- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Mozilla Moves To Monetize Thunderbird, Transfers Project To New Subsidiary
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jan '20

31 Jan '20

'The Mozilla Foundation announced today that it was moving its Thunderbird email client to a new subsidiary named the MZLA Technologies Corporation. From a report: Mozilla said that Thunderbird will continue to remain free and open source, but by moving the project away from its foundation into a corporate entity they will be able to monetize the product and pay for its development easier than before. Currently, Thunderbird is primarily being kept alive through charitable donations from the product's userbase. "Moving to MZLA Technologies Corporation will not only allow the Thunderbird project more flexibility and agility, but will also allow us to explore offering our users products and services that were not possible under the Mozilla Foundation," said Philipp Kewisch, Mozilla Product Manager. "The move will allow the project to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations, which in turn can be used to cover the costs of new products and services," Kewisch added.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/01/29/1430253 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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64-Bit Times On 32-Bit Linux
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jan '20

31 Jan '20

Some more patches have gone into the Linux kernel <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/30/linux_5_6_2038/> to allow 32-bit builds to deal with times past the year-2038 barrier. Basically the fix involves offering a 64-bit alternative to the original time_t type, without the whole app having to go 64-bit. One point I noticed is that certain filesystems (e.g. ext2, presumably ext3 as well) store on-disk fields with 32-bit timestamps, so if you’re using one of these, you’ll have to reformat the disks as well. And that would apply even if you’re already using a 64-bit OS.

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GetTogether.community - alternative to meetup.com
by Peter Reutemann 30 Jan '20

30 Jan '20

Hi everyone Based on our discussions at the AGM on Monday night... Next year, I'll be advertising our meetings also on GetTogether, a free/open-source alternative to meetup.com. If you've been using meetup.com, please consider helping me test-drive GetTogether by creating an account and joining the WLUG team/group. WLUG is accessible here on GetTogether: https://gettogether.community/waikato-linux-users-group/ 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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autoremove
by john 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

Hi all, At our last meeting Tom was concerned about Linux bloating with surplus files. I have always found this to seldom be the case due to : a. The new download removes the older files or: b. The command autoremove clears the unused kernels and other not required files. eg. john(a)polomint:~$ sudo apt autoremove Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: linux-headers-4.15.0-72 linux-headers-4.15.0-72-generic linux-image-4.15.0-72-generic linux-modules-4.15.0-72-generic linux-modules-extra-4.15.0-72-generic 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 5 to remove and 4 not upgraded. After this operation, 332 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Cheers John..

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Intel Is Patching Its 'Zombieload' CPU Security Flaw For the Third Time
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

'For the third time in less than a year, Intel has disclosed a new set of vulnerabilities related to the speculative functionality of its processors. On Monday, the company said it will issue a software update "in the coming weeks" that will fix two more microarchitectural data sampling (MDS) or Zombieload flaws. This latest update comes after the company released two separate patches in May and November of last year. Compared to the MDS flaws Intel addressed in those two previous patches, these latest ones have a couple of limitations. To start, one of the vulnerabilities, L1DES, doesn't work on Intel's more recent chips. Moreover, a hacker can't execute the attack using a web browser. Intel also says it's "not aware" of anyone taking advantage of the flaws outside of the lab. In response to complaints of the company's piecemeal approach, Intel said that it has taken significant steps to reduce the danger the flaws represent to its processors. "Since May 2019, starting with Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS), and then in November with TAA, we and our system software partners have released mitigations that have cumulatively and substantially reduced the overall attack surface for these types of issues," a spokesperson for the company said. "We continue to conduct research in this area -- internally, and in conjunction with the external research community.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/01/27/2126231 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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European Processor Initiative
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

Here’s a report <https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/01/27/european-processor-initiative-readi…> on a Europe-wide effort to produce a processor chip for an “exascale” supercomputer. It will have an ARM CPU core, with a RISC-V-based accelerator and a few other special-purpose units on the side. I was intrigued to see mention of an “AI-inspired bfloat16 format”. Floating-point numbers commonly come in 32-bit and 64-bit sizes. There is also a “half-precision” 16-bit format, with reduced precision and dynamic range, commonly used in computer graphics, for example. This new format keeps the full dynamic range of 32-bit floats, at the expense of even further reduced precision. Apparently this works better for various machine-learning algorithms.

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ProtonVPN Open Sources All Its Code
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

'ProtonVPN open sourced its code this week, ZDNet reports: On Tuesday, the virtual private network (VPN) provider, also known for the ProtonMail secure email service, said that the code backing ProtonVPN applications on every system -- Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Android, and iOS -- is now publicly available for review in what Switzerland-based ProtonVPN calls "natural" progression. "There is a lack of transparency and accountability regarding who operates VPN services, their security qualifications, and whether they fully conform to privacy laws like GDPR," the company says. "Making all of our applications open source is, therefore, a natural next step." Each application has also undergone a security audit by SEC Consult, which ProtonVPN says builds upon a previous partnership with Mozilla... The source code for each app is now available on GitHub (Windows, macOS, Android, iOS). "As a community-supported organization, we have a responsibility to be as transparent, accountable, and accessible as possible," ProtonVPN says. "Going open source helps us to do that and serve you better at the same time." They're also publishing the results of an independent security audit for each app. "As former CERN scientists, publication and peer review are a core part of our ethos..." the company wrote in a blog post. They also point out that Switzerland has some of the world's strongest privacy laws -- and that ProtonVPN observes a strict no-logs policy. But how do they feel about their competition? "Studies have found that over one-third of Android VPNs actually contain malware, many VPNs suffered from major security lapses, and many free VPN services that claimed to protect privacy are secretly selling user data to third parties."' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/01/27/0352244 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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Do Emails Contribute to Global Warming?
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

'"Cut back on email if you want to fight global warming," read the headline on a recent article at Bloomberg: [A]ll those messages require energy to preserve them. And despite the tech industry's focus on renewables, the advents of streaming and artificial intelligence are only accelerating the amount of fossil fuels burned to keep data servers up. Right now, data centers consume about 2 percent of the world's electricity, but that is expected to reach 8 percent by 2030. Moreover, only about 6 percent of all data ever created is in active use today, according to research from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. That means 94 percent is sitting in a vast "landfill" with a massive carbon footprint. "It's costing us the equivalent of maintaining the airline industry for data we don't even use," said Andrew Choi, a senior research analyst at Parnassus Investments, a $27 billion environmental, social and governance firm in San Francisco. Kirk Bresniker, chief architect of Hewlett Packard Labs, said these server farms use energy both to retain your data and when you use it... And when you empty the email trash, you probably aren't actually erasing the data. Multiple copies of even decade-old emails are stored on servers around the world, still using energy... Bresniker says the tech industry is "flying blind" when it comes to the true cost of storing data. The picture is clouded by a constant stream of efficiency and memory upgrades, increased renewable power and AI aimed at data-center efficiency. "We don't really understand what the footprint is," he said... The sum of all the world's data in 2018 was 33 zettabytes — 33 trillion gigabytes — but by 2025 it could increase fivefold, to 175 zettabytes, according to International Data Corp. Every day, the world produces about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data... Computing workloads are likely to more than double as more AI comes online, more devices are connected and people do more work in the cloud... Choi says the problem is getting too big, too fast... Training an AI model emits about as much carbon as the lifetime emissions associated with running five cars' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/01/27/0149253 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 5.5 Released
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

'Linus Torvalds has announced Linux 5.5 release, codenamed as Kleptomaniac Octopus.The latest version of the open source operating system kernel brings RAID1 with 3- and 4- copies to btrfs filesystem, ext4 gets direct I/O via iomap together with fscrypt supporting smaller block sizes, and you can now use SMB as root filesystem. AMD OverDrive overclocking is now supported on Navi GPUS, wake-on-voice on newer Google Chromebooks is now supported. Added was a Logitech keyboard driver. KUnit is a new unit testing framework for the kernel. There are many more new features which you can read about on Kernel Newbies changelog page. For downloads visit The Linux Kernel Archives.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/01/27/144259 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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Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

'An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag has found. From the report: Our report relies on leaked user data, contracts, and other company documents that show the sale of this data is both highly sensitive and is in many cases supposed to remain confidential between the company selling the data and the clients purchasing it. The documents, from a subsidiary of the antivirus giant Avast called Jumpshot, shine new light on the secretive sale and supply chain of peoples' internet browsing histories. They show that the Avast antivirus program installed on a person's computer collects data, and that Jumpshot repackages it into various different products that are then sold to many of the largest companies in the world. Some past, present, and potential clients include Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, Pepsi, Sephora, Home Depot, Conde Nast, Intuit, and many others. Some clients paid millions of dollars for products that include a so-called "All Clicks Feed," which can track user behavior, clicks, and movement across websites in highly precise detail.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/01/27/1453226 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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