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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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