January 2021 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

List Of IPTV Resources
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Sep '24

22 Sep '24

This user <https://github.com/iptv-org> just popped up in my GitHub feed. One repo <https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv> claims to be a list of links to over 8000 streaming TV channels from nations all over the world, while the other is a list of tools*, providers and other resources. Do be aware it’s a bit of a mixed bag: yes, there are legitimate channels (no encryption so far that I have noticed), but also some dubious-looking links. *Oddly, FFmpeg and youtube-dl aren’t in the list.

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Outlawing Dark Patterns
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 05 Nov '22

05 Nov '22

“Dark patterns” is a term coined to describe user interfaces designed to manipulate people into giving up time, money or personal data that they didn’t intend to. A common example is the obstacle course you often have to go through to cancel a subscription to something online. Another example is the use of countdown timers to rush buyers into hasty decisions. They may not be out-and-out deceptive, but they do come close. Now, the US states of California and Washington are looking to pass laws to restrict this practice. <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/lawmakers-take-aim-at-insidious…>

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Apple’s Windows 10
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

Fred Brooks predicted long ago that complex pieces of software would eventually reach the point of irreducible entropy, where any attempt to fix a bug would simply introduce a new one. Microsoft’s Windows 10 seems to be about there, and it’s now clear that Apple’s macOS 10.15 “Catalina” has also joined that elite group <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/27/apple_catalina_update/>: The first spin of Catalina, officially released in October 2019, was a mess. ... The biggest issue was that all kinds of apps simply stopped working. ... Peripherals like mice, keyboards and printers stopped working. Email went missing; iCloud backups failed; users were constantly harassed by login requests; updates didn’t update ... ... So came for the first update to its new system one week after the main launch which fixed some, but not all, of the issues. ... Version two came in December 2019 and fixed some of those issues, but not all. ... More bug fixes came with version three in January 2020, but the OS seemed to have finally stabilized; something that was then spectacularly undone with version .4. ... Then we had the “supplemental update” to version 10.15.4, which fixed some, but not all, of the problems – most significantly the problem with Finder and transferring large files. And, amazingly, appeared to undo the good work that had been done with website security and broke SSH for some users. But now, with version point-five this week, that problem appears to have been sorted and, of course, your battery might last longer too.

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More On The NZ Reserve Bank Breach
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Sep '21

15 Sep '21

Seems hackers broke into a secure file-sharing service called Accellion, based in California. The RBNZ was using that to exchange documents with the likes of banks and insurance companies. <https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/123911764/reserve-bank-reveals-more-detail…>

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Raspberry Pi Foundation Launches $4 Microcontroller With Custom Chip
by Peter Reutemann 14 Mar '21

14 Mar '21

'Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico, a tiny little microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects with some code running on the microcontroller. Even more interesting, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is using its own RP2040 chip, which means that the foundation is now making its own silicon. From a report: If you're not familiar with microcontrollers, those devices let you control other parts or other devices. You might think that you can already do this kind of stuff with a regular Raspberry Pi. But microcontrollers are specifically designed to interact with other things. They're cheap, they're small and they draw very little power. You can start developing your project with a breadboard to avoid soldering. You can pair it with a small battery and it can run for weeks or even months. Unlike computers, microcontrollers don't run traditional operating systems. Your code runs directly on the chip. Like other microcontrollers, the Raspberry Pi Pico has dozens of input and output pins on the sides of the device. Those pins are important as they act as the interface with other components. For instance, you can make your microcontroller interact with an LED light, get data from various sensors, show some information on a display, etc. The Raspberry Pi Pico uses the RP2040 chip. It has a dual-core Arm processor (running at 133MHz), 264KB of RAM, 26 GPIO pins including 3 analog inputs, a micro-USB port and a temperature sensor. It doesn't come with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. And it costs $4.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/01/21/1258214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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CentOS Is Gone -- But RHEL Is Now Free For Up To 16 Production Servers
by Peter Reutemann 06 Mar '21

06 Mar '21

'Ars Technica: Last month, Red Hat caused a lot of consternation in the enthusiast and small business Linux world when it announced the discontinuation of CentOS Linux. Long-standing tradition -- and ambiguity in Red Hat's posted terms -- led users to believe that CentOS 8 would be available until 2029, just like the RHEL 8 it was based on. Red Hat's early termination of CentOS 8 in 2021 cut eight of those 10 years away, leaving thousands of users stranded. Red Hat's December announcement of CentOS Stream -- which it initially billed as a "replacement" for CentOS Linux -- left many users confused about its role in the updated Red Hat ecosystem. As of February 1, 2021, Red Hat will make RHEL available at no cost for small-production workloads -- with "small" defined as 16 systems or fewer. This access to no-cost production RHEL is by way of the newly expanded Red Hat Developer Subscription program, and it comes with no strings -- in Red Hat's words, "this isn't a sales program, and no sales representative will follow up." Red Hat is also expanding the availability of developer subscriptions to teams, as well as individual users. Moving forward, subscribing RHEL customers can add entire dev teams to the developer subscription program at no cost. This allows the entire team to use Red Hat Cloud Access for simplified deployment and maintenance of RHEL on well-known cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/01/20/2016202 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Firefox 85 Hammers the Final Nail Into the Adobe Flash Coffin
by Peter Reutemann 03 Feb '21

03 Feb '21

'With Mozilla's release of Firefox 85 on Tuesday, Adobe's once ubiquitous Flash technology is really gone for good. The software had been widely used to expand gaming, video and animation on the web, though Adobe stopped supporting it at the end of 2020. Firefox was the last major browser to support Flash. From a report: Apple, whose late boss Steve Jobs helped sink Flash by banning it from iPhones and iPads, ditched Flash with Safari 14 in September 2020. Google Chrome, the most widely used browser, completely excised it on Jan. 19 with version 88. Microsoft's Edge 88 followed suit on Jan. 21. The schedule of removals shows just how hard it is to advance technology foundations as widely used as the web. Browser makers for years wanted to remove Flash, replacing it with more advanced standards built directly into the web. Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" letter in 2010 solidified the opposition, and Adobe started recognizing the software's doom by scrapping the Android version of Flash in 2011. It's taken years of effort to drop Flash completely. Adobe took until 2017 to announce that Flash would be completely unsupported at the end of 2020, and still some are willing to jump through lots of hoops to keep Flash around a little longer.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/01/26/1618254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Google Threatens To Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates
by Peter Reutemann 01 Feb '21

01 Feb '21

'Google has threatened to disable its search engine in Australia if it's forced to pay local publishers for news, a dramatic escalation of a months-long standoff with the government. From a report: The proposed law, intended to compensate publishers for the value their stories generate for the company, is "unworkable," Mel Silva, managing director for Australia and New Zealand, told a parliamentary hearing Friday. She specifically opposed the requirement that Google pay media companies for displaying snippets of articles in search results. The threat is Google's most potent yet as the digital giant tries to stem a flow of regulatory action worldwide. At least 94% of online searches in Australia go through the Alphabet unit, according to the local competition regulator. "We don't respond to threats," Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday. "Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That's done in our parliament. It's done by our government. And that's how things work here in Australia."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/01/22/0339236 However, in related news: "Google Agrees To Pay French News Sites To Send Them Traffic" -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/01/21/2316209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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TinyPilot KVM Over IP
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jan '21

31 Jan '21

Just been watching this review <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyEpshm16HY> of the TinyPilot KVM-over-IP box. It’s purchasable from the maker’s website for US$300-plus, which is a fraction of the price of most other KVM-over-IP products. It’s built around a Raspberry π 4, using the camera adapter for HDMI in (no use made of the GPIO connector at all). Of course this means it can only support a connection to a single server machine. The source code is on GitHub if you want to build that yourself. The base product offers insecure HTTP-only access; if you want HTTPS, you have to pay extra for the TinyPilot Pro software licence. For comparison, some reader comments mention an alternative “PiKVM” product -- has anyone heard of this?

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CERN Gets Its Open Hardware Licence Approved By OSI
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jan '21

31 Jan '21

CERN wanted to come up with the hardware equivalent of open-source software licences. Such licences don’t really work well with hardware, because they use terms (like “linking” and “system libraries”) that aren’t applicable to hardware. So they worked with the Open Source Initiative (the custodians of the Open Source Definition) to come up with a selection of three licences, allowing for a choice of strong copyleft (GPL-equivalent), weak copyleft (LGPL-equivalent, I guess) and no copyleft at all. It seems these licences could actually be used for a combination of both hardware and software. <https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/29/cern_ohl_approved/>

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