- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

UK Court Rules That E-Mail Sig Blocks Can Sign Contracts
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

An e-mail exchange has been ruled to be a binding contract <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/30/email_signature_legally_binding_co…> because the senders included their names at the end, as people commonly do.

1 0

Linus Torvalds Approves New Kernel 'Lockdown' Feature
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'"After years of countless reviews, discussions, and code rewrites, Linus Torvalds approved on Saturday a new security feature for the Linux kernel, named 'lockdown'," reports ZDNet: The new feature will ship as a LSM (Linux Security Module) in the soon-to-be-released Linux kernel 5.4 branch, where it will be turned off by default; usage being optional due to the risk of breaking existing systems. The new feature's primary function will be to strengthen the divide between userland processes and kernel code by preventing even the root account from interacting with kernel code -- something that it's been able to do, by design, until now. When enabled, the new "lockdown" feature will restrict some kernel functionality, even for the root user, making it harder for compromised root accounts to compromise the rest of the OS... "When enabled, various pieces of kernel functionality are restricted," said Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel creator, and the one who put the final stamp of approval on the module yesterday. This includes restricting access to kernel features that may allow arbitrary code execution via code supplied by userland processes; blocking processes from writing or reading /dev/mem and /dev/kmem memory; block access to opening /dev/port to prevent raw port access; enforcing kernel module signatures; and many more others, detailed here.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/30/0312211 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 Promises UK Government DNS-Over-HTTPS Won't Be Default in UK
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'"Despite looking to make DNS-over-HTTPS the default for its American users, Mozilla has assured culture secretary Nicky Morgan that this won't be the case in the UK," reports Gizmodo: DNS-over-HTTPS has been fairly controversial, with the Internet Services Providers Association nominating Mozilla for an 'Internet Villain' over the whole thing, saying it will "bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the UK." In his letter to Morgan, Mozilla vice president of global policy, trust and security, Alan Davidson, stressed that the company "has no plans to turn on our DNS-over-HTTPS feature by default in the United Kingdom and will not do so without further engagement with public and private stakeholders". He did add that Mozilla does "strongly believe that DNS-over-HTTPS would offer real security benefits to UK citizens. The DNS is one of the oldest parts of the internet's architecture, and remains largely untouched by efforts to make the web more secure. "Because current DNS requests are unencrypted, the road that connects your citizens to their online destination is still open and used by bad actors looking to violate user privacy, attack communications, and spy on browsing activity. People's most personal information, such as their health-related data, can be tracked, collected, leaked and used against people's best interest. Your citizens deserve to be protected from that threat."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/0434233 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

Do We Need To Rethink What Free Software Is?
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'Matthew Garrett is a security developer at Google and a Linux contributor who in 2014 won the Free Software Foundation's annual "Advancement of Free Software" award. But now he's asking if we need to re-think what free software is: If users can pay Amazon to provide a hosted version of a piece of software, there's little incentive for them to pay the authors of that software. This has led to various projects adopting license terms such as the Commons Clause that effectively make it nonviable to provide such a service, forcing providers to pay for a commercial use license instead. In general the entities pushing for these licenses are VC backed companies who are themselves benefiting from free software written by volunteers that they give nothing back to, so I have very little sympathy. But it does raise a larger issue -- how do we ensure that production of free software isn't just a mechanism for the transformation of unpaid labour into corporate profit...? At the same time, people are spending more time considering some of the other ethical outcomes of free software. Copyleft ensures that you can share your code with your neighbour without your neighbour being able to deny the same freedom to others, but it does nothing to prevent your neighbour using your code to deny other fundamental, non-software, freedoms. As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. The JSON license includes a requirement that "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil", but the lack of any meaningful clarity around what "Good" and "Evil" actually mean makes it hard to determine whether it achieved its aims. As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years, otherwise the opportunity will be lost and much of the activist energy that underpins free software will be spent elsewhere. If free software is going to maintain relevance, it needs to continue to explain how it interacts with contemporary social issues. If any organisation is going to claim to lead the community, it needs to be doing that.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/28/1741229 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

Purism's Librem 5 Phone Starts Shipping. It Can Run Linux Desktop Apps
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'On Tuesday Purism announced their first Librem 5 smartphones were rolling off the assembly line and heading to customers. "Seeing the amazing effort of the Purism team, and holding the first fully functioning Librem 5, has been the most inspirational moment of Purism's five year history," said their founder and CEO Todd Weaver. On Wednesday they posted a video announcing that the phones were now shipping, and Friday they posted a short walk-through video. "The crowdsourced $700 Linux phone is actually becoming a real product," reports Ars Technica: Purism's demand that everything be open means most of the major component manufacturers were out of the question. Perhaps because of the limited hardware options, the internal construction of the Librem 5 is absolutely wild. While smartphones today are mostly a single mainboard with every component integrated into it, the Librem 5 actually has a pair of M.2 slots that house full-size, off-the-shelf LTE and Wi-Fi cards for connectivity, just like what you would find in an old laptop. The M.2 sockets look massive on top of the tiny phone motherboard, but you could probably replace or upgrade the cards if you wanted... [Y]ou're not going to get cutting-edge hardware at a great price with the Librem 5. That's not the point, though. The point is that you are buying a Linux phone, with privacy and open source at the forefront of the design. There are hardware kill switches for the camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband on the side of the phone, ensuring none of the I/O turns on unless you want it to. The OS is the Free Software Foundation-endorsed PureOS, a Linux distribution that, in this case, has been reworked with a mobile UI. Purism says it will provide updates for the "lifetime" of the device, which would be a stark contrast to the two years of updates you get with an Android phone. PureOS is a Debian-based Linux distro, and on the Librem 5, you'll get to switch between mobile versions of the Gnome and KDE environments. If you're at all interested in PureOS, Purism's YouTube page is worth picking through. Dozens of short videos show that, yes, this phone really runs full desktop-class Linux. Those same videos show the dev kit running things like the APT package manager through a terminal, a desktop version of Solitaire, Emacs, the Gnome disk utility, DOSBox, Apache Web Server, and more. If it runs on your desktop Linux computer, it will probably run on the Librem 5, albeit with a possibly not-touch-friendly UI. The Librem 5 can even be hooked up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and you can run all these Linux apps with the normal input tools... Selling a smartphone is a cutthroat business, and we've seen dozens of companies try and fail over the years. Purism didn't just survive long enough to ship a product -- it survived in what is probably the hardest way possible, by building a non-Android phone with demands that all the hardware components use open code. Making it this far is an amazing accomplishment. ' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/0548215 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

Libre-RISC-V 3D CPU/GPU Seeks Grants For Ambitious Expansion
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'The NLNet Foundation is a non-profit supporting privacy, security, and the "open internet". Now the open source Libre RISC-V hybrid CPU/GPU is applying for eight additional grants from the NLNet Foundation, according to this update from the project's Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (Slashdot reader #517,947): Details on each Grant Application are on the newly-opened RISC-V Community Forum. The general idea is to kick RISC-V into a commercially-viable mass-volume high gear by putting forward funding proposals for NEON/SSE-style Video Acceleration to be upstreamed for use by ffmpeg, vlc, mplayer and gstreamer; hardware-assisted Mesa 3D (a port of the RADV Vulkan Driver to RISC-V), and a hardware-accelerated OpenCL port to RISC-V. This all in a "Hybrid" fashion (a la NEON/SSE) as opposed to the "usual" way that 3D and Video is done, which hugely complicate both software drivers and applications debugging. In addition, the Libre RISC-V SoC itself is applying for grants to do a gcc port supporting its Vectorisation Engine including auto-vectorisation, and, crucially, to do an entirely Libre-licensed ASIC Layout using LIP6.fr coriolis2, working in tandem with Chips4Makers to create a 180nm commercially-viable single-core dual-issue test ASIC. The process takes approximately 2-3 months for approval. Once accepted, anyone may be the direct (tax-deductible) recipient of NLNet donations, for sub-tasks completed. Worth noting: Puri.sm is sponsoring the project, and, given NLNet's Charitable Status, donations from Corporations (or individuals) are 100% tax-deductible.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/1845252 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

Richard Stallman Is Still Head of the GNU Project
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

'On Thursday, Richard Stallman reminded the GNU Project mailing list that "On September 16 I resigned as president of the Free Software Foundation, but the GNU Project and the FSF are not the same. I am still the head of the GNU Project (the Chief GNUisance), and I intend to continue as such." The next day, with no explanation, a one-sentence update appeared on his personal blog at Stallman.org announcing that "I hereby step down as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately." But a few commenters on social media speculated that the post could have come from someone who'd hijacked Stallman's site -- and sure enough, that sentence had been removed by Sunday morning. In addition, for what it's worth Techrights.org posted an unconfirmed claim Sunday from "a generally reliable source" that "Stallman.org was defaced by an FSF employee. The deface has been reverted, and the domain appears to now be operating on non-FSF infrastructure..." But whatever's happening, Richard Stallman is still living the life of Richard Stallman. Friday he also posted that he's looking for a room in a shared house or apartment for at least two months. "There should not be a cat (unless hypoallergenic), or a dog that jumps up excitedly on people (unless quite small), or a digital listening device such as Echo, Siri or 'Hello Google', or a card lock that records who opens the door. I will ask about cameras."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/054211 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

Roll On The Paperless Office?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Sep '19

30 Sep '19

The “Paperless Office” was a prediction from back in the 1970s or so that, with the increasing use of electronic automation for business data processing, the need for paper documents would diminish over time and eventually go away. Then with the increasing popularity of PCs came the demand for printers to print the documents created with them, and it seemed the trend was the opposite--electronic automation was producing even more paper documents than ever, rather than less. Well, maybe we have seen “peak paper”, according to <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/13/wall_street_analyst_slashes_hp_inc…>: The company is currently trying to dig itself out a hole of its own making: it mis-forecast toner cartridge revenues in EMEA for FY'19 that started in October last year, not factoring in the burgeoning demand for cloned or remanufactured alternatives or - seemingly - that businesses are printing less than they used to.

4 10

4K / Ultra High Definition Monitors
by Ian Stewart 27 Sep '19

27 Sep '19

Hi Folks, For those of you at last nights meeting you'll recollect there was some discussion on Ultra High Definition<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution> computer monitors (i.e. "4K" monitors). With such a large resolution monitor there were jokes made about sitting on the other side of the room in order to use your computer. Today I found links to a Canadian web-site that seems to have created a science out of how far to sit in front of a TV monitor... https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship ...and... https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/4k-ultra-hd-uhd-vs-1080p-full-hd-tvs-and-up… ...apparently you sit closer to a 4K/UHD TV monitor than a 1080/HD TV monitor. In fact, if you sit too far away from a 4K/UHD monitor then there is no point in having one and you should have stuck with a 1080/HD monitor! I notice that PB-Tech for the category of 4K Monitors<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/category/peripherals/monitors/4k-monitors>, the sizes are mostly in the range 24 inch to 32 inch, while 4K TVs<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/category/tv-av/tvs/4k-televisions> have screens in the range 43 inch to 86 inch. The cheapest 32 inch 4K monitor I found was a Kogan 32" Ultra HD 4K FreeSync IPS Monitor (3840 x 2160) that is available by purchasing on-line at NZ$370 plus shipping from kogan<https://www.kogan.com/nz/buy/kogan-32-ultra-hd-4k-freesync-ips-monitor-3840…>. Getting a 4K monitor is one thing, being able to feed it with true 4K created video is the next challenge. I don't think it will be coming out of a Freeview box in NZ for a while ;-) However, with the adoption and take-up of the AV1<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1> standard, then more 4K video content should become available to stream from the internet. If your Desktop PC doesn't have a 4K (3980 x 1920 pixel) graphics capability, then don't forget that for a starting price of around $150 will be required for a PCI-e 4K graphics adapter<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/VGAGBV11032/Gigabyte-GeForce-GT1030-2GB-GD…>. cheers, Ian.

2 4

Cloudflare, Google Chrome, and Firefox Add HTTP/3 Support
by Peter Reutemann 27 Sep '19

27 Sep '19

'HTTP/3, the next major iteration of the HTTP protocol, is getting a big boost today with support added in Cloudflare, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. From a report: Starting today, Cloudflare announced that customers will be able to enable an option in their dashboards and turn on HTTP/3 support for their domains. That means that whenever users visit a Cloudflare-hosted website from an HTTP/3-capable client, the connection will automatically upgrade to the new protocol, rather than being handled via older versions. On the browser side, Chrome Canary added support for HTTP/3 earlier this month. Users can enable it by using the Chrome command-line flags of "--enable-quic --quic-version=h3-23". In addition, Mozilla too announced it would roll out support for HTTP/3. The browser maker is scheduled to ship HTTP/3 in an upcoming Firefox Nightly version later this fall.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/26/1710239 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