February 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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Topic for next meeting: audio/video
by Peter Reutemann 18 Mar '21

18 Mar '21

Hi everyone Before the last meeting, Ian looked into ffmpeg and was wondering whether it would a good idea for a presentation. I think that widening the topic to general audio/video processing (command line or GUI) would be a rally useful session for people new to Linux (and probably also for more experienced users, finding out about little neat tricks!). Rather than a super in-depth presentation for one application, we can cover a bigger range with a 5-10min show-and-tell per application. I'll assume that Ian will talk about ffmpeg, Lawrence about the other tools that come with ffmpeg, and I will show OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) and Handbrake. Just reply to this thread with your application that you'd like to present. 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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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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Linux On Mars
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Mar '21

03 Mar '21

One of many accounts of the NASA “Perseverance” rover landing on Mars is this one <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfgzTfw_J6o> by ever-dependable space nerd Scott Manley. He mentions that the umbilical carrying those camera images from the skycrane back to the lander is Ethernet, and that camera connections are done via USB 3. And yes, apparently there is Linux running on there somewhere as well.

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Exploring the Open Source That Really Goes Into a RISC-V Chip
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '21

01 Mar '21

'"Maker Andreas Spiess talks about the Open Source that really goes into a RISC-V chip and the ESP32-C3," writes Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 — sharing a link to this article from Hackaday: It's an exciting time in the world of microprocessors, as the long-held promise of devices with open-source RISC-V cores is coming to fruition. Finally we might be about to see open-source from the silicon to the user interface, or so goes the optimistic promise. In fact the real story is considerably more complex than that, and it's a topic [Andreas Speiss] explores in a video that looks at the issue with a wide lens... nickwinlund77 writes: The YouTube video starts out with a good general history of competition between large businesses over architectures and embracing the standards for tech which many of us have depended on throughout the years. The video then gets into the technical specifics of the ESP32-C3. Hackaday adds: His conclusion is that while a truly open-source RISC-V chip is entirely possible (as demonstrated with a cameo Superconference badge appearance), the importance of the RISC-V ISA is in its likely emergence as a heavyweight counterbalance to ARM's dominance in the sector. ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/02/28/195212 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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Red Hat Introduces Free RHEL for Open-Source Organizations
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '21

01 Mar '21

'ZDNet brings an update about the future of Red Hat Enterprise Linux: When Red Hat, CentOS's Linux parent company, announced it was "shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream," CentOS users were not happy. Now, in an effort to mollify them and to keep its promise to open-source organizations, Red Hat is introducing a new, free RHEL for Open Source Infrastructure. If your non-profit organization, project, standard body, or foundation is "engaged with open source," you can get a free RHEL subscription via this program. Earlier this year, Red Hat introduced no-cost RHEL for small production workloads and for customer development teams... Jason Brooks, a Red Hat Open Source Program Office Manager explained: Supporting the open-source software ecosystem is a core objective for Red Hat... We know that we are part of a larger, interdependent ecosystem that we benefit from and which we do our best to foster and support. This support comes in many forms, but often includes helping open source software projects, foundations, and standards bodies access enterprise technologies for development and testing. We frequently provide no-cost access to RHEL to these groups, but the process isn't as formalized, consistent, accessible, or transparent as we'd like it to be. With the announcement that we will be shifting our resources to CentOS Stream at the end of 2021, we want to make sure that those organizations engaged with open source have access to RHEL as they build and test the future of open-source software... The GNOME Foundation's executive director Neil McGovern, said: As a non-profit, we rely on donations to help us achieve our goal of a world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust. RHEL subscriptions are an essential part of this. With full operating system management and security updates, we can concentrate on the services we provide to GNOME users and developers without having to worry about the underlying systems. Red Hat has generously provided these services to GNOME at zero cost for years, and we look forward to continuing our relationship for a long time to come. GNOME is also the default desktop in RHEL Workstation.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/02/27/0235247 Chdeers, 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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