July 2018 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Google Allows Outside App Developers To Read People's Gmails, Says Report
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '18

03 Jul '18

'According to The Wall Street Journal, hundreds of app developers have access to millions of inboxes belonging to Gmail users (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). The developers reportedly receive access to messages from Gmail users who signed up for things like price-comparison services or automated travel-itinerary planners. Some of these companies train software to scan the email, while others enable their workers to pore over private messages. INSIDER reports: It's not news that Google and many top email providers enable outside developers to access users' inboxes. In most cases, the people who signed up for the price-comparison deals or other programs agreed to provide access to their inboxes as part of the opt-in process. In Google's case, outside developers must pass a vetting process, and as part of that, Google ensures they have an acceptable privacy agreement, The Journal reported, citing a Google representative. What is unclear is how closely these outside developers adhere to their agreements and whether Google does anything to ensure they do, as well as whether Gmail users are fully aware that individual employees may be reading their emails, as opposed to an automated system, the report says. It's interesting to note that, judging from The Journal's story, very little indicates that Google is doing anything different from Microsoft or other top email providers. According to the newspaper, nothing in Microsoft or Yahoo's policy agreements explicitly allows people to read others' emails. ' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/07/02/2057256 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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Micro Focus Sells SUSE
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/02/linux_makes_suse_sold_for_a_cool_2…>: Micro Focus CEO Chris Hsu subsequently decided that spending time with his family seemed more fun than piloting a juggernaut made of more offcuts than a cut-and-shut Ford Fiesta from Honest Bob's Motors. ... However, SUSE was a bright spot in the gloom, showing revenues of $164.4m and a solid, if unexciting, growth rate of 13.1 per cent in the six months to October 2017. ... For its part, SUSE is pretty happy with the deal. It will retain its CEO, Nils Brauckman, who seemed pleased to be free of Micro Focus ...

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Metric-Compatible Fonts
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

I was idly doing some web searches the other day (as you do), and stumbled across this page <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Metric-compatible_fonts> at the ever-dependable Arch Wiki. My specific question was, what had happened to the “URW Palladio” font? Up until recently, this was the one that Fontconfig would offer up when I used the old “Palatino” name from Adobe PostScript days. (I used to like the way the curve of the “P” didn’t quite join up with the stem, but left a little gap with a pointy bit on the end. Ahem...) Turns out it’s still there, just under another name; it’s now called “P052” for some unfathomable reason. Anyway, that page gives a bunch of handy alternatives if you are looking for Free alternatives to proprietary fonts that preserve the metrics (widths, spacing etc), so substituting them won’t stuff up the formatting of a document.

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'Why You Should Not Use Google Cloud'
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

'A user on Medium named "Punch a Server" says you should not use Google Cloud due to the "'no-warnings-given, abrupt way' they pull the plug on your entire system if they (or the machines) believe something is wrong." The user has a project running in production on Google Cloud (GCP) that is used to monitor hundreds of wind turbines and scores of solar plants scattered across 8 countries. When their project goes down, money is lost. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares the report: Early today morning (June 28, 2018) I receive an alert from Uptime Robot telling me my entire site is down. I receive a barrage of emails from Google saying there is some "potential suspicious activity" and all my systems have been turned off. EVERYTHING IS OFF. THE MACHINE HAS PULLED THE PLUG WITH NO WARNING. The site is down, app engine, databases are unreachable, multiple Firebases say I've been downgraded and therefore exceeded limits. Customer service chat is off. There's no phone to call. I have an email asking me to fill in a form and upload a picture of the credit card and a government issued photo id of the card holder. Great, let's wake up the CFO who happens to be the card holder. What if the card holder is on leave and is unreachable for three days? We would have lost everything -- years of work -- millions of dollars in lost revenue. I fill in the form with the details and thankfully within 20 minutes all the services started coming alive. The first time this happened, we were down for a few hours. In all we lost everything for about an hour. An automated email arrives apologizing for "inconvenience" caused. Unfortunately The Machine has no understanding of the "quantum of inconvenience" caused.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/07/01/0354200 The cloud is convenient, as you don't have to look after your own hardware and it allows you to add more processing power as needed. But this is a good example of why your own hardware might not be a bad idea... 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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PB Tech Used Trade Me Data For Spam
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

From <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=120816…>: PB Tech has signed an enforceable undertaking with the [Department of Internal Affairs] after it was found to have collected Trade Me customer details during trades and then sent them unsolicited messages. This was in breach of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act.

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