- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Debian Linux reveals Intel Skylake and Kaby Lake processors have broken hyper-threading
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

'Do you have an Intel Skylake and Kaby Lake processor under your computer's hood? Have you experienced unexplained application and system hiccups, data corruption, or data loss? It could be because your chipset has hyper-threading enabled and the chips are malfunctioning. Henrique de Moraes Holschuh, a Debian Linux developer, revealed the Intel chip problem on the Debian developer list. Officially, Intel hasn't acknowledged the problem, but engineers at Dell and Intel have told me that the problem, and its fix, exists. This processor/microcode defect has been found on Intel Skylake and Intel Kaby Lake processors with hyper-threading enabled. Besides these 6th and 7th generation Intel Core processors, its also found on its related server processors, such as Xeon v5 and Xeon v6, and some select Intel Pentium processor models. While the Debian community revealed the problem, it's not Linux-specific. Any operating system -- Windows, macOS,FreeBSD, you name it -- can run into the problem. According to Intel chip errata, "Under complex micro-architectural conditions, short loops of less than 64 instructions that use AH, BH, CH or DH registers as well as their corresponding wider register (e.g. RAX, EAX or AX for AH) may cause unpredictable system behavior. This can only happen when both logical processors on the same physical processor are active." This will lead to the computer experiencing "unpredictable system behavior." What programs will cause a computer to act up? That's a good question, and we don't have a good answer. As Holschuh wrote, "We do not have enough information at this time to know how much software out there will trigger this specific defect."' -- source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/debian-linux-reveals-intel-skylake-kaby-lake-p… 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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23 Years Of The Open Source 'FreeDOS' Project
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

Not quite Linux, but a good example of an open-source project: 'Jim Hall is celebrating the 23rd birthday of the FreeDOS Project, calling it "a major milestone for any free software or open-source software project," and remembering how it all started. An anonymous reader quotes Linux Journal: If you remember Windows 3.1 at the time, it was a pretty rough environment. I didn't like that you could interact with Windows only via a mouse; there was no command line. I preferred working at the command line. So I was understandably distressed in 1994 when I read via various tech magazines that Microsoft planned to eliminate MS-DOS with the next version of Windows. I decided that if the next evolution of Windows was going to be anything like Windows 3.1, I wanted nothing to do with it... I decided to create my own version of DOS. And on June 29, 1994, I posted an announcement to a discussion group... Our "PD-DOS" project (for "Public Domain DOS") quickly grew into FreeDOS. And 23 years later, FreeDOS is still going strong! Today, many people around the world install FreeDOS to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software or develop embedded systems... FreeDOS has become a modern DOS, due to the large number of developers that continue to work on it. You can download the FreeDOS 1.2 distribution and immediately start coding in C, Assembly, Pascal, BASIC or a number of other software development languages. The standard FreeDOS editor is quite nice, or you can select from more than 15 different editors, all included in the distribution. You can browse websites with the Dillo graphical web browser, or do it "old school" via the Lynx text-mode web browser. And for those who just want to play some great DOS games, you can try adventure games like Nethack or Beyond the Titanic, arcade games like Wing and Paku Paku, flight simulators, card games and a bunch of other genres of DOS games. On his "Open Source Software and Usability" blog, Jim says he's been involved with open source software "since before anyone coined the term 'open source'," and first installed Linux on his home PC in 1993. Over on the project's blog, he's also sharing appreciative stories from FreeDOS users and from people involved with maintaining it (including memories of early 1980s computers like the Sinclair ZX80, the Atari 800XL and the Coleco Adam). Any Slashdot readers have their own fond memories to share?' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/07/02/1710200 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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Ubuntu Disputes 'Ads In MOTD' Claims
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

'Thursday Lproven (Slashdot reader #6030) wrote: It appears that Ubuntu is using a feature it has added -- intended to insert headlines of breaking tech news (security alerts and so on) into the Message of the Day displayed at login to the console -- to display advertising and promotional messages. The message in question linked to a Hacker Noon article titled "How HBO's Silicon Valley built 'Not Hotdog' with mobile TensorFlow, Keras & React Native." Later that day Dustin Kirkland, a Ubuntu Product Manager for the feature's design (and the Core Developer for its implementation) suggested the message had been mistaken for an ad, describing it on Hacker News as a "fun fact... an interesting tidbit of potpourri from the world of Ubuntu," and later saying it was intended like Google's doodles. "Last week's message actually announced an Ubuntu conference in Latin America. The week before, we linked to an article asking for feedback on Kubuntu. Before that, we announced the availability of Extended Security Maintenance updates for 12.04. And so on." He later confirmed Canonical received no money for the message, and also pointed out that the messages all come from an open source repository, and "You're welcome to propose your own messages for merging, if you have a well formatted, informative message for Ubuntu users." Click through for a condensed version of the complete response by Dustin Kirkland, Ubuntu Product and Strategy at Canonical.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/07/01/0550251 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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15 Devices (Including 6 Laptops) Awarded FSF's 'Respects Your Freedom' Certification
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

'This week the Free Software Foundation awarded its coveted 'Respects Your Freedom' certification to 15 products -- more than doubling the number of certified products (from 12 to 27) since the program began in 2012. An anonymous reader writes: The non-profit FSF certified six different laptops, two docking stations, three WiFi USB adapters and two internal WiFi devices, a mainboard, and their first-ever certified Bluetooth device, the TET-BT4 USB adapter. The products are all from Technoethical (formerly Tehnoetic), a Romania-based company who previously had just one mini wireless USB adapter on their list of FSF-certified products. "In 2014 we started selling hardware compatible with fully free systems in order to fund the free software activism work that we've been doing with our foundation," said Technoethical founder, Tiberiu C. Turbureanu. "Since then, we worked hard to build a hardware catalog that allows free software users to choose what best fits their computing needs, while also helping with the funding of different free software projects." "We are excited that Technoethical has brought out such an impressive collection of hardware whose associated software respects user freedom," said the FSF's executive director, John Sullivan. "RYF certification continues to gain speed and momentum, thanks to companies like them."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/07/02/205201 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 Mint 18.2 (Sonya) released
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jul '17

02 Jul '17

Hi everyone Linux Mint 18.2, nicknamed Sonya, has been released. Here are the blog entries for the various flavors: - KDE http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3292 - XFCE http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3291 - MATE http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3290 - Cinnamon http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3289 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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Govhack hamilton
by William Mckee 01 Jul '17

01 Jul '17

Hi, Govhack is happening end of July. Tickets are free. https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/govhack-nz-hamilton-tickets-35833922226 I'm planning on a project involving Waikato bus data. a static website that displays bus stops and when the next buses leave. Hope to see you there! Cheers, William

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Open-Source Healthcare
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Jul '17

01 Jul '17

Report on a long-standing project called “NHSbuntu” to put together an open-source OS fit for use at the NHS in the UK <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/30/nhsbuntu_nhs_revolution/>. Also mentions Code4health, a “home for the growing number of open source projects in the health service”.

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Tuesday’s massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jun '17

29 Jun '17

'Tuesday's massive outbreak of malware that shut down computers around the world has been almost universally blamed on ransomware, which by definition seeks to make money by unlocking data held hostage only if victims pay a hefty fee. Now, some researchers are drawing an even bleaker assessment—that the malware was a wiper with the objective of permanently destroying hard drives.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/petya-outbreak-was-a-chaos-sowing-… Welcome to cyber warfare... 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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Vulnerability Discovered In Latest Ubuntu Distributions, Users Advised To Update
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jun '17

29 Jun '17

'There is a vulnerability in the latest ubuntu distributions due to the DNS resolver included in systemd. The inclusion of the dns resolver was lamented by many on the mailing list, not without cause. All are advised to update their distribution.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/06/28/1659216 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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Testing For Windows Vulnerabilities On Linux
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jun '17

27 Jun '17

What’s notable about this report <https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/latest-high-severity-flaw-in-windo…> on a vulnerability in Windows Defender is that the testing that uncovered the problem was done, not on Windows, but on Linux. The researcher, Tavis Ormandy, developed a framework <https://github.com/taviso/loadlibrary> for loading Windows DLLs (Dynamically-Loadable Libraries) under Linux so that he could take advantage of the superior tools available there.

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Intel Quietly Discontinues Galileo, Joule, and Edison Development Boards
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jun '17

20 Jun '17

'Intel is discontinuing its Galileo, Joule, and Edison lineups of development boards. The chip-maker quietly made the announcement last week. From company's announcement: Intel Corporation will discontinue manufacturing and selling all skus of the Intel Galileo development board. Shipment of all Intel Galileo product skus ordered before the last order date will continue to be available from Intel until December 16, 2017. [...] Intel will discontinue manufacturing and selling all skus of the Intel Joule Compute Modules and Developer Kits (known as Intel 500 Series compute modules in People's Republic of China). Shipment of all Intel Joule products skus ordered before the last order date will continue to be available from Intel until December 16, 2017. Last time orders (LTO) for any Intel Joule products must be placed with Intel by September 16, 2017. [...] Intel will discontinue manufacturing and selling all skus of the Intel Edison compute modules and developer kits. Shipment of all Intel Edison product skus ordered before the last order date will continue to be available from Intel until December 16, 2017. Last time orders (LTO) for any Intel Edison products must be placed with Intel by September 16, 2017. All orders placed with Intel for Intel Edison products are non-cancelable and non-returnable after September 16, 2017. The company hasn't shared any explanation for why it is discontinuing the aforementioned development boards. Intel launched the Galileo, an Arduino-compatible mini computer in 2013, the Edison in 2014, and the Joule last year. The company touted the Joule as its "most powerful dev kit." You can find the announcement posts here.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/06/19/1720201 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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meeting on the 26th
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jun '17

18 Jun '17

Hi everyone Unfortunately, I haven't had any inspirations as to topics for the upcoming meeting on June 26th. Any ideas or suggestions? Any cool software or distro that you'd like to demo? Personally, I've never seen an installation and day-to-day usage of Arch Linux (adding/removing applications, configuring services, etc)... Thanks. 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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Debian 9 "Stretch" released
by William Mckee 18 Jun '17

18 Jun '17

Hi, Debian 9 "Stretch" has been released... After 26 months of development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 9 (code name Stretch), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and of the Debian Long Term Support team. Debian 9 is dedicated to the project's founder Ian Murdock, who passed away on 28 December 2015. https://www.debian.org/News/2017/20170617 Cheers, William.

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Why do printers add secret tracking dots?
by Ian Stewart 17 Jun '17

17 Jun '17

Hi, This is new news to me, however it looks like its been known about for years. cheers, Ian. According to this<http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170607-why-printers-add-secret-tracking-d…> BBC technology article, colour laser printers add yellow dots to each page printed that identify the date and time it was printed and the printers serial number. "At that point, experts began taking a closer look at the document, now publicly available on the web. They discovered something else of interest: yellow dots in a roughly rectangular pattern repeated throughout the page. They were barely visible to the naked eye, but formed a coded design. After some quick analysis, they seemed to reveal the exact date and time that the pages in question were printed: 06:20 on 9 May, 2017 – at least, this is likely to be the time on the printer’s internal clock at that moment. The dots also encode a serial number for the printer." The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) maintained a List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots<https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking…> ...but "This list is no longer being updated." "(Added 2015) Some of the documents that we previously received through FOIA suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable. Although we still don't know if this is correct, or how subsequent generations of forensic tracking technologies might work, it is probably safest to assume that all modern color laser printers do include some form of tracking information that associates documents with the printer's serial number. (If any manufacturer wishes to go on record with a statement to the contrary, we'll be happy to publish that here.) (Added 2017) REMINDER: IT APPEARS LIKELY THAT ALL RECENT COMMERCIAL COLOR LASER PRINTERS PRINT SOME KIND OF FORENSIC TRACKING CODES, NOT NECESSARILY USING YELLOW DOTS. THIS IS TRUE WHETHER OR NOT THOSE CODES ARE VISIBLE TO THE EYE AND WHETHER OR NOT THE PRINTER MODELS ARE LISTED HERE. THIS ALSO INCLUDES THE PRINTERS THAT ARE LISTED HERE AS NOT PRODUCING YELLOW DOTS."

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Wi-Fi Alliance Offers Guidance For Builders
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Jun '17

16 Jun '17

The Wi-Fi Alliance has issued its “Home Design Standard”, a set of recommendations that it hopes will see new homes outfitted properly for wireless networking from the beginning <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/15/wifi_certified_home_designs/>. Some of the reader comments suggest that UK builders at least, seem to have no clue. But surely even builders’ families must appreciate the value of wi-fi in their own homes nowadays...

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Programmers Who Indent With Spaces Earn More Than Those Using Tabs
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Jun '17

16 Jun '17

According to this report <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/according-to-statist…>, the latest Stack Overflow developer survey shows a wide gap between the earnings of those who use spaces to indent their code, versus those who use tabs. Speaking as someone who moved from tabs to spaces about a decade ago, I don’t understand why the author seems so cut up about this. It makes about as much sense as vi/vim users complaining about Emacs users. (The guy also seems to put Perl and PHP on the same intellectual level, which I think tells you all you need to know about the state of his mental health...) And he forgot to link to the actual survey results, which are here <https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017>. I can’t see where he got the information about the correlation between tabs/spaces and income--all I can see is that among professional developers, spaces are more popular, whereas among all developers, tabs are more popular.

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Green Party Leaders Don't Want Windows In Munich
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jun '17

15 Jun '17

'Munich spent a lot of time (9 years) and a lot of money in shifting some 15,000 staff to a Linux-based OS. The plan now is to move to Windows 10 by 2021. Munich's Green Party is citing the WannaCry virus as a valid reason not to switch to Windows. "As with many of the biggest attacks, the computers that were mainly hit were running the Windows operating system," the Green Party said in a statement.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/06/15/1530224 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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Vivaldi 1.10 Released
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jun '17

15 Jun '17

'Vivaldi, the successor to Opera 12.16 (Presto) in spirit, admittedly has a long way to go but continues to steadily mature with the release of version 1.10: Releasing Vivaldi 1.10, we give you the power for making the Start Page more personal than ever before. You're the one who gets to decide how your Start Page looks, feels and performs. We've also added the much-requested ability to dock the Developer Tools. Other new features and improvements include: -Sorting of Downloads in the Side Panel by name, size, date added and date finished, as well as manually. -Toggle image visibility from the View menu or via configurable keyboard shortcut. -Quick Commands improvements for users that like to control everything in their browser from their keyboard. The Quick Commands menu lets users navigate to tabs, find search terms, filter lists of available commands and much more. -Address Bar dropdown list can now exclude bookmarks and typed history. -Controlling new tabs via third-party extensions with additional functionality, such as productivity tools or reminders. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/06/15/1511257 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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Re: [wlug] meeting on the 26th
by William Mckee 15 Jun '17

15 Jun '17

On Jun 15, 2017 9:44 PM, "Peter Reutemann" <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote: Hi everyone Unfortunately, I haven't had any inspirations as to topics for the upcoming meeting on June 26th. Any ideas or suggestions? Any cool software or distro that you'd like to demo? Personally, I've never seen an installation and day-to-day usage of Arch Linux (adding/removing applications, configuring services, etc)... I installed arch linux once on the pi. didnt get further than the login prompt though. its certainly helpful distro, i will be forever grateful for the wiki. i will be away for this meetup up though, mid semester break gives an excuse to get away. Hope you find a topic. cheers, william.

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Firefox 54 Arrives With Multi-Process Support For All Users
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jun '17

14 Jun '17

'Mozilla today launched Firefox 54 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The new version includes the next major phase of multi-process support, which streamlines memory use, improving responsiveness and speed. The Electrolysis project, which is the largest change to Firefox code ever, is live. Firefox now uses up to four processes to run webpage content across all open tabs. This means that complex webpages in one tab have a much lower impact on responsiveness and speed in other tabs, and Firefox finally makes better use of your computer's hardware.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/06/13/1720250 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 Malware Infects Raspberry Pi Devices And Makes Them Mine Cryptocurrency
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '17

12 Jun '17

'If you're a Raspberry Pi user who's never changed the default password of the "pi" user, then heed this warning: change it. A brand new piece of malware has hit the web, called "Linux.MulDrop.14", and it preys on those who haven't secured their devices properly... After scanning for RPis with an open (and default) SSH port, the "pi" user is logged into (if the password is left default), and the password is subsequently changed. After that, the malware installs ZMap and sshpass software, and then it configures itself. The ultimate goal of Linux.MulDrop.14 is to make digital money for someone else, namely the author of the malware, using your Raspberry Pi. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/06/11/0552231 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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Malware Uses Obscure Intel CPU Feature To Steal Data and Avoid Firewalls
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jun '17

09 Jun '17

'Microsoft's security team has come across a malware family that uses Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) interface as a file transfer tool. The problem with Intel AMT SOL is that it's part of Intel's ME, a separate chip inside Intel CPUs that runs its own OS and stays on even when the main CPU is off. Inside Intel's ME, AMT SOL opens a virtual network interface which works even when the PC is turned off. Furthermore, because this virtual network interface runs inside ME, firewalls and security products installed on the main OS won't detected malware using AMT SOL to exfiltrate data. The malware was created and used by a nation-state cyber-espionage unit codenamed PLATINUM, active since 2009, and which has targeted countries around the South China Sea. PLATINUM is by far one of the most sophisticated hacking groups ever discovered. Last year [PDF], the OS maker said the group was installing malware by abusing hotpatching — a mechanism that allows Microsoft to issue updates that tap into active processes and upgrade applications or the operating system without having to reboot the computer. Details about PLATINUM's recent targets and attacks are available in a report [PDF] Microsoft released yesterday.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/06/08/1754244 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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Is Intel Threatening To Sue Microsoft Over x86-on-ARM?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Jun '17

09 Jun '17

Intel has put out a press release warning anybody working on x86-emulation technology to beware of infringing its patents <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-…>. The article suggests that the timing of this announcement is a warning specifically to Microsoft, and possibly also Qualcomm, over their upcoming release of Windows-10-on-ARM machines. Even if this is so, I’m not sure I agree that “This compatibility makes these ARM-based machines a threat to Intel in a way that Windows RT never was”. The simple fact is that the performance of emulated x86 code on ARM is going to be most politely described as “anaemic”. ARM chips are not the most powerful (they are the most power-efficient), and x86 code is extremely complicated to emulate. Thus, the overheads of the translation layer are going to sap any hope of reasonable speed.

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Internet cameras have hard-coded password that can’t be changed
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '17

08 Jun '17

'Security cameras manufactured by China-based Foscam are vulnerable to remote take-over hacks that allow attackers to view video feeds, download stored files, and possibly compromise other devices connected to a local network. That's according to a 12-page report released Wednesday by security firm F-Secure. Researchers at F-Secure documented 18 vulnerabilities that the manufacturer has yet to fix despite being alerted to them several months ago. All of the flaws were confirmed in a camera marketed under the Opticam i5 HD brand. A smaller number of the vulnerabilities were also found in the Foscam C2. The report said the weaknesses are likely to exist in many other camera models Foscam manufactures and sells under other brand names.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/internet-cameras-expose-private-vi… Not sure whether these cameras are sold here in NZ... 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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Ubuntu Works With GNOME To Improve HiDPI Support On Linux Desktop
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '17

07 Jun '17

'Canonical is playing host to a 'fractional scaling hackfest' in its Taipei offices this week. Both GNOME developers and Ubuntu developers are in attendance, ready to wrestle with the aim: improve GNOME HiDPI support. Ubuntu's Unity desktop (I'm told, anyhow) plays fairly nice with high DPI monitors because the shell supports fractional scaling (though most apps, I believe, do not). Furthermore, users can tweak some high DPI settings to better suit their display(s). GNOME Shell also supports HiDPI monitors, but has, until now, been a little less flexible about it. "Currently, we only allow to scale windows by integral factors (typically 2). This proves somewhat limiting as there are many systems that are just in between the dpi ranges that are good for scale factor 2, or unscaled," the hackfest page explains.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/06/06/2048243 Other links regarding HiDPI: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-hidpi-support-for-gnome-kde-xfce-cinnamo… https://www.maketecheasier.com/best-linux-desktop-environments-for-hidpi-di… 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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SGI Desktop Clone Gets A New Version On Fedora
by Peter Reutemann 06 Jun '17

06 Jun '17

'Silicon Graphics workstations used the IRIX Interactive Desktop (formerly called Indigo Magic Desktop) for its IRIX operating system (based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions). "Anyone who remembers working on a SGI machine probably has fond memories of the Magic Desktop for IRIX," remembered one Slashdot reader in 2002. At the time a project called 5Dwm was working on a clone, and its work is still being continued by MaXX Interactive. Today Slashdot reader Daniel Mark shared the news that after "several years and many long nights," the company is announcing a new release for Fedora 25, adding that "more Linux Distributions support will be added over the coming days/weeks." They're calling it "something new and fresh in the Linux Desktop space." The MaXX Desktop is available in two versions, the free Community Edition (CE) which provides basic SGI Desktop experience and the commercially available Professional Edition (PE) that comes with support, CPU and GPU specific optimizations and a full SGI Desktop experience... So there is no surprise here, the MaXX Desktop is a highly tuned Workstation Environment for the Linux x86_64 and ia64 platforms. Multi-core processing, NVidia GPU specific optimizations are among the things that makes the MaXX Desktop so fast, light-weight and stable. ' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/17/06/04/1535251 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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Network Time Protocol Hardened To Protect Users From Spying, Increase Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '17

05 Jun '17

'The Internet Engineering Task Force has taken another small step in protecting everybody's privacy... As the draft proposal explains, the RFCs that define NTP have what amounts to a convenience feature: packets going from client to server have the same set of fields as packets sent from servers to clients... "Populating these fields with accurate information is harmful to privacy of clients because it allows a passive observer to fingerprint clients and track them as they move across networks". The header fields in question are Stratum, Root Delay, Root Dispersion, Reference ID, Reference Timestamp, Origin Timestamp, and Receive Timestamp. The Origin Timestamp and Receive Timestamp offer a handy example or a "particularly severe information leak". Under NTP's spec (RFC 5905), clients copy the server's most recent timestamp into their next request to a server – and that's a boon to a snoop-level watcher. The proposal "proposes backward-compatible updates to the Network Time Protocol to strip unnecessary identifying information from client requests and to improve resilience against blind spoofing of unauthenticated server responses." Specifically, client developers should set those fields to zero.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/06/03/0422246 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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Ubuntu Touch Mobile OS Now Maintained By UBports
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '17

05 Jun '17

'UBports continues to be the leading community project for trying to let Ubuntu Touch live on and evolve under their direction... Among their recent achievements were acquiring more sponsors, all devices that were sold with Ubuntu Touch can now run with UBports' builds, they are working on their own version of Mozilla's AGPS Location Service to replace Canonical's GPS system, the Halium OS platform continues evolving, the Dekko email client is back under development, installation improvements are being worked on, they are still striving for Wayland support, and more. The UBports Patreon page has even raised enough to allow UBports founder Marius Gripsgard to work full-time on what they're calling "a beautiful, free and open-source mobile OS." Their recent community update announced that "we are seeing more activity on Ubuntu Touch than for a very long time, and that is really encouraging."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/06/04/0316204 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/

1 0

US Supreme Court Victory for the Right to Tinker in Printer Cartridge Case
by Ian Stewart 01 Jun '17

01 Jun '17

"The [US] Supreme Court struck a blow today for your right to own the things you buy, reversing a lower court decision that had given patent owners the power to sue customers who paid in full for a patented item but then used it in a way the patent owner didn't care for. Together with Public Knowledge and R Street, EFF filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court. We explained that the ability of patent owners to sell products into the stream of commerce while also writing a wishlist of anti-competitive restrictions, would be a disastrous expansion of patent law, hindering competition, innovation, and your freedom to tinker with and repair your own stuff. The Supreme Court agreed, explaining that when a patent owner "chooses to sell an item, that product is no longer within the limits of the monopoly and instead becomes the private individual property of the purchaser, with the rights and benefits that come along with ownership." The Court emphasized that, by default, people have every right to make, sell, and use things. The limited monopoly that the government bestows upon a patent owner is a deviation from the norm of free market competition and ownership of personal property, and is subject to important limits in order to protect the public interest. The Court explained that people who buy things are allowed to use and resell them without being sued under patent and copyright law, and explained that this freedom is necessary for commerce to function. The next logical step will be for courts to recognize that people who buy digital goods are owners of those goods, not mere licensees, and can resell and tinker with their digital goods to the same extent as purchasers of tangible property." See the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) article for more details... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/supreme-court-victory-right-tinker-pr… [https://www.eff.org/files/issues/patents-2.png]<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/supreme-court-victory-right-tinker-pr…> Supreme Court Victory for the Right to Tinker in Printer Cartridge Case<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/supreme-court-victory-right-tinker-pr…> www.eff.org The Supreme Court struck a blow today [PDF] for yo Maybe the 11 remaining TPP countries will ensure that their agreement endorses this ruling ? cheers, Ian

2 1

Car Emissions Cheating: How It’s Done
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 May '17

29 May '17

Researchers have been digging through car firmware from Volkswagen and Audi to get to the bottom of the emissions-testing scandal that broke a couple of years ago. Turns out the code was written by Bosch, and important information in the form of “function sheets” (documentation for what the firmware does) was not (officially) forthcoming from that company. But unofficial sources can be found on online forums frequented by vehicle-modding enthusiasts. <https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/05/volkswagen-bosch-fiat-diesel-emissions…>

1 0

Creative Commons Staff Members Release New Free eBook
by Peter Reutemann 28 May '17

28 May '17

'Creative Commons staff-members Sarah Hinchliff Pearson and Paul Stacey have now published Made With Creative Commons, the awaited book they successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2015. "Made With Creative Commons is a book about sharing," explains the book's description. "It is about sharing textbooks, music, data, art, and more. People, organizations, and businesses all over the world are sharing their work using Creative Commons licenses because they want to encourage the public to reuse their works, to copy them, to modify them... But if they are giving their work away to the public for free, how do they make money? "This is the question this book sets out to answer. There are 24 in-depth examples of different ways to sustain what you do when you share your work. And there are lessons, about how to make money but also about what sharing really looks like -- why we do it and what it can bring to the economy and the world. Full of practical advice and inspiring stories, Made with Creative Commons is a book that will show you what it really means to share." There's free versions in PDF, ePub, and MOBI formats for downloading from the Creative Commons site, and there's also an edit-able version on Google Docs. A small Danish non-profit publisher named Ctrl+Alt+Delete Books is also publishing print copies of the book under a Creative Commons license "to ensure easy sharing," and is making the book available on Amazon or through the publisher's own web site.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/05/28/0130259 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/

1 0

Timers In systemd
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 May '17

27 May '17

Was referred to this page <https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd> about enabling systemd as the init system in Gentoo. The section on “Timer services” I found particularly useful, as applicable to other distros running systemd: instead of a conventional crontab, you create .timer entries, and corresponding .service descriptions for them to invoke, in your ~/.local/share/systemd/user area. One advantage of this I can see is one less set of user files kept in /var. In fact, do this in conjunction with maildir format for user mail, and you no longer need to have any user files in /var. (That I can think of, anyway...)

1 0

Popularity Contests
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 May '17

26 May '17

In the middle of another Phoronix flame war, someone posted links to a couple of interesting pages. What’s your favourite desktop environment? According to this <https://opensource.com/life/15/7/poll-preferred-desktop-environment>, GNOME is number one, with KDE not far behind. One-third of respondents use something else. Arch Linux offers some stats <https://www.archlinux.de/?page=FunStatistics> on popularity of desktop environments and other software among its users. Here GNOME and KDE add up to only about 50%. By the way, it’s clear from the numbers for browsers and text editors in the latter that lots of people use more than one.

1 0

UK Government May Push Anti-Encryption Laws After Election
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 May '17

25 May '17

Not too surprising to discover that some parties in the UK might be using the Manchester attack as a pretext to push through laws to ban secure encryption <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/25/uk_to_push_antiencryption_laws_aft…>. As if such a ban would have helped uncover a perpetrator who, by all accounts, had already been reported to the authorities multiple times...

3 5

A wormable code-execution bug has lurked in Samba for 7 years. Patch now!
by Peter Reutemann 25 May '17

25 May '17

'Maintainers of the Samba networking utility just patched a critical code-execution vulnerability that could pose a severe threat to users until the fix is widely installed. The seven-year-old flaw, indexed as CVE-2017-7494, can be reliably exploited with just one line of code to execute malicious code, as long as a few conditions are met. Those requirements include vulnerable computers that (a) make file- and printer-sharing port 445 reachable on the Internet, (b) configure shared files to have write privileges, and (c) use known or guessable server paths for those files. When those conditions are satisfied, remote attackers can upload any code of their choosing and cause the server to execute it, possibly with unfettered root privileges depending on the vulnerable platform. "All versions of Samba from 3.5.0 onwards are vulnerable to a remote code execution vulnerability, allowing a malicious client to upload a shared library to a writable share, and then cause the server to load and execute it," Samba maintainers wrote in an advisory published Wednesday. They urged anyone using a vulnerable version to install a patch as soon as possible.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/05/a-wormable-code-execution-bug-has-… 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/

2 1

Windows switch to Git almost complete: 8, 500 commits and 1, 760 builds each day
by Peter Reutemann 25 May '17

25 May '17

'Back in February, Microsoft made the surprising announcement that the Windows development team was going to move to using the open source Git version control system for Windows development. A little over three months after that first revelation, and about 90 percent of the Windows engineering team has made the switch.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/90-of-windows-devs-n… 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/

2 1

Malicious Subtitles Threaten VLC, Kodi and Popcorn Time Users, Researchers Warn
by Peter Reutemann 24 May '17

24 May '17

'Millions of people risk having their devices and systems compromised by malicious subtitles, according to a new research published by security firm Check Point. The threat comes from a previously undocumented vulnerability which affects users of popular streaming software, including Kodi, Popcorn-Time, and VLC. Developers of the applications have already applied fixes and in some cases, working on it. From a report: While most subtitle makers do no harm, it appears that those with malicious intent can exploit these popular streaming applications to penetrate the devices and systems of these users. Researchers from Check Point, who uncovered the problem, describe the subtitle 'attack vector' as the most widespread, easily accessed and zero-resistance vulnerability that has been reported in recent years. "By conducting attacks through subtitles, hackers can take complete control over any device running them. From this point on, the attacker can do whatever he wants with the victim's machine, whether it is a PC, a smart TV, or a mobile device," they write.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/05/24/1329211 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/

1 0

Testing Windows Software For Vulns Too Slow? Do It On Linux!
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 May '17

24 May '17

“Distributed, scalable fuzzing on Windows can be challenging and inefficient. This is especially true for endpoint security products, which use complex interconnected components that span across kernel and user space. This often requires spinning up an entire virtualized Windows environment to fuzz them or collect coverage data.” Porting stuff like Windows antivirus tools to Linux lets Ormandy “run the code I’m testing in minimal containers with very little overhead, and easily scale up testing”. Oh, and “I also think Linux has better tools”. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/24/whats_got_a_vast_attack_service_an…>

1 0

WannaCry Makes an Easy Case For Linux
by Peter Reutemann 23 May '17

23 May '17

'The thing is, WannaCry isn't the first of its kind. In fact, ransomware has been exploiting Windows vulnerabilities for a while. The first known ransomware attack was called "AIDS Trojan" that infected Windows machines back in 1989. This particular ransomware attack switched the autoexec.bat file. This new file counted the amount of times a machine had been booted; when the machine reached a count of 90, all of the filenames on the C drive were encrypted. Windows, of course, isn't the only platform to have been hit by ransomware. In fact, back in 2015, the LinuxEncoder ransomware was discovered. That bit of malicious code, however, only affected servers running the Magento ecommerce solution. The important question here is this: Have their been any ransomware attacks on the Linux desktop? The answer is no. With that in mind, it's pretty easy to draw the conclusion that now would be a great time to start deploying Linux on the desktop. I can already hear the tired arguments. The primary issue: software. I will counter that argument by saying this: Most software has migrated to either Software as a Service (SaaS) or the cloud. The majority of work people do is via a web browser. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari; with few exceptions, SaaS doesn't care. With that in mind, why would you want your employees and staff using a vulnerable system? [...] Imagine, if you will, you have deployed Linux as a desktop OS for your company and those machines work like champs from the day you set them up to the day the hardware finally fails. Doesn't that sound like a win your company could use? If your employees work primarily with SaaS (through web browsers), then there is zero reason keeping you from making the switch to a more reliable, secure platform.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/05/18/1757205 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/

2 2

Check-In Delays At Auckland Airport, Australia And Elsewhere
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 May '17

22 May '17

You may have come across this report <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11860878> about problems with check-in processing at Auckland and Wellington “as a result of a global issue”. This item from The Register <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/22/sita_failure_australia/> gives a few more details, mentioning an international hookup called “SITA” which was hit by problems in the UK.

1 0

Disabling Microsoft Telemetry Is Not So Easy
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 May '17

22 May '17

Came across a link to this series of tweets <https://twitter.com/m8urnett/status/866353982217699328> detailing a sysadmin’s attempts to block his Windows 10 Enterprise installation from making gratuitous Internet accesses. Seems like the obvious answer--blocking things at your border router--can cause major Windows malfunctions...

1 0

upcoming meeting
by Peter Reutemann 18 May '17

18 May '17

Hi everyone We don't have anything scheduled yet for the upcoming meeting next week. Any ideas? [and apologies if I should have missed your suggestion - I've got too many things going on at the moment...] 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/

2 3

Google Takes Another Shot At Making Android Great On Low-Budget Smartphones
by Peter Reutemann 17 May '17

17 May '17

'At its developer conference, Google unveiled Android Go, a project wherein Google will offer a version of Android that runs swiftly on budget, low-specced smartphones. With the new strategy, Google hopes to further improve the low-budget smartphone ecosystem in developing markets. Android Go will be focused around building a version of Android for phones with less memory, with the System UI and kernel able to run with as little as 512MB of memory. Apps will be optimized for low bandwidth and memory, with a version of Play Store designed for those markets that will highlight these apps. From a report: Another feature of Android Go will be data management. Android Go will let you easily see your data usage, and thanks to carrier integration, it'll also let you top-up with more data right on your device.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/17/202209 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/

1 0

Ubuntu 17.04 review: Don’t call it abandonware, per se
by Peter Reutemann 12 May '17

12 May '17

'Last month, it finally happened. Six years after its tumultuous switch from GNOME 2 to the homegrown Unity desktop, Canonical announced it was abandoning work on Unity. Going forward, the company will switch the default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME beginning with next year's 18.04 LTS release. This means Canonical is also abandoning the development of the Mir display server and its unified interface of Ubuntu for phones and tablets. The company's vision of "convergence," as Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth termed it, has officially died.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/ubuntu-17-04-review-this-is-unitys-… 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/

1 0

Ubuntu Arrives in the Windows Store, Suse and Fedora Are Coming To the Windows Subsystem For Linux
by Peter Reutemann 11 May '17

11 May '17

'At its Build developer conference today, Microsoft announced that Ubuntu has arrived in the Windows Store. From a report: The company also revealed that it is working with Fedora and Suse to bring their distributions to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10. At the conference last year, Microsoft announced plans to bring the Bash shell to Windows. The fruits of that labor was WSL, a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) natively on Windows, which arrived with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update released in August 2016. Microsoft also partnered with Canonical to allow Ubuntu tools and utilities to run natively on top of the WSL. By bringing Ubuntu to the Windows Store, the company is now making it even easier for developers to install the tools and run Windows and Linux apps side by side. Working with other Linux firms shows that Microsoft's deal with Canonical was not a one-time affair, but rather part of a long-term investment in the Linux world.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/05/11/1535214 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/

1 0

Canonical Founder Says Recent Changes In Ubuntu Were Necessary To Prepare the Company For an IPO
by Peter Reutemann 10 May '17

10 May '17

'Canonical was doing well with Ubuntu and cloud and container-related technologies, such as Juju, LXD, and Metal-as-a-Service (MaaS). In addition, its OpenStack and Kubernetes software stacks, according to Shuttleworth, are growing by leaps and bounds on both the public and private cloud. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said "in the last year, Ubuntu cloud growth had been 70 percent on the private cloud and 90 percent on the public cloud." In particular, "Ubuntu has been gaining more customers on the big five public clouds." What hadn't succeeded was Canonical's attempt to make Unity the universal interface for desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Shuttleworth was personally invested in this project, but at day's end, it wasn't getting enough adoption to make it profitable. So, Shuttleworth said with regret, Unity had to be dropped. This move also means Canonical will devote more of its time to "putting the company on the path to a IPO. We must figure out what steps we need to take moving forward." That means focusing on Canonical's most profitable lines. Specifically, "Ubuntu will never die. Ubuntu is the default platform on cloud computing. Juju, MaaS, and OpenStack are nearly unstoppable. We need to work out more of our IoT path. At the same time, we had to cut out those parts that couldn't meet an investors' needs. The immediate work is get all parts of the company profitable."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/05/09/1553255 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/

1 0

Re: [wlug] How Psychology Today Sees Richard Stallman
by rowan schischka 09 May '17

09 May '17

>He is a control freak, and a prophet. He has been right more than once >(the dangers of software patents, pitfalls of online services). But >some of his policy decisions (e.g. the reluctance to allow a plugin >architecture into GCC for fear it would lead to evasion of the GPL) >have, I think, been counterproductive. >But isn?t it grand that Free Software is all about having a choice? >That we can use what he and everybody else working for the FSF has been >responsible for, without necessarily having to subscribe to every tenet >of his philosophy? You can't expect anyone to be 100% correct on everything.

2 1

Re: [wlug] The hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips is worse than anyone thought
by rowan schischka 09 May '17

09 May '17

I went through Intel's press release and document on how to detect the exploit. https://downloadmirror.intel.com/26754/eng/Intel-SA-00075%20Mitigation%20Gu… Intel says this to detect: netstat -na | findstr "\<16993\> \<16992\> \<16994\> \<16995\> \<623\> \<664\>" Is that all we can do? just scan for port numbers and throw them into our firewalls?

1 0

Google’s “Fuchsia” smartphone OS dumps Linux, has a wild new UI
by Peter Reutemann 09 May '17

09 May '17

'Google, never one to compete in a market with a single product, is apparently hard at work on a third operating system after Android and Chrome OS. This one is an open source, real-time OS called "Fuchsia." The OS first popped up in August last year, but back then it was just a command line. Now the mysterious project has a crazy new UI we can look at, so let's dive in. Unlike Android and Chrome OS, Fuchsia is not based on Linux—it uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called "Magenta." With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Dumping Linux might come as a bit of a shock, but the Android ecosystem seems to have no desire to keep up with upstream Linux releases. Even the Google Pixel is still stuck on Linux Kernel 3.18, which was first released at the end of 2014.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/googles-fuchsia-smartphone-os-dumps… 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/

1 0

How Psychology Today Sees Richard Stallman
by Peter Reutemann 08 May '17

08 May '17

'After our article about Richard Stallman's new video interview, Slashdot reader silverjacket shared this recent profile from Psychology Today that describes Richard Stallman's quest "to save us from a web of spyware -- and from ourselves." By using proprietary software, Stallman believes, we are forfeiting control of our computers, and thus of our digital lives. In his denunciation of all nonfree software as inherently abusive and unethical, he has alienated many possible allies and followers. But he is not here to make friends. He is here to save us from a software industry he considers predatory in ways we've yet to recognize... for Stallman, moralism is the whole point. If you write or use free software only for practical reasons, you'll stop when it's inconvenient, and freedom will disappear. Stallman collaborator Eben Moglen -- a law professor at Columbia, as well as the FSF's general counsel -- assesses Stallman's legacy by saying "the idea of copyleft and the proposition that social and political freedom can't happen in a society without technological freedom -- those are his long-term meanings. And humanity will be aware of those meanings for centuries, whatever it does about them." The article also includes quotes from Linus Torvalds and Eric S. Raymond -- along with some great artwork. In addition to insisting the reporter refer to Linux as "GNU/Linux," Stallman also required that the article describe free software without using the term open source, a phrase he sees as "a way that people who disagree with me try to cause the ethical issues to be forgotten." And he ultimately got Psychology Today to tell its readers that "Nearly all the software on our phones and computers, as well as on other machines, is nonfree or 'proprietary' software and is riddled with spyware and back doors installed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the like."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/05/06/0258204 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/

2 1

The hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips is worse than anyone thought
by Peter Reutemann 08 May '17

08 May '17

'A remote hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips for seven years was more severe than many people imagined, because it allowed hackers to remotely gain administrative control over huge fleets of computers without entering a password. This is according to technical analyses published Friday. As Ars reported Monday, the authentication bypass vulnerability resides in a feature known as Active Management Technology. AMT, as it's usually called, allows system administrators to perform a variety of powerful tasks over a remote connection. Among the capabilities: changing the code that boots up computers, accessing the computer's mouse, keyboard, and monitor, loading and executing programs, and remotely powering on computers that are turned off. In short, AMT makes it possible to log into a computer and exercise the same control enjoyed by administrators with physical access. AMT, which is available with many vPro processors, was set up to require a password before it could be remotely accessed over a Web browser interface. But, remarkably, that authentication mechanism can be bypassed by entering any text string—or no text at all. According to a blog post published Friday by Tenable Network Security, the cryptographic hash that the interface's digest access authentication requires to verify someone is authorized to log in can be anything at all, including no string at all.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/05/the-hijacking-flaw-that-lurked-in-… 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/

2 2

Debian 8.8 Released
by Peter Reutemann 07 May '17

07 May '17

'The Debian Project announced today Debian GNU/Linux 8.8, the most advanced stable version of the Jessie series, which brings corrections for numerous packages and various security flaws discovered and patched since the release of the Debian GNU/Linux 8.7 maintenance update back in mid-January 2017... "This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available," reads today's announcement. "Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian 8 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old 'jessie' CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated." Debian 8.8 contains more than 150 bug fixes and security updates.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/05/06/2243254 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/

1 0

Google Docs phishing problem
by Ian Young 05 May '17

05 May '17

As seen in an ITP weekly update. Spear phishing This one will definitely leave a mark and I suspect we'll be seeing waves from it for years to come. Google Docs have become a default mechanism for sharing and collaborating on single documents. For those of you not in the realm of writing stuff for a living, you possibly don't know about the special circle of hell reserved for those who don't track changes or for the group email that results in 50 different versions of the same document that need to be subsumed into one. Google Docs has meant everyone can work on the one piece at the same time and when they've exhausted their pedantic nit-picking about fonts, Oxford commas or whether Kiwi needs to be upper or lower case (upper case for New Zealanders, lower case for the bird or the dollar) then you can simply print it off and be done. Now some bugger has gone and ruined it for all by releasing a nasty phishing attack which sends out a spam inviting you to edit a Google Doc, then raiding your contacts and spamming all of them with the same message. By now it will have more email addresses than there are grains of sand on Whangapoua beach. Google has rushed out the big guns to take on the phish and says it has managed to shut it down (I haven't seen it at all, so I'm pleased about that) but already the damage will be done. These kinds of attacks simply undermine what makes the internet so useful - the openness of it all. One day soon the whole thing will be locked down (I see the newest version of Windows only allows apps to be installed from Microsoft's own app store) and the value and character that makes the internet what it is will be gone. The Verge - Google Docs users hit with sophisticated phishing attack Wired - Don't Open That Google Doc Unless You're Positive It's Legit CNN - Major phishing attack targets Google Docs users

1 0

Google Releases DIY Open Source Raspberry Pi Voice Kit Hardware
by Peter Reutemann 05 May '17

05 May '17

'Google has decided to take artificial intelligence to the maker community with a new initiative called AIY. This initiative will introduce open source AI projects to the public that makers can leverage in a simple way. Today, Google announces the first-ever AIY project. Called "Voice Kit," it is designed to work with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B to create a voice-based virtual assistant. Billy Rutledge, Director of AIY Projects for Google, explains, "The first open source reference project is the Voice Kit: instructions to build a Voice User Interface (VUI) that can use cloud services (like the new Google Assistant SDK or Cloud Speech API) or run completely on-device. This project extends the functionality of the most popular single board computer used for digital making -- the Raspberry Pi. The included Voice Hardware Accessory on Top (HAT) contains hardware for audio capture and playback: easy-to-use connectors for the dual mic daughter board and speaker, GPIO pins to connect low-voltage components like micro-servos and sensors, and an optional barrel connector for dedicated power supply. It was designed and tested with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/04/208240 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/

1 0

No More FTP At Debian
by Peter Reutemann 04 May '17

04 May '17

'It looks like anonymous FTP is officially on its way out. While many public repositories have deprecated it in favor of HTTP, I was rather surprised to see Debian completely drop it on their public site. In a blog post, the team cited the FTP's lack of support for caching or acceleration, and declining usage as some of the reasons for their decision.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/05/04/1731227 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/

1 0

Linux Distro Count
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 May '17

03 May '17

I can remember reports from several years ago that distrowatch.com was tracking about 350 different Linux distros. Curious to know what the situation is like now, I went to their home page a few minutes ago, and counted the number of “<option ...>” entries in the “Select Distribution” popup menu at the top, and got 290. This figure also includes a few non-Linux OSes. But even so, I think it’s fair to say the sheer variety of Linux distros has scarcely abated over the last decade.

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Linux Kernel 4.11 Officially Released
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '17

02 May '17

'Linux kernel 4.11 has been in development for the past two months, since very early March, when the first Release Candidate arrived for public testing. Eight RCs later, we're now able to download and compile the final release of Linux 4.11 on our favorite GNU/Linux distributions and enjoy its new features. Prominent ones include scalable swapping for SSDs, a brand new perf ftrace tool, support for OPAL drives, support for the SMC-R (Shared Memory Communications-RDMA) protocol, journalling support for MD RAID5, all new statx() system call to replace stat(2), and persistent scrollback buffers for VGA consoles... The Linux 4.11 kernel also introduces initial support for Intel Gemini Lake chips, which is an Atom-based, low-cost computer processor family developed using Intel's 14-nanometer technology, and better power management for AMD Radeon GPUs when the AMDGPU open-source graphics driver is used.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/05/01/0534253 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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UEFI Secure Boot Booted From Debian 9 'Stretch'
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '17

02 May '17

'In a release update from last week, release team member Jonathan Wiltshire wrote that "At a recent team meeting, we decided that support for Secure Boot in the forthcoming Debian 9 'stretch' would no longer be a blocker to release. The likely, although not certain outcome is that stretch will not have Secure Boot support." "We appreciate that this will be a disappointment to many users and developers," he continued, "However, we need to balance that with the limited time available for the volunteer teams working on this feature, and the risk of bugs being introduced through rushed development." The decision not to offer Secure Boot support at release leaves Debian behind Red Hat and Suse, making it the only one of Linux's three main branches not to support the heir-to-BIOS and the many security enhancements it offers.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/05/01/1452209 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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Intel Patches Remote Execution Hole That's Been Hidden In Its Chips Since 2008
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '17

02 May '17

'Intel processor chipsets have, for roughly the past nine years, harbored a security flaw that can be exploited to remotely control and infect vulnerable systems with virtually undetectable spyware and other malicious code. Specifically, the bug is in Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT), Standard Manageability (ISM) and Small Business Technology (SBT) firmware versions 6 to 11.6. According to Chipzilla, the security hole allows "an unprivileged attacker to gain control of the manageability features provided by these products." That means hackers exploiting the flaw can silently snoop on a vulnerable machine's users, make changes to files and read them, install rootkits and other malware, and so on. This is possible across the network, or with local access. These management features have been available in various Intel chipsets for years, starting with the Nehalem Core i7 in 2008, all the way up to Kaby Lake Core parts in 2017. According to Intel today, this critical security vulnerability, labeled CVE-2017-5689, was found and reported in March by Maksim Malyutin at Embedi. To get the patch to close the hole, you'll have to pester your machine's manufacturer for a firmware update, or try the mitigations here. These updates are hoped to arrive within the next few weeks.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/01/228211 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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Richard Stallman Interviewed By Bryan Lunduke
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '17

26 Apr '17

'Many Slashdot readers know Bryan Lunduke as the creator of the humorous "Linux Sucks" presentations at the annual Southern California Linux Exposition. He's now also a member of the OpenSUSE project board and an all-around open source guy. (In September, he released every one of his books, videos and comics under a Creative Commons license, while his Patreon page offers a tip jar and premiums for monthly patrons). But now he's also got a new "daily computing/nerd show" on YouTube, and last week -- using nothing but free software -- he interviewed the 64-year-old founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman. "We talk about everything from the W3C's stance on DRM to opinions on the movie Galaxy Quest," Lunduke explains in the show's notes.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/24/0738250 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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Systemd-Free Devuan Announces Its First Stable Release Candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '17

26 Apr '17

' Devuan 1.0.0-RC is announced, following its beta 2 release last year. The Debian fork that spawned over systemd controversy is reaching stability and plans long-term support. Devuan deploys an innovative continuous integration setup: with fallback on Debian packages, it overlays its own modifications and then uses the merged source repository to ship images for 11 ARM targets, a desktop and minimal live, vagrant and qemu virtual machines and the classic installer isos. The release announcement contains several links to projects that have already adopted this distribution as a base OS. "Dear Init Freedom Lovers," begins the announcement, "Once again the Veteran Unix Admins salute you!" It points out that Devuan "can be adopted as a flawless upgrade path from both Debian Wheezy and Jessie. This is a main goal for the Devuan Jessie stable release and has proven to be a very stable operation every time it has been performed. "' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/04/22/1822216 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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Anbox Can Run Android Apps Natively On Linux (In A Container)
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '17

26 Apr '17

'Canonical engineer Simon Fels has publicly released an Alpha version of Anbox. Similar to the method employed for Android apps on ChromeOS, Anbox runs an entire Android system (7.1.1 at present) in an LXC container. Developed over the last year and a half, the software promises to seamlessly bring performant Android apps to the Linux desktop. After installing Anbox (based on Android 7.1.1) and starting Anbox Application Manager, ten apps are available: Calculator, Calendar, Clock, Contacts, Email, Files, Gallery, Music, Settings, and WebView. Apps run in separate resizeable windows. Additional apps (ARM-native binaries are excluded) can be installed via adb. Installation currently is only supported on a few Linux distributions able to install snaps. Contributions are welcome on Github. In a blog post Simon describes it as "a side project" that he's worked on for over a year and a half. "There were quite a few problems to solve on the way to a really working implementation but it is now in a state that it makes sense to share it with a wider audience."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/22/207253 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 PC Maker System76 Plans To Design And Manufacture Its Own Hardware
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '17

26 Apr '17

'System76 is one of only a handful of PC vendors that exclusively sells computers with Linux-based software. Up until now, that's meant the company has chosen hardware that it could guarantee would work well with custom firmware and the Ubuntu Linux operating system... Starting in 2018 though, you may be able to buy a System76 computer that was designed and built in-house... CAD files for System76 computers will be open source, allowing anyone with the appropriate skills and equipment to build or modify their own cases based on the company's designs. "We're prototyping with acrylic and moving to metal soon," the company says in a blog post, adding "Our first in-house designed and manufactured desktops will ship next year. Laptops are more complex and will follow much later."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/04/23/0325234 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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The Linux Foundation Launches IoT-focused Open Source EdgeX Foundry
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '17

26 Apr '17

'The Linux Foundation launches the open source EdgeX Foundry -- an attempt to unify and simplify the Internet of Things. The Linux Foundation says, "EdgeX Foundry is unifying the marketplace around a common open framework and building an ecosystem of companies offering interoperable plug-and-play components. Designed to run on any hardware or operating system and with any combination of application environments, EdgeX can quickly and easily deliver interoperability between connected devices, applications, and services, across a wide range of use cases. Interoperability between community-developed software will be maintained through a certification program."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/04/24/1511239 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 4.11 Delayed For a Week
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '17

26 Apr '17

'Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds said over the weekend that v4.11 version of Linux has hit a speed bump in the form of "NVMe power management that apparently causes problems on some machines." The Register adds: "It's not entirely clear what caused the [NVMe] issue (it wasn't just limited to some NVMe hardware, but also particular platforms), but let's test it." Which sounds like a good idea, given that flash memory on the PCIe bus is increasingly mainstream. That problem and "a couple of really annoying" bugs mean that Torvalds has decided to do an eighth release candidate for Linux 4.11. "I did get fixes for the issues that popped up, so I could have released 4.11 as-is," Torvalds wrote, "but it just doesn't feel right."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/04/24/1633209 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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Canadian Regulator Puts Foot Down On Net Neutrality
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Apr '17

23 Apr '17

While the Trump administration has rolled back consumer protections on net neutrality in the USA, the Canadian CRTC has come out firmly in favour of it <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/21/canada_net_neutrality/>. It has said that “zero rating”--the practice of ISPs favouring certain online services by not counting them towards data caps, is bad because differential pricing practices, generally speaking, result in (a) a preference toward certain subscribers over others, (b) a preference toward certain content providers over others, (c) a disadvantage to subscribers who are not eligible for, or interested in, a differential pricing practice offering, and (d) a disadvantage to content providers that are not eligible for, or included in, an offering. In other words, they are anticompetitive, no matter what some may try to argue.

1 1

File System Improvements To the Windows Subsystem for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 21 Apr '17

21 Apr '17

'In the latest Windows Insider build, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) now allows you to manually mount Windows drives using the DrvFs file system. Previously, WSL would automatically mount all fixed NTFS drives when you launch Bash, but there was no support for mounting additional storage like removable drives or network locations. Now, not only can you manually mount any drives on your system, we've also added support for other file systems such as FAT, as well as mounting network locations. This enables you to access any drive, including removable USB sticks or CDs, and any network location you can reach in Windows all from within WSL.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/04/20/1422256 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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Unicode In Domain Names Opens Up Homograph Attacks
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Apr '17

19 Apr '17

The problem is not new: it was identified over a decade ago. But no fix has been forthcoming. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/18/homograph_attack_again/>

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meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 18 Apr '17

18 Apr '17

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up on Monday next week: "With Canonical killing off its desktop environment Unity in favor of GNOME, let's have a look at some of the available desktop environments: - Ian Stewart: Ubuntu 17.04 with Unity - William Mckee: LXDE - Peter Reutemann: MATE (vanilla and mint-flavored) Also, Ian Young: Getting a DVB-T card for laptops going - a live experiment." Details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/237234793/ If you want to demo another desktop environment, like KDE or XFCE, then please let me know. Always looking for volunteers! :-) 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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demo at meeting on Monday
by Ian Young 17 Apr '17

17 Apr '17

Afraid I won't be talking about Unity as Ian S has suggested - I have only ever used it briefly and never really quite got what it was all about. However if there is any spare time I could bring a DVB-T card for use with laptops I got recently. It seems to be a live one, lights up and is seen by a laptop and various Linux software applications for viewing TV. Alas, not scanning any channels. Perhaps someone knows all about this, or at any rate more than I do. The device in question is badged as an HP EC300 and has a DIBcom chipset. ~ Ian Y

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suggestion for upcoming meeting
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '17

15 Apr '17

Hi everyone With Canonical pulling out of Unity development, how about we showcase the various desktops that have been available for a long time and are *still* available at the next meeting (April 24th)? If you want to present one, then please reply to this list naming the desktop of your choice. Thanks. Cheers, Peter PS And stay safe with Cyclone Cook! The next 24 hours will be interesting... -- 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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Dozens Of Canonical Employees Resign As Ubuntu Switches To GNOME, Shuttleworth Returns As CEO
by Peter Reutemann 12 Apr '17

12 Apr '17

'More than 80 Canonical workers are facing the axe as founder Mark Shuttleworth has taken back the role of chief executive officer. The number, revealed today by The Reg, comes as Shuttleworth assumed the position from CEO of eight years Jane Silber, previously chief operating officer. The Reg has learned 31 or more staffers have already left the Ubuntu Linux maker ahead of Shuttleworth's rise, with at least 26 others now on formal notice and uncertainty surrounding the remainder. One individual has resigned while others, particularly in parts of the world with more stringent labour laws (such as the UK), are being left in the dark. The details come after The Reg revealed plans for the cuts as a commercial get-fit programme instituted by Shuttleworth. The Canonical founder is cutting numbers after an external assessment of his company by potential new financial backers found overstaffing and that projects lacked focus.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/12/1844230 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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The Kodi Development Team Wants To Be Legitimate and Bring DRM To the Platform
by Peter Reutemann 11 Apr '17

11 Apr '17

'The XBMC/ Kodi development team has taken a lot of heat over the years, mostly due to third-party developers introducing piracy plugins to the platform. In many cases, cheap Android computers are often sold with these plugins pre-installed with the Kodi or XBMC name attached to them -- something that caused Amazon to ban sales of such devices. The Kodi team is not happy about this, and has taken the fight to the sellers. The Kodi team is now trying to work with rights holders to introduce DRM and legitimate plugins to the platform. Is this the first step towards creating a true one-stop do it yourself Linux entertainment system?' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/04/11/1911215 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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Canonical Founder Criticizes Free Software Developers Who 'Hate On Whatever's Mainstream'
by Peter Reutemann 10 Apr '17

10 Apr '17

'Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth said Saturday that "I came to be disgusted with the hate" on Canonical's display server Mir, saying it "changed my opinion of the free software community." After announcing his company was abandoning Unity for GNOME, Shuttleworth posted a gracious thank-you note to the Unity community Friday on Google Plus. But on Saturday, he added a sharper comment: "I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream. When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too. The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence. Fuck that shit." The comment begins by saying "The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind - it's free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance. We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their life's work and make it freely available."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/09/1829209 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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Smart TV hack embeds attack code into broadcast signal—no access required
by Chris O'Halloran 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

https://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2017/04/smart-tv-hack-embeds-attack-code… A new attack that uses terrestrial radio signals to hack a wide range of Smart TVs raises an unsettling prospect—the ability of hackers to take complete control of a large number of sets at once without having physical access to any of them.

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Android devices can be fatally hacked by malicious Wi-Fi networks
by Peter Reutemann 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

'A broad array of Android phones is vulnerable to attacks that use booby-trapped Wi-Fi signals to achieve full device takeover, a researcher has demonstrated. The vulnerability resides in a widely used Wi-Fi chipset manufactured by Broadcom and used in both iOS and Android devices. Apple patched the vulnerability with Monday's release of iOS 10.3.1. "An attacker within range may be able to execute arbitrary code on the Wi-Fi chip," Apple's accompanying advisory warned. In a highly detailed blog post published Tuesday, the Google Project Zero researcher who discovered the flaw said it allowed the execution of malicious code on a fully updated 6P "by Wi-Fi proximity alone, requiring no user interaction." Google is in the process of releasing an update in its April security bulletin. The fix is available only to a select number of device models, and even then it can take two weeks or more to be available as an over-the-air update to those who are eligible. Company representatives didn't respond to an e-mail seeking comment for this post.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/04/wide-range-of-android-phones-vulne… 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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Canonical Killing Unity For Ubuntu Linux, Will Switch To the Superior GNOME
by Peter Reutemann 05 Apr '17

05 Apr '17

'Today, the company admits that it is throwing in the towel on Unity, as well as its vision for convergence with devices like phones and tablets. Starting with Ubuntu 18.04, the wonderful GNOME will once again become the default desktop environment! "We are wrapping up an excellent quarter and an excellent year for the company, with performance in many teams and products that we can be proud of. As we head into the new fiscal year, it's appropriate to reassess each of our initiatives. I'm writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS," says Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu and Canonical.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/04/05/1812232 <rant> Well, looks like some consolidation is happening, not that I consider Gnome3 "superior". IMHO MATE is still far better (and making me more efficient) than Gnome3. Introducing dynamic workspaces was the worst decision ever... </rant> 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/

2 1

Samsung’s Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written
by Peter Reutemann 05 Apr '17

05 Apr '17

'Tizen, the open source operating system that Samsung uses on a range of Internet-of-Things devices and positions as a sometime competitor to Android, is chock full of egregious security flaws, according to Israeli researcher Amihai Neiderman. Samsung has been developing the operating system for many years. The project started as an Intel and Nokia project, and Samsung merged its Bada operating system into the code in 2013. Like Android, it's built on a Linux kernel, with a large chunk of open source software running on top. App development on Tizen uses C++ and HTML5.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/samsungs-tizen-is-riddled-with-secu… 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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Fuchsia: Google's new operating system
by Bryan Baldwin 04 Apr '17

04 Apr '17

Fuchsia is a new operating system <https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/718267/206c8a5fbf0ee2ea/> being built more or less from scratch at Google. The news of the development of Fuchsia made a splash on technology news sites in August 2016, although many details about it are still a mystery. It is an open-source project; development and documentation work is still very much ongoing. Despite the open-source nature of the project, its actual purpose has not yet been revealed by Google. From piecing together information from the online documentation and source code, we can surmise that Fuchsia is a complete operating system for PCs, tablets, and high-end phones. The source to Fuchsia and all of its components is available to download at its source repository <https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/>. If you enjoy poking around experimental operating systems, exploring the innards of this one will be fun. Fuchsia consists of a kernel plus user-space components on top that provide libraries and utilities. There are a number of subprojects under the Fuchsia umbrella in the source repository, mainly libraries and toolkits to help create applications. Fuchsia is mostly licensed under a 3-clause BSD license, but the kernel is based on another project called LK (Little Kernel) <https://github.com/littlekernel/lk> that is MIT-licensed, so the licensing for the kernel is a mix. Third-party software included in Fuchsia is licensed according to its respective open-source license. https://www.osnews.com/story/29747/Fuchsia_Google_s_new_operating_system

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The r/place Experiment
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Apr '17

04 Apr '17

Over the April Fool’s weekend, Reddit, the (in)famous social-media and troll-hangout site, tried something very unusual: they created a blank 1000-by-1000-pixel canvas, and turned their users loose on it to draw whatever they liked. The only restriction was a limit on how quickly any one user could update the image: just 1 pixel every 5 minutes. The resulting time-lapse animation is quite breathtaking to watch <https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/in-memoriam-reddits-72-hour-live-gra…>. Look at the number of logos and national flags: a battle between the French and German flags gets resolved with the French one running its bars vertically, the German one horizontally, and an EU flag placed at the intersection; another brief skirmish between the Greek and Turkish flags gets resolved with them being placed side by side, joined by a heart. Yes, there are the occasional rude words. But it’s surprising how little of that kind of thing appears--or perhaps it was removed too quickly by competing groups with other fish to fry. Watch the animations a few times; you’ll see something new each time.

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If-I-Buy-It-Do-I-Own-It Chapter 339: Tractors
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Mar '17

31 Mar '17

Owners of John Deere tractors are resorting to pirated firmware in order to gain the ability to repair their own property: <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170322/04582036973/tractor-owners-using…> Are farmers in NZ impacted by any of this? I see that John Deere tractors are indeed sold here.

2 1

Phrase Of The Week: “Necessary Hashtags”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Mar '17

28 Mar '17

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s immortal quotation has spawned a T-shirt: <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170327/20224837016/limited-edition-gear…>. Do you have the necessary hashtags? Do they come in a nice series of tubes?

1 0

After 20 Years, OpenSSL Will Change To Apache License 2.0, Seeks Pasts Contributors
by Peter Reutemann 26 Mar '17

26 Mar '17

'After nearly 20 years and 31,000 commits, OpenSSL wants to change to Apache License v2.0. They're now tracking down all 400 contributors to sign new license agreements, a process expected to take several months. Slashdot reader rich_salz shares links to OpenSSL's official announcement (and their agreement-collecting web site). "This re-licensing activity will make OpenSSL, already the world's most widely-used FOSS encryption software, more convenient to incorporate in the widest possible range of free and open source software," said Mishi Choudhary, Legal Director of Software Freedom Law Center and counsel to OpenSSL. "OpenSSL's team has carefully prepared for this re-licensing, and their process will be an outstanding example of 'how to do it right.'" Click through for some comments on the significance of this move from the Linux Foundation, Intel, and Oracle.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/26/2258218 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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Ubuntu Linux 17.04 'Zesty Zapus' Final Beta Now Available For Download
by Peter Reutemann 26 Mar '17

26 Mar '17

'The final beta of Ubuntu 17.04 'Zesty Zapus' became available for download Thursday. While it is never a good idea to run pre-release software on production machines, Canonical is claiming that it should be largely bug free at this point. In other words, if you understand the risks, it should be a fairly safe. Home users aside, this is a good opportunity for administrators to conduct testing prior to the official release next month. "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta release of the Ubuntu 17.04 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products. Codenamed 'Zesty Zapus', 17.04 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution," says Adam Conrad, Canonical. "The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/25/2127238 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/

3 2

meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 23 Mar '17

23 Mar '17

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday: "William Mckee has been to nz.js.con recently and will talk about the A/V setup used for recording the presentations: hdmi2usb" https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/237234774/ BTW It's not too late if you still want to present something! Just email me. 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/

1 0

GNOME 3.24 Released
by Peter Reutemann 22 Mar '17

22 Mar '17

'GNOME 3.24 just finished its six-month development cycle, and it's now the most advanced stable version of the modern and popular desktop environment used by default in numerous GNU/Linux distributions. It was developed since October 2016 under the GNOME 3.23.x umbrella, during which it received numerous improvements. Prominent new features of the GNOME 3.24 desktop environment include a Night Light functionality that promises to automatically shift the colors of your display to the warmer end of the spectrum after sunset, and a brand-new GNOME Control Center with redesigned Users, Keyboard and Mouse, Online Accounts, Bluetooth, and Printer panels. As for the GNOME apps, we can mention that the Nautilus file manager now lets users browse files as root (system administrator), GNOME Photos imitates Darktable's exposure and blacks adjustment tool, GNOME Music comes with ownCloud integration and lets you edit tags, and GNOME Calendar finally brings the Week view. New apps like GNOME Recipes are also part of this release. The full release notes can be viewed here. Softpedia notes in conclusion: "As mentioned before, it will take at least a couple of weeks for the new GNOME 3.24 packages to land on the stable repositories of your favorite distro, which means that you'll most probably be able to upgrade from GNOME 3.22 when the first point release, GNOME 3.24.1, is out on April 12, 2017."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/03/22/205210 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/

1 0

Firefox for Linux is Now Netflix Compatible
by Peter Reutemann 22 Mar '17

22 Mar '17

'For a while, Netflix was not available for traditional Linux-based operating systems, meaning users were unable to enjoy the popular streaming service without booting into Windows. This was due to the company's reliance on Microsoft Silverlight. Since then, Netflix adopted HTML5, and it made Google Chrome and Chromium for Linux capable of playing the videos. Unfortunately, Firefox -- the open source browser choice for many Linux users -- was not compatible. Today this changes, however, as Mozilla's offering is now compatible with Netflix!' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/22/1510220 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/

1 0

suggestions for upcoming meeting?
by Peter Reutemann 19 Mar '17

19 Mar '17

Hi everyone Any suggestions for the upcoming meeting? https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/237234774/ Thanks. 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/

4 6

Big Surprise: HTTPS Interception Middleboxes Weaken Your Security
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Mar '17

17 Mar '17

Some companies run boxes that intercept outgoing TLS/SSL connections, by using their own certificates that employees’ machines are configured to accept, in order to enforce policies on access to outside sites. Trouble is, many of these boxes introduce their own vulnerabilities into the system, by allowing new kinds of attacks from outside. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/17/are_you_undermining_your_web_secur…>

1 0

Microsoft Locks Ryzen, Kaby Lake Users Out of Updates On Windows 7, 8.1
by Peter Reutemann 17 Mar '17

17 Mar '17

'In a move that will shock a lot of people, someone at Microsoft decided to deny Windows 7/8.1 updates to the users of the following CPU architectures: Intel seventh (7th)-generation processors (Kaby Lake); AMD "Bristol Ridge" (Zen/Ryzen); Qualcomm "8996." It's impossible to find any justification for this decision to halt support for the x86 architectures listed above because you can perfectly run MS-DOS on them. Perhaps, Microsoft has decided that the process of foisting Windows 10 isn't running at full steam, so the company created this purely artificial limitation. I expect it to be cancelled soon after a wide backlash from corporate customers. KitGuru notes that users may encounter the following error message when they attempt to update their OS: "Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows." The only resolution is to upgrade to Windows 10.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/03/16/2047215 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/

1 0

Canonical Preps Security Lifeboat, Yells: Ubuntu 12.04 Hold-Outs, Get In
by Peter Reutemann 15 Mar '17

15 Mar '17

'Canonical is extending the deadline for security updates for paying users of its five-year-old Ubuntu 12.04 LTS -- a first. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS will become the first Long Term Support release of Canonical's Linux to get Extended Security Maintenance (ESM). There are six LTS editions. All others have been end-of-lifed -- and given no security reprieve. LTS editions of Ubuntu Linux are released every two years. Desktop support runs for three years and the server edition receives security patches and updates for a period of five years. Security updates for 12.04 were scheduled to run out on April 28, 2017 but that now won't happen for those on Canonical's Ubuntu Advantage programme. They'll now receive important security fixes for the kernel and "most essential" userspace packages on their servers running 12.04. In what's shaping up to be Canonical's Windows XP moment over at Microsoft, the Linux spinner rolled out the lifeline because customers are clinging to 12.04.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/1754232 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/

1 0

From DoNotPay To DoNotDeport?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Mar '17

14 Mar '17

Last year, a 19-year-old student named Josh Browder released a chatbot that helped people avoid paying illegal parking fines. Now he is adapting the same technology to areas like compensation for flight delays, the rights of those who are HIV-positive, and refugees trying to cope with foreign legal systems <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170308/10393436870/chatbot-that-helped-…>.

1 0

Debian Update: Stretch Frozen, Bug-Squashing Parties Planned
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'"Debian project leader Mehdi Dogguy has written a status update concerning the work going on for the first two months of 2017," reports Phoronix. An anonymous reader quotes their report: So far this year Debian 9.0 Stretch has entered its freeze, bug squashing parties are getting underway for Stretch, the DebConf Committee is now an official team within Debian, a broad Debian Project roadmap is in the early stages of talk, and more. Bug-Squashing Parties have been scheduled this week in Germany and Brazil, with at least two more happening in May in Paris and Zurich, and for current Debian contributors, "Debian is willing to reimburse up to $100 (or equivalent in your local currency) for your travel and accommodation expenses for participating in Bug Squashing Parties..." writes Dogguy, adding "If there are no Bug Squashing Parties next to your city, can you organize one?"' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/12/2210215 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/

1 0

New 'USG' Firewalls Protect USB Drives From Malicious Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'A developer has created the USG, "a small, portable hardware USB firewall...to prevent malicious USB sticks and devices laden with malware from infecting your computer." An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: The problem is that most computers automatically trust every USB device that's plugged in, which means malicious code can run without warning... Cars, cash registers, and some ATMs also come with USB ports, all of which can be vulnerable to cyberattacks from a single USB stick. That's where the USG firewall comes in...a simple hardware serial link that only accepts a very few select number of safe commands, which prevents the device from executing system commands or intercepting network traffic. That means the data can flow from the USB device, but [it] effectively blocks other USB exploits. The firmware has been open sourced, and the technical specifications have also been released online "to allow anyone to build their own from readily available development boards."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/03/11/1658238 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/

1 0

Munich's IT Lead: 'No Compelling Reason' To Switch Back To Windows From Linux
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'"The man who runs Munich's central IT says there is no practical reason for the city to write off millions of euros and years of work to ditch its Linux-based OS for Windows," reports TechRepublic. Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino summarizes a German-language article: Karl-Heinz Schneider, lead of Munich's local system house company IT(a)M, goes on to claim, "We do not see pressing technical reasons to switch to MS and MS Office... The council [in their recent plans] didn't even follow the analysts' suggestion to stick with using LibreOffice." Furthermore, Schneider stated that "System failures that angered citizens in recent years never were related to the LiMux project, but due to new bureaucratic procedures..." and apparently decisions by unqualified personnel at the administrative level, as Munich's administration itself states.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/11/0142247 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/

1 0

Linux Foundation Chief: Businesses 'Will Fail' If They Don't Use Open Source Code
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'First Vint Cert said there's a "thread of openness" that runs throughout the internet, adding that "the internet, itself, has open characteristics" and thrives on "permissionless innovation." And Eric Brewer, vice president of infrastructure at Google, touched on the same themes, according to Tech Republic. "Linux, Brewer said, won some of the early internet wars because it was open, but also because it was the most innovative of its time. He also said that companies should work with open source for the value of the ecosystem and community, not just the value of the code." Then Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin told the audience that business models were already changing to include open source, and ultimately made the argument that organizations that "don't harvest the shared innovation" of open source "will fail." ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/12/0317215 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/

1 0

Netflix access using Linux
by Roderick Aldridge 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

Does Spark prevent clients using Netflix under Linux? If so is there a work-around? Thanks for any info. Rod

3 5

Sensible Password Rules
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

NIST came out last year with some guidelines on how to choose passwords <https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/08/18/nists-new-password-rules-what-y…>. The “dos” should not be too surprising, but it is worth mentioning the “don’ts”: * No restrictions on what characters are allowed * No password hints * No knowledge-based authentication * No expiration without some good reason Also, they are no longer recommending the use of SMS for two-factor authentication. I wonder what you should use instead?

1 0

Look before you paste from a website to terminal
by Peter Reutemann 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

'Most of the time when we see a code snippet online to do something, we often blindly copy paste it to the terminal. Even the tech savy ones just see it on the website before copy pasting. Here is why you shouldn't do this.' -- source: https://lifepluslinux.blogspot.co.nz/2017/01/look-before-you-paste-from-web… Hint: hidden commands thanks to HTML/CSS. 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/

3 2

Microsoft Continues Porting Visual C++ To Linux
by Peter Reutemann 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

'Long-time Slashdot reader Billly Gates shared some news from Microsoft's Visual C++ blog: Visual Studio 2017 now lets developers write C++ code for Linux desktops, servers, and other devices without an extension, targeting specific architectures, including ARM: Visual Studio will automatically copy and remotely build your sources and can launch your application with the debugger... Today Visual Studio only supports building remotely on the Linux target machine. It is not limited to specific Linux distros, but we do have dependencies on the presence of some tools. Specifically, we need openssh-server, g++, gdb and gdbserver. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/11/0431252 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/

1 0

US ISP Verizon Wireless To Stop Giving Out Static IPv4 Addresses
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Mar '17

10 Mar '17

New business customers with Verizon Wireless will no longer get static IPv4 addresses. Instead, they will get “persistent prefix” IPv6 addresses <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/verizon_running_out_of_ipv4_addres…>. I assume “persistent prefix” means they get a fixed value for the top 48 bits, and they can do what they like with the bottom 80 bits. This /48 subnet allocation seems to be the common thing for IPv6.

1 0

Engineering Around Social Media Border Searches
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Mar '17

08 Mar '17

In the wake of the plan floated by the US Government to demand passwords to social media accounts from people wanting to enter the country, here <http://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/02/10/engineering-around-social-media-bor…> is a discussion of some likely countermeasures that should still give the cover of plausible deniability.

1 3

Quote Of The Week
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Mar '17

08 Mar '17

“One of the reasons society hasn't destroyed itself is that people with intelligence and skills tend to not be criminals for a living. If it ever became a viable career path, we're doomed.” -- Bruce Schneier <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/building_smarte.html>

1 0

Litebook launches a $249 linux laptop
by Ron Dean 07 Mar '17

07 Mar '17

Presumably this is in $US -- Ron Dean Unit 61 Village Gardens 16 Rototuna Road Hamilton 3210 New Zealand Home 64 7 8493904 Mob 02102259172

1 0

The City of Munich Might Stick With Linux
by Peter Reutemann 06 Mar '17

06 Mar '17

'Munich's "LiMux" project brought FOSS software to their city's IT administration -- until a vote last month on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows. "Since this decision was reached, the majority of media have reported that a final call was made to halt LiMux and switch back to Microsoft software," reports the Free Software Foundation Europe. "This is, however, not an accurate representation of the outcome of the city council meeting." An anonymous reader quotes their report: The opposing parties were overruled, but the decision was amended such that the strategy document must specify which LiMux-applications will no longer be needed, the extent in which prior investments must be written off, and a rough calculation of the overall costs of the desired unification... [Only then will the city council make their final decision...] We succeeded thus far in forcing the mayor Dieter Reiter to postpone the final decision, and this was possible through the unwavering pressure created by joint efforts between The Document Foundation, KDE, OSBA, and the FSFE together with all the individuals who wrote to city council members and took the issue to the media. Although the mandate is highly suggestive in that it suggests that the existing vendor-neutral approach is to be replaced with a proprietary solution, it leaves the door open... The new mandate buys us some time. And we will keep going. Some politicians said they'd never received this much input from the public before, and the Free Software Foundation Europe says the city's issues were caused "from organizational problems, including lack of clear structures and responsibilities," which should not be attributed to the Linux operating system. "LiMux as such is still one of the best examples of how to create a vendor-neutral administration based on Free Software."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/04/0532214 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/

1 0

Litebook Launches A $249 Linux Laptop
by Peter Reutemann 06 Mar '17

06 Mar '17

'It's "like a Chromebook for Linux users on a budget," reports ZDNet. The new 2.9-pound Litebook uses Intel's Celeron N3150 processor and ships with a 14.1-inch display and a 512-gigabyte hard drive with full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080). For $20 more they'll throw in a 32-gigabyte SSD to speed up your boot time. "Unlike Windows laptops, Litebooks are highly optimized, come without performance hogging bloatware, [are] designed to ensure your privacy, and are entirely free of malware and viruses," writes the company's web site. They also add that their new devices "are affordable, customizable, and are backwards compatible with Windows software."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/06/0050203 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/

1 0

Tim Berners-Lee Endorses DRM In HTML5, Offers Depressingly Weak Defense Of His Decision
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Mar '17

02 Mar '17

Has the godfather of the Web just sold it down the river? <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170301/03062936815/tim-berners-lee-endo…>

2 1

Researchers find “severe” flaw in WordPress plugin with 1 million installs
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '17

01 Mar '17

'More than 1 million websites running the WordPress content management system may be vulnerable to hacks that allow visitors to snatch password data and secret keys out of databases, at least under certain conditions. The vulnerability stems from a "severe" SQL injection bug in NextGEN Gallery, a WordPress plugin with more than 1 million installations. Until the flaw was recently fixed, NextGEN Gallery allowed input from untrusted visitors to be included in WordPress-prepared SQL queries. Under certain conditions, attackers can exploit the weakness to pipe powerful commands to a Web server's backend database.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/severe-vulnerability-in-wordpress-… 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/

1 0

New $10 Raspberry Pi Zero comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '17

01 Mar '17

'The newest member of the Raspberry Pi product line costs just $10 plus tax and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability. The "Raspberry Pi Zero W" is an updated version of the Raspberry Pi Zero. While it lacks some niceties, like Ethernet and full-sized USB-A ports, it's smaller than the flagship Pi and a fraction of the cost. The original Raspberry Pi Zero was released in November 2015 at a price of just $5/£4. The new Pi Zero W is almost identical to the original, but doubles the price to $10 and adds a wireless chip that supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (2.4GHz-only) and Bluetooth 4.0.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/new-10-raspberry-pi-… 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/

2 1

CSS font-size parameter
by Ian Stewart 27 Feb '17

27 Feb '17

Hi All, There was discussion at last nights meeting regarding the CSS "font-size" property and which units to use. E.g. px (pixels), % (percentage), pt (point), or em (a unit in the field of typography originally based on the width of an "M"), . Note that there are more than just these four units, see here<https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html>. If you buy-off on the statements from w3schools.com, then this<http://%20https://www.w3schools.com/TAgs/ref_pxtoemconversion.asp> web-page provides a pixel to em converter, and to quote from their CSS page<https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp>... "Note: If you do not specify a font size, the default size for normal text, like paragraphs, is 16px (16px=1em)." "The em size unit is recommended by the W3C. 1em is equal to the current font size. The default text size in browsers is 16px. So, the default size of 1em is 16px. The size can be calculated from pixels to em using this formula: pixels/16=em." Although admitting there is much debate over which is the better approach, Kyle Schaeffer, on his website<http://kyleschaeffer.com/development/css-font-size-em-vs-px-vs-pt-vs/>, adds in an addendum from 2011... "Generally, when I create a new design, I will use percent on the body element (body { font-size: 62.5%; }), and then use the em unit to size it from there." Or, for some quotes from wikipedia...<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)> "One em was traditionally defined as the width of the capital M in the current typeface and point size..." "In Cascading Style Sheets, the em unit is the height of the font in nominal points or inches." ...And finally there is one "rem" to save us all... "To make style rules that depend only on the default font size, another unit was developed: the rem. The rem, or root em, is the font size of the root element of the document. Unlike the em, which may be different for each element, the rem is constant throughout the document." More on rem's here<https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html#future> cheers, Ian.

1 0

Running Emacs As A Daemon With systemd
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Feb '17

26 Feb '17

Some instructions here <http://blog.refu.co/?p=1296> for creating a systemd “.service” file for running Emacs. Initially he did it as a privileged systemwide service, then he figured out how to make it per-user without needing special privileges. (Found in a user comment to this article <http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=systemd-233>.)

1 0

Image-To-Image Translation In TensorFlow
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Feb '17

24 Feb '17

This page <http://affinelayer.com/pixsrv/index.html> lets you create schematic renditions of various kinds of objects, and then synthesize corresponding photorealistic representations of those objects, based on pieces of images taken from the training databases. You can draw your own outlines, or just click the “Random” buttons to see what it does. Results range from entertaining to disturbing.

1 0

“Smart Contracts” May Not Be So Smart
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Feb '17

23 Feb '17

To review, “smart contracts” are a feature of some blockchain-based systems, which allow an interaction between multiple parties to be encoded as a set of rules which will be executed automatically by the system, so that neither the parties nor anyone else can prevent those rules from being enforced. ... To give just one example, a legal contract need not try to anticipate absolutely every relevant event that might occur. If some weird thing happens that is not envisioned in a regular legal contract, the parties can work out a modification to the contract that seems reasonable to them, and failing that, a judge might decide the outcome, subject to established legal principles. Similarly, a single error or “bug” in writing a regular contract, causing its literal meaning to differ from what the parties intended, is unlikely to lead to extreme results because the legal system will often resolve such a problem by trying to be reasonable. Contrast this with “smart contracts” where a bug in a “contract’s” code can lead to a perverse result that may allow one party to exploit the bug, extracting much of the value out of the arrangement with no recourse for the other parties. That’s what happened with the DAO in Ethereum, leading to a controversial attempt to unwind a legal-according-to-the-rules set of transactions, and dividing the Ethereum community. <http://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/02/20/smart-contracts-neither-smart-not-c…>

1 0

Catching Fishing Pirates With Signals Analysis
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Feb '17

22 Feb '17

Every vessel on the ocean broadcasts its identity and location using the automatic identification system (AIS), which is mostly used to prevent ships from colliding. These days it can also be used to track ship locations, as most AIS data is relayed through satellites. If you want to hide on the sea, the first thing you do is make your vessel "dark" by turning off your AIS broadcasts. What's interesting about pirate fishing vessels, however, is that they need to rendezvous with legitimate reefers if they want to get paid for their catch. To find the pirates, Amos told Ars, he and Bergman needed to look for odd patterns in the behavior of reefers. The group partnered with Global Fishing Watch to work on mapping satellite AIS data, and those patterns began to emerge. "Often with reefers they come to a halt in the middle of the ocean," Amos said. "We don’t see other broadcasting vessels, but we can be confident based on what that ship is doing that they must be rendezvousing with dark vessels." <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/to-catch-a-thief-with-satellite…> I guess this counts as a “big data” application...

1 0

ESA Adopts CC-BY-SA
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

The European Space Agency is releasing its images and videos under a Free Creative Commons licence <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/21/esa_turns_valve_pours_open_images_…>. This kind of thing is long overdue. Though I can imagine some commercial entities not liking the sharealike proviso...

1 0

meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up next Monday: "With Firefox losing against Chrome and sliding lower and lower in the browser rankings, how about we have a good look at the browsers available for Linux and benchmark them? Michael Cree has been to linux.conf.au recently and will talk a bit about his experience. " More details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/237234743/ 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/

1 0

When The Internet Of Things Meets The Second-Hand Market
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

The global head of IBM's X-Force Red penetration-testing team, Charles Henderson, created a flurry at RSA last week by relating how a connected car app could still access a car he traded in – two years after he'd sold it. ... Henderson feels that none of that should have been possible years after he disposed of the car. Especially as he says he ran a factory reset, reset his garage door and had traded the old car through a factory dealership ... which ... should have revoked his access to the old car. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/20/connected_car_in_the_secondhand_lo…> Seems to me this could happen with other kinds of “smart” devices as well.

1 0

Aboard A Cable Survey Ship
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

I mention this <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/16/iregi_tours_submarine_cable_survey_…> because it is scouting out the route for the “Southern Cross NEXT” cable. And also it was formerly an NZ Navy vessel.

1 0

Linus Torvalds: Talk of Tech Innovation is Bullshit. Shut Up and Get the Work Done
by Peter Reutemann 16 Feb '17

16 Feb '17

'Linus Torvalds believes the technology industry's celebration of innovation is smug, self-congratulatory, and self-serving. From a report on The Register: The term of art he used was more blunt: "The innovation the industry talks about so much is bullshit," he said. "Anybody can innovate. Don't do this big 'think different'... screw that. It's meaningless. Ninety-nine per cent of it is get the work done." In a deferential interview at the Open Source Leadership Summit in California on Wednesday, conducted by Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, Torvalds discussed how he has managed the development of the Linux kernel and his attitude toward work. "All that hype is not where the real work is," said Torvalds. "The real work is in the details." Torvalds said he subscribes to the view that successful projects are 99 per cent perspiration, and one per cent innovation.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/02/16/1530223 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/

1 0

An Ordinary User?s Adventures In Linux
by rowan schischka 16 Feb '17

16 Feb '17

Third party ink works but don't fill up 100% and save OEM ink to periodically flush. I did not use a cheap printer for a few weeks and the third party ink blocked up the plumbing.

1 0

Google's Not-so-secret New OS
by Peter Reutemann 16 Feb '17

16 Feb '17

'According to reports late last year, Google is working on a new operating system called Andromeda. Much about it is still unknown, but according to the documentations Google has provided on its website, it's clear that the Fuchsia is the actual name of the operating system, and the kernel is called Magenta. A tech enthusiast dug around the documentations to share the followings: To my naive eyes, rather than saying Chrome OS is being merged into Android, it looks more like Android and Chrome OS are both being merged into Fuchsia. It's worth noting that these operating systems had previously already begun to merge together to an extent, such as when the Android team worked with the Chrome OS team in order to bring Update Engine to Nougat, which introduced A/B updates to the platform. Google is unsurprisingly bringing up Andromeda on a number of platforms, including the humble Intel NUC. ARM, x86, and MIPS bring-up is exactly what you would expect for an Android successor, and it also seems clear that this platform will run on Intel laptops. My best guess is that Android as an API and runtime will live on as a legacy environment within Andromeda. That's not to say that all development of Android would immediately stop, which seems extremely unlikely. But Google can't push two UI APIs as equal app frameworks over the long term: Mojo is clearly the future. Ah, but what is Mojo? Well it's the new API for writing Andromeda apps, and it comes from Chromium. Mojo was originally created to "extract a common platform out of Chrome's renderer and plugin processes that can support multiple types of sandboxed content."' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/17/02/15/1023242 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/

1 0

JavaScript Attack Breaks ASLR On 22 CPU Architectures
by Peter Reutemann 16 Feb '17

16 Feb '17

'Five researchers from the Vrije University in the Netherlands have put together an attack that can be carried out via JavaScript code and break ASLR protection on at least 22 microprocessor architectures from vendors such as Intel, AMD, ARM, Allwinner, Nvidia, and others. The attack, christened ASLRCache, or AnC, focuses on the memory management unit (MMU), a lesser known component of many CPU architectures, which is tasked with improving performance for cache management operations. What researchers discovered was that this component shares some of its cache with untrusted applications, including browsers. This meant that researchers could send malicious JavaScript that specifically targeted this shared memory space and attempted to read its content. In layman's terms, this means an AnC attack can break ASLR and allow the attacker to read portions of the computer's memory, which he could then use to launch more complex exploits and escalate access to the entire OS. Researchers have published two papers [1, 2] detailing the AnC attack, along with two videos[1, 2] showing the attack in action.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/02/15/2149235 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/

1 0

QOTW
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

Re the Internet of Things: A doctor friend of mine said to me many years ago, "Good thing they won't let you put 'General Protection Fault' down as a cause of death on the certificate." <https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/3104004>

1 0

Bruce Schneier At The Open Source Leadership Summit
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

"We all had this special right to code the world as we saw fit," said Schneier. "My guess is we're going to lose that right, because it's too dangerous to give to a bunch of techies." <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/14/the_government_is_coming_for_your_c…>

1 0

Would A Phone That Makes Calls Fly In 2017?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

A company called HMD Global wants to bring back the legendary Nokia 3310 candy-bar phone <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/report-hmd-to-resurrect-legendary-n…>. You regularly see comments from people lamenting the complexity of modern smartphones, and wishing for a return to the simpler days of mobile phones that were good at making calls, with less of all the extra bells and whistles. As well as having much longer battery life. Now we will see if resurrecting a popular model from the days when phones did exactly that will succeed, given that today making calls is one of the last things that people do with their phones...

3 2

Engineering Around Social Media Border Searches
by rowan schischka 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

What happens when the 2-factor authentication text gets sent to my NZ phone number, i cant exactly hand that over. I think ill start a bot that posts cat pictures from a fake account. Give the authorities what they want to see. -- Kind Regards Rowan Schischka

1 0

Now sites can fingerprint you online even when you use multiple browsers
by Peter Reutemann 14 Feb '17

14 Feb '17

'Researchers have recently developed the first reliable technique for websites to track visitors even when they use two or more different browsers. This shatters a key defense against sites that identify visitors based on the digital fingerprint their browsers leave behind.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/now-sites-can-fingerprint-you-onli… 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/

1 0

Web Copy-Protection As A Censorship Tool
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Feb '17

13 Feb '17

There has been ongoing work at the W3C for some time to standardize “Encrypted Media Extensions” (EME), with the usual claims that many publishers will refuse to offer their content without this kind of “protection”. The mitigating argument has been made that such a “feature” would be optional--the browser user could always turn it off. Well, it turns out Google has removed the option to disable its implementation of EME from Chrome. A further worry is that many countries’ copyright laws include provisions that prohibit the circumvention of copy-protection mechanisms. So work by security researchers to audit browsers that implement EME could be interpreted as violations of such provisions. Many have requested that the W3C explicitly state that EME conformance cannot be (ab)used in such a way, but so far it has refused. <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170201/14285436609/codification-web-drm…>

1 1

The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows
by Peter Reutemann 12 Feb '17

12 Feb '17

'"The prestigious FOSS project replacing the entire city's administration IT with FOSS based systems, is about to be cancelled and decommissioned," writes long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino. TechRepublic reports: Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021. The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client. If the city leaders back the proposition it would be a notable U-turn by the council, which spent years migrating about 15,000 staff from Windows to LiMux, a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS, and only completed the move in 2013... The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using "market standard products" that offer the "highest possible compatibility" with external and internal software... The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority. The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/11/1930217 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/

1 0

Bored with ho-hum cloud backups? Use Usenet (yes, Usenet!) instead
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '17

11 Feb '17

'Cloud backups these days are all the rage—for good reason. Rather than dealing with shuffling physical media offsite, you can simply back up the data offsite, where it can be stored in one of many professionally monitored data centers. Unfortunately, this kind of service isn’t free, and the cost can be a barrier. However, there is a cost-effective way to store your cloud backups: Usenet. With access to a Usenet news server, you can simply upload your backup there, and it will be stored redundantly in news servers all over the world. Best of all, this approach typically costs considerably less than a cloud backup service.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/bored-with-ho-hum-cl… 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/

1 0

Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '17

11 Feb '17

'Google successfully made its case to a jury last year that its use of Java APIs in Android was "fair use." A San Francisco federal jury rejected Oracle's claim that the mobile system infringed Oracle's copyrights. But Oracle isn't backing down. Late Friday, the company appealed the high-profile verdict to a federal appeals court. This is the latest stage of a seemingly never-ending legal battle over intellectual property that began in 2010. The conflict has meandered through two federal trials, in addition to multiple trips to the appellate courts and to the Supreme Court. Oracle opened its brief to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit right where it left off after losing its case. Among other things, Oracle is refusing to believe that the "fair use" defense to copyright-infringement allegations should have protected Google from having to pay billions of dollars in damages.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/oracle-refuses-to-accept-pro-go… 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/

1 0

When A Safety Check Becomes A Point Of Failure...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Feb '17

10 Feb '17

All inbound networking for GCE instances, load balancers and VPN tunnels enter via shared layer 2 load balancers. These load balancers are configured with changes to IP addresses for these resources, then automatically tested in a canary deployment, before changes are globally propagated. The issue was triggered by a large set of updates which were applied to a rarely used load balancing configuration. The application of updates to this configuration exposed an inefficient code path which resulted in the canary timing out. From this point all changes of public addressing were queued behind these changes that could not proceed past the testing phase. In other words, the safety system for validating configuration updates before allowing deployment suffered a failure which blocked all configuration updates thereafter. I guess the answer is to add a watchdog for the canaries ... how many more metaphors can I mix in? <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/10/google_cloud_outage_explanation/>

1 0

We Finally Have A Computer That Can Survive The Surface Of Venus
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Feb '17

10 Feb '17

The Venera landers that the USSR sent to Venus in the 1970s and 1980s were able to survive for up to 2 hours by heavy use of refrigeration and pre-cooling. But now researchers are testing electronics based on silicon carbide, which can work without special protection at very high voltages and temperatures: The chip, a simple 3-stage oscillator, kept functioning [in Venus-like conditions] at a steady 1.26MHz for 521 hours (21.7) days before the [test rig] had to be shut down. <https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/02/venus-computer-chip/>.

1 0

Met Goes Public Domain
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Feb '17

10 Feb '17

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is putting 375,000 digitized images online under a Creative Commons CC0 (effectively Public Domain) licence. As Techdirt notes <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170208/13005636669/met-goes-public-doma…>, it shouldn’t have to bother specifying such a licence: we should be able to take for granted that digitizations of public-domain works should themselves be public-domain. Unfortunately, others with control over such works (and sizeable legal budgets) think differently. So all kudos to the Met for making this very clear.

2 1

The Right Not To Be Searchable
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Feb '17

09 Feb '17

“[A] website in Romania ... obtained and posted Canadian judicial and tribunal decisions. These were all public documents, but they were not previously indexed by Google, which meant their contents were effectively hidden. The Romanian site allowed its copies to be indexed by Google, which made the decisions and the Canadian citizens involved visible for the first time -- something the people affected were not happy about. They complained to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who ruled that the Romanian site violated Canadian privacy law.” <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170208/02314536660/landmark-court-decis…>

1 0

Microsoft hosts the Windows source in a monstrous 300GB Git repository
by Peter Reutemann 07 Feb '17

07 Feb '17

'Microsoft has been working to enhance Git to improve the way it handles vast repositories. Central to this effort is a new project released (in part) as open source Git Virtual File system (GVFS). The premise of GVFS is straightforward enough: rather than fetching all the data at once, only a bare skeleton of the repository needs to be populated up front. The virtualized file system subsequently retrieves additional data on a demand-driven, as-needed basis. Building one particular Windows component, for example, will cause GVFS to fetch the files that make up that component, along with anything that the component depends on, but it will stop short of fetching all the many hundreds of gigabytes the repository contains.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/microsoft-hosts-the-… I remember using SourceSafe way back. It may not have been great, but it was a big improvement over "not having any" version control. :-) 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/

3 4

Intel's Atom C2000 Chips Are Bricking Products – And It's Not Just Cisco Hit
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

Certain models of Intel Atom chips are prone to clock-signal failures after about 18 months, rendering them unusable. This seems to be related to a warning put out by Cisco about some of its products, but neither company will confirm there is a link. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/06/cisco_intel_decline_to_link_product…>

1 0

Chrome 56 Quietly Added Bluetooth Snitch API
by Peter Reutemann 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

'When Google popped out Chrome 56 at the end of January it was keen to remind us it's making the web safer by flagging non-HTTPS sites. But Google made little effort to publicise another feature that's decidedly less friendly to privacy, because it lets websites ask about users' Bluetooth devices and harvest information from them through the browser. That's more a pitch to developers, as is clear in this YouTube video from Pete LePage of the Chrome Developers team. "Until now, the ability to communicate with Bluetooth devices has been possible only for native apps. With Chrome 56, your Web app can communicate with nearby Bluetooth devices in a private and secure manner, using the Web Bluetooth API," Google shares in the video. "The Web Bluetooth API uses the GATT [Generic Attribute Profile - ed] protocol, which enables your app to connect to devices such as light bulbs, toys, heart-rate monitors, LED displays and more, with just a few lines of JavaScript." In other words, the API lets websites ask your browser "what Bluetooth devices can you see," find out what your fridge, and so on, is capable of, and interact with it.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/06/1425208 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/

1 0

25G/50G Ethernet
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

Thought there already was a 100-gigabit-per-second Ethernet spec. But it seems that still isn’t quite practical enough (cost? range?) for common use. Nor is the 40-gigabit-per-second fallback. So here we have two more lesser specs: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/31/25g_and_50g_ethernet_spec_finalised/>.

1 1

Windows DRM-Protected Files Used To Decloak Tor Browser Users
by rowan schischka 04 Feb '17

04 Feb '17

It will be interesting to see if advertising companies will exploit this. You can see it as an exploit to track users but it should be possible for users to discover who is tracking them -- Rowan Schischka

1 0

Windows DRM-Protected Files Used To Decloak Tor Browser Users
by Peter Reutemann 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

'Downloading and trying to open Windows DRM-protected multimedia files can deanonymize Tor Browser users and reveal their real IP addresses, security researchers from Hacker House have warned. On Windows, multimedia files encoded with special Microsoft SDK will automatically open an IE window and access a URL to check the file's license. Since this request is sent outside of the Tor Browser and without user interaction, this can be used to ping law enforcement servers and detect the user's real IP address and other details. For example, law enforcement could host properly signed DRM-protected files on sites pretending to host child pornography. When a user would try to view the file, the DRM multimedia file would use Internet Explorer to ping a server belonging to the law enforcement agency. The same tactic can also be used to target ISIS militants trying to view propaganda videos, illegal drug and weapons buyers trying to view video product demos, political dissidents viewing news videos, and more. A video of the attack is available here.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/02/231229 Not sure whether that applies to Linux/Wine/IE as well. 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/

1 0

Judge Stops PS3 Linux Settlement
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

<https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/game-over-for-ps3-linux-settlem…>: “The California judge presiding over the litigation is now killing the proposed settlement amid concerns the lawyers representing the class haven't explained why they should get $2.25 million for their legal services, especially considering that the deal has made it burdensome on gamers to get their cash.” Seems par for the course for class-action settlements, that the lawyers rake it in in fees, while the actual plaintiffs end up with peanuts...

1 0

How Google fought back against a crippling IoT-powered botnet and won
by Peter Reutemann 02 Feb '17

02 Feb '17

'In September, KrebsOnSecurity—arguably the Internet's most intrepid source of security news—was on the receiving end of some of the biggest distributed denial-of-service attacks ever recorded. The site soon went dark after Akamai said it would no longer provide the site with free protection, and no other DDoS mitigation services came forward to volunteer their services. A Google-operated service called Project Shield ultimately brought KrebsOnSecurity back online and has been protecting the site ever since. At the Enigma security conference on Wednesday, a Google security engineer described some of the behind-the-scenes events that occurred shortly after Krebs asked the service for help, and in the months since, they said yes. While there was never significant hesitancy to bring him in, the engineers did what engineers always do—weighed the risks against the benefits. "What happens if this botnet actually takes down google.com and we lose all of our revenue?" Google Security Reliability Engineer Damian Menscher recalls people asking. "But we considered [that] if the botnet can take us down, we're probably already at risk anyway. There's nothing stopping them from attacking us at any time. So we really had nothing to lose here."' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/how-google-fought-back-against-a-c… 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/

1 0

Gitlab Backups ... What Backups?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Feb '17

02 Feb '17

A harried sysadmin accidentally deletes nearly 300GB of data during a troublesome data replication process ... and then they discover that, out of 5 different recovery procedures they thought they had available, none work. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/01/gitlab_data_loss/>

2 2

LibreOffice 5.3 Released, Touted As 'One of the Most Feature-Rich Releases' Ever
by Peter Reutemann 02 Feb '17

02 Feb '17

'A new month, and a brand new version of open-source office suite LibreOffice is now available to download. And what a release it is. LibreOffice 5.3 introduces a number of key new features and continues work on improving the look and feel of the app across all major platforms. The Document Foundation describes LibreOffice 5.3 as "one of the most feature-rich releases in the history of the application." One of the headline features is called MUFFIN interface, a new toolbar design similar to the Microsoft Office Ribbon UI.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/01/1326204 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/

1 0

System76 GPGPU Server
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Feb '17

01 Feb '17

System76 announces its new Ibex Pro box <http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=System76-Ibex-Pro-GPU-Se…> which can hold up to nearly 40,000 NVidia CUDA cores <https://system76.com/servers/ibex>. Not sure how many you get for that USD9,575 base price... Seems like there is no really competitive market for GPGPU hardware--it is totally dominated by NVidia, and nobody else gets a serious look-in. So the industry-standard OpenCL API languishes, since the dominant player prefers its own proprietary alternative, and there is little pressure from users to be able to port their code to competing products.

1 0

Google AI on raspberry pi
by rowan schischka 31 Jan '17

31 Jan '17

"Google has developed a huge range of tools for machine learning, IoT, wearables, robotics, and home automation, and it wants Raspberry Pi fans to fill out a survey <https://google.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3yMNYryaP4WsCwJ?Source=RaspPi> that will help it to understand what tools to provide." http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-is-bringing-ai-to-your-raspberry-pi/ I just took the survey and I don't get any impression of what tools they will bring to the r-pi. It was pretty simple, no email address required to participate. The questions were how old are you, what area are your projects in, and how frequently do you work on your projects. Im sure with the processing power of r-pi we'll see some sort of web API which wouldn't really need to be specific to the r-pi. It will be interesting to watch what they come up with so if you have maker projects, take the survey. -- Rowan Schischka

1 0

Backblaze 2016 Hard Drive Report
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jan '17

31 Jan '17

<https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/8tb-hgst-disks-show-…>: Traditionally, the company has stuck with consumer-oriented disks. Backblaze argues that the extra cost of "enterprise" disks doesn't make sense for its usage pattern. Other studies have shown no significant difference in reliability between “enterprise” and “consumer” disks anyway.

2 2

USB-C Power Meter
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jan '17

31 Jan '17

With all the worries over bad USB-C cables and vendors that play fast and loose with the power spec, here <https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/01/usb-c-power-meter/> is a measurement gadget that can help to some extent. But as the article says: If you really want to test a new charger or cable before plugging it into an expensive device, your best bet is some DIYish electronics involving a breakout board and a multimeter. But there doesn't seem to be a plug-and-play version of that yet.

1 0

The Trump-And-Dump Bot
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Jan '17

30 Jan '17

This bot <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/30/trumps_corporate_twitter_trolling_t…> analyzes Trump’s tweets, identifies the company he is badmouthing, and does a quick short-sell to profit from the momentary dip in the company’s stock value. T3's approach involves using a Python Twitter bot and API calls to services like Indico for machine learning (sentiment analysis and entity recognition), Clearbit for company identification, Google Finance for stock pricing, and E‑Trade for executing the trade. They have been donating the profits to charity. Imagine that--an ethical use for short-selling...

1 0

Windows Users: It Might Be Time To Stop Using Antivirus
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jan '17

27 Jan '17

The nail in the coffin, according to O'Callahan, is that software vendors rarely speak out about antivirus issues "because they need cooperation from the AV vendors." He then links to a mailing list thread in 2012, where he suggests keeping a list of the AV software that interferes with Firefox. Later in the thread, Mozilla PR swoops in and tells him to knock it off. <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/antivirus-is-bad/>

1 0

Code-Signing Vs Software Developers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Jan '17

26 Jan '17

This item <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/windows_code_signing_changes/> is about Microsoft adopting some recommendations from the “Certificate Authority Security Council” that code-signing keys should be embedded in special hardware devices, not simply kept as files on a regular computer. Apparently they are also suggesting some yet-to-be-defined “cloud-based service” as an alternative, which raises some questions. One of the commenters linked this article <http://www.pcworld.com/article/2846653/storage-for-spies-how-the-fips-stand…> which gives a good overview of hardware signing key devices that are certified to the various levels of the FIPS 140-2 standard. The idea is not a new one. But like most security techniques that are worth a darn, it can cause all kinds of irritations in practical use.

1 0

KDE-Branded Laptop
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Jan '17

26 Jan '17

Announcing ... the KDE Slimbook <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Slimbook-Laptop>.

2 1

why ifconfig may not work these days
by Ian Young 26 Jan '17

26 Jan '17

>From time to time I find myself wondering where *ifconfig* has gone. This article may provide the answer. https://lwn.net/Articles/710533/ See also: http://baturin.org/docs/iproute2/

2 1

Mossberg: What?s up with Firefox, the browser that time forgot?
by rowan schischka 26 Jan '17

26 Jan '17

Happy new year everybody. Somehow i missed the first meeting. For the next one could we do a live benchmark of web browsers available on linux? Theres a couple of things to consider such as: how quickly new browser versions are available - security updates accuracy of rendering - i have found Midori feels fast but does not display some web pages the same as others Theres also flash and HTML5 we could look into. A few years ago (around 2010/2011) I made a simple HTML5 canvas with some animations that looked like a space invaders game, from memory, on debian i had the following results: IE, can't remember version, got around 20 fps chrome scored 120 something fps firefox received around 12 fps I dont know what benchmarks are available for us to use but it would be interesting, it would also be interesting to look at comparing browsers on fedora and ubuntu -- Kind Regards Rowan Schischka

2 1

Mossberg: What’s up with Firefox, the browser that time forgot?
by Peter Reutemann 25 Jan '17

25 Jan '17

'Until about five years ago, techies and others who wanted a speedier, extensible, more privacy-oriented web browser on their desktops often immediately downloaded Mozilla's Firefox to use instead of Internet Explorer on Windows or Safari on the Mac. But those days seem long ago. Firefox is hardly discussed today, and its usage has cratered from a high of over 30 percent of the desktop browser market in 2010 to about 12 percent today, according to Mozilla, citing stats from NetMarketShare. (Various other analytics firms put the share as low as 10 percent or as high as 15 percent.) And Firefox’s share on mobile devices is even worse, at under 1 percent, according to the same firm. Today, the go-to-browser is Google’s Chrome, which has over a 50 percent share on both desktop and mobile, according to NetMarketShare.' -- source: http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14376710/walt-mossberg-mozilla-firefox-br… 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/

1 0

AdNauseam, Google, And The Myth Of The “Acceptable Ad”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Jan '17

24 Jan '17

[AdNauseam 3.0] contains some new features we’ve been excited to discuss with users and critics, but the discussion was quickly derailed when we learned that Google had banned AdNauseam from its store, where it had been available for the past year. We also learned that Google has disallowed users from manually installing or updating AdNauseam on Chrome, effectively locking them out of their own saved data, all without prior notice or warning. <http://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/01/24/adnauseam-google-and-the-myth-of-th…>

1 0

Zorin distro reviewed on Distrowatch
by Ian Young 24 Jan '17

24 Jan '17

For a more detailed appraisal of Zorin than was possible at the last meeting see issue 695 of Distrowatch Weekly. http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20170116#zorin See also with reference to Fedora a derivative called Korora bubbling under at 49 on Distrowatch. Tracks Fedora releases without much delay. Korora is a little blue penguin. 'Korora was born out of a desire to make Linux easier for new users, while still being useful for experts. The main goal of Korora is to provide a complete, easy-to-use system for general computing. Originally based on Gentoo Linux in 2005, Korora was re-born in 2010 as a Fedora Remix with tweaks and extras to make the system "just work" out of the box.'

1 0

Asus Tinker Board
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jan '17

23 Jan '17

Quad-core ARM-based board with more powerful GPU with 4K video capability, also 24-bit audio, and the site linked to quotes a price of about £46+VAT, so not too far off competing with the Raspberry π. Except it’s 32-bit only. <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/asus-tinker-board-price-specs-releas…>

1 0

Already on probation, Symantec issues more illegit HTTPS certificates
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jan '17

23 Jan '17

'A security researcher has unearthed evidence showing that three browser-trusted certificate authorities (CAs) owned and operated by Symantec improperly issued more than 100 unvalidated transport layer security certificates. In some cases, those certificates made it possible to spoof HTTPS-protected websites.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2017/01/already-on-probation-symantec-issue… 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/

1 0

Learn-To-Code Site Code.org Loses Student Work Due To Index Bug
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jan '17

23 Jan '17

For your revision this week: understanding integer overflow. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/22/code_dot_org_index_bug_wiped_studen…>

1 0

New Term To Scare You With: “Line Of Death”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Jan '17

20 Jan '17

... a.k.a. the demarcation between pixels in a web browser window that the user can trust, and those they can’t. And how every new advance in “user experience” seems calculated to weaken this line. Another lovely new term: “picture-in-picture phishing attack”. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/19/browser_line_of_death/>

1 0

SporeStack: Anonymous, Disposable Servers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jan '17

19 Jan '17

Paid for with Bitcoin: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/19/disposable_servers_available_anonym…>.

1 0

Microsoft-Owned Minecraft No Longer Supported On Microsoft-Owned Windows Phone/Mobile
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jan '17

19 Jan '17

<http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/microsoft-owned-minecraft-no-longer-s…>: In the meantime, however, the game stands as yet another anomaly in the company's approach to software development. It isn't following the rules it suggests that others should obey, and third-party platforms—including the relatively rarely used Fire OS—are seeing stronger software support than the company's own. This tendency to offer better support for non-Windows systems continues to annoy Windows fans, and the failure to capitalize on the universal-ness of UWP leads developers to wonder, "If Microsoft isn't consistently writing universal apps, why should we?"

2 2

Big Astronomy Destroys Big Data
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '17

18 Jan '17

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/18/murchison_radiotelescope_opens_the_…>: A curious detail in the CSIRO blog post caught Vulture South's eye: ASKAP is producing 5.2 TB per second of data, which the CSIRO reckons is equivalent to about 15 per cent of the current data rate for the whole of the Internet. That's bigger, by a nice fat margin, than two things: the connection from Murchison to the Pawsey supercomputer centre in Perth; the amount of disk available once the data arrives in Perth. Clearly, there's a serious amount of data reduction happening along the way... In short, 5.2TB/s of raw data in, 22MB/s of high-res image data out. The latter is what’s stored for further processing.

1 0

Project Isambard To Test Feasibility Of An ARM-Based Supercomputer
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '17

18 Jan '17

Four UK universities will build a 10,000+-core ARM super to determine whether such a beast can beat the usual Xeon-based beasties on price/performance. There’s a suggestion of support for other architectures for comparison purposes as well. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/18/arm_met_office_hpc/>

1 0

Guilty SPARC: Oracle euthanizes Solaris 12, expunging it from roadmap
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jan '17

18 Jan '17

'Rumors have been circulating since late last year that Oracle was planning to kill development of the Solaris operating system, with major layoffs coming to the operating system's development team. Others speculated that future versions of the Unix platform Oracle acquired with Sun Microsystems would be designed for the cloud and built for the Intel platform only and that the SPARC processor line would meet its demise. The good news, based on a recently released Oracle roadmap for the SPARC platform, is that both Solaris and SPARC appear to have a future. The bad news is that the next major version of Solaris—Solaris 12— has apparently been canceled, as it has disappeared from the roadmap. Instead, it's been replaced with "Solaris 11.next"—and that version is apparently the only update planned for the operating system through 2021.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/oracle-sort-of-confir… 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/

1 0

meeting on Monday (incl SGM)
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jan '17

18 Jan '17

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up next Monday: SGM with the following (preliminary) agenda: - elect Vice president Meeting topics - distro roundup: Fedora, Devuan, Zorin - a bit different: ReactOS, FreeDOS Details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/236393751/ 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/

1 0

Vivaldi is building “Opera as it should’ve been”
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jan '17

16 Jan '17

'Working in tight niches occupied by the behemoths of the Internet world is hard; doing it as a startup without external funding is even harder. The 35-strong team of Vivaldi, the spiritual successor to Opera, is doing exactly that: two years after the first public beta and eight months after the release of version 1.0, the Web browser has about 1 million users—but it still isn't turning a profit. Vivaldi, which was envisioned by the Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, is catering first of all to power users and the tech-savvy lot. The team, however, has high expectations for their product and hopes it will have a broader appeal over time in order to start actually making money.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/vivaldi-opera-one-mil… 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/

1 0

Raspberry Pi upgrades Compute Module with 10 times the CPU performance
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jan '17

16 Jan '17

'The Raspberry Pi Compute Module is getting a big upgrade, with the same processor used in the recently released Raspberry Pi 3. The Compute Module, which is intended for industrial applications, was first released in April 2014 with the same CPU as the first-generation Raspberry Pi. The upgrade announced today has 1GB of RAM and a Broadcom BCM2837 processor that can run at up to 1.2GHz. "This means it provides twice the RAM and roughly ten times the CPU performance of the original Compute Module," the Raspberry Pi Foundation announcement said.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/raspberry-pi-upgrades… 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/

1 0

Debian 8.7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '17

15 Jan '17

'Debian 8.7 has been released. An anonymous reader quotes Debian.org: This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian 8 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "jessie" CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated. Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update. 86 packages have been updated -- including some fixes for systemd. ("Rework logic to determine when we decide to add automatic deps for mounts; various ordering fixes for ifupdown; systemctl: Fix argument handling when invoked as shutdown...")' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/01/15/0144253 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/

1 0

Mint 18.1 review: Forget about Wayland and get comfy with the command line
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '17

12 Jan '17

'For better or worse, the Wayland graphics stack is the future of Linux and will undoubtedly be the big story of 2017 (unless the Mir display server actually ships, in which case it might share the spotlight). What's more, once you've used Wayland in my experience, you'll want it everywhere. Sadly, only one of the major distros has Wayland today: Fedora. That doesn't mean Mint 18.1, which happened to arrive the same day that our Fedora review published, isn't a great release. But this new release doesn't have Wayland. Nor will the distro at large have Wayland until Linux Mint's upstream source, Ubuntu, ships Wayland as part of an LTS release. That likely won't happen until at least 2018, when the next Ubuntu LTS release comes out. By that time, theoretically, Ubuntu itself will be using Mir, and Ubuntu GNOME (and possibly other flavors) will move to Wayland. Then and only then will Mint be in a position to move to Wayland. And even then, it may not happen right away. That means there's no Wayland in Mint's near future, and it also means Mint will be a little out of the loop going forward. That's an interesting transition for the project given that it started out with a more aggressive development pace, adopting new features and iterating quickly compared to other Linux distros. All that changed a couple of years ago when Mint opted to stop chasing Ubuntu and built off the LTS cycle. Mint is no longer quite as cutting edge as it once was, which shows up in some important areas like the kernel (which is only at 4.4 even now). Mint is also still plagued by the some of the poorly implemented update and security issues that have dogged it for years. You can keep Mint up-to-date and secure, but Mint actively encourages users (especially inexperienced) users to avoid updates. That more than anything else would prevent me from picking Mint 18.1 over, well, any other distro. Although Mint 18.1 builds on the same set of base packages found in the previous release (Linux Mint 18.0), which are based on Ubuntu 16.04, there's still plenty of new stuff in 18.1 to make Mint fans happy. Most of what's new is not underlying system change; rather, it's higher level stuff (the stuff that makes Mint, well, Mint).' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/mint-18-1-review-forget-about-waylan… 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/

1 0

Lawyer Rewrites Instagram's Privacy Policy So Kids and Parents Can Have a Meaningful Talk About Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jan '17

10 Jan '17

Not exactly Linux related, but nonetheless interesting to read a privacy policy in "plain English" rather than legal mumbo jumbo: 'Kids, of age between 12 and 15, are increasingly joining Facebook's Instagram service, but according to a research, they likely don't even understand what they are signing up for. Jenny Afia, a privacy law expert at Schillings, a UK-based law firm, rewrote Instagram's terms of service in child-friendly language, so that not only the kids but their parents are able to understand what things are at stake. Highlighted are the changes the lawyer has made: Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and ** *we will not pay you for that*. [...] We may keep, use and share your personal information with companies connected with Instagram. This information includes your name, email address, school, where you live, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use Instagram, and ** *any other personal information we find* such as your birthday or who you are chatting with, ** * including in private messages (DMs)*. [...] We might send you adverts connected to your interests which we are monitoring. ** *You cannot stop us doing this and it will not always be obvious that it is an advert*.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/01/09/1413215 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/

2 1

You Know The Machines Are Taking Over When ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jan '17

07 Jan '17

... a San Diego TV station does a story about a young girl who asks her parents’ Amazon Echo to get her a dollhouse, which automatically causes an order to be placed for one; but the fun really begins when the voice of the TV presenter triggers additional Amazon Echo devices in the homes of those watching the news, causing them to try to place orders for dollhouses as well. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/07/tv_anchor_says_alexa_buy_me_a_dollh…>

2 1

https://kite.com - Your programming copilot
by Chris O'Halloran 05 Jan '17

05 Jan '17

A utility that may be available to Linux users soon. https://kite.com/

2 2

An SQL Injection Attack Is A Legal Company Name In The UK
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Jan '17

04 Jan '17

I wonder if any real-world databases will fall over trying to include this name. ;) <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/an_sql_injectio.html>

1 0

Rutgers U In Financial Trouble From Cloud Failure
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Jan '17

04 Jan '17

Rutgers University in New Jersey has put its “Cornerstone” admin system on Oracle’s cloud services. Ongoing hiccups in this, going back to September, have caused it serious trouble trying to pay its bills, leading to unpleasant consequences like the electricity supply being cut off to some offices. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/03/rutgers_university_oracle_cloud_fou…>

1 0

Cloudflare Leap-Second Panic
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

Cloudflare’s DNS proxy software misbehaved on New Year’s Day, because of the extra second that was added to December 31st: <http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2017/01/cloudflare-leap-second-software-p…>. Because they occur so rarely, it seems very difficult to test software to work correctly with leap seconds. This is one reason why some groups propose getting rid of them altogether.

1 0

Photocopier Security
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/photocopier_sec.html>: A modern photocopier is basically a computer with a scanner and printer attached. This computer has a hard drive, and scans of images are regularly stored on that drive. This means that when a photocopier is thrown away, that hard drive is filled with pages that the machine copied over its lifetime. As you might expect, some of those pages will contain sensitive information. Some of the reader discussion veers into one or two only-semi-related, but interesting areas. For example, did you know that Xerox invented an image-compression technique (JBIG2) for its photocopiers that would actually introduce typos into documents?

1 0

Is The Desktop CPU Dead?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intel-core-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-review/>: For yet another year, high-end desktop CPU performance remains at a standstill. With low-power laptops and all-in-ones continuing to outsell desktops—and with high-end workloads like video editing, 3D animation, and machine learning increasingly being offloaded to GPUs—perhaps it was inevitable that Intel would stop caring so much about its high-end consumer CPUs. Or maybe Intel's struggles with the 14nm process forced its hand, and the last few years of disappointing performance improvements are down to physics rather than passivity. Those laptop sales are declining, too...

1 0

Listening To Streaming Radio
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jan '17

02 Jan '17

Currently listening to Sydney’s TripleJ radio station using the ffplay utility (part of FFmpeg). For anybody else who wants to listen without having to go through a web browser, ABC helpfully provide a list of direct-streaming URLs for their stations at <https://radio.abc.net.au/help/streams>. ffplay reports some interesting additional details about the stream: Metadata: icy-notice1 : <BR>This stream requires <a href="http://www.winamp.com">Winamp</a><BR> icy-notice2 : SHOUTcast DNAS/posix(linux x64) v2.4.7.256<BR> icy-name : Triple J NSW icy-genre : Misc icy-br : 64 icy-url : http://www.abc.net.au/radio icy-pub : 0 In other words, they seem to be streaming from a Linux server, but their recommendation is for a client that doesn’t run on Linux...

2 6

Report on U.S. political party having its e-mail servers hacked
by Ian Stewart 30 Dec '16

30 Dec '16

You may have read in the main-stream media about a U.S. political party having its e-mail servers hacked and then copies of the e-mails were published on a web-site. If you'd like to know more, then a 13 page joint report<https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZ…> has been released on 29 December 2016 by the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) of The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In reading this report please recognise that "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within." The report commences... "GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity Summary This Joint Analysis Report (JAR) is the result of analytic efforts between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This document provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities. The U.S. Government is referring to this malicious cyber activity by RIS as GRIZZLY STEPPE." While the report contains many abbreviations, please note that "GRIZZLY STEPPE" is never written as "Grizzly Steppe" nor is it abbreviated to "GS". On Page 2... "Description. The U.S. Government confirms that two different RIS actors participated in the intrusion into a U.S. political party." The report does not provide the name of the "U.S. political party". For these details you'll need to use a search engine to search the Internet. The Description continues... "The first actor group, known as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 29, entered into the party’s systems in summer 2015, while the second, known as APT28, entered in spring 2016." Page 4 lists 48 "Alternate Names" of the Russian Military and Civilian Intelligence Services (RIS). They are not all called names like Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 28, APT29, APT30... etc. For example one of them is called "Powershell backdoor". Page 8 has the, "Detailed Mitigation Strategies" with a section on "Protect Against SQL Injection and Other Attacks on Web Services", which states... "Take steps to harden both Web applications and the servers hosting them to reduce the risk of network intrusion via this vector." The "vector" (or "link") is to this webpage... https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648653.aspx "Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures J.D. Meier, Alex Mackman, Michael Dunner, Srinath Vasireddy, Ray Escamilla and Anandha Murukan Microsoft Corporation Published: June 2003 Last Revised: January 2006 Applies to: Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 Microsoft Windows® 2000 operating system" With a last revision date of January 2006 its interesting to be provided with advice on how to take steps on your Microsoft Windows® 2000 operating system for which mainstream support ended on June 30, 2005 and extended support ended on July 13, 2010. UNIX does get one mention in the section "Credentials" on page 10... "Properly secure password files by making hashed passwords more difficult to acquire. Password hashes can be cracked within seconds using freely available tools. Consider restricting access to sensitive password hashes by using a shadow password file or equivalent on UNIX systems." While the report has IT related abbreviations such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SQL, etc., here is a list to aid you with some of the other abbreviations used in the report... JAR - Joint Analysis Report NCCIC - National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center DHS - Department of Homeland Security FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation RIS - Russian civilian and military intelligence Services APT - Advanced Persistent Threat. RATs - Remote Access Tools IOCs - Indicators of Compromise US-CERT - United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team EMET - Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit For additional reading on this report, use a search engine or go here<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/29/fbi-dhs-russian-hacking-…> or here<http://caucus99percent.com/content/all-there>. cheers, Ian.

1 0

CyanogenMod Becomes LineageOS
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Dec '16

27 Dec '16

Cyanogen Inc tried to take its CyanogenMod fork of Android commercial, with limited success. Now it has shut down the open-source project altogether. But a group of contributors has launched their own fork, called LineageOS. <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/cyanogen-inc-shuts-do…>

2 1

siduction and Wayland
by Ian Young 24 Dec '16

24 Dec '16

Merry Xmas all Just saw this. Wayland relevant. Not tested here. https://news.siduction.org/2016/12/release-notes-for-siduction-2016-1-patie… The released images are a snapshot of Debian unstable, that also goes by the name of Sid, from 2016-12-23. They are enhanced with some useful packages and scripts, our own installer and a custom patched version of the linux-kernel 4.9, accompanied by X-Server 1.19.0-3 and systemd 232-8. Changes that affect all flavours In the wake of the upcoming Wayland display server, that will replace the old Xorg-Server, the way input devices are handled, has changed. The new way to handle devices like Mice, Touchpads, Wacom Tablets, and the like was developed by Red Hat developer Peter Hutterer and is called libinput If you look into /etc/X11/xorgconf.d/60-libinput.conf, you will see that we implemented a basic config, that supports some touchpad actions, but not all. If you miss anything, look at the above link, that has ways to set up other actions. Another change over all flavours is the use of SDDM as Display- and Login-Manager, which is the new default for Plasma, but suits the other flavours fine as well.

1 0

Google Researchers Recommend Security Keys
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

Google has been running a two-year internal trial of “Security Keys”, which are cheap, easy-to-use USB-pluggable devices for generating secure authentication tokens, based on the “Universal Second Factor” open standard. Verdict: they work really well, and are resistant to phishing attacks. The Chrome browser has already added support for them. <http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/this-low-cost-device-may-be-the-wor…>

1 0

Signal Implements Domain Fronting
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

Signal, the secure communications application created by Moxie Marlinspike, has added another tool to its kit to evade Governments that want to block their subjects from using it: “domain fronting”. The technique requires routing through a content-delivery network, which typically is not available for free. But it does mean the only way to block the use of Signal is to block the user from the entire Internet. At least for now. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/23/signal_deploys_domain_deceit_to_den…>

1 0

January meeting
by Ian Young 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

I have the most recent Zorin Core Edition. Version 12. This is available at no charge, they also have a offering that requires payment. I can try to find something to say if required. ~ Ian Y

2 1

SGM and meeting in January
by Peter Reutemann 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

Hi everyone Just a quick email to announce the SGM in January. The agenda (so far): - Elect Vice president Since that is the only item and won't take very long, we will have a regular meeting as well. At this stage, it will be a Linux distro roundup. More details here: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/236393751/ 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/

1 0

January meeting - ideas?
by Peter Reutemann 22 Dec '16

22 Dec '16

Hi everyone Apart from a very short SGM, we haven't got anything planned yet for our January meeting. How about roundup of some distros? Some ideas: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devuan http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zorin And something a little different? ;-) http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=reactos 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/

1 0

Firefox Takes the Next Step Towards Rolling Out Multi-Process To Everyone
by Peter Reutemann 22 Dec '16

22 Dec '16

'With Firefox 50, Mozilla has rolled out the first major piece of its new multi-process architecture. Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari all have a multiple process design that separates their rendering engine -- the part of the browser that reads and interprets HTML, CSS, and JavaScript -- from the browser frame. They do this for stability reasons (if the rendering process crashes, it doesn't kill the entire browser) and security reasons (the rendering process can be run in a low-privilege sandbox, so exploitable flaws in the rendering engine are harder to take advantage of). Moreover, these browsers can all create multiple rendering engine processes and use different processes for different tabs. This means that the scope of a crash is narrowed even further, typically to a single tab. Internet Explorer and Chrome both implemented this long ago, in 2009. Firefox, however, has not offered a similar design. Although work on a multi-process browser was started in 2009, under the codename Electrolysis, that work was suspended between 2011 and 2013 as priorities within the organization shifted. In response, Mozilla started switching to a new extension system in 2015 that opened the door to a multi-process design. The first stage of Firefox's move to multi-process involves separating the browser shell from a single rendering process that's used by every tab. In Firefox 48, that feature was enabled for a small number of users who used no extensions. Firefox 49 was rolled out to include users running a limited selection of extensions. Now, in Firefox 50, a separate renderer process is used for most users and most extensions. Developers are now able to mark their extensions as explicitly multi-process compatible. Firefox 51 will extend this even further to cover all extensions, except those that are explicitly marked as incompatible. Mozilla says that, even with the limited changes made in Firefox 50, responsiveness of the browser has improved by 400 percent due to the separation between the renderer and the browser shell. During page loads, responsiveness will increase to 700 percent.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/12/22/0120256 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/

1 0

MUFFIN, a new tasty user interface concept for LibreOffice
by Peter Reutemann 21 Dec '16

21 Dec '16

'The Document Foundation announces the MUFFIN, a new tasty user interface concept for LibreOffice, based on the joint efforts of the development and the design teams, supported by the marketing team. MUFFIN is an acronym for My User Friendly & Flexible INterface, and focuses on the three areas suggested by LibreOffice users during the development of the concept: My: LibreOffice users want a “personal” UI, with different options capable of adapting to the user’s personal habits, and not a single UI without options. User Friendly: of course, any UI should be as user friendly as possible, but LibreOffice users have clearly asked for a “modular” UI, where they can set their own level of user friendliness, and not a single UI without options. Flexible: the increasing number of LibreOffice users deploying the software on different hardware platforms (for instance, a desktop and a laptop), each one with different characteristics and screen size and resolution, have asked for a UI that can be tweaked to leverage the screen real estate, and not a single UI without options. INterface: The MUFFIN concept is the combination of different UI elements, which are going to be available starting from LibreOffice 5.3 either as a standard or experimental feature: the Default UI (with toolbars), a Single Toolbar UI, the Sidebar with a Single Toolbar, and the new Notebook Bar (experimental). Each UI layout has been thought to serve a different cluster of LibreOffice users.' -- source: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/12/21/the-document-foundation… It's about choice, that's why I love open-source! :-) 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/

1 0

Home routers under attack in ongoing malvertisement blitz
by Peter Reutemann 19 Dec '16

19 Dec '16

'As you read these words, malicious ads on legitimate websites are targeting visitors with malware. But that malware doesn't infect their computers, researchers said. Instead, it causes unsecured routers to connect to fraudulent domains. Using a technique known as steganography, the ads hide malicious code in image data. The hidden code then redirects targets to webpages hosting DNSChanger, an exploit kit that infects routers running unpatched firmware or are secured with weak administrative passwords. Once a router is compromised, DNSChanger configures it to use an attacker-controlled domain name system server. This causes most computers on the network to visit fraudulent servers, rather than the servers corresponding to their official domain.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/home-routers-under-attack-in-ongoin… 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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Old Masters Reinterpreted
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Dec '16

16 Dec '16

“We Rolled Our Own Crypto”, by Peter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1562 <http://classicprogrammerpaintings.com/post/148027314949/we-rolled-our-own-c…>

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Razors Edge database
by Roderick Aldridge 16 Dec '16

16 Dec '16

Does anybody know about running Razors Edge database under Linux or anybody who does? I successfully installed Citrix Receiver and logged into the database and ran a Report to get information, but could not save it or export it. Although I used the Linux Debian Citrix Receiver the options to save were all Windows destinations. when I tried to save to the computer option the message says The operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on the computer. Please contact your system administrator. This could be a permissions problem. Any help welcome. Roderick Aldridge.

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0-days hitting Fedora and Ubuntu open desktops to a world of hurt
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '16

16 Dec '16

'If you run a mainstream distribution of Linux on a desktop computer, there's a good chance security researcher Chris Evans can hijack it when you do nothing more than open or even browse a specially crafted music file. And in the event you're running Chrome on the just-released Fedora 25, his code-execution attack works as a classic drive-by.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/fedora-and-ubuntu-0days-show-that-h… 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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Yahoo admits it’s been hacked again, and 1 billion accounts were exposed
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '16

15 Dec '16

'On December 14, Yahoo announced that after an investigation into data provided by law enforcement officials in November, the company and outside forensics experts have determined that there was in fact a previously undetected breach of data from more than 1 billion user accounts. The breach took place in August 2013 and is apparently distinct from the previous mega-breach revealed this fall—one Yahoo claims was conducted by a "state-sponsored actor." The information accessed from potentially exposed accounts "may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers," Yahoo's chief information security officer, Bob Lord, reported in the statement issued by the company. "The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system the company believes was affected."' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/yahoo-reveals-1-billion-more-accoun… 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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OpenStreetView
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Dec '16

14 Dec '16

You’ve heard of OpenStreetMap, the (very popular) project to compile mapping information for the whole world under a freely shareable, open licence; now there is OpenStreetView, which attempts to do the same for street-level photos <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/14/open_source_insider_openstreetview_…>.

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First Version of Sandboxed Tor Browser Available
by Peter Reutemann 12 Dec '16

12 Dec '16

'To protect Tor users from FBI hacking tools that include all sorts of Firefox zero-days, the Tor Project started working on a sandboxed version of the Tor Browser in September. Over the weekend, the Tor Project released the first alpha version of the sandboxed Tor Browser. "Currently, this version is in an early alpha stage, and only available for Linux," reports BleepingComputer. "There are also no binaries available, and users must compile it themselves from the source code, which they can grab from here." The report notes: "Sandboxing is a security mechanism employed to separate running processes. In computer security, sandboxing an application means separating its process from the OS, so vulnerabilities in that app can't be leveraged to extend access to the underlying operating system. This is because the sandboxed application works with its own separate portion of disk and memory that isn't linked with the OS."' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/12/12/2042225 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 Mint 18.1 'Serena' BETA Ubuntu-based Operating System Now Available For Download
by Peter Reutemann 05 Dec '16

05 Dec '16

'Feeling fatigued by Windows 10 and its constant updates and privacy concerns? Can't afford one of those beautiful new MacBook Pro laptops? Don't forget, Linux-based desktop operating systems are just a free download away, folks! If you do decide to jump on the open source bandwagon, a good place to start is Linux Mint. Both the Mate and Cinnamon desktop environments should prove familiar to Windows converts, and since it is based on Ubuntu, there is a ton of compatible packages. Today, the first beta of Linux Mint 18.1 'Serena' becomes available for download.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/12/04/236236 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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Canonical Sues Cloud Provider Over 'Unofficial' Ubuntu Images
by Peter Reutemann 05 Dec '16

05 Dec '16

'Canonical posted Thursday that they've been in a dispute with "a European cloud provider" over the use of their own homespun version of Ubuntu on their cloud servers. Their implementation disables even the most basic of security features and Canonical is worried something bad could happen and it'd reflect badly back on them... They said they've spent months trying to get the unnamed provider to use the standard Ubuntu as delivered to other commercial operations to no avail. Canonical feels they have no choice but to "take legal steps to remove these images." They're sure Red Hat and Microsoft wouldn't be treated like this. Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, wrote in his blog post that Ubuntu is "the leading cloud OS, running most workloads in public clouds today," whereas these homegrown images "are likely to behave unpredictably on update in weirdly creative and mysterious ways... We hear about these issues all the time, because users assume there is a problem with Ubuntu on that cloud; users expect that 'all things that claim to be Ubuntu are genuine', and they have a right to expect that... "To count some of the ways we have seen home-grown images create operational and security nightmares for users: clouds have baked private keys into their public images, so that any user could SSH into any machine; clouds have made changes that then blocked security updates for over a week... When things like this happen, users are left feeling let down. As the company behind Ubuntu, it falls to Canonical to take action."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/12/04/2235251 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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