- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

This 11-year-old is selling cryptographically secure passwords for $2 each
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

"We now live in a world where a New York City sixth grader is making money selling strong passwords. Earlier this month, Mira Modi, 11, began a small business at dicewarepasswords.com, where she generates six-word Diceware passphrases by hand." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/10/this-11-year-old-is-selling-cryptog… 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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Official, Customized Raspberry Pi Versions Coming Soon
by Peter Reutemann 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

"The immensely popular Raspberry Pi will soon be offered in customized versions, through an exclusive arrangement between Raspberry Pi Trading and Element14. According to the companies' announcement, Element14 will provide design and manufacturing services to OEM customers to create 'bespoke designs' based upon the Raspberry Pi technology platform. That's weird U.K. English for saying that contracts for creating customized Raspberry Pi SBCs will entail substantial NRE fees and 3,000 to 5,000 unit orders, depending on the nature of the customization. The tweaked Pi's are likely to have revised board layouts, additional or alternative functions, interfaces, connectors, and memory configurations, and more. A handful of unsanctioned Raspberry Pi knock-offs have already appeared over the past couple of years, including various Orange Pi and Banana Pi flavors, which certainly didn't involve any 'bespeaking.' More info is at Element14's CustomPi page." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/10/27/1211234 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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FSF-certified laptop
by Ian Young 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

This may be of interest to some. Not sure I want to try this at home except with a machine I don't mind turning into a brick. http://www.fsf.org/news/now-fsf-cerified-to-respect-your-freedom-taurinus-x…

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Intel Develops Linux 'Software GPU' That's ~29-51x Faster
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

"Intel is open-sourcing their work on creating a high-performance graphics software rasterizer that originally was developed for scientific visualizations. Intel is planning to integrate this new OpenSWR project with Mesa to deploy it on the Linux desktop as a faster software rasterizer than what's currently available (LLVMpipe). OpenSWR should be ideal for cases where there isn't a discrete GPU available or the drivers fail to function. This software rasterizer implements OpenGL 3.2 on Intel/AMD CPUs supporting AVX(2) (Sandy Bridge / Bulldozer and newer) while being 29~51x faster than LLVMpipe and the code is MIT licensed. The code prior to being integrated in Mesa is offered on GitHub." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/20/2213215 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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Use GNURoot to install a GNU/Linux distribution on your Android device
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

"How many times have you been on the go and discovered that you needed to pull off some Linux-fu, but the only piece of tech you had was an Android device? Imagine if you were able to fire up a Linux command prompt on that device and make use of apt-get to install whatever command line tool you needed. Wget? No problem. Traceroute? Yes. Ssh? Absolutely. Just about any tool you can install on Linux, you can install within Android. Even some graphical apps will work (even though command line tools work best)." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/use-gnuroot-to-install-a-gnulinux-… 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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Microsoft Publishes OpenSSH For Windows Code
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

"Microsoft has published early source code for its OpenSSH-for-Windows port for developers to pick apart and improve. In a blog post on Monday, Steve Lee – the PowerShell team's principal software engineer manager – said Redmond has finished early work on a Windows port of OpenSSH 7.1, built in a joint-effort with NoMachine. Their rough roadmap from here: 1) Leverage Windows crypto APIs instead of OpenSSL/LibreSSL and run as Windows Service. 2) Address POSIX compatibility concerns. 3) Stabilize the code and address reported issues. 4) Production quality release." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/20/1925226 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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AGM?
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

Hi everyone I'm proposing this year's AGM to take place on November 23rd, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2016 Committee - Consumption of pizza Any comments or things to add to the agenda? 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 Monday
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

Hi everyone Due to exams starting next week, we don't have access to our usual meeting room up at uni. Therefore we'll just meet at the The Cook for a drink next Monday to discuss all things Linux and Open-Source! More details here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/225544297/ 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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Fwd: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

Apologies, if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: philip Date: Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 12:09 AM Subject: Re: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe To: nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz On Wed, 2015-10-14 at 08:32 +1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote: > In Europe there is a good chance that it would be recognised that a > business like trademe is practically a monopoly, and anti-competitive > behaviour does not go down well with authorities with company > policies > not carrying much weight. E.g. google is permanently under > investigation > for something. > > In New Zealand trademe is essentially a monopoly, and they are > hindering > legitimate local businesses. (Isn't Johnny keen on local business, or > is > that only when overseas companies grease him up first?) You could try > complaining on those grounds, but the commerce commission is not > often > useful. > > Until things change use a better trading platform than tardme, and > don't > waste your time discussing anything with them, their back pockets are > far too fat to need to pay attention to you. > > Volker >From Jerry. Got a call from TradeMe today and they are happy to allow linux distributions to be listed again. This of course goes hand in hand with a pending policy wording review/change. Phil. _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- 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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Celebrating 20 Years of OpenBSD With Release 5.8
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '15

19 Oct '15

"20 years to the day after the OpenBSD source tree was created for the new project, the project has released OpenBSD 5.8, the 38th release on CD-ROM (and 39th via FTP/HTTP). This release comes with four release songs instead of the usual one, and a long list of improvements over the last releases." "(Probably a good time to donate to the project, too, even if you don't use it directly, because of all the security improvements that OpenBSD programmers contribute to the world.)" -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/15/10/18/1617256 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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GDrive - opens-source and command-line to the rescue
by Peter Reutemann 18 Oct '15

18 Oct '15

Hi everyone For some reason, my GDrive no longer allows me to download files, it simply doesn't do anything beyond the "scanning for viruses" screen. Fed up with that, I had a look around and came across the following open source project (Apache 2 licensed): https://github.com/odeke-em/drive There are instructions on how to install it straight from source: http://www.howopensource.com/2015/01/google-drive-for-ubuntu-linux/ But you can also install it from a repository, which I came across here: https://github.com/odeke-em/drive/wiki/PPA-Download-Stats Install ppa and tool: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:twodopeshaggy/drive sudo apt-get install drive One-off initialization of the synchronization directory (choose whatever location you like): drive init ~/gdrive cd gdrive gdrive pull Check out the command-line help: drive or drive help 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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Pbtech selling intel compute stick with Ubuntu
by William Mckee 16 Oct '15

16 Oct '15

Today I recieved an email from pbtech and was happy to see an ad for an intel compute stick running Ubuntu. It's cheaper than the windows model! Here's a link to the product - http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=MBDINT10000&name=Intel-Compute-Stic… Of course the first thing I would do is remove Ubuntu and install Debian. Cheers, William

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Comments On “Junk your IT. Now. Before it drags you under”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Oct '15

16 Oct '15

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/junk_your_it_now_before_it_drags_yo…> says: “Our computers, he argued, have become more complex and less reliable.” Yes, they have become more complex, but no, they haven’t become less reliable. Consider this paper <https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/retro.ps> from 1977 by Dennis Ritchie, entitled “The UNIX Time-sharing System—A Retrospective”: it says “the typical period between software crashes (depending somewhat on how much tinkering with the system has been going on recently) is well over a fortnight of continuous operation”. Today, our Linux servers can have uptimes measured in months or even years. I can remember in the 1990s, there was a big gulf between the hardware reliability of commodity PCs and more expensive “workstations” or “servers”. Remember, those were the days when powerful, multitasking, multiuser OSes with proper memory protection, like Linux, the BSDs, the ones carrying the “Unix” brand, and Windows NT, were just starting to be able to run on commodity PC hardware. And the result was a lot of hardware crashes. Nowadays, there is no longer this great difference in hardware reliability. The main difference with servers is inclusion of management features (e.g. hot-swap bays, remote consoles), not the quality of the hardware.

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Walmart To Open-Source Its Cloud-Portability Code
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Oct '15

16 Oct '15

Walmart has developed a middleware layer, called “OneOps”, which apparently allows it to move its applications between different cloud service providers. It now says it is going to offer that software as Open Source <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/walmart_opensources_its_cloudhoppin…>. When? “before the end of the year”.

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The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE) Turns 19, Happy Birthday!
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '15

15 Oct '15

"Believe it or not, the KDE desktop environment turned 19 years old on October 14, 2015. Yes, it has been 19 long years since Matthias Ettrich announced his new project, the Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)." -- source: http://linux.softpedia.com/blog/the-kool-desktop-environment-kde-turns-19-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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BeagleBoard-x15 to arrive in time for holiday hacking
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '15

15 Oct '15

"BeagleBoard.org has provided some new details, including PCIe support, for its dual-core Cortex-A15 BeagleBoard-X15 SBC, which is due by December for $239." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/beagleboard-x15-to-arrive-in-time-… 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 There Space For Open Hardware In Networking?
by Peter Reutemann 14 Oct '15

14 Oct '15

"Open hardware has got much attention with the advent of Raspberry Pi, Arduino and their respective clones. But most of the devices are focused either on tinkerers (Arduino) or most notably multimedia (Raspberry Pi). However, there is not much happening in other areas such as home routers where openness might help improve security and drive progress. Our company (non-profit) is trying to change this with Turris Omnia but we still wander if there is in fact demand for such devices. Is the market large enough and the area cool enough? Are there enough people who would value open hardware running open software even with a higher price tag? Any feedback would be most valued." -- source: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/10/13/191202 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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Geriatric Linux: How an 'old geezer' came to terms with computers
by Peter Reutemann 14 Oct '15

14 Oct '15

"I was born in 1933, so computers weren't something I grew up with. In fact, neither was TV, atomic energy, or even jet planes. For my first 70 years I had neither the need nor the desire to become involved with computers." -- source: http://opensource.com/life/15/9/my-linux-story-emery-fletcher 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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Wayland Ported To DragonFlyBSD
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '15

13 Oct '15

"Wayland 1.9 and the reference Weston compositor have been ported to DragonFlyBSD. Significant changes were made to get Wayland/Weston running, and you must either already be running an X.Org Server or be using the Linux-ported Radeon and Intel kernel mode-setting drivers, plus jump through a few setup steps." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/10/13/1859232 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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Fwd: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '15

12 Oct '15

Apologies, if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: philip Date: Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 6:31 PM Subject: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe To: nzlug <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> Hi folks, Jerry Bezencon, the author of the Linux Lite distribution has had his distribution banned from TradeMe. Jerry has put the correspondence on the Linux Lite forums. https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/on-topic/linux-lite-banned-as-free-s oftware-from-trademe Jerry has been given the same run around that Copyleft was given a few years ago when it was thrown off TradeMe. I had explained about Free Software, Project Gutenberg, and that eBay allowing Linux sales. All I got was "it was against policy blah blah blah" – despite the fact that TradeMe's policy did not cover FLOSS. A burnt Official Debian Disc is the original disc. Or worse, in Jerry's case he is selling his own work and that he owns the original copyright on his work. Applying Hanlon's razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". eBay.com.au runs Apache (FLOSS), so management has been educated by its techies about free software, how it works and the environment in which it works. So Linux sales are permitted. IMHO the root of the problem lies in the techie area of TradeMe. When I checked a few years ago I found that TradeMe was a Microsoft shop (os info is not available now). TradeMe has Microsoft techies and so management remains ignorant and open to FUD about FLOSS. OnOffer is also a Microsoft shop and has similar restrictions. Let's make waves. Phil. -- Philip Charles; 39a Paterson Street, Abbotsford, Dunedin, New Zealand +64 3 488 2818 Fax +64 3 488 2875 Mobile 027 663 4453 philipc(a)copyleft.co.nz - personal. info(a)copyleft.co.nz - business _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- 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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android-x86 marches onward in v5 alpha
by Ian Young 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

For anyone who may like this sort of thing and not seen this announcement. Sounds like some interesting progress. https://sites.google.com/a/android-x86.org/web/releases/releasenote-5-1-rc1 Key Features The 5.1-rc1 release is based on the Android 5.1.1_r24. We added many x86 specified code and fixed issues to let the system runs smoothly on x86 platforms, especially for netbooks or tablets. The key features contain Supports 64-bit kernel and userspace, as well as 32-bit system. Update kernel to 4.0.9. Enable OpenGL ES hardware acceleration for Intel/AMD(radeon/radeonsi)/Nvidia(nouveau) chipsets. Support booting from UEFI and installing to UEFI disk. Be able to install to ext4/ext3/ext2/ntfs/fat32 filesystems via a text based GUI installer. Support Multi-touch, Audio, Wifi, Bluetooth, Sensors, Camera and Ethernet (DHCP only). Auto-mount external usb drive and sdcard with filesystem vfat/ntfs/exfat/ext4. Support VM including Qemu, VirtualBox and VMware. Support foreign archs (arm / arm64) via the native bridge mechanism. (Settings -> Apps Compatibility)

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Ubuntu Plans To Make ZFS File-System Support Standard On Linux
by Peter Reutemann 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

'Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth revealed today that they're planning to make ZFS standard on Ubuntu. They are planning to include ZFS file-system as "standard in due course," but no details were revealed beyond that. However, ZFS On Linux contributor Richard Yao has said they do plan on including it in their kernel for 16.04 LTS and the GPL vs. CDDL license worries aren't actually a problem. Many Linux users have been wanting ZFS on Linux, but aside from the out of tree module there hasn't been any luck in including it in the mainline kernel or with tier-one Linux distributions due to license differences.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/06/210202 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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Matthew Garrett Forks the Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

'Just like Sarah Sharp, Linux developer Matthew Garrett has gotten fed up with the unprofessional development culture surrounding the kernel. "I remember having to deal with interminable arguments over the naming of an interface because Linus has an undying hatred of BSD securelevel, or having my name forever associated with the deepthroating of Microsoft because Linus couldn't be bothered asking questions about the reasoning behind a design before trashing it," Garrett writes. He has chosen to go his own way, and has forked the Linux kernel and added patches that implement a BSD-style securelevel interface. Over time it is expected to pick up some of the power management code that Garrett is working on, and we shall see where it goes from there.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/10/06/1553233 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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Ditch Linux For Windows 10 On Your Raspberry Pi With Microsoft's IoT Kit
by Peter Reutemann 29 Sep '15

29 Sep '15

'Partnering with Adafruit, Microsoft has announced the Windows IoT Core Starter Kit. The $75 kit comes comes with an SD card preloaded with Windows 10 IoT. According to the Raspberry Pi blog: "The pack is available with a Pi 2 for people who are are new to Raspberry Pi or who'd like a dedicated device for their projects, or without one for those who'll be using a Pi they already own. The box contains an SD card with Windows 10 Core and a case, power supply, wifi module and Ethernet cable for your Pi; a breadboard, jumper wires and components including LEDs, potentiometers and switches; and sensors for light, colour, temperature and pressure. There's everything you need to start building."' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/09/28/1949211 Looks like it wasn't vaporware after all. But I'm not gonna replace the Linux on my RPis. Especially not since I can have a full-blown Linux OS on it rather than some stripped down Windows version. :-) 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 Life And Death Of A Laptop Battery
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Sep '15

27 Sep '15

<http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_batte…> “Why are my laptop batteries always dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe Battery University, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100% all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.” ... “Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in preparation for a longer trip?”

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