- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Anti-systemd Trolls
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jul '17

27 Jul '17

I keep wondering about these random names who pop up with all the badmouthing every time somebody mentions something about systemd. I don’t recall any faces at WLUG meetings that go with them. Who are you and where do you come from? Do you people have any interest in the Waikato Linux User Group at all, or are you just here to shoot your mouths off?

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Some Low-Cost Android Phones Come at a Price -- Your Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jul '17

27 Jul '17

'At $60, the BLU R1 HD is the top-selling phone on Amazon. Last November, researchers caught it secretly sending private data to China. Shanghai Adups Technology, the group behind the spying software on the BLU R1 HD, called it a mistake. But analysts at Kryptowire found the software provider is still making the same "mistake" on other phones. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, researchers from Kryptowire, a security firm, revealed that Adups' software is still sending a device's data to the company's server in Shanghai without alerting people. But now, it's being more secretive about it. "They replaced them with nicer versions," Ryan Johnson, a research engineer and co-founder at Kryptowire, said. "I have captured the network traffic of them using the Command and Control channel when they did it." An Adups spokeswoman said that it had resolved the issues in 2016 and that the issues "are not existing anymore." Kryptowire said it has observed the company sending data without telling users on at least three different phones.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/07/26/187258 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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Wellcome Trust Wants To Share
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Jul '17

26 Jul '17

You’ve probably heard of the Wellcome Trust: they’re a UK-based nonprofit that funds scientific research, primarily into health. They’ve long had an open-access policy, meaning that “all original research articles and scholarly monographs resulting from our funding are made freely available”. Contrast this with what more commonly happens with scientific research, where the journal publishers get exclusive copyright over the papers, and charge an arm and a leg to everyone wanting a copy. Now the Wellcome Trust is going even further, and requiring open access in a timely manner to the raw research data (within reasonable limits, such as privacy concerns etc), material such as cell lines, antibodies and reagents, and also any software developed. No actual mention of “open source” or “Free software” licences as such, though; the news article only uses the word “freeware”, which I’m not sure is the word they should be using. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/25/wellcome_trust_extends_research_da…> <https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/our-new-policy-sharing-research-data-what-it-me…>

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Intel Abandons Consumer/Hobbyist IoT
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Jul '17

26 Jul '17

Intel is giving up on its consumer/hobbyist-oriented Internet of Things products <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/25/intel_arduino_board_curie_canceled/>. However, the “enterprise”-oriented efforts remain for now. Not sure what “enterprise” means in this space: are there companies building IoT-type devices for their own internal use? Or is this referring to companies selling readymade IoT products? In any case, I suspect this is the one area left where “Windows 10 IoT Edition” can be mentioned without raising hails of derisive laughter...

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The systemd House Of Horror
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Jul '17

26 Jul '17

Came across this link in one of the comments to The Register’s article on Fedora 26, rife with the usual anti-systemd moaning. “Here are some examples of how people commonly use systemd in an egregiously wrong manner ... Don't ask me why, so far, all of these have involved starting Java programs. Maybe it's Oracle in general.” <https://jdebp.eu/FGA/systemd-house-of-horror/>

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'Devil's Ivy' Is Another Wake-Up Call for IoT Security
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jul '17

26 Jul '17

'The vulnerability -- called Devil's Ivy or CVE-2017-9765 -- was made public last week by Senrio, a company that specializes in IoT security. It initially found the bug in the M3004 model security camera marketed by Axis Communications, but further research found that 249 of Axis's 251 surveillance camera models are affected. Although that's of lot of devices, it's only the tip of the iceberg, as the problem isn't with code that's native to Axis products but is in gSOAP, an open source web services library that's used by many developers. Media outlets are reporting that 34 companies use gSOAP -- a list that includes Microsoft, IBM, Xerox and Adobe.' -- source: http://windowsitpro.com/internet-things-iot/devils-ivy-another-wake-call-io… 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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Using Gnome Disk Utility - "Disks" - to install distro iso to USB stick.
by Ian Stewart 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

Hi, I mentioned this at last nights meeting, so here is the link info. You might be used to burning distro iso image files to USB sticks using the dd command line utility, or Ubuntu's Startup Disk Creator gui application. The Fedora 21 Installation Guide<https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/21/html/Installation_Guide/inde…> describes another way<https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/21/html/Installation_Guide/sect…>. You launch the Gnome Disk Utility by clicking on the Disks application icon, or from the command line as gnome-disks, and follow these instructions... Procedure 3.4. Creating USB media with GNOME Disks 1. On a system with GNOME, or with the gnome-disk-utility package installed, open Disks using the system menu. 2. Click your USB device in the left column. 3. Click the menu icon in the upper right corner of the window, and choose the Restore Disk Image option. 4. Navigate to your image file and click Start Restoring. After a few minutes, it will report the process is complete and your installation media will be ready to use. cheers, Ian.

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How a VC-Funded Company Is Undermining the Open-Source Community
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

'Is a $4 million venture capital-funded startup stealthily taking over popular coding tools and injecting ads and spyware into them? That's what some programmers fear may be happening. It is one of the most troubling scandals to hit the open-source community -- a robust network of programmers who work on shared tools for free -- in recent memory. It started back in April, when a programmer noticed a strange change to an open-source tool called Minimap. Minimap has had more than 3.5 million downloads, but like many open-source tools, it was maintained by a single person who no one knew much about other than their username: @abe33. At some point, @abe33, whose real name is Cedric Nehemie, was hired by Kite. Kite was started by Adam Smith, a successful tech entrepreneur who raised funding from a slew of big names including the CEO of Dropbox and the creator of WordPress. It is unclear what Kite's business model is, but it says it uses machine-learning techniques to make coding tools. Its tools are not open source. After being hired by Kite, @abe33 made an update to Minimap. The update was titled "Implement Kite promotion," and it appeared to look at a user's code and insert links to related pages on Kite's website. Kite called this a useful feature. Programmers said it was not useful and was therefore just an ad for an unrelated service, something many programmers would consider a violation of the open-source spirit. "It's not a feature, it's advertising -- and people don't want it, you want it," wrote user @p-e-w. "The least you can do is own up to that." "I have to wonder if your goal was to upset enough people that you'd generate real attention on various news sites and get Kite a ton of free publicity before your next funding round," @DevOpsJohn wrote. "That's the only sane explanation I can find for suddenly dropping ads into the core of one of the oldest and most useful Atom plugins." [...] Although Kite has no business model yet, it's widely thought in Silicon Valley that having users is the first step toward profitability. Adding users potentially benefits the company in another way, by giving it access to precious data. Kite says it uses machine learning tactics to make the best coding helper tools possible. In order to do that, it needs tons of data to learn from. The more code it can look at, the better its autocomplete suggestions will get, for example.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/07/24/0118202 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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DNS Lib Underscore Bug Bites Everyone's Favorite Init Tool, Blanks Netflix
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

'Systemd doing what it does best. From a report on The Register: A few Penguinistas spent a weekend working out why they can't get through to Netflix from their Linux machines, because when they tried, their DNS lookups failed. The issue emerged over the weekend, when Gentoo user Dennis Schridde submitted a bug report to the Systemd project. Essentially, he described a failure within systemd-resolve, a Systemd component that turns human-readable domain names into IP addresses for software, like web browsers, to connect to. The Systemd resolver couldn't look up Netflix's servers for Schridde's web browser, according to the report. In his detailed post, Schridde said he expected this to happen: ipv6_1-cxl0-c088.1.lhr004.ix.nflxvideo.net gets resolved to 37.77.187.142 or 2a00:86c0:5:5::142. When in reality, that wasn't happening, so Netflix couldn't be reached on his box. His speculation that libidn2, which adds internationalised domain names support to the resolver, was at fault turned out to be accurate. Rebuilding Systemd without that library cleared the problem.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/07/24/1558259 Please, no flame war... 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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Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Hundreds of Victims For Years
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

'A mysterious piece of malware has been infecting hundreds of Mac computers for years -- and no one noticed until a few months ago. The malware is called "FruitFly," and one of its variants, "FruitFly 2" has infected at least 400 victims over the years. FruitFly 2 is intriguing and mysterious: its goals, who's behind it, and how it infects victims, are all unknown. Earlier this year, an ex-NSA hacker started looking into a piece of malware he described to me as "unique" and "intriguing." It was a slightly different strain of a malware discovered on four computers earlier this year by security firm Malwarebytes, known as "FruitFly." This first strain had researchers scratching their heads. On the surface, the malware seemed "simplistic." It was programmed mainly to surreptitiously monitor victims through their webcams, capture their screens, and log keystrokes. But, strangely, it went undetected since at least 2015. There was no indication of who could be behind it, and it contained "ancient" functions and "rudimentary" remote control capabilities, Malwarebytes's Thomas Reed wrote at the time.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/07/24/1719255 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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Mozilla's New Open Source Voice-Recognition Project Wants Your Voice
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '17

23 Jul '17

'Mozilla is building a massive repository of voice recordings for the voice apps of the future -- and it wants you to add yours to the collection. The organization behind the Firefox browser is launching Common Voice, a project to crowdsource audio samples from the public. The goal is to collect about 10,000 hours of audio in various accents and make it publicly available for everyone... Mozilla hopes to hand over the public dataset to independent developers so they can harness the crowdsourced audio to build the next generation of voice-powered apps and speech-to-text programs... You can also help train the speech-to-text capabilities by validating the recordings already submitted to the project. Just listen to a short clip, and report back if text on the screen matches what you heard... Mozilla says it aims is to expand the tech beyond just a standard voice recognition experience, including multiple accents, demographics and eventually languages for more accessible programs. Past open source voice-recognition projects have included Sphinx 4 and VoxForge, but unfortunately most of today's systems are still "locked up behind proprietary code at various companies, such as Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/07/22/2026208 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, Gnome Patched 'Bad Taste' VBScript-Injection Vulnerabilities
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '17

23 Jul '17

'A now-patched vulnerability in the "GNOME Files" file manager was recently discovered which allowed hackers to create dodgy MSI files which would run malicious VBScript code on Linux... Once Nils Dagsson Moskopp discovered the bug, he reported it to the Debian Project which fixed it very rapidly. The GNOME Project also patched the gnome-exe-thumbnailer file which is responsible for parsing MSI and EXE files inside the GNOME Files app... If you run a Linux distribution with the GNOME desktop it's advisable to run the update manager and check for updates as soon as possible before you become affected by this critical vulnerability.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/07/22/1911237 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 'Stretch' Updated With 9.1 Release
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '17

23 Jul '17

'The Debian project is pleased to announce the first update of its stable distribution Debian 9 (codename "stretch"). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems... Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 9 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "stretch" media... Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages, and most such updates are included in the point release.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/07/23/1930253 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 next week?
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '17

22 Jul '17

Hi everyone We don't have any topics lined up yet for next Monday's meeting. Any ideas? A new Fedora release (https://getfedora.org/) is out - give it a spin? Maybe an introduction on how to use man pages efficiently? For commands and programming? Introduction to useful basic commands: ls, cat/tac/zcat, less, column, grep, find, sort, sed, ... 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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next lug meet -fedora 26
by Ian Young 22 Jul '17

22 Jul '17

I will bring a live version of Fedora 26 if there is time available at the meeting ~ Ian Y

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Sysadmin position
by Stuart Inglis 20 Jul '17

20 Jul '17

We are looking for an experienced Linux Administrator to join our team. Being one of the larger website hosting providers in New Zealand our ideal candidate would come from an ISP or web hosting background. To be successful in this role, you would ideally have: - 3+ Years practical experience in the administration of Linux servers - Great multi-tasking skills - Ability to troubleshoot complex problems, software faults, and operational issues and take appropriate corrective action personally and by interacting with other members of the systems team. - Strong technical knowledge - Experience in setting up high-load, high-availability, multi-data centre environments - Experience in supporting MySQL - Configuring and fine-tuning Apache - Knowledge of web architecture - Disaster recovery management - Experience with KVM or other Virtualisation platforms - Excellent communication skills are essential In return we can offer you the chance to work for a leading organisation, work on some exciting projects and deliver key solutions to a variety of clients. This position is based in our office in Hamilton, no teleworking. Applications must be able to attend interviews in Hamilton, NZ. If this sounds like you please don't hesitate to send in your CV today. kind regards Stuart Inglis, Ph.D. | Chief Technology Officer Director NetValue Limited Level 1, SouthBloc, 19 Knox Street, Hamilton M +64 (0) 21 907 532 E stuart.inglis(a)netvalue.nz | W netvalue.nz

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4 lightweight image viewers for the Linux desktop
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jul '17

18 Jul '17

'Like most people, you probably have more than a few photos and other images on your computer. And, like most people, you probably like to take a peek at those images and photos every so often. Firing up an editor like GIMP or Pinta is overkill for simply viewing images. On the other hand, the basic image viewer included with most Linux desktop environments might not be enough for your needs. If you want something with a few more features, but still want it to be lightweight, then take a closer look at these four image viewers for the Linux desktop, plus a handful of bonus options if they don't meet your needs.' -- source: https://opensource.com/article/17/7/4-lightweight-image-viewers-linux-deskt… I've just switched to Nomacs as my default viewer. Fast and displays the EXIF information in a separate pane, which is rather handy for my work. 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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Bruce Schneier’s Book Review: “Twitter And Tear Gas”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Jul '17

14 Jul '17

There are two opposing models of how the Internet has changed protest movements. The first is that the Internet has made protesters mightier than ever. ... The second is that it has made them more ineffectual. Derided as "slacktivism" or "clicktivism," the ease of action without commitment can result in movements like Occupy petering out in the US without any obvious effects. Of course, the reality is more nuanced ... <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/07/book_review_twi.html>

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PC Sales Still In Decline
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Jul '17

14 Jul '17

Looks like world PC shipments are now down to about 240 million a year <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/13/pc_sales_still_slumping_but_more_s…>. I think the peak, maybe ten years ago, was a million a day.

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Looking for something to celebrate today?
by Ian Stewart 14 Jul '17

14 Jul '17

Hi, If you are looking for something to celebrate today, the 14th July 2017, then there's always the storming of La Bastille<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille>. If this doesn't appeal, and you are looking for something a little more global, then there is a minor milestone in Unix epoch time<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time>. For NZ this will occur today at 14:40. It is when Unix time ticks over the 1.5 billion seconds mark. $ date --date="@1500000000" Fri Jul 14 14:40:00 NZST 2017 If you can't think of anything else to do then you can watch it happen here... https://www.epochconverter.com/ ...or repeatedly enter this on your console... $ echo "How many seconds to go:" $((1500000000 - $(date +%s))) If this event is a little low key, and you'd rather wait for it to tick over the 2 billion mark, then you'll have to hold off with the celebrations for another 16 years... $ date --date="@2000000000" Wed May 18 15:33:20 NZST 2033 Cheers to another 1.5 billion seconds and many more. Ian.

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Tim Berners-Lee Approves Web DRM, But W3C Members Have Two Weeks To Appeal
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jul '17

12 Jul '17

'der Atticus Rex writes: A high controversial Web standard has received a seal of approval from Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web and its chief technical decision-maker. Opponents like the Free Software Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation say that the standard, Encrypted Media Extensions, is a step backwards for freedom, privacy, and a host of other rights on the Web. There's still a two-week window in which members of the W3C can appeal the decision, and the Free Software Foundation is asking people to email and encourage them to do so.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/07/08/0147206 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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net neutrality article on BBC
by Ian Young 12 Jul '17

12 Jul '17

Some may not have seen this. I thought it a useful summary of the current state of play around this issue. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-40494909

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Fedora 26 Linux Distro Released
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jul '17

12 Jul '17

'Today, Fedora 26 sheds its pre-release status and becomes available for download as a stable release. GNOME fans are in for a big treat, as version 3.24 is default. If you stick to stable Fedora releases, this will be your first time experiencing that version of the desktop environment since it was released in March. Also new is LibreOffice 5.3, which is an indispensable suite for productivity. If you still use mp3 music files I've moved onto streaming), support should be baked in for both encoding and decoding. "The latest version of Fedora's desktop-focused edition provides new tools and features for general users as well as developers. GNOME 3.24 is offered with Fedora 26 Workstation, which includes a host of updated functionality including Night Light, an application that subtly changes screen color based on time of day to reduce effect on sleep patterns, and LibreOffice 5.3, the latest update to the popular open source office productivity suite. For developers, GNOME 3.24 provides matured versions of Builder and Flatpak to make application development for a variety of systems, including Rust and Meson, easier across the board," says the Fedora Project.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/07/11/1722202 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 Is Now Available On the Windows Store
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jul '17

11 Jul '17

'Ubuntu is now available for download on the Windows Store. "Initially spotted by Rafael Rivera and Necrosoft Core on Twitter, Ubuntu on the Windows Store will let you install and run the Ubuntu terminal on Windows next to your other apps," reports Windows Central. From the report: Ubuntu's arrival, and that of SUSE, are part of a recent push by Microsoft to embrace Linux and the open source community more broadly. This began with the arrival of the Windows Subsystem for Linux in 2016, allowing users to use the Bash shell from within Windows. Keep in mind that this is limited to the Fall Creators Update, which isn't set for a public release until later this year. If you're running a PC testing the Fall Creators Update through the Windows Insider Program, however, you should be able to download and try Ubuntu from the Windows Store just fine. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/07/10/202218 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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Multics Lives!
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Jul '17

10 Jul '17

I previously mentioned <https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2015-August/013714.html> the old Multics OS, which was so complex and so delayed in its development that a group of folks at AT&T Bell Labs decided not to wait and created their own, less ambitious OS instead, deciding to call it “UNIX” as a sort of pun on “Multics”. Well, at long last <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/multics_resurrected_in_new_simulat…>, you can now run Multics for yourself. The original mainframe hardware is long gone, but today’s PCs can easily support a suitable software emulation without breaking too much of a sweat--even a Raspberry π 2, it seems, can run the emulation at something close to the speed of the early mainframe units. All it took was some suitably dedicated people to build such an emulator. And now you can download their work and try it out for yourself.

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