June 2019 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Birthplace Of BASIC Gets A Memorial Marker
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jun '19

18 Jun '19

The US state of New Hampshire has added a marker <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/17/plaque_for_basic_birthplace_new_ha…> commemorating the creation of the BASIC programming language by professors Kemeny and Kurtz and a bunch of their students at Dartmouth College, back in 1964. The marker is not actually on College property, but on the nearest available state highway location.

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Linux PCs, Servers, Gadgets Can Be Crashed by 'Ping of Death' Network Packets
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jun '19

17 Jun '19

'The Register reports that it is possible to crash network-facing Linux servers, PCs, smartphones and tablets, and gadgets, or slow down their network connections, by sending them a series of maliciously crafted packets. It is also possible to hamper FreeBSD machines with the same attack. Patches and mitigations are available, and can be applied by hand if needed, or you can wait for a security fix to be pushed or offered to your at-risk device. A key workaround is to set /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_sack to 0. At the heart of the drama is a programming flaw dubbed SACK Panic aka CVE-2019-11477: this bug can be exploited to remotely crash systems powered by Linux kernel version 2.6.29 or higher, which was released 10 years ago.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/06/17/2018227 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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RKWard on Linux Mint 19.1 fails to start up
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jun '19

17 Jun '19

Hi everyone In case you're trying to use RKWard (GUI environment for the R language) on Linux Mint 19.1 and you keep getting the following error message: "The KDE installation could not be found (kreadconfig5). When moving / copying RKWard, make sure to copy the whole application folder, or create a shorcut / link, instead." Then simply install the following package: libkf5config-bin For instance, you can do this using apt-get: sudo apt-get install libkf5config-bin -- source: https://rkward-devel.narkive.com/M5x9XHCk/rkward-0-7-0-is-available 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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A New Hidden Way of Web Browser Profiling, Identification and Tracking
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jun '19

17 Jun '19

'Researchers from Austria's Graz University of Technology "have devised an automated system for browser profiling using two new side channel attacks that can help expose information about software and hardware," reports The Register. The researchers recently presented a paper titled "JavaScript Template Attacks: Automatically Inferring Host Information for Targeted Exploits," which The Register says "calls into question the effectiveness of anonymized browsing and browser privacy extensions... " Long-time Slashdot reader Artem S. Tashkinov shared their report: One of the side-channel attacks developed for JavaScript Template Attacks involve measuring runtime differences between two code snippets to infer the underlying instruction set architecture through variations in JIT compiler behavior. The other involves measuring timing differences in the memory allocator to infer the allocated size of a memory region. The boffins' exploration of the JavaScript environment reveals not only the ability to fingerprint via browser version, installed privacy extension, privacy mode, operating system, device microarchitecture, and virtual machine, but also the properties of JavaScript objects. And their research shows there are far more of these than are covered in official documentation. This means browser fingerprints have the potential to be far more detailed -- have more data points -- than they are now. The Mozilla Developer Network documentation for Firefox, for example, covers 2,247 browser properties. The researchers were able to capture 15,709. Though not all of these are usable for fingerprinting and some represent duplicates, they say they found about 10,000 usable properties for all browsers.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/06/16/232241 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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next meeting - topics?
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jun '19

14 Jun '19

Hi everyone At the moment, we don't have a speaker for this month's meeting (June 24th): https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/257884282/ Any volunteers? I was thinking of quickly demoing how to generate .deb packages from your code - I've forked an unmaintained plugin, which does that for Maven projects (= java based), i.e., I know a teeny bit about the process. Apart from the command-line tools, there are also GUI tools available for achieving this. 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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CERN Ditches Microsoft to 'Take Back Control' With Open Source Software
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jun '19

14 Jun '19

'CERN is best known for pushing the boundaries of science and understanding, but the famed research outfit's next major experiment will be with open-source software. From a report: The European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, and also known as home of the Large Hadron Collider, has announced plans to migrate away from Microsoft products and on to open-source solutions where possible. Why? Increases in Microsoft license fees. Microsoft recently revoked the organisations status as an academic institution, instead pricing access to its services on users. This bumps the cost of various software licenses 10x, which is just too much for CERN's budget' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/06/12/1839213 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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The Unstoppable Rise Of The Machines
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Jun '19

14 Jun '19

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a robot that will always beat a human at rock-paper-scissors: <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/06/rock-paper-scis.html>.

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Windows 10's Linux Kernel Is Now Available
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jun '19

13 Jun '19

'Microsoft released a new Windows 10 Insider Preview build this week featuring the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. WSL 2 includes a real Linux kernel that lets you run more Linux software on Windows and with better performance than WSL 1. From a report: This is part of Windows 10 Insider Preview build 18917, released on June 12, 2019. It's part of the fast ring of updates. You can experiment with it today, although you'll have to join the Windows Insider program and get unstable builds of Windows 10 on your PC. Microsoft's Windows Command Line blog offers more information about WSL 2, complete with an install guide, list of user experience changes, and more documentation. To install WSL 2 on the latest insider build, run the following command in a PowerShell window launched with Administrator permissions: Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/06/13/1442201 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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Google Promises To Play Nice With Ad Blockers (Again)
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jun '19

13 Jun '19

'After being ripped to shreds by angry users, Google engineers have promised this week that the upcoming changes to Chrome's extensions system won't cripple ad blockers, as everyone is fearing. Instead, the company claims that the new extension API changes will actually improve user privacy and bring speed improvements. Furthermore, Google also promised to raise a maximum limit in one of the upcoming APIs that should address and lay to rest the primary criticism brought against the new extensions API by developers of ad blockers during the last six months.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/06/13/1522245 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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System76's Supercharged Linux-powered Gazelle Laptop is Finally Available
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jun '19

13 Jun '19

'The System76 Gazelle laptop is finally available. From a report: What makes this laptop so special (besides its pre-installed Linux-based operating System), is its impressive specifications. You see, System76 has supercharged it with a 9th generation Intel Core i7 Processor (9750H) and NVIDIA GTX 16-Series Graphics. It even has something the pricey MacBook Pro doesn't -- the ability to be configure with up to 64GB. Yeah, Apple's laptop can only have a maximum of 32GB. The Gazelle can be configured with additional top specs, such as an NVMe SSD up to 2TB. Actually, it can accommodate two such drives, so you can theoretically have 4TB of speedy storage. You can opt for either a 15 or 17-inch display, both of which have a 1080p resolution. Regardless of screen size, you get a full keyboard too, meaning it has a number pad on the right. It ships with Ubuntu or Pop!_OS pre-installed and starts at $1099.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/06/13/189249 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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