April 2025 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Weta Digital’s Technology Division Sold To US Firm
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '25

01 Aug '25

Let me see if I understand this article <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/sir-peter-jackson-to-sell-weta-digital-…> correctly: the part of Weta Digital that used to develop the in-house 3D graphics/effects tools that they use in all those movies is being sold to US-based Unity Software. The part that is left will be called “WetaFX”, and will become a customer of Unity for the use of those tools, no longer doing its own development in-house. By the way, I’ve been looking at the Unity site <https://unity.com/>, and it looks like all their products are rentware (subscription-based).

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Happy Birthday To Steve Jobs’ Screed Against Flash
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

It was 15 years ago to day that Apple boss Steve Jobs published a blog post railing against Adobe Flash <https://www.theverge.com/apple/657934/happy-birthday-to-steve-jobs-screed-a…>, particularly about how it impinged on Apple’s control over its own platform: If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers. In hindsight, we all know now about the problems with lack of open standards, security and battery life. But as always, at the time, there were those who played down these problems and who assumed that, because Flash was so prevalent, it would remain so into the future. There’s a lesson in there, about history repeating itself ...

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Ubuntu 25.04 “Plucky Puffin” Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

'Canonical published today the Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) release, the latest stable version of their popular GNU/Linux distribution, featuring up-to-date components and new features. Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.14 kernel series for top-notch hardware support, Ubuntu 25.04 features the GNOME 48 desktop environment with the usual enhancements and look that Ubuntu users are used to, specifically the dynamic triple buffering feature for an extra boost on low-end systems. Some exciting changes in Ubuntu 25.04 include an official generic ARM64 (AArch64) desktop ISO targeting virtual machines, ACPI + EFI platforms, and Snapdragon-based WoA devices, as well as initial hardware enablement for the Snapdragon X Elite platform is now included in the Ubuntu Desktop ISO image. The Ubuntu Desktop installer has been updated with support for local file paths for autoinstall import, a new option to replace an existing Ubuntu installation, dual boot improvements with a focus on BitLocker-protected Windows systems, allowing users to install Ubuntu alongside existing BitLocker partitions. Ubuntu 25.04 also brings some networking enhancements as Netplan received support for wpa-psk-sha256 Wi-Fi connections, support for configuring routing policy on the NetworkManager backend, and support for a new functionality in systemd-networkd-wait-online to wait for DNS servers to be configured and reachable before considering an interface to be online. Other than that, the xdg-terminal-exec package is now installed by default for easier access to the default terminal using the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut, Papers has been added as the default document viewer instead of Evince, and BeaconDB-powered geolocation services are now enabled by default on new installations. Among other noteworthy changes, the AppArmor package now includes many new profiles for apps to improve sandboxing and mitigate the impact of any exploit in confined apps, the JPEG XL image format is now supported by default, and NVIDIA Dynamic Boost is now enabled by default on supported laptops with NVIDIA GPUs. It also brings full support for Intel Core Ultra Xe2 integrated Intel Arc graphics and Intel Arc B580 and B570 “Battlemage” discrete GPUs, improved GPU and CPU ray tracing rendering performance in apps with Intel Embree support, full hardware accelerated video encoding of AVC, JPEG, HEVC, and AV1 on “Battlemage” devices, new CCS optimization in Intel Compute Runtime, and debugging support for Intel Xe GPUs.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-25-04-plucky-puffin-is-now-available-for-downl… Cheers, Peter

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OpenBSD 7.7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

'OpenBSD quietly released the new version (7.7) of its "secure by default" operating system. This is the 58th release. Changes include improved hardware and VMM support, along with many kernel improvements. This release brings several specific improvements, including performance boosts on ARM64, Arm SVE support, AMD SEV virtualization enhancements, better low-memory handling on i386, and improved suspend/hibernate and SMP performance. It also updates graphics drivers with support for AMD Ryzen IA 300, Radeon RX 9070, and Intel Arrow Lake, along with expanded hardware support for MediaTek SoCs.' -- source: https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/25/04/29/0456227 Cheers, Peter

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Firefox Finally Delivers Tab Groups Feature
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

'Firefox has launched its long-awaited tab groups feature, responding to the most upvoted request in Mozilla Connect's three-year history. The feature allows users to organize tabs by name or color through a drag-and-drop interface. Mozilla is now developing an AI-powered "smart tab groups" feature that automatically suggests organization based on open tabs. Unlike competitors, the company said, Firefox processes this data locally, keeping tab information on the user's device rather than sending it to cloud servers.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/29/1853259 Cheers, Peter

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CVE Foundation Emerges From Stealth to Rescue CVE Program
by Peter Reutemann 28 Apr '25

28 Apr '25

'I’m guessing that Trump and Musk are behind this, and that this is just another essential thing the government does that they’re trying to break into pieces. The good news is that in this case not only was there a last minute reprieve, but some people saw it coming and made plans to keep things going in case the rug still eventually gets pulled out. If this was the work of the dynamic duo of Pennsylvania Avenue, what they were busy trying to break was the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures program — better known as CVE — which keeps track of security vulnerabilities found in software so that it can get fixed, hopefully before the bad guys develop a way to exploit the bug. The story started on Tuesday when MITRE — a nonprofit that among other things operates federally funded research and development centers that support various federal government agencies, including the CVE program — sent a letter to CVE board members, telling them that funding for CVE and other related programs was set to expire on Wednesday. As you might imagine, when that news hit the internet, it got social networks buzzing. [...] Then on Wednesday morning, at about the time that tech oriented websites and tech-focused users on social sites were at peak craziness over this withdrawal of funding, a monkey wrench was thrown into the machinery by a news release from the CVE Foundation, an organization that nobody — at least not anybody that I know — has heard anything about until now. “The CVE Foundation has been formally established to ensure the long-term viability, stability, and independence of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Program, a critical pillar of the global cybersecurity infrastructure for 25 years,” the release opened, under the heading: “CVE Foundation Launched to Secure the Future of the CVE Program.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2025/04/cve-foundation-emerges-from-stealth-to-rescue… Cheers, Peter

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Lenovo May Be Avoiding the 'Windows Tax' By Offering Cheaper Laptops With Pre-Installed Linux
by Peter Reutemann 28 Apr '25

28 Apr '25

'"The U.S. and Canadian websites for Lenovo offered U.S. $140 and CAD $211 off on the same ThinkPad X1 Carbon model when choosing any one of the Linux-based alternatives," reports It's FOSS News: This was brought to my attention thanks to a Reddit post... Others then chimed in, saying that Lenovo has been doing this since at least 2020 and that the big price difference shows how ridiculous Windows' pricing is... Not all models from their laptop lineup, like ThinkPad, Yoga, Legion, LOQ, etc., feature an option to get Linux pre-installed during the checkout process. Luckily, there is an easy way to filter through the numerous laptops. Just go to the laptops section (U.S.) on the Lenovo website and turn on the "Operating System" filter under the Filter by specs sidebar menu. The article end with an embedded YouTube video showing a VCR playing a videotape of a 1999 local TV news report... about the legendary "Windows Refund Day" protests.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/04/27/0127203 Cheers, Peter

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Linus Torvalds Expresses His Hatred For Case-Insensitive File-Systems
by Peter Reutemann 28 Apr '25

28 Apr '25

'Some patches for Linux 6.15-rc4 (updating the kernel driver for the Bcachefs file system) triggered some "straight-to-the-point wisdom" from Linus Torvalds about case-insensitive filesystems, reports Phoronix. Bcachefs developer Kent Overstreet started the conversation, explaining how some buggy patches for their case-insensitive file and folder support were upstreamed into the Bcachefs kernel driver nearly two years ago: When I was discussing with the developer who did the implementation, I noted that fstests should already have tests. However, it seems I neglected to tell him to make sure the tests actually run... It is _not_ enough to simply rely on the automated tests. You have to have eyes on what your code is doing. Overstreet added "There's a story behind the case insensitive directory fixes, and lessons to be learned." To which Torvalds replied.... "No." "The only lesson to be learned is that filesystem people never learn." Torvalds: Case-insensitive names are horribly wrong, and you shouldn't have done them at all. The problem wasn't the lack of testing, the problem was implementing it in the first place. The problem is then compounded by "trying to do it right", and in the process doing it horrible wrong indeed, because "right" doesn't exist, but trying to will make random bytes have very magical meaning. And btw, the tests are all completely broken anyway. Last I saw, they didn't actually test for all the really interesting cases — the ones that cause security issues in user land. Security issues like "user space checked that the filename didn't match some security-sensitive pattern". And then the shit-for-brains filesystem ends up matching that pattern *anyway*, because the people who do case insensitivity *INVARIABLY* do things like ignore non-printing characters, so now "case insensitive" also means "insensitive to other things too".... Dammit. Case sensitivity is a BUG. The fact that filesystem people *still* think it's a feature, I cannot understand. It's like they revere the old FAT filesystem _so_ much that they have to recreate it — badly. And this led to a very lively back-and-forth discussion.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/04/27/0547245 Cheers, Peter

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'Linux Mint Debian Edition 7' Gets OEM Support
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '25

15 Apr '25

'Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 "will come with full support for OEM installations," according to their monthly newsletter, so Linux Mint "can be pre-installed on computers which are sold throughout the World. It's a very important feature and it's one of the very few remaining things which wasn't supported by Linux Mint Debian Edition." Slashdot reader BrianFagioli speculates that "this could be a sign of something much bigger." OEM installs are typically reserved for operating systems meant to ship on hardware. It's how companies preload Linux on laptops without setting a username, password, or timezone... Mint has supported this for years — but only in its Ubuntu-based version. So why is this feature suddenly coming to Linux Mint Debian Edition, which the team has repeatedly described as a contingency? In other words, if the Debian variant is merely a plan B, why make it ready for OEMs? Their blog post goes on to speculate about possible explanations (like the hypothetical possibility of dissatisfaction with Snap packages or Canonical's decisions around telemetry and packaging).' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/04/12/0518218 Cheers, Peter

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The EFF's 'Certbot' Now Supports Six-Day Certs
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '25

15 Apr '25

'10 years ago "certificate authorities normally issued certificate lifetimes lasting a year or more," remembers a new blog post Thursday by the EFF's engineering director. So in 2015 when the free cert authority Let's Encrypt first started issuing 90-day TLS certificates for websites, "it was considered a bold move, that helped push the ecosystem towards shorter certificate life times." And then this January Let's Encrypt announced new six-day certificates... This week saw a related announcement from the EFF engineering director. More than 31 million web sites maintain their HTTPS certificates using the EFF's Certbot tool (which automatically fetches free HTTPS certificates forever) — and Certbot is now supporting Let's Encrypt's six-day certificates. (It's accomplished through ACME profiles with dynamic renewal at 1/3rd of lifetime left or 1/2 of lifetime left, if the lifetime is shorter than 10 days): There is debate on how short these lifetimes should be, but with ACME profiles you can have the default or "classic" Let's Encrypt experience (90 days) or start actively using other profile types through Certbot with the --preferred-profile and --required-profile flags. For six day certificates, you can choose the "shortlived" profile. Why shorter lifetimes are better (according to the EFF's engineering director): - If a certificate's private key is compromised, that compromise can't last as long. - With shorter life spans for the certificates, automation is encouraged. Which facilitates robust security of web servers. - Certificate revocation is historically flaky. Lifetimes 10 days and under prevent the need to invoke the revocation process and deal with continued usage of a compromised key.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/04/14/0356212 Cheers, Peter

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Adobe Gets Bullied Off Bluesky
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Apr '25

12 Apr '25

Adobe creates a couple of accounts on the Bluesky social network, only to meet a storm of opprobrium, bile, and just plain animosity <https://futurism.com/adobe-bullied-bluesky>. The fact that the company is able to get people to keep paying it more and more money, even as they hate its guts, is quite an achievement. It must take some pretty extensive (and expensive) marketing campaigns.

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Microsoft is About To Launch Recall For Real This Time
by Peter Reutemann 11 Apr '25

11 Apr '25

'Microsoft is starting to gradually roll out a preview of Recall, its feature that captures screenshots of what you do on a Copilot Plus PC to find again later, to Windows Insiders. From a report: This new rollout could indicate that Microsoft is finally getting close to launching Recall more widely. Microsoft originally intended to launch Recall alongside Copilot Plus PCs last June, but the feature was delayed following concerns raised by security experts. The company then planned to launch it in October, but that got pushed as well so that the company could deliver "a secure and trusted experience."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/04/11/0143227 I guess, it's time to turn off video chat with Windows users, unless you would want to be recorded - accidentally or not... I wonder whether they claim "fair use" to include data from their worldwide user base in their model training data. Copyright infringements seem to be fine if you're big like MS or OpenAI, the rest of us can get sued. Cheers, Peter

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slowroads.io
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

Found this website which does ... nothing, really. No points to win, no money to pay, no prize, no goal, just drive ... on and on ... with various choices of vehicle and terrain (including some off-Earth). Seems a paid version is being promised for Steam, but in the meantime ... just enjoy your sophisticated Web browser generating absolutely pointless real-time 3D graphics.

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Ubuntu 25.04 “Plucky Puffin” Enters Public Beta Testing with Linux 6.14, GNOME 48
by Peter Reutemann 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

'Canonical released today the beta version of the upcoming Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) release for public beta testing, so it’s time to take a look at what to expect from the final release. Powered by the recently released Linux 6.14 kernel and featuring the latest and greatest GNOME 48 desktop environment, Ubuntu 25.04 (codename Plucky Puffin) promises many goodies like the triple buffering feature from Ubuntu, Papers as the default document viewer replacing Evince, and BeaconDB-powered geolocation services. The Ununtu Desktop installer received a new option to replace an existing Ubuntu installation and improvements to dual boot user experience with a focus on BitLocker-protected Windows systems. Users can now install Ubuntu alongside existing BitLocker partitions if enough unallocated space and dual boot support is now available for encrypted installations and other advanced scenarios. Netplan received support for wpa-psk-sha256 Wi-Fi connections, support for configuring routing-policy on the NetworkManager backend, and support for a new functionality in systemd-networkd-wait-online to wait for DNS servers to be configured and reachable before considering an interface to be online.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-25-04-plucky-puffin-enters-public-beta-testing… Cheers, Peter

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Akamai becomes the official distributor of the Linux kernel
by Peter Reutemann 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

Open Source watch reports: 'When I was a young--well, younger anyway--squirt, I ftped my Linux kernel code from Ted T’so, one of the first Linux kernel developers, personal PC, tsx-11.mit.edu. I was glad to do it! Before T'so set up his repository, you had to download the files from Linus Toravalds' machine in Helsinki, Finland, which was s l o w. Mind you, at the time, I recall I downloaded it at a "blazing" fast 64 Kilobits per second (Kbps) over an ISDN line. Hey, it was great in its day. Things have gotten orders of magnitude faster since those days! Now, Akamai, the well-known content delivery network (CDN) and cloud company, has announced a multi-year partnership with the Linux Kernel Organization. This collaboration aims to provide critical infrastructure support for the development and distribution of the Linux kernel, ensuring uninterrupted access for its global network of developers. Akamai will leverage its infrastructure to support kernel.org, the primary platform for Linux kernel source code distribution. This partnership is crucial for maintaining Linux security and performance.' -- source: https://opensourcewatch.beehiiv.com/p/akamai-becomes-the-official-distribut… Cheers, Peter

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20 Years Of Git
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Apr '25

08 Apr '25

The Git version control system for software development is now 20 years old <https://www.tomshardware.com/software/git-turns-20-as-we-celebrate-decades-…>.

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Comparison Of Python Asyncio-Supporting Web Frameworks
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Apr '25

08 Apr '25

Trying to decide whether Quart or Starlette was the better bet for a higher-level web framework, I came across this comparison, from just a few years ago, of those two and some other possibilities at different levels <https://www.laac.dev/blog/should-you-use-asyncio-next-python-web-applicatio…>. As far as I can tell, it’s only slightly out of date: the Stripe issue they link to shows that that now includes async support for its Python API.

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The Rise Of “Frankenstein” Laptops In New Delhi’s Repair Markets
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Apr '25

08 Apr '25

India has long had a, shall we say, “informal engineering” culture, where backstreet operators put together improvised machinery of various kinds from whatever parts are available. Now this extends to assembling working laptops out of the parts of broken ones <https://www.theverge.com/tech/639126/india-frankenstein-laptops>. This allows Indians on low incomes (which is much of the country) an alternative to unaffordable new-built machines. There is a downside to these operations, and that is the health risks from exposure to toxic materials. Seems the Indian Government is becoming aware that it can be helpful to these homegrown industries if it passed some good right-to-repair laws, as is happening in many Western countries. One question that isn’t answered in the article is: what OS are these recycled/refurbished machines running? I can’t imagine that Microsoft would offer Windows licences for them at anything resembling OEM prices. And I don’t think the company would accept that there is such a thing as a “secondhand” Windows licence.

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Open-Source Tool Designed To Throttle PC and Server Performance Based On Electricity Pricing
by Peter Reutemann 04 Apr '25

04 Apr '25

'Robotics and machine learning engineer Naveen Kul developed WattWise, a lightweight open-source CLI tool that monitors power usage via smart plugs and throttles system performance based on electricity pricing and peak hours. Tom's Hardware reports: The simple program, called WattWise, came about when Naveen built a dual-socket EPYC workstation with plans to add four GPUs. It's a power-intensive setup, so he wanted a way to monitor its power consumption using a Kasa smart plug. The enthusiast has released the monitoring portion of the project to the public now, but the portion that manages clocks and power will be released later. Unfortunately, the Kasa Smart app and the Home Assistant dashboard was inconvenient and couldn't do everything he desired. He already had a terminal window running monitoring tools like htop, nvtop, and nload, and decided to take matters into his own hands rather than dealing with yet another app. Naveen built a terminal-based UI that shows power consumption data through Home Assistant and the TP-Link integration. The app monitors real-time power use, showing wattage and current, as well as providing historical consumption charts. More importantly, it is designed to automatically throttle CPU and GPU performance. Naveen's power provider uses Time-of-Use (ToU) pricing, so using a lot of power during peak hours can cost significantly more. The workstation can draw as much as 1400 watts at full load, but by reducing the CPU frequency from 3.7 GHz to 1.5 GHz, he's able to reduce consumption by about 225 watts. (No mention is made of GPU throttling, which could potentially allow for even higher power savings with a quad-GPU setup.) Results will vary based on the hardware being used, naturally, and servers can pull far more power than a typical desktop -- even one designed and used for gaming. WattWise optimizes the system's clock speed based on the current system load, power consumption as reported by the smart plug, and the time -- with the latter factoring in peak pricing. From there, it uses a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller to manage the power and adapts system parameters based on the three variables.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/04/03/0110212 -- blog: https://www.naveen.ing/cli-for-smartplugs/ -- github: https://github.com/naveenkul/WattWise Cheers, Peter

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EndeavourOS Mercury Neo Launches with KDE Plasma 6.3, NVIDIA 570, and Mesa 25
by Peter Reutemann 02 Apr '25

02 Apr '25

'The EndeavourOS team announced today the release and general availability of EndeavourOS Mercury Neo as a maintenance update to the EndeavourOS Mercury release addressing various issues and updating core components. EndeavourOS Mercury landed on February 10th, 2025, powered by Linux kernel 6.13 and featuring the KDE Plasma 6.2.5 desktop environment on both the live environment and the offline installation option. EndeavourOS Mercury Neo is here to bump the kernel to Linux 6.13.7 and the live session to KDE Plasma 6.3.3. In addition, this release improves the installation to automatically create a 2GB EFI partition instead of a 1GB partition when choosing systemd in the auto-install option. According to the devs, this change will give users more space and freedom to install multiple kernels and other desirable options. EndeavourOS Mercury Neo also removes the obsolete NVIDIA options from the NVIDIA boot menu, fixes the Arch Linux mirror ranking bug, and removes the xwaylandvideobridge package from the installation script since it was removed upstream. Moreover, it updates the NVIDIA graphics driver to version 570.124.04, the Mesa graphics stack to version 25.0.1, the Calamares graphical installer to version 25.02.2.1-2, the Mozilla Firefox web browser to version 136.0.2, and the XOrg Server display server to version 21.1.16. EndeavourOS Mercury Neo is available for download right now from the official website. Since EndeavourOS follows a rolling-release model where you install once and receive updates forever, existing users need only to update their installations by running the sudo pacman -Syu command in the Terminal app.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/endeavouros-mercury-neo-launches-with-kde-plasma-6-3-… Cheers, Peter

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