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Surface Duo review—Orphaned Windows hardware makes a poor Android device
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '20

20 Oct '20

'After one of the strangest run-ups to launch in smartphone history, the Microsoft Surface Duo is here. Microsoft's first-ever Android phone (sorry, we're not counting the Nokia X) was announced and demoed an entire year before its release, hinting at what a long and winding road the Surface Duo took from inception to shipping. The hardware apparently dates back to plans to revitalize Windows for phones, but after that plan fell through, the hardware was upcycled into the most head-scratching Android phone of the year. The Surface Duo sales pitch is that foldable display technology isn't ready yet, so try this best-we-can-do-right-now version that features two rigid, 5.6-inch OLED displays attached together with a 360 hinge. Microsoft is calling this a "productivity" device thanks to it having the side-by-side app capability of a tablet-style foldable smartphone without any of the janky display technology. Microsoft's website also says the Duo was designed to "inspire people to rethink how they want to use the device in their pocket," indicating that the company definitely sees this as a primary device. I bring up Microsoft's sales pitch because, boy, is the Surface Duo bad at doing the things Microsoft says it's supposed to be good at. The phone feels like it was made without any respect to ergonomics, hand size, pocket-size, or anything that makes a good Android phone. It has crippling productivity problems that negate any benefit you could get from the two-screen design, it's extremely awkward in day-to-day use, and it's very buggy. The phone is missing a whole host of features you would expect for the stratospheric $1400 asking price, and even the hardware that is here seems like it's a least a year old. The Surface Duo feels like a phone that was slapped together without a plan, and the reports of the phone's history indicate that's what actually happened. We would like to gently welcome Microsoft to the Android ecosystem, but we are not grading $1400 smartphones on a curve. Microsoft needed to knock this out of the park. Instead, the company turned in a borderline incompetent smartphone that I really had to force myself to use during the review period.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/10/surface-duo-review-orphaned-windows… 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 Chat goes free in 2021, while Hangouts loses features this month
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '20

20 Oct '20

'With the rise of Google Chat, Google Hangouts is going to die. Google initially announced this all the way back in 2018, and now we're getting more details about the service's slow shutdown and transition plans for the services that rely on it. We've already seen Hangouts lose location sharing and SMS support, and in the blog post, Google announced that phone calls, Google Fi support, and Google Voice support will soon be stripped away from the service.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/10/google-chat-goes-free-in-2021-while… 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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Fancy Bear imposters are on a hacking extortion spree
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '20

20 Oct '20

'Ransomware attacks that tear through corporate networks can bring massive organizations to their knees. But even as these hacks reach new popularity highs—and new ethical lows—among attackers, it's not the only technique criminals are using to shake down corporate victims. A new wave of attacks relies instead on digital extortion—with a side of impersonation. On Wednesday, the Web security firm Radware published extortion notes that had been sent to a variety of companies around the world. In each of them, the senders purport to be from the North Korean government hackers Lazarus Group, or APT38, and Russian state-backed hackers Fancy Bear, or APT28. The communications threaten that if the target doesn’t send a set number of bitcoin—typically equivalent to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars—the group will launch powerful distributed denial of service attacks against the victim, walloping the organization with a fire hose of junk traffic strategically directed to knock it offline. This type of digital extortion—give us what we’re asking for and we won’t attack you—has resurfaced repeatedly throughout the last decade. But in recent months, criminals have attempted to capitalize on fear about high-profile nation-state attacks, combined with anxieties related to rising ransomware attacks, to try to make some extra money.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/10/fancy-bear-imposters… 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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Hackers are using a severe Windows bug to backdoor unpatched servers
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '20

20 Oct '20

'One of the most critical Windows vulnerabilities disclosed this year is under active attack by hackers who are trying to backdoor servers that store credentials for every user and administrative account on a network, a researcher said on Friday. Zerologon, as the vulnerability has been dubbed, gained widespread attention last month when the firm that discovered it said it could give attackers instant access to active directories, which admins use to create, delete, and manage network accounts. Active directories and the domain controllers they run on are among the most coveted prizes in hacking, because once hijacked, they allow attackers to execute code in unison on all connected machines. Microsoft patched CVE-2020-1472, as the security flaw is indexed, in August. On Friday, Kevin Beaumont, working in his capacity as an independent researcher, said in a blog post that he had detected attacks on the honeypot he uses to keep abreast of attacks hackers are using in the wild. When his lure server was unpatched, the attackers were able to use a powershell script to successfully change an admin password and backdoor the server.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/10/hackers-are-using-a-… 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 Compute Module 4 for Industrial Users
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '20

20 Oct '20

'The Raspberry Pi Foundation is launching a new product today -- the Compute Module 4. From a report: If you've been keeping an eye on the Raspberry Pi releases, you know that the flagship Raspberry Pi 4 was released in June 2019. The Compute Module 4 features the same processor, but packed in a compute module for industrial use cases. A traditional Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer with a ton of ports sticking out. Compute Modules are somewhat different. Those system-on-module variants are more compact single-board computers without any traditional port. It lets you create a prototype using a traditional Raspberry Pi, and then order a bunch of Compute Modules to embed in your commercial products. "Over half of the seven million Raspberry Pi units we sell each year go into industrial and commercial applications, from digital signage to thin clients to process automation," Eben Upton wrote on the Raspberry Pi blog. Some things are strictly similar between the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Compute Module 4, such as the 64-bit ARM-based processor with VideoCore VI graphics. This is going to represent a huge upgrade for previous Compute Module customers. In particular, you get much better video performance with 4Kp60 hardware decode for H.265 videos, 1080p60 hardware decode for H.264 videos, 1080p30 hardware encode of H.264 videos. You can also take advantage of the dual HDMI interfaces to connect up to two 4K displays at 60 frames per second.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/10/19/175255 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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Three npm Packages Opened Remote-Access Shells on Linux and Windows Systems
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '20

19 Oct '20

'"Three JavaScript packages have been removed from the npm portal on Thursday for containing malicious code," reports ZDNet. "According to advisories from the npm security team, the three JavaScript libraries opened shells on the computers of developers who imported the packages into their projects." The shells, a technical term used by cyber-security researchers, allowed threat actors to connect remotely to the infected computer and execute malicious operations. The npm security team said the shells could work on both Windows and *nix operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and others. All three packages were uploaded on the npm portal in May (first) and September 2018 (last two). Each package had hundreds of downloads since being uploaded on the npm portal. The packages names were: plutov-slack-client nodetest199 nodetest1010 "Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer," the npm security team said.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/10/18/2321208 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 5.10 Solves the Year 2038 Problem Until 2486
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '20

19 Oct '20

'The Linux 5.10 kernel's XFS file-system will have two new on-disk meta-data capabilities, reports Phoronix: 1. The size of inode btrees in the allocation group is now recorded. This is for increasing redundancy checks and also allowing faster mount times. 2. Support for timestamps now until the year 2486. This "big timestamps" feature is the refactoring of their timestamp and inode encoding functions to handle timestamps as a 64-bit nanosecond counter and bit shifting to increase the effective size. This now allows XFS to run well past the Year 2038 problem (where storing the time since 1970 in seconds will no longer fit in a signed 32-bit integer and thus wraparound) to now the Year 2486. Making a new XFS file-system with bigtime enabled allows a timestamp range from December 1901 to July 2486 rather than December 1901 to January 2038. For preserving backwards compatibility, the big timestamps feature is not currently enabled by default. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/10/17/2237236 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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Bash Hackers’ Wiki
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Oct '20

18 Oct '20

Found this useful collection of Bash tips and tricks. May not be all that well maintained, but I found some handy pages, like this list <https://wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/bashchanges> of the more interesting features that were introduced in the various versions of Bash. I was looking for something like this because the Bash version in my Debian Unstable installations was just upgraded to 5.1.

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Need A New Computer For Homeschooling? How About a 2007-Vintage MacBook?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Oct '20

17 Oct '20

PC sales have been given a boost by, among other things, the need for schooling the young ones from home, but there’s no reason why they need the latest and greatest hardware for this. How about something from over a decade ago? Here a long-time collector of same <https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/16/need_a_new_computer_for/> reports how Apple-branded gear from that era can be obtained quite cheaply, is a lot easier to service and upgrade than the current stuff, and while it is not supported by current versions of Apple’s own OS, something like Linux will work just fine. That way you get a modern web browser, and enough grunt to stream video. What more could you ask for?

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Quote Of The Week: The State Of Microsoft
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Oct '20

16 Oct '20

>From this <https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2020/10/15/microsoft_adopting_goog…> reader comment: ... today's Microsoft users really are left with best guesses [as to what their software is doing]. It's sad that web searches reveal that everybody's first concern on [Macs]/Linux is installing 3rd party things, but the first concern for everybody on Windows is uninstalling 1st party things. Ironically, nobody on Windows seems to use the term "jailbreak” ... ... yet.

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