over the last LTS version.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/bionic-beaver-a-firs… 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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Chrome 66 Arrives With Autoplaying Content Blocked By Default
by Peter Reutemann 09 May '18

09 May '18

'Google today launched Chrome 66 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The desktop release includes autoplaying content muted by default, security improvements, and new developer features. You can update to the latest version now using the browser's built-in silent updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. In our tests, autoplaying content that is muted still plays automatically. Autoplaying content with sound, whether it has visible controls or not, and whether it is set to play on loop or not, simply does not start playing. Note that this is all encompassing -- even autoplaying content you are expecting or is the main focus of the page does not play. YouTube videos, for example, no longer start playing automatically. And in case that's not enough, or if a page somehow circumvents the autoplaying block, you can still mute whole websites.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/04/18/0410202 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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Meeting topics?
by Peter Reutemann 08 May '18

08 May '18

Hi everyone Any ideas for next week's meeting? Having a go at System76's Pop!_OS? Other ideas? 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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USB 3.2 Work Is On The Way For The Linux 4.18 Kernel: Report
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '18

30 Apr '18

'USB 3.2 was announced last summer as an incremental update to the USB standard to double the bandwidth for existing USB Type-C cables. We haven't seen much in the way of USB 3.2 mentions in the Linux kernel yet but then again we haven't really seen USB 3.2 devices yet. USB 3.2 brings a multi-lane operation mode for hosts and devices using existing Type-C cables as well as a minor update to the USB hub specification. USB 3.2 allows for new 10 Gbit/s and 20 Gbit/s rates using two lanes, USB 3.2 Gen 1x2 and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, respectively. It looks like kernel developers are now working on getting their USB 3.2 Linux support in order. We were tipped off that as of last week there are some USB 3.2 patches queued in the usb-next tree maintained by Greg Kroah-Hartman's.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/04/30/1558201 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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Sinclair ZX Spectrum Designer Rick Dickinson Succumbs To Cancer
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Apr '18

27 Apr '18

Rick Dickinson, the designer for several machines sold by Sinclair in the 1980s, has died <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/26/rick_dickinson_dies/>. More recently, he was involved in the campaign to create the “ZX Spectrum Next” machine. Commenters have offered up some useful links: his Flickr gallery <https://www.flickr.com/photos/9574086(a)N02/albums> with some peeks at concept renders, and this item <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAwHIcdidzI> from 2003 where he talks about his designs for Sinclair.

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Microsoft Quarterly Report
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Apr '18

27 Apr '18

Just some items I found notable from here <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/even-windows-revenue-is-up-in-micro…>: * Office 365 is up, traditional MS Office is down. * Corporate sales of Windows are up, while consumer sales are down (“below the general decline of the PC market”). In each case, the former is growing faster than the latter is declining, so overall business is up.

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Linux At The Leading Edge Of Enterprise-Level Storage
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Apr '18

26 Apr '18

First of all, some background (as I understand it): * “NVMe” is a standard for accessing storage (normally flash rather than hard drives) via a PCI-E bus <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express>. * “NVME-oF” (“NVMe over Fabrics”) (mentioned in the above article) is a further spec that allows one node to access storage attached to another node. Sounds like NBD, really <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_block_device>, though the term “RDMA” (“Remote Direct Memory Access”) gets tossed around. So, this article <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/26/nvme_fabric_over_fibre_channel/> says things like NVME-oF “has to be implemented across network or fabric and, so far, Ethernet, with ROCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet), is the favoured one”, though other lower-layer protocols also work. In particular, the writer is interviewing an industry guru about the prospects for FC-NVMe, which uses Fibre Channel as the transport. A couple of quotes caught my eye: Since the low-level driver isn't a part of the OS, like NVMe-oF, but rather supplied by the HBA vendor (Emulex or QLogic), the deployment for OSes outside the Linux model should be more agile... You must run a recent version of Linux; no other OSes have NVMe-oF drivers available (yet). In other words, NVME-oF is pretty much Linux-only at the moment. But it would be hardware-independent, which should mean you can mix and match storage from different vendors. Unlike FC-NVMe, where the “HBA vendor” needs to supply hardware-specific drivers. In other, other words, NVME-oF works only on Linux, but makes you “hardware-agile”, while FC-NVMe is hardware-specific but should (hopefully) be “OS-agile”. Which kind of “agility” will turn out to be more important, I wonder?

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