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When Linux Spooked Microsoft: Remembering 1998's Leaked 'Halloween Documents'
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '23

06 Nov '23

't happened a quarter of a century ago. The New York Times wrote that "An internal memorandum reflecting the views of some of Microsoft's top executives and software development managers reveals deep concern about the threat of free software and proposes a number of strategies for competing against free programs that have recently been gaining in popularity." The memo warns that the quality of free software can meet or exceed that of commercial programs and describes it as a potentially serious threat to Microsoft. The document was sent anonymously last week to Eric Raymond, a key figure in a loosely knit group of software developers who collaboratively create and distribute free programs ranging from operating systems to Web browsers. Microsoft executives acknowledged that the document was authentic... In addition to acknowledging that free programs can compete with commercial software in terms of quality, the memorandum calls the free software movement a "long-term credible" threat and warns that employing a traditional Microsoft marketing strategy known as "FUD," an acronym for "fear, uncertainty and doubt," will not succeed against the developers of free software. The memorandum also voices concern that Linux is rapidly becoming the dominant version of Unix for computers powered by Intel microprocessors. The competitive issues, the note warns, go beyond the fact that the software is free. It is also part of the open-source software, or O.S.S., movement, which encourages widespread, rapid development efforts by making the source code — that is, the original lines of code written by programmers — readily available to anyone. This enables programmers the world over to continually write or suggest improvements or to warn of bugs that need to be fixed. The memorandum notes that open software presents a threat because of its ability to mobilize thousands of programmers. "The ability of the O.S.S. process to collect and harness the collective I.Q. of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing," the memo states. "More importantly, O.S.S. evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale." Back in 1998, Slashdot's CmdrTaco covered the whole brouhaha — including this CNN article: A second internal Microsoft memo on the threat Linux poses to Windows NT calls the operating system "a best-of-breed Unix" and wonders aloud if the open-source operating system's momentum could be slowed in the courts. As with the first "Halloween Document," the memo — written by product manager Vinod Valloppillil and another Microsoft employee, Josh Cohen — was obtained by Linux developer Eric Raymond and posted on the Internet. In it, Cohen and Valloppillil, who also authored the first "Halloween Document," appear to suggest that Microsoft could slow the open-source development of Linux with legal battles. "The effect of patents and copyright in combating Linux remains to be investigated," the duo wrote. Microsoft's slogain in 1998 was "Where do you want to go today?" So Eric Raymond published the documents on his web site under the headline "Where will Microsoft try to drag you today? Do you really want to go there?" 25 years later, and it's all still up there and preserved for posterity on Raymond's web page — a collection of leaked Microsoft documents and related materials known collectively as "the Halloween documents." And Raymond made a point of thanking the writers of the documents, "for authoring such remarkable and effective testimonials to the excellence of Linux and open-source software in general."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/11/05/046247 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Update/upgrade
by john 03 Nov '23

03 Nov '23

For some time I have been receiving a message regarding missing firmware. I do have an onboard AMD GPU do I need to go hunting or am I suffering from fomo? W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/ip_discovery.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/vega10_cap.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sienna_cichlid_cap.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/navi12_cap.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/psp_13_0_10_ta.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/psp_13_0_10_sos.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/aldebaran_cap.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/aldebaran_sjt_mec2.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/aldebaran_sjt_mec.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_imu.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_rlc.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_mec.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_me.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_pfp.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_0_toc.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sdma_6_0_3.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sienna_cichlid_mes1.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sienna_cichlid_mes.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/navi10_mes.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_mes1.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_mes_2.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/gc_11_0_3_mes.bin for module amdgpu W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/smu_13_0_10.bin for module amdgpu Cheers John..

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Chrome Not Proceeding With Web Integrity API Deemed By Many To Be DRM
by Peter Reutemann 03 Nov '23

03 Nov '23

'Back in July, Google's work on a Web Integrity API emerged and many equated it to DRM. While prototyped, it was only at the proposal stage and the company announced today it's not going ahead with it. With this proposal, Google wanted to give websites a way to confirm the authenticity of the user and their device/browser. The Web Integrity API would let websites "request a token that attests key facts about the environment their client code is running in." It's not all too different from the Play Integrity API (SafetyNet) on Android that Google Wallet and other banking apps use to make sure a device hasn't been tampered with (rooted). ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/11/02/2040234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Bye-Bye Theora
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Nov '23

03 Nov '23

Seems the old Theora video codec, an early attempt at a freely-licensable algorithm unencumbered by patent restrictions, has largely fallen into disuse <https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/theora_video_codec_deprecation/>. In other words, it has served its purpose, and the patent minefields that used to plague video encoding have (to mix metaphors) been effectively defanged. I remember when the Xiph.org foundation came out with the Vorbis audio codec as a free alternative to MP3, back when Fraunhofer was still vigorously enforcing its patents on the latter. Xiph also came up with a multimedia container format called “Ogg”, which could handle both audio and video. But given it was, at least in the early years, only used for audio, quite a lot of people assumed that a “.ogg” file was audio-only. So the video files had to have the “.ogv” file extension (I think there were some “.oga” files to indicate that they were audio-only). The name “Theora” comes from Theora Jones, one of the principal characters in the old “Max Headroom” TV series. “Vorbis” is from a character in Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” novels. I thought “Ogg” also came from those novels, but Wikipedia says no.

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Arm Acquires Minority Stake in Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 03 Nov '23

03 Nov '23

'Arm today announced that it has made a strategic investment, a minority stake in Raspberry Pi -- the arm of Raspberry Pi responsible for the new Raspberry Pi 5 and past Raspberry Pi products. From a report: Arm's minority stake extends the long-term partnership between Arm and Raspberry Pi, which has seen Arm CPUs feature in all of the Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi Pico SoC. The partnership began way before the Raspberry Pi was available for sale, in 2008 -- when the original board was still just a dream. Fast-forward to 2023 and we have a generation of learners who have taken their first steps with coding, science and electronics thanks to the Raspberry Pi.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/02/1638205 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Jupyter Server Behind Reverse Proxy
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Nov '23

02 Nov '23

I’ve been experimenting with running a Jupyter server inside an LXC container, and making it publicly accessible in a controlled way, via a reverse-proxy setup in Apache. This way, the web server handles all the authentication access, the Jupyter server doesn’t need to impose any restrictions. And being isolated inside a container should help to minimize the impact of a security breach. I found some related documentation here <https://jupyterhub.readthedocs.io/en/stable/howto/configuration/config-prox…>, though it talks about JupyterHub, not Jupyter. This part matched what I initially tried (but didn’t fully work on its own): ProxyPreserveHost on ProxyPass http://«container-host»:«port»/ ProxyPassReverse http://«container-host»:«port»/ This line was not something I did, so I’m not sure it’s really needed: RequestHeader set "X-Forwarded-Proto" expr=%{REQUEST_SCHEME} However, this whole rewrite business I found to be quite unnecessary: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP:Connection} Upgrade [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} websocket [NC] RewriteRule /(.*) ws://«container-host»:«port»/$1 [P,L] Because the same effect can be achieved much more simply, by one small change to those initial three lines: ProxyPreserveHost on ProxyPass http://«container-host»:«port»/ upgrade=websocket ProxyPassReverse http://«container-host»:«port»/ Notice that “upgrade=websocket” bit? That’s all it took to get the proxying to work.

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Raspberry Pi Smart Vertical Farming Takes Veggies To New Heights
by Peter Reutemann 02 Nov '23

02 Nov '23

'Tanay Tanay has developed a smart vertical farming system using a Raspberry Pi 4 as the central controller, with features such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support for remote plant monitoring, precise automated watering based on moisture levels, and environmental factor tracking. Tom's Hardware reports: The end result is a Pi-powered system with tons of cool goodies to take your plant care to the next level. Tanay is able to monitor all sorts of environmental factors like how much light is available, how moist the air is, how much water is in the soil, what the temperature is and much more. The icing on the cake is a user-friendly interface that can be used to manually water the plants. The main board for this project is a Raspberry Pi 4 B. It's connected to an Arduino Nano R3 which is assigned to a specific plant. Some of the sensors confirmed in the design are a soil moisture sensor, an ambient light sensor as well as a water level depth detection sensor. You could always add more or take away modules depending on what you want to do with your vertical farm. For example, a camera could be used to log plant growth progress over time. Tanay explains that ThingSpeak, an IoT platform, was used in the project design. ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/01/0043259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Another Apple “Innovation” Bites The Dust
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Nov '23

01 Nov '23

This commentary <https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/01/apple_kills_off_touchpad/> on Apple’s latest product introductions mentions, among other things, the company’s abandonment of its “touch bar” technology: Personally, my biggest gripe with the Touch Bar during the two years I used it was the overall lack of tactility. Because it replaced the top row of keys with an indistinct plate of glass, and its contents changed depending on what you were doing, using it required looking away from the screen and down at the keyboard. Am I really the only one to notice the great irony of touchscreens, that they cannot be operated by touch? That, being a featureless flat surface in tactile terms, you have to look at the image being displayed on them to figure out where the buttons are?

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Russia Blocks 167 VPNs, Steps Up OpenVPN and WireGuard Disruption
by Peter Reutemann 01 Nov '23

01 Nov '23

'TorrentFreak reports: The head of the Russian department responsible for identifying threats to the "stability, security and integrity" of the internet, has revealed the extent of the Kremlin's VPN crackdown. Former FSO officer Sergei Khutortsev, a central figure in Russia's 'sovereign internet' project, confirmed that 167 VPN services are now blocked along with over 200 email services. Russia is also reported as stepping up measures against protocols such as OpenVPN, IKEv2 and WireGuard. [...] An in-depth report published by TheIns.ru has details of the monitoring/blocking system reportedly deployed in Russia, how much it costs (4.3 billion rubles/$43 million in 2020, 24.7 billion rubles/$247 million for 2022-2024), and the names of the companies supplying the components. The publication also obtained original documents that apparently show some of the protocols Russia initially intended to block. They include older VPN protocols IPSec, L2TP, and PPTP, plus the BitTorrent protocol still widely used today. The full report on the system, which reveals the use of Intel chips/chipsets in 965 servers manufactured by Huawei and already purchased by Russia, plus another 2400+ servers for 2023/24, is available here.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/10/31/2124234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Google Plans RISC-V Android Tools In 2024, Wants Developers To 'Be Ready'
by Peter Reutemann 01 Nov '23

01 Nov '23

'Ars Technica reports: Android is slowly entering the RISC-V era. So far we've seen Google say it wants to give the up-and-coming CPU architecture "tier-1" support in Android, putting RISC-V on equal footing with Arm. Qualcomm has announced the first mass-market RISC-V Android chip, a still-untitled Snapdragon Wear chip for smartwatches. Now Google has announced a timeline for developer tools via the Google Open Source Blog. The last post is titled "Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready." Getting the Android OS and app ecosystem to support a new architecture is going to take an incredible amount of work from Google and developers, and these tools are laying the foundation for that work. First up, Google already has the "Cuttlefish" virtual device emulator running, including a gif of it booting up. This isn't the official "Android Emulator" -- which is targeted at app developers doing app development -- Cuttlefish is a hardware emulator for Android OS development. It's the same idea as the Android Emulator but for the bottom half of the tech stack -- the kernel, framework, and hardware bits. Cuttlefish lets Google and other Android OS contributors work on a RISC-V Android build without messing with an individual RISC-V device. Google says it's working well enough now that you can download and emulate a RISC-V device today, though the company warns that nothing is optimized yet. The next step is getting the Android Emulator (for app developers) up and running, and Google says: "By 2024, the plan is to have emulators available publicly, with a full feature set to test applications for various device form factors!" The nice thing about Android is that most app code is written with no architecture in mind -- it's all just Java/Kotlin. So once the Android RunTime starts spitting out RISC-V code, a lot of app code should Just Work. That means most of the porting work will need to go into things written in the NDK, the native developer kit, like libraries and games. The emulator will still be great for testing, though.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/10/31/2059206 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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