- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

LibreSSL Gets Rid Of SSL
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

LibreSSL (a fork of OpenSSL created after the security scandals over the latter) has now got rid of all versions of the protocol called “SSL” (“Secure Sockets Layer”) <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LibreSSL-2.3-Released>. The official name of current versions of the protocol used for secure HTTP connections (among other things) is “TLS” (“Transport Layer Security”).

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Why Ad Blockers Could Be A Good Thing
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

A posting <https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/golden/has-apple-doomed-ads-on-the-web-w…> on “Freedom To Tinker”, which is part of my regular reading, talks about the potential implications of more widespread use of ad-blocker plugins in Web browsers. Not quite triggering an “arms race” of ad-blocker-blockers, and so on: If the use of these plugins becomes ubiquitous, only one thing would have to change – the publishers would have to insert the line of code in some way on the server side, and the ad would just look as though it came with the rest of the page. At that point, the browser plugin is useless. What would be the knock-on effects of this? The ad companies no longer have any way to track users as they move around the web. Absent some way on the ad companies’ part to implement a cross-site evercookie (which would be considered unethical and would quickly be blocked by browser authors if discovered), the ad companies will no longer have a way to connect users on one site to users on another. The ads you’d see on a given site could be based solely on the interactions you’ve had with that one site – which would be a boon to privacy. So rather than becoming worse, the ads would actually take on a less creepy form.

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PatchSee Ethernet Cables
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Sep '15

23 Sep '15

The unique selling point is the special LED tool that, when plugged in to one end, lights up the other end. So you can tell where your cables run without having to colour-code or label them. But is it worth the cost? <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PETJpmxiyOY>

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Copying from a pdf, removing EOL and spaces
by Roderick Aldridge 23 Sep '15

23 Sep '15

Hi everyone I want to copy an extract from a .pdf file. When I select some text to copy and paste it puts each word followed by two spaces on a separate line. Do you know a better way to extract some text from a .pdf? Alternatively what is an easy way to remove the space and EOL to reformat the text in a readable format? I am sure there are several, but I would appreciate a really easy one. TIA Roderick

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WLUG meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '15

22 Sep '15

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday: "Hieu Trinh will talk about how to use a Raspberry Pi for sorting fruit." More details: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/223612685/ According to Hieu, his presentation will be a short one, so if you have something else from the world of Linux/Open Source, then please let me know and I'll add it. 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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Keith Packard On X11
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Sep '15

19 Sep '15

A half-hour talk from “Mr X11” himself, Keith Packard <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KeithP-Sustaining-X>. Notable points: * The original MIT X Consortium was dominated by the proprietary UNIX workstation vendors, who were all trying to lock in their own customers into their own ways of doing things. These “UNIX Wars” led to the whole workstation market imploding, letting Microsoft take over with Windows NT. * XFree86 was, in the beginning, like a “rebel alliance”, trying to bring X11 to commodity PC hardware. They were shunned for many years by the X Consortium. Of course this changed after all the UNIX vendors went under. Later, the revitalized X Consortium became a home for the X11 developer community which left the inflexibilities of the XFree86 corporate organization behind. * Over the last decade, the X server has become less and less of an operating system in its own right. Hardware-specific graphics drivers have been moved into the Linux kernel, leaving the X userland code to focus on the hardware-independent implementation layers. * Programs written to work with X11 nearly thirty years ago still work today. Even with all the reorganization and rewrites, X11 still remains fully backward-compatible. Which is more than Microsoft Windows can manage. * Keith made it clear he prefers GPL-style (copyleft/sharealike) licences to MIT/BSD style ones. Net contributors of code tend to prefer the former, while net consumers of code (those who don’t want to give back to the community) tend to favour the latter. In other words, freeloaders.

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Microsoft Linux
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Sep '15

18 Sep '15

Microsoft’s “Azure Cloud Switch” is a “a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux”. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/18/microsoft_has_developed_its_own_lin…>

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Dell Reportedly Shipping Ubuntu-Based Linux On 40%+ Of PCs In China
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Sep '15

15 Sep '15

<http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Dell-China-40-Linux> As the article admits, it is common for a pirated copy of Windows to be installed on such machines after the fact. However, as a commenter points out, these machines still officially count as sales of desktop Linux regardless.

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fxload - EZ USB loading firmware
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '15

14 Sep '15

Hi everyone I'm currently playing around with a Digilent Atlys Board for recording video: http://code.timvideos.us/home/ However, I've hit a snag in flashing the device, mainly because I can't find an up-to-date "fxload" executable. According to the documentation, the one that comes with Ubuntu is too old. But, the alternative downloads mentioned below for fxload and fx2loader no longer exist: https://github.com/timvideos/HDMI2USB/wiki/Digilent-Atlys-Board:-Loading-Fi… https://github.com/timvideos/HDMI2USB/wiki/Digilent-Atlys-Board:-Loading-Fi… Anyone an idea where to get an fxload of at least this version? Mar 12 2013 (development) 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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Linux 4.3 Bringing Stable Intel Skylake Support, Reworked NVIDIA Driver
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '15

13 Sep '15

'Mr. Torvalds has released Linux 4.3-rc1 this weekend. He characterized the release as "not particularly small — pretty average in size, in fact. Everything looks fairly normal, in fact, with about 70% of the changes being drivers, 10% architecture updates, and the remaining 20% are spread out." There are a number of new user-facing features including stabilized Intel "Skylake" processor support, initial AMD R9 Fury graphics support, SMP scheduler optimizations, file-system fixes, a reworked open-source NVIDIA driver, and many Linux hardware driver updates.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/09/13/1521216 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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Stopping A Command-Line Loop
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Sep '15

12 Sep '15

I was playing a bunch of several dozen MP3 files in sequence using a command like for f in *.mp3; do ffplay -autoexit "$f"; done Then half-way through I decided to stop it. Trouble was, every time I hit CTRL/C, it killed the playback of the current MP3 file, but the loop just went on to the next one. Finally I hit CTRL/Z. This suspended the entire command, putting it in the background, and returned me to the command prompt. Then I was able to type kill %1 to kill the background job. In future, I will remember to use a command more like for f in *.mp3; do ffplay -autoexit "$f" || break; done This terminates the loop if the playback of a file aborts with an error.

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LibreOffice 5.0.2 to Feature a Lot of DOCX Fixes
by Peter Reutemann 11 Sep '15

11 Sep '15

"Usually, maintenance releases are all about fixes, and the same can be said about the 5.0.2 version. From the looks of it, it's going to be bigger than the 5.0.1 version, which landed just last week. The first RC in the series incorporates a huge number of changes and various fixes that will definitely make this office suite even better." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/libreoffice-5-0-2-to-feature-a-lot-of-docx-f… Article also contains info on how to install this version (ppa + download). 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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UK Government Offering Detailed Guides On ODF Adoption
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Sep '15

10 Sep '15

After selecting ODF 1.2 last year as its standard format for editable documents, the UK Government has gone a step further to explain exactly how this standard is going to be implemented <http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2015/09/uk-government-backs-away-from-mic…>. A long way from the days when the US state of Massachusetts tried to do something similar, only to have its IT division outmaneouvred by backroom dealing <http://www.computerworld.com/article/2553645/enterprise-applications/inside…>.

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“Linux PC Repair”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Sep '15

09 Sep '15

Clicked on one of those “You may need to fix Windows errors” ad links, just for fun. Took me to a page that says “System Information: Your machine is currently running: Linux. Reimage PC Repair is compatible with your operating system”. And there is a link to download an .exe file... And on the rest of the page: “Designed for: Windows XP, Vista , 7 , 8 , 8.1 & 10”, “Using Microsoft Technologies”, “McAfee Secure”, “Norton Secured”, blah-blah-blah...

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Raspberry Pi now has a $60 7-inch touchscreen display
by Peter Reutemann 09 Sep '15

09 Sep '15

"The Raspberry Pi Foundation today announced a touchscreen display for the small computer, on sale for $60 (or £48 in the UK). The display has an 800×480 resolution, 10-finger capacitive touch capability, and an adapter board that is used both to power the display and connect to the Raspberry Pi with a DSI ribbon cable. Using DSI keeps the Pi's HDMI port free, so people can use both the small touchscreen display and a big monitor or TV simultaneously. Some assembly is required, but later versions will come fully assembled." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/raspberry-pi-now-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/

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Mozilla: data stolen from hacked bug database was used to attack Firefox
by Peter Reutemann 09 Sep '15

09 Sep '15

"An attacker stole security-sensitive vulnerability information from the Mozilla's Bugzilla bug tracking system and probably used it to attack Firefox users, the maker of the open-source Firefox browser warned Friday." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/mozilla-data-stolen-from-hacked-bug… 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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New Release of the Trinity Desktop Environment
by Peter Reutemann 06 Sep '15

06 Sep '15

'A new release of the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) is out. TDE is "a computer desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the function and form of traditional desktop computers" which translates into a fully functional KDE 3 style Desktop. Something is missing in the new generation of desktop environments, since some people (perhaps more than "some") feel at home with Gnome 2 or KDE i3. They have repositories for Debian and Ubuntu-based distros. I'm now using it on Ubuntu 15.04, amazed about how well-planned things were in the previous generation of DE. We may have gained some things with Gnome 3 and Plasma 5, but we lost a lot of good features too. TDE brings them back' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/06/030222 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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Automating the 3270 part of a Debian System z install
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Sep '15

04 Sep '15

From <http://debblog.philkern.de/2015/08/automating-3270-part-of-debian-system-z.…>: “This will load the alternate kernel parameters file into the card reader, while still loading the original kernel and initrd files.” “(note the 80 character column limit)” Nope, not from the last century, but from the last month. This is how you run Linux on a “modern” IBM mainframe.

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Where to Download the Best Linux Games Without Any Hassle
by Peter Reutemann 02 Sep '15

02 Sep '15

"Not even a decade ago, native gaming on Linux was barely a conceivable reality save for a few open source cross-platform games. Today, it’s clear that the “no games on Linux” myth is dead. Sure, hardcore gamers will probably still choose Windows over Linux, but there’s more than enough evidence that many high-quality games can be played on Linux, and the number of available games is just going to keep increasing." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/where-to-download-the-best-linux-g… 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, Google, Amazon, others, aim for royalty-free video codecs
by Peter Reutemann 01 Sep '15

01 Sep '15

"Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon today launched a new consortium, the Alliance for Open Media. The group plans to develop next-generation media formats—including audio and still images, but with video as the top priority—and deliver them as royalty-free open source, suitable for both commercial and noncommercial content." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/microsoft-google-amaz… 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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LILO Development Coming To An End
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Sep '15

01 Sep '15

<http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LILO-Bootloader-EOY> Is anybody still using LILO (the “LInux LOader”)? That was the Linux-specific bootloader from the early days, before GRUB (the “GRand Unified Bootloader”) came on the scene. I remember one difference was that LILO compiled its configuration into the bootloader binary at installation time. That way, if you made any errors in the configuration, you usually discovered that immediately. Whereas with GRUB, you only found this out when your machine failed to boot. Though with GRUB 2 commonplace nowadays, I haven’t felt the need to configure anything as yet. It seems smart enough to figure it out all by itself. :)

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"Hack" Typeface Is Open Source, Easy On the IDEs
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '15

31 Aug '15

"Ars Technica writes that "At SourceFoundry.org this week, programmer Chris Simpkins debuted the 2.0 version of Hack, an open-source typeface designed specifically for use in source code." The revamped font is" characterized by a large x-height, wide aperture, and low contrast design in order to be "highly legible" at common coding text sizes," and the font specimen shows how legible it is right down to downright tiny sizes, though Simpkins says the sweet spot is between 8 and 12 pixels. " -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/08/30/1733217 Very subtle differences in comparison to "monospace", from a quick comparison: - the dash "-" is longer - the "*" has five points rather than six - the "i" looks more like an "l" (not so sure about this change, though) - the stroke inside the zero is more pronounced Using Hack in a terminal seems a bit clearer than monospace. Here's a howto for Mint on installing a new font: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/29 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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Fake EFF site serving espionage malware was likely active for 3+ weeks
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '15

31 Aug '15

"A spear-phishing campaign some researchers say is linked to the Russian government masqueraded as the Electronic Frontier Foundation in an attempt to infect targets with malware that collects passwords and other sensitive data." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/fake-eff-site-serving-espionage-mal… 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 MAGPI ISSUE 37 - SEPTEMBER 2015
by Peter Reutemann 30 Aug '15

30 Aug '15

Featured in The MagPi Issue 37: * Build a Raspberry Pi digital home Eight projects to build tomorrow’s home, today * Stream live from your PC Use the hottest PC software anywhere in your house * Build a fridge monitor Everyday engineering brought to life with your Pi * Build a computer vision sequencer Mike Cook continues his Pi Bakery project series * The Fallout Pip-Boy How one man made sci-fi fact, just in time for Fallout 4! -- source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/37/ PDF can be downloaded for free. 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 NZ Herald’s Data Blog
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Aug '15

30 Aug '15

Discovered this through a mention on the “Media Watch” program on RNZ National <http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/201762824/min…>. Harkanwal Singh is a “data journalist”, who uses data analysis techniques to put together news stories. His group has already published some interesting analyses, such as broadband affordability, school deciles, traffic crashes and other things. <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/data-blog/news/headlines.cfm?c_id=1503710>

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