September 2019 - 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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How Qualcomm Shook Down The Cell Phone Industry For Almost 20 Years
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Aug '20

15 Aug '20

A pretty sobering read <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-shook-down-the-cel…>: Qualcomm's first weapon against competitors: patent licensing terms requiring customers to pay a royalty on every phone sold—not just phones that contained Qualcomm's wireless chips. Sound familiar? Judge Koh draws a direct parallel to licensing behavior that got Microsoft in legal trouble in the 1990s. Microsoft would offer PC makers a discount if they agreed to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for every PC sold—whether or not the PC shipped with a copy of MS-DOS. This effectively meant that a PC maker had to pay twice if it shipped a PC running a non-Microsoft operating system. There’s a lot more--the article reads like a catalogue of gangster-like tactics. All of which is perfectly all right under the US interpretation of “Free Enterprise”, of course ... Also, reading the details of how Qualcomm managed to sabotage Intel’s efforts to develop 5G chips, it seems to me that Qualcomm is directly responsible for the situation today where US companies are lagging behind Chinese ones like Huawei in 5G capability.

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Edge TV Now Online-Only
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Apr '20

22 Apr '20

If there is anybody else besides me who wondered what happened to Edge TV, as of the beginning of this month it is no longer on Freeview, it can now only be viewed as an online stream <https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/113928839/the-edge-tv-remove…>. In the last few days of June, there was a promo announcing that it was going HD, but I don’t recall it mentioning that it was leaving the broadcast airwaves. Quote: MediaWorks chief executive Michael Anderson says the move is in line with audience trends, which show people primarily consume music videos online. While that may be mostly true, personally I would go look for videos on YouTube after seeing them first on Edge TV.

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The State Of Video Streaming In NZ
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Feb '20

03 Feb '20

Apple’s TV+ streaming service is coming soon, followed by Disney’s one <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=122666…>. Note: Disney+ will break Sky's longtime near-monopoly on Disney content in these parts. Disney says that, ultimately, Disney+ will be the exclusive home of its content. So to get a comparable range of TV content to that you currently have free-to-air, you are going to have to subscribe to two or three or maybe more different streaming services. The increasing multitude of things to pay for isn’t about choice, but about no choice at all.

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“Open Source” Journalism
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '20

06 Jan '20

This week’s “Listening Post” on Al Jazeera (viewable here <https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2019/09/xinjiang-story-c…>) talks, in the latter part, about this new phenomenon of “open source” journalism. My understanding is, the meaning of “source” here is not that of “source code” familiar to software developers, but “source of information” as understood by journalists. That means getting information from public sources available to all. Even a tightly-controlled society like China makes a surprising amount of information freely available online--more than it really wants to make available, sometimes. And this information can be pieced together like a puzzle by perceptive investigators, to point to conclusions which can be directly at odds with public pronouncements from Government officials.

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Google's DNS-Over-TLS Plans Scrutinized By US Congress
by Peter Reutemann 01 Oct '19

01 Oct '19

'Google's plans to implement DNS over TLS in Chrome are being investigated by a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, while the Justice Department has "recently received complaints" about the practice, according to the Wall Street Journal. An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: While Google says it's pushing for adoption of the technology to prevent spying and spoofing, House investigators are worried this would give the internet giant an unfair advantage by denying access to users' data. The House sent a letter on September 13th asking if Google would use data handled through the process for commercial purposes... Internet service providers are worried that they may be shut out of the data and won't know as much about their customers' traffic patterns. This could "foreclose competition in advertising and other industries," an alliance of ISPs told Congress in a September 19th letter... Mozilla also wants to use the format to secure DNS in Firefox, and the company's Marshall Erwin told the WSJ that the antitrust gripes are "fundamentally misleading." ISPs are trying to undermine the standard simply because they want continued access to users' data, Erwin said. Unencrypted DNS helps them target ads by tracking your web habits, and it's harder to thwart DNS tracking than cookies and other typical approaches. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/2033247 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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UK Court Rules That E-Mail Sig Blocks Can Sign Contracts
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

An e-mail exchange has been ruled to be a binding contract <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/30/email_signature_legally_binding_co…> because the senders included their names at the end, as people commonly do.

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Linus Torvalds Approves New Kernel 'Lockdown' Feature
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'"After years of countless reviews, discussions, and code rewrites, Linus Torvalds approved on Saturday a new security feature for the Linux kernel, named 'lockdown'," reports ZDNet: The new feature will ship as a LSM (Linux Security Module) in the soon-to-be-released Linux kernel 5.4 branch, where it will be turned off by default; usage being optional due to the risk of breaking existing systems. The new feature's primary function will be to strengthen the divide between userland processes and kernel code by preventing even the root account from interacting with kernel code -- something that it's been able to do, by design, until now. When enabled, the new "lockdown" feature will restrict some kernel functionality, even for the root user, making it harder for compromised root accounts to compromise the rest of the OS... "When enabled, various pieces of kernel functionality are restricted," said Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel creator, and the one who put the final stamp of approval on the module yesterday. This includes restricting access to kernel features that may allow arbitrary code execution via code supplied by userland processes; blocking processes from writing or reading /dev/mem and /dev/kmem memory; block access to opening /dev/port to prevent raw port access; enforcing kernel module signatures; and many more others, detailed here.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/30/0312211 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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Firefox Promises UK Government DNS-Over-HTTPS Won't Be Default in UK
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'"Despite looking to make DNS-over-HTTPS the default for its American users, Mozilla has assured culture secretary Nicky Morgan that this won't be the case in the UK," reports Gizmodo: DNS-over-HTTPS has been fairly controversial, with the Internet Services Providers Association nominating Mozilla for an 'Internet Villain' over the whole thing, saying it will "bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the UK." In his letter to Morgan, Mozilla vice president of global policy, trust and security, Alan Davidson, stressed that the company "has no plans to turn on our DNS-over-HTTPS feature by default in the United Kingdom and will not do so without further engagement with public and private stakeholders". He did add that Mozilla does "strongly believe that DNS-over-HTTPS would offer real security benefits to UK citizens. The DNS is one of the oldest parts of the internet's architecture, and remains largely untouched by efforts to make the web more secure. "Because current DNS requests are unencrypted, the road that connects your citizens to their online destination is still open and used by bad actors looking to violate user privacy, attack communications, and spy on browsing activity. People's most personal information, such as their health-related data, can be tracked, collected, leaked and used against people's best interest. Your citizens deserve to be protected from that threat."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/0434233 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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Do We Need To Rethink What Free Software Is?
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'Matthew Garrett is a security developer at Google and a Linux contributor who in 2014 won the Free Software Foundation's annual "Advancement of Free Software" award. But now he's asking if we need to re-think what free software is: If users can pay Amazon to provide a hosted version of a piece of software, there's little incentive for them to pay the authors of that software. This has led to various projects adopting license terms such as the Commons Clause that effectively make it nonviable to provide such a service, forcing providers to pay for a commercial use license instead. In general the entities pushing for these licenses are VC backed companies who are themselves benefiting from free software written by volunteers that they give nothing back to, so I have very little sympathy. But it does raise a larger issue -- how do we ensure that production of free software isn't just a mechanism for the transformation of unpaid labour into corporate profit...? At the same time, people are spending more time considering some of the other ethical outcomes of free software. Copyleft ensures that you can share your code with your neighbour without your neighbour being able to deny the same freedom to others, but it does nothing to prevent your neighbour using your code to deny other fundamental, non-software, freedoms. As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. The JSON license includes a requirement that "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil", but the lack of any meaningful clarity around what "Good" and "Evil" actually mean makes it hard to determine whether it achieved its aims. As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years, otherwise the opportunity will be lost and much of the activist energy that underpins free software will be spent elsewhere. If free software is going to maintain relevance, it needs to continue to explain how it interacts with contemporary social issues. If any organisation is going to claim to lead the community, it needs to be doing that.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/28/1741229 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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Purism's Librem 5 Phone Starts Shipping. It Can Run Linux Desktop Apps
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'On Tuesday Purism announced their first Librem 5 smartphones were rolling off the assembly line and heading to customers. "Seeing the amazing effort of the Purism team, and holding the first fully functioning Librem 5, has been the most inspirational moment of Purism's five year history," said their founder and CEO Todd Weaver. On Wednesday they posted a video announcing that the phones were now shipping, and Friday they posted a short walk-through video. "The crowdsourced $700 Linux phone is actually becoming a real product," reports Ars Technica: Purism's demand that everything be open means most of the major component manufacturers were out of the question. Perhaps because of the limited hardware options, the internal construction of the Librem 5 is absolutely wild. While smartphones today are mostly a single mainboard with every component integrated into it, the Librem 5 actually has a pair of M.2 slots that house full-size, off-the-shelf LTE and Wi-Fi cards for connectivity, just like what you would find in an old laptop. The M.2 sockets look massive on top of the tiny phone motherboard, but you could probably replace or upgrade the cards if you wanted... [Y]ou're not going to get cutting-edge hardware at a great price with the Librem 5. That's not the point, though. The point is that you are buying a Linux phone, with privacy and open source at the forefront of the design. There are hardware kill switches for the camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband on the side of the phone, ensuring none of the I/O turns on unless you want it to. The OS is the Free Software Foundation-endorsed PureOS, a Linux distribution that, in this case, has been reworked with a mobile UI. Purism says it will provide updates for the "lifetime" of the device, which would be a stark contrast to the two years of updates you get with an Android phone. PureOS is a Debian-based Linux distro, and on the Librem 5, you'll get to switch between mobile versions of the Gnome and KDE environments. If you're at all interested in PureOS, Purism's YouTube page is worth picking through. Dozens of short videos show that, yes, this phone really runs full desktop-class Linux. Those same videos show the dev kit running things like the APT package manager through a terminal, a desktop version of Solitaire, Emacs, the Gnome disk utility, DOSBox, Apache Web Server, and more. If it runs on your desktop Linux computer, it will probably run on the Librem 5, albeit with a possibly not-touch-friendly UI. The Librem 5 can even be hooked up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and you can run all these Linux apps with the normal input tools... Selling a smartphone is a cutthroat business, and we've seen dozens of companies try and fail over the years. Purism didn't just survive long enough to ship a product -- it survived in what is probably the hardest way possible, by building a non-Android phone with demands that all the hardware components use open code. Making it this far is an amazing accomplishment. ' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/0548215 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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Libre-RISC-V 3D CPU/GPU Seeks Grants For Ambitious Expansion
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'The NLNet Foundation is a non-profit supporting privacy, security, and the "open internet". Now the open source Libre RISC-V hybrid CPU/GPU is applying for eight additional grants from the NLNet Foundation, according to this update from the project's Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (Slashdot reader #517,947): Details on each Grant Application are on the newly-opened RISC-V Community Forum. The general idea is to kick RISC-V into a commercially-viable mass-volume high gear by putting forward funding proposals for NEON/SSE-style Video Acceleration to be upstreamed for use by ffmpeg, vlc, mplayer and gstreamer; hardware-assisted Mesa 3D (a port of the RADV Vulkan Driver to RISC-V), and a hardware-accelerated OpenCL port to RISC-V. This all in a "Hybrid" fashion (a la NEON/SSE) as opposed to the "usual" way that 3D and Video is done, which hugely complicate both software drivers and applications debugging. In addition, the Libre RISC-V SoC itself is applying for grants to do a gcc port supporting its Vectorisation Engine including auto-vectorisation, and, crucially, to do an entirely Libre-licensed ASIC Layout using LIP6.fr coriolis2, working in tandem with Chips4Makers to create a 180nm commercially-viable single-core dual-issue test ASIC. The process takes approximately 2-3 months for approval. Once accepted, anyone may be the direct (tax-deductible) recipient of NLNet donations, for sub-tasks completed. Worth noting: Puri.sm is sponsoring the project, and, given NLNet's Charitable Status, donations from Corporations (or individuals) are 100% tax-deductible.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/1845252 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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Richard Stallman Is Still Head of the GNU Project
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'On Thursday, Richard Stallman reminded the GNU Project mailing list that "On September 16 I resigned as president of the Free Software Foundation, but the GNU Project and the FSF are not the same. I am still the head of the GNU Project (the Chief GNUisance), and I intend to continue as such." The next day, with no explanation, a one-sentence update appeared on his personal blog at Stallman.org announcing that "I hereby step down as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately." But a few commenters on social media speculated that the post could have come from someone who'd hijacked Stallman's site -- and sure enough, that sentence had been removed by Sunday morning. In addition, for what it's worth Techrights.org posted an unconfirmed claim Sunday from "a generally reliable source" that "Stallman.org was defaced by an FSF employee. The deface has been reverted, and the domain appears to now be operating on non-FSF infrastructure..." But whatever's happening, Richard Stallman is still living the life of Richard Stallman. Friday he also posted that he's looking for a room in a shared house or apartment for at least two months. "There should not be a cat (unless hypoallergenic), or a dog that jumps up excitedly on people (unless quite small), or a digital listening device such as Echo, Siri or 'Hello Google', or a card lock that records who opens the door. I will ask about cameras."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/054211 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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Roll On The Paperless Office?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

The “Paperless Office” was a prediction from back in the 1970s or so that, with the increasing use of electronic automation for business data processing, the need for paper documents would diminish over time and eventually go away. Then with the increasing popularity of PCs came the demand for printers to print the documents created with them, and it seemed the trend was the opposite--electronic automation was producing even more paper documents than ever, rather than less. Well, maybe we have seen “peak paper”, according to <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/13/wall_street_analyst_slashes_hp_inc…>: The company is currently trying to dig itself out a hole of its own making: it mis-forecast toner cartridge revenues in EMEA for FY'19 that started in October last year, not factoring in the burgeoning demand for cloned or remanufactured alternatives or - seemingly - that businesses are printing less than they used to.

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4K / Ultra High Definition Monitors
by Ian Stewart 27 Sep '19

27 Sep '19

Hi Folks, For those of you at last nights meeting you'll recollect there was some discussion on Ultra High Definition<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution> computer monitors (i.e. "4K" monitors). With such a large resolution monitor there were jokes made about sitting on the other side of the room in order to use your computer. Today I found links to a Canadian web-site that seems to have created a science out of how far to sit in front of a TV monitor... https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship ...and... https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/4k-ultra-hd-uhd-vs-1080p-full-hd-tvs-and-up… ...apparently you sit closer to a 4K/UHD TV monitor than a 1080/HD TV monitor. In fact, if you sit too far away from a 4K/UHD monitor then there is no point in having one and you should have stuck with a 1080/HD monitor! I notice that PB-Tech for the category of 4K Monitors<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/category/peripherals/monitors/4k-monitors>, the sizes are mostly in the range 24 inch to 32 inch, while 4K TVs<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/category/tv-av/tvs/4k-televisions> have screens in the range 43 inch to 86 inch. The cheapest 32 inch 4K monitor I found was a Kogan 32" Ultra HD 4K FreeSync IPS Monitor (3840 x 2160) that is available by purchasing on-line at NZ$370 plus shipping from kogan<https://www.kogan.com/nz/buy/kogan-32-ultra-hd-4k-freesync-ips-monitor-3840…>. Getting a 4K monitor is one thing, being able to feed it with true 4K created video is the next challenge. I don't think it will be coming out of a Freeview box in NZ for a while ;-) However, with the adoption and take-up of the AV1<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1> standard, then more 4K video content should become available to stream from the internet. If your Desktop PC doesn't have a 4K (3980 x 1920 pixel) graphics capability, then don't forget that for a starting price of around $150 will be required for a PCI-e 4K graphics adapter<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/VGAGBV11032/Gigabyte-GeForce-GT1030-2GB-GD…>. cheers, Ian.

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Cloudflare, Google Chrome, and Firefox Add HTTP/3 Support
by Peter Reutemann 27 Sep '19

27 Sep '19

'HTTP/3, the next major iteration of the HTTP protocol, is getting a big boost today with support added in Cloudflare, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. From a report: Starting today, Cloudflare announced that customers will be able to enable an option in their dashboards and turn on HTTP/3 support for their domains. That means that whenever users visit a Cloudflare-hosted website from an HTTP/3-capable client, the connection will automatically upgrade to the new protocol, rather than being handled via older versions. On the browser side, Chrome Canary added support for HTTP/3 earlier this month. Users can enable it by using the Chrome command-line flags of "--enable-quic --quic-version=h3-23". In addition, Mozilla too announced it would roll out support for HTTP/3. The browser maker is scheduled to ship HTTP/3 in an upcoming Firefox Nightly version later this fall.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/26/1710239 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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Phrase Of The Week: “Chaos Engineering”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Sep '19

27 Sep '19

How about a company that offers “Failure-As-A-Service” <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/26/organizing_chaos_gremlin_announces…>? That is, they make it easier to deliberately trigger various kinds of infrastructure problems and outages (under controlled conditions, of course) to make sure that your systems that are supposed to be designed for resiliency, actually do what they say on the tin. Quote from their Senior Site Reliability Engineer: “I like to do a CPU attack first. It's the Hello World of chaos engineering.”

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Why So Many Apps Are Asking To Use Bluetooth on iOS 13
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '19

26 Sep '19

'Apple's new iOS 13 update adds a new privacy measure that requires apps to get your consent in order to use your device's Bluetooth. From a report: After installing the latest version of iOS, trust me when I say you'll be surprised by the number of apps asking for Bluetooth permission the next time you open them. Some might seem very strange (like Dunkin' Donuts in my case), but others probably won't make you think twice about giving the thumbs-up. The reason Apple implemented this is because Bluetooth has enabled companies to sneakily track your location over Bluetooth by using beacons in stores, shopping malls, and even on popular city streets if they're placed within range of a place you'd walk by. This is entirely separate from your iPhone's location privacy settings, which makes it seem all the more underhanded. A beacon is very easily able to detect your device's Bluetooth chip and log that with a retailer or some other app on your phone. So getting more strict about Bluetooth is a good move by Apple to prevent unwanted tracking of its customers. Similarly, the company is also getting even more transparent about location, showing you on a map how often and where apps have recorded your position. This prompt is much easier to understand, and will probably startle people into slimming down the list of apps that can monitor where they are. As it should!' -- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/19/09/26/1928204 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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High-severity vulnerability in vBulletin is being actively exploited
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '19

26 Sep '19

'Attackers are mass-exploiting an anonymously disclosed vulnerability that makes it possible to take control of servers running vBulletin, one of the Internet’s most popular applications for website comments. Sites running the app should take comments offline until administrators install a patch that vBulletin developers released late Wednesday morning. The vulnerability was disclosed through an 18-line exploit that was published on Monday by an unidentified person. The exploit allows unauthenticated attackers to remotely execute malicious code on just about any vBulletin server running versions 5.0.0 up to 5.5.4. The vulnerability is so severe and easy to exploit that some critics have described it as a back door.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/public-exploit-code-… 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 /e/ Google-Free, Pro-Privacy Android Clone Is Now Available
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '19

26 Sep '19

'Gael Duval, creator of the popular early Linux distribution, Mandrake Linux, wanted a smartphone, which was open source, would run a wide variety of popular software, and protect your privacy. His answer was the Android-based /e/ operating system and smartphones. While it's still in beta, both its code and refurbished Samsung phones running it are now available. Duval's approach hasn't been to reinvent the mobile operating system wheel, but instead to clean up Android of its Google privacy-invading features and replace them with privacy-respecting one, in which, as Duval said in an interview, "Your data is your data." To do this, he's started with LineageOS. This is an Android-based operating system, which is descended from the failed CyanogenMod Android fork. According to Duval, the /e/ operating system is a Lineage OS fork. It also blends in features from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 7, 8, and 9 source-code trees. In the /e/ OS all Google services have been removed and replaced with MicroG services. MicroG replaces Google's libraries with purely open-source implementations without hooks to Google's services. This includes libraries and apps which provide Google Play, Maps, Geolocation, and Messaging services for the Android applications when they need them. What this means is that you can run some Android apps, which normally only work on a fully Google-enabled Android phone on an /e/ phone. These compatible apps are available via the /e/ app store. The /e/ platform also comes with its own services, the report notes. For example, its search program uses Qwant, a popular, privacy-first European-based search engine, and for cloud storage, you get /e/'s own cloud, which is based on the open-source NextCloud. You can download and install /e/ on 85 different smartphone models. You can also buy an /e/ phone today if you're in the EU.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/25/2129247 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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Developer Made an Ad Blocker That Works On Podcasts and Radio
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '19

25 Sep '19

'Meet AdBlock Radio, an adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts. Its creator, Alexandre Storelli, told Motherboard he hopes to help companies "develop alternative business models for radio and podcast lovers that do not want ads." "Ads exploit the weaknesses of many defenseless souls," Storelli told Motherboard. "Ads dishonestly tempt people, steal their time and promise them a higher social status. Blocking them will be a relieving experience for many." Most audio ads exploit "auditory artifacts" to produce an ad that can't be ignored or tuned out because it feels louder than it actually is -- this has gotten so bad that there has actually been a "sonic arms race" where ads have been made increasingly louder over the years. "Adblock Radio detects audio ads with machine-learning and Shazam-like techniques," Storelli wrote about the project. He said he's been working on it for more than three years and that it uses techniques such as speech recognition, acoustic fingerprinting, and machine learning to detect known ad formats. It uses a crowdsourced database of ads and "acoustic fingerprinting," which converts audio features into a series of numbers that can be combed by an algorithm. Storelli has made Adblock Radio open-source and given detailed instructions on how to build on it, integrate it into user devices, and deploy it in a way that pressures radio stations (and podcasts) to self-regulate the quality of their ads.' -- source: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/19/09/25/2056215 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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Android 10 Go Edition Improves Speed and Security For Low-cost Phones
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '19

25 Sep '19

'Android Go has made smartphones more accessible by focusing on lower-cost devices, but it's frequently pokey and sometimes insecure -- not a great introduction to modern mobile tech. Google is aware of this, though, and it's tackling those issues head-on with its newly unveiled Android 10 Go edition. From a report: The scaled-back version of Android 10 puts a strong focus on speed, with faster and more memory-efficient app switching as well as launching that's 10 percent faster than in Android 9 Go. It should be more reliable, too. For some, data protection may be the real star of the show. Android 10 Go edition includes a new Adiantum encryption system that should secure data without affecting performance or requiring special hardware. You won't have to worry that your sensitive info is vulnerable simply because you bought an entry-level device.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/19/09/25/1648239 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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Microsoft’s Cascadia Font Offers Ligatures For Programmers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Sep '19

25 Sep '19

I just heard of this <https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/cascadia-code/>, though it was apparently announced back in May. It has OpenType context-dependent substitutions for displaying “>=” as “≥”, “/=” as “≠” among others. Me? I just think it’s about time programming languages supported those Unicode characters directly.

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Quantum Computers Are Analog Computers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Sep '19

25 Sep '19

Google continues to experiment with quantum computing <https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/paper-leaks-showing-a-quantum-compu…>. This latest result (albeit preliminary) sounds impressive: But that seriously understates what's going on here. Every calculation that's done on a quantum computer will end up being a measurement of a quantum system. And in this case, there is simply no way to get that probability distribution using a classical computer. With this system, we can get it in under 10 minutes, and most of that time is spent in processing that doesn't involve the qubits. As the researchers put it, "To our knowledge, this experiment marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor." but it is still just reinforcing the point I made earlier <https://list.waikato.ac.nz/hyperkitty/list/wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz/thread…>, that quantum computers are just a reboot of the old idea of “analog” computers. These are able to do fast simulations of physical systems (in this case, a quantum probability distribution), to limited precision. But they continue to be useless for number-theoretic calculations, such as factoring large integers. Or code cracking.

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EU Right To Be Forgotten Is For Europe Only
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Sep '19

25 Sep '19

The EU Court of Justice has ruled in favour of Google <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/google-wins-case-as-court-rules…>, in saying that France’s claim that any “right to be forgotten” has to be implemented worldwide cannot apply. While it is true that, in an always-online connected world, the ease of bypassing regional bans makes a mockery of local laws, how do you reconcile the ability of one country to impose communication blocks on others with the idea of national sovereignty?

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