September 2019 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Linux Foundation Exec Believes Edge Computing Will Be More Important Than Cloud Computing
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '19

23 Sep '19

'Once upon a time, back when we all had mainframes and then servers in our offices, we had edge computing. Our compute power was literally down the hall. Then, along came the cloud, and all that changed. Computers were hundreds of miles but milliseconds away. Now, with the rise of IoT, 5G, and our never-satisfied need for speed, edge computing is coming back with a vengeance. Indeed, at his keynote at Open Networking Summit in Belgium, Arpit Joshipura, The Linux Foundation's general manager of networking, said "edge computing will overtake cloud computing" by 2025. When Joshipura is talking about edge computing, he means compute and storage resources that are five to 20 milliseconds away. He also means edge computing should be an open, interoperable framework. This framework should be independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system. Open-edge computing should also work with any edge-computing use case: Internet of Things (IoT) edge, a telecom edge, cloud edge, or enterprise edge, whatever, "Our goal here is to unify all of these." This is being done via LF Edge. This Linux Foundation organization seeks to bring all edge computing players under one umbrella with one technology. Its purpose is to create a software stack that unifies a fragmented edge market around a common, open vision for the future of the industry. To make this happen, Joshipura announced two more projects were being incorporated into LF Edge: Baetyl and Fledge.' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/19/09/23/1722226 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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GNU's Former Kernel Maintainer Shares 'A Reflection on the Departure of Richard Stallman'
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

'Thomas Bushnell, BSG, founded GNU's official kernel project, GNU Hurd, and maintained it from 1990 through 2003. This week on Medium he posted "a reflection on the departure of RMS." There has been some bad reporting, and that's a problem. While I have not waded through the entire email thread Selam G. has posted, my reaction was that RMS did not defend Epstein, and did not say that the victim in this case was acting voluntarily. But it's not the most important problem. It's not remotely close to being the most important problem. This was an own-goal for RMS. He has had plenty of opportunities to learn how to stfu when that's necessary. He's responsible for relying too much on people's careful reading of his note, but even that's not the problem. He thought that Marvin Minsky was being unfairly accused. Minsky was his friend for many many years, and I think he carries a lot of affection and loyalty for his memory. But Minsky is also dead, and there's plenty of time to discuss at leisure whatever questions there may be about his culpability. RMS treated the problem as being "let's make sure we don't criticize Minsky unfairly", when the problem was actually, "how can we come to terms with a history of MIT's institutional neglect of its responsibilities toward women and its apparent complicity with Epstein's crimes". While it is true we should not treat Minsky unfairly, it was not -- and is not -- a pressing concern, and by making it his concern, RMS signaled clearly that it was much more important to him than the question of the institution's patterns of problematic coddling of bad behavior. And, I think, some of those focusing themselves on careful parsing of RMS's words are falling into the same pitfall as he.... Minsky was RMS's protector for a long long time. He created the AI Lab, where I think RMS found the only happy home he ever knew. He kept the rest of the Institute at bay and insulated RMS from attack (as did other faculty that also had befriended RMS). I was around for most of the 90s, and I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS's behavior was a concern at the time, and that this protection was itself part of the problem... Bushnell also calls Stallman "a tragic figure. He is one of the most brilliant people I've met, who I have always thought desperately craved friendship and camaraderie, and seems to have less and less of it all the time. This is all his doing; nobody does it to him. But it's still very sad. As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life's work is a failure..." But Bushnell concludes that "It is time for the free software community to leave adolescence and move to adulthood, and this requires leaving childish tantrums, abusive language, and toxic environments behind."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/21/0253227 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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Debian May Need To Re-Evaluate Its Interest In 'Init System Diversity'
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

'"Debian Project Leader Sam Hartman has shared his August 2019 notes where he outlines the frustrations and issues that have come up as a result of init system diversity with some developers still aiming to viably support systemd alternatives within Debian," reports Phoronix: Stemming from elogind being blocked from transitioning to testing and the lack of clarity into that, Hartman was pulled in to try to help mediate the matter and get to the bottom of the situation with a lack of cooperation between the elogind and systemd maintainers for Debian as well as the release team. Elogind is used by some distributions as an implementation of systemd's logind, well, outside of systemd as a standalone daemon. Elogind is one of the pieces to the puzzle for trying to maintain a modern, systemd-free Linux distribution. Various issues were raised that are trying to be worked through albeit many Debian developers face time limitations and other factors like emotional exhaustion. Hartman noted in his August notes, "I think we may be approaching a point where we need to poll the project -- to have a GR and ask ourselves how committed we are to the different parts of this init diversity discussion. Reaffirming our support for sysvinit and elogind would be one of the options in any such GR. If that option passed, we'd expect all the maintainers involved to work together or to appoint and empower people who could work on this issue. It would be fine for maintainers not to be involved so long as they did not block progress. And of course we would hold the discussions to the highest standards of respect."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/21/042213 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: “Tab Bankruptcy”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

What happens when you accumulate a growing bunch of open pages in your browser, meaning to look at them in the next few days, but never get around to it? Until you have so many tabs open, you realize you will never have time to check them out, so you abandon them all and start again? That’s called “declaring tab bankruptcy”. And here <https://github.com/jsvine/tab-bankrupter> is a Chrome extension that lets you do that, while preserving pinned tabs, but saves a record of all the tabs you’ve abandoned. So, you know, you can change your mind and come back to them later ... Then you’ll probably want another extension to let you declare saved-bankruptcy bankruptcy, where you wipe all your bankruptcy saves and start again ...

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A Novel Use For GitHub
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

Came across this GitHub repo <https://github.com/tewhalen/bmw_e30>, which doesn’t actually contain any code. Instead, the owner is using the issues feature to keep track of servicing items for his car. Why do it on a public server? Well, the guy is a BMW owner ...

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At The Open-Core Summit
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

A bunch of companies <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/20/open_source_companies_cloud/> have met to share a common annoyance: that big corporations like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are able to profit from their open-source software without giving anything back. I’m not sure what you can do about it, though. Attempts to impose more restrictive conditions on licences seem to have backfired. The AGPL seems to have been the only one of these efforts to have any legs, and I’m doubtful it has really achieved much.

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German Interior Ministry Wants To Ensure “Digital Sovereignty”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

Germany wants to avoid having too much reliance on specific software/service vendors, like Microsoft and cloud suppliers <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/19/german_government_report_digital_s…>. How to deal with this? Answers suggested were * Negotiate new contracts with those same suppliers that get rid of the objectionable things, like telemetry * Diversify: stick with proprietary software, just get it from more suppliers * Use Open Source. Real-world results seem mixed? (Munich was cited as a “failure”). Also, Open Source software can end up acquired by proprietary vendors anyway. But then again, why should such acquisitions be such a big deal? Have they not heard of “forks”? Word I learned today: “Schmerzpunkt”.

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How the Internet Archive is Waging War on Misinformation
by Peter Reutemann 19 Sep '19

19 Sep '19

'San Francisco-based non-profit is archiving billions of web pages in a bid to preserve web history. From a report: Since the 2016 US election, as fears about the power of fake news have intensified, the archive has stepped up its efforts to combat misinformation. At a time when false and ultra-partisan content is rapidly created and spread, and social media pages are constantly updated, the importance of having an unalterable record of who said what, when has been magnified. "We're trying to put in a layer of accountability," said founder Brewster Kahle. Mr Kahle founded the archive, which now employs more than 100 staff and costs $18m a year to run, because he feared that what was appearing on the internet was not being saved and catalogued in the same way as newspapers and books. The organisation is funded through donations, grants and the fees it charges third parties that request specific digitisation services. So far, the archive has catalogued 330bn web pages, 20m books and texts, 8.5m audio and video recordings, 3m images and 200,000 software programs. The most popular, public websites are prioritised, as are those that are commonly linked to. Some information is free to access, some is loaned out (if copyright laws apply) and some is only available to researchers. Curled up in a chair in his office after lunch, Mr Kahle lamented the combined impact of misinformation and how difficult it can be for ordinary people to access reliable sources of facts. "We're bringing up a generation that turns to their screens, without a library of information accessible via screens," said Mr Kahle. Some have taken advantage of this "new information system", he argued -- and the result is "Trump and Brexit." Having a free online library is crucial, said Mr Kahle, since "[the public is] just learning from whateverâ...âis easily available."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/09/19/1858249 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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Protocol found in webcams and DVRs is fueling a new round of big DDoSes
by Peter Reutemann 19 Sep '19

19 Sep '19

'Hackers have found a new way to amplify the crippling effects of denial-of-service techniques by abusing an improperly implemented tool found in almost 1 million network-connected cameras, DVRs, and other Internet-of-things devices. The technique abuses WS-Discovery, a protocol that a wide array of network devices use to automatically connect to one another. Often abbreviated as WSD, the protocol lets devices send user datagram protocol packets that describe the device capabilities and requirements over port 3702. Devices that receive the probes can respond with replies that can be tens to hundreds of times bigger. WSD has shipped with Windows since Vista and is one of the ways the operating system automatically finds network-based printers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/in-the-wild-ddoses-a… 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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Adobe Raking It In
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

That rentware business model continues to pay off very handsomely <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/18/adobe_results/>. Users may grumble, but as long as they don’t actually do anything about it, why should Adobe worry?

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OBS Studio
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

Came across the OBS Studio project last night by accident (never heard of it before!): "Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Download and start streaming quickly and easily on Windows, Mac or Linux. High performance real time video/audio capturing and mixing. Create scenes made up of multiple sources including window captures, images, text, browser windows, webcams, capture cards and more. Set up an unlimited number of scenes you can switch between seamlessly via custom transitions. Intuitive audio mixer with per-source filters such as noise gate, noise suppression, and gain. Take full control with VST plugin support." -- source: https://obsproject.com/ I'll give it a go for my next video recording project. :-) 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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MITRE’s Latest Common Weakness Enumeration List
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

The CWE is not a list of security vulnerabilities as such, but of factors which commonly lead to security vulnerabilities <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/18/the_25_most_dangerous_software_wea…>. The methodology of the list has changed from the previous one (from back in 2011), so it’s hard to say that the changes are down to different (improved?) coding practices. Still, two thirds of the entries are the same in both lists.

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Researchers Uncover 125 Vulnerabilities Across 13 Routers and NAS Devices
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

'Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) discovered a total of 125 different security vulnerabilities across 13 IoT devices, likely affecting millions of consumers. Help Net Security reports: In nearly all the devices (12 of the 13), ISE achieved its goal of obtaining remote root-level access. The table below shows the types of vulnerabilities that ISE identified in the targets. All 13 of the devices evaluated by ISE had at least one web application vulnerability such as cross-site scripting (XSS), operating system command injection (OS CMDi), or SQL injection (SQLi) that could be leveraged by an attacker to get remote access to the device's shell or gain access to the device's administrative panel. ISE obtained root shells on 12 of the devices, allowing complete control over the device. Six of them can be remotely exploited without authentication: the Asustor AS-602T, Buffalo TeraStation TS5600D1206, TerraMaster F2-420, Drobo 5N2, Netgear Nighthawk R9000, and TOTOLINK A3002RU. "We found that many of these issues were trivial to exploit and should have been discovered even in a rudimentary vulnerability assessment," says ISE founder Stephen Bono. "This indicates that these manufacturers likely undergo no such assessment whatsoever, that the bug bounty programs they employ are ineffective, that vulnerability disclosures sent to them are not addressed, or more likely, all of the above."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/09/17/2053202 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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HP Printers Try To Send Data Back To HP About Your Devices and What You Print
by Peter Reutemann 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

'Robert Heaton: Last week my in-laws politely but firmly asked me to set up their new HP printer. I protested that I'm completely clueless about that sort of thing, despite my tax-return-job-title of "software engineer." Still remonstrating, I was gently bundled into their study with an instruction pamphlet, a cup of tea, a promise to unlock the door once I'd printed everyone's passport forms, and a warning not to try the window because the roof tiles are very loose. At first the setup process was so simple that even a computer programmer could do it. But then, after I had finished removing pieces of cardboard and blue tape from the various drawers of the machine, I noticed that the final step required the downloading of an app of some sort onto a phone or computer. This set off my crapware detector. [...] It was a way to try and get people to sign up for expensive ink subscriptions and/or hand over their email addresses, plus something even more nefarious that we'll talk about shortly (there were also some instructions for how to download a printer driver tacked onto the end). This was a shame, but not unexpected. I'm sure that the HP ink department is saddled with aggressive sales quotas, and no doubt the only way to hit them is to ruthlessly exploit people who don't know that third-party cartridges are just as good as HP's and are much cheaper. Fortunately, the careful user can still emerge unscathed from this phase of the setup process by gingerly navigating the UI patterns that presumably do fool some people who aren't paying attention.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/09/17/1454203 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 Moving To a Faster 4-Week Release Cycle
by Peter Reutemann 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

'Mozilla announces in a blog post: We typically ship a major Firefox browser (Desktop and Android) release every 6 to 8 weeks. Building and releasing a browser is complicated and involves many players. To optimize the process, and make it more reliable for all users, over the years we've developed a phased release strategy that includes 'pre-release' channels: Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition. With this approach, we can test and stabilize new features before delivering them to the majority of Firefox users via general release. And today we're excited to announce that we're moving to a four-week release cycle! We're adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, and bring you new features more quickly. In recent quarters, we've had many requests to take features to market sooner. Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Considering these factors, it is time we changed our release cadence. Starting Q1 2020, we plan to ship a major Firefox release every 4 weeks. Firefox ESR release cadence (Extended Support Release for the enterprise) will remain the same. In the years to come, we anticipate a major ESR release every 12 months with 3 months support overlap between new ESR and end-of-life of previous ESR. The next two major ESR releases will be ~June 2020 and ~June 2021.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/17/1750247 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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Fedora Linux 31 Beta is Here
by Peter Reutemann 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

'Fedora 31 is due later this year, but first, there needs to be some beta testing. And so, today, Fedora 31 Beta is made available for download. Unfortunately, details surrounding version 31 are a bit sparse. With that said, one big change involves Fedora users with ARM 64-based single board computers, such as a Raspberry Pi. Those folks will get access to an additional desktop spin -- the lightweight Xfce. Workstation users will be treated to GNOME 3.34, but not the final version that was released recently. Don't worry -- when Fedora leaves beta status, and is officially released, you can be sure the stable GNOME 3.34 will be included. Remember, Fedora is one of the best ways to experience a vanilla GNOME desktop environment.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/17/1836214 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’s Last Interview As FSF President
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

Seems the great prophet has bumbled into matters where perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut, and is now stepping down from the FSF. But leaving that aside, this interview <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/17/richard_stallman_interview/> has the usual choice nuggets on subjects he does know something about: One thing that has changed is that nowadays, a non-free program is typically malware as well. That was not the case in 1983. In 1983, when a proprietary software product was discovered to be malware, it was scandalous. It was shocking. It made the news, sort of at least in the tech press, because this wasn't the usual case. It there was a certain level of scruples, even among proprietary software developers. But over the years, those scruples have evaporated, as companies raced each other to the bottom in terms of mistreating their own users. And now, almost any non free program you run is mistreating you somehow.

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Password-exposing bug purged from LastPass extensions
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

'Developers of the LastPass password manager have patched a vulnerability that made it possible for websites to steal credentials for the last account the user logged into using the Chrome or Opera extension. The vulnerability was discovered late last month by Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy, who privately reported it to LastPass. In a write-up that became public on Sunday, Ormandy said the flaw stemmed from the way the extension generated popup windows. In certain situations, websites could produce a popup by creating an HTML iframe that linked to the Lastpass popupfilltab.html window rather than through the expected procedure of calling a function called do_popupregister(). In some cases, this unexpected method caused the popups to open with a password of the most recently visited site.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/lastpass-fixes-bug-t… 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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Say hello to 802.11ax: Wi-Fi 6 device certification begins today
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

'Today, the Wi-Fi Alliance launched its Wi-Fi Certified 6 program, which means that the standard has been completely finalized, and device manufacturers and OEMs can begin the process of having the organization certify their products to carry the Wi-Fi 6 branding. If you need a bit of a catch-up, Wi-Fi 6—aka 802.11ax—is the next generation of Wi-Fi. 802.11ax will, at least in theory, allow many more nearby devices to use the same Wi-Fi channels and frequencies without causing as much congestion and lag as Wi-Fi 5 (better known as 802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) do. That's the good news. The bad news is that very few of these benefits can be seen just from buying a Wi-Fi 6 router—you need most, if not all, of the devices in range (both yours and, ideally, any neighbors') to also support Wi-Fi 6 before you see the improvements. 802.11ax also mandates support for the WPA3 encryption and authentication protocol. WPA3 provides considerably better security for your Wi-Fi network than WPA2 did, and due to its adoption of Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), it will hopefully prove more robust toward future attacks as well.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/say-hello-to-802-11ax-wi-fi-6-devic… 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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Pine64 Confirms $25 'PineTime' Smartwatch for Linux Smartphones
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

'Besides their Linux laptops, single-board computers, and tablets, Pine64 is now also working on "PineTime," a new $25 smartwatch for Linux smartphones running open source software (and based on either ARM Mbed or FreeRTOS), reports Liliputing.com: The company describes the PineTime watch as a companion for Linux smartphones... you know, like the company's upcoming $150 PinePhone. For either or both of those reasons, it could appeal to folks who may not have wanted in on the smartphone space until now... The PineTime uses an existing watch body that's used by other device makers, but Pine64 is choosing custom internal hardware. The PineTime will support Bluetooth 5.0, a heart rate monitor, and multi-day battery life and the watch features a zinc alloy & plastic case and comes with a charging dock... At this point the PineTime is described as a side project, which means it's not a top priority for Pine64. While the company says the picture above is an actual photo of a prototype, Pine64 is still seeking software developers interested in contributing to the project, and the company's primary focus at this point will still be other upcoming devices like the PineBook Pro laptop and PinePhone smartphone.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/15/2345229 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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Linux 5.3 Released
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

'This release includes support for AMD Navi GPUs; support for the umwait x86 instructions that let processes wait for short amounts of time without spinning loops; a 'utilization clamping' mechanism that is used to boost interactivity on power-asymmetric CPUs used in phones; a new pidfd_open(2) system call that completes the work done to let users deal with the PID reuse problem; 16 millions of new IPv4 addresses in the 0.0.0.0/8 range are made available; support for Zhaoxin x86 CPUs; support Intel Speed Select for easier power selection in Xeon servers; and support for the lightweight hypervisor ACRN, built for embedded IoT devices. As always, many other new drivers and improvements can be found in the changelog.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/15/2319220 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 next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting coming up next week: "Lawrence D'Oliveiro will talk about how he set up greylisting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting) on his VPS to reduce the amount of spam, what lessons he learned and what pitfalls to avoid." -- details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/257884313 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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Debian 10: Playing catch-up with the rest of the Linux world (that’s a good thing)
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '19

13 Sep '19

Ars Technica has a review of Debian 10 which got released in July: 'The Debian project, the upstream mother of countless Linux distributions, has released Debian 10, also known as "Buster." And yes, that's a reference to the character from Toy Story. All Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters. Over the years, Debian has built a well-deserved reputation as a rock-solid distro for those who don't want the latest and greatest and instead prefer the stability that comes from sticking with what works. Naturally, Debian gets security updates, bug fixes, and maintenance releases like any distro, but don't expect major updates to applications or desktop environments with this Linux flavor. Right now, as with every release, Debian is pretty close to up to date with what the rest of the Linux world is doing. But Buster will be supported for five years, and Debian 11 won't arrive for at least two years (Buster comes just 26 months after Debian 9, though it has been five years since the big tweaks of Debian 8). So as time goes on, Buster will look increasingly outdated.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/debian-10-playing-ca… 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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Linux Is Taking Over--For Better Or For Worse
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Sep '19

13 Sep '19

You’ve probably come across pictures of Windows crash screens in various entertaining places, like public signage. Well, Linux is now taking over there, too <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/12/inlinkuk_crashed_ubuntu/>. And yes, whereas it was hilariously out-of-date versions of Windows before (XP remained quite common, for example), now it’s out-of-date versions of Linux.

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Arch Linux-based Manjaro 18.1.0 'Juhraya' Now Available With GNOME, KDE, or Xfce
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '19

13 Sep '19

'Manjaro may have lofty goals of becoming a successful company, but let's be honest -- users of the Linux-based operating system don't really care about that. Don't get me wrong, I am sure most members of the Linux community are rooting for the newly-formed company's success, but they are probably more interested in the excellent operating system itself. Today, Manjaro Linux 18.1.0 "Juhraya" finally becomes available for download, and it isn't without some controversy. You see, rather than just offer up LibreOffice like most distributions, Juhraya offers an alternative choice at installation -- FreeOffice. "After six months of development, version 18.1 of Manjaro Linux is now available. Juhraya offers numerous improvements, especially with regard to Office productivity applications and package management. Another significant innovation in Manjaro 18.1 is the integrated support for FlatPak and Snap packages. For this purpose, the graphical package management tool 'bauh' (formerly known as 'fpakman' ) is now available to users," says Philip Muller, Manjaro developer.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/12/1947223 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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