- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Mozilla Urges Action To Unpick Platform Browser Lock-ins
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '22

23 Sep '22

'As antitrust regulators around the world dial up scrutiny of platform power, Mozilla has published a piece of research digging into the at times subtle yet always insidious ways operating systems exert influence to keep consumers locked to using their own-brand browsers rather than seeking out and switching to independent options -- while simultaneously warning that competition in the browser market is vital to ensure innovation and choice for consumers and, more broadly, protect the vitality of the open web against the commercial giants trying to wall it up. TechCrunch: "Billions of people across the globe are dependent on operating systems from the largest technology companies. Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta each provide their own browser on their operating systems and each of them uses their gatekeeper position provider to preference their own browsers over independent rivals. Whether it is Microsoft pushing Firefox users to switch their default on Windows computers, Apple restricting the functionality of rival browsers on iOS smartphones or Google failing to apply default browser settings across Android, there are countless examples of independent browsers being inhibited by the operating systems on which they are dependent," Mozilla writes in a summary of its findings. "This matters because American consumers and society as a whole suffer. Not only do people lose the ability to determine their own online experiences but they also receive less innovative and lower quality products. In addition, they can be forced to accept poorer privacy outcomes and even unfair contracts. By contrast, competition from independent browsers can help to drive new features, as well as innovation in areas like privacy and security."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/09/22/1841231 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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GNU Grep 3.8 Starts Issuing Warnings About Using Egrep and Fgrep
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '22

22 Sep '22

'After 104 commits from six different people, GNU grep was released Saturday, reports Phoronix. The biggest change? "It's now made more clear that if you are still relying on the egrep and fgrep commands, it's past due for switching to just grep with the appropriate command-line arguments." The egrep and fgrep commands have been deprecated since 2007. Beginning with GNU Grep 3.8 today, calling these commands will now issue a warning to the user that instead they should use grep -E and grep -F, respectively. Eventually, GNU Grep will drop the egrep / fgrep commands completely but there doesn't seem to be a firm deadline yet for when that removal will happen. >From grep's updated manual: 7th Edition Unix had commands egrep and fgrep that were the counterparts of the modern 'grep -E' and 'grep -F'. Although breaking up grep into three programs was perhaps useful on the small computers of the 1970s, egrep and fgrep were not standardized by POSIX and are no longer needed. In the current GNU implementation, egrep and fgrep issue a warning and then act like their modern counterparts; eventually, they are planned to be removed entirely. If you prefer the old names, you can use use your own substitutes, such as a shell script... Other notable changes from the release announcement: - The confusing GREP_COLOR environment variable is now obsolescent. Instead of GREP_COLOR='xxx' use GREP_COLORS='mt=xxx' - Regular expressions with stray backslashes now cause warnings' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/09/05/0135254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Repairable, upgradeable Framework Laptop will also be available as a Chromebook
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '22

22 Sep '22

'Fans of the modular Framework Laptop who also prefer ChromeOS to Windows or Linux are in for a treat: Framework and Google are announcing a Chromebook Edition of the laptop today. It has the same basic hardware design and works with most of the same parts as the regular Framework Laptop but with tweaks to make it a full-fledged Chromebook. While you could always take a standard Framework Laptop and install ChromeOS Flex on it, the standard version of ChromeOS still has a few features that Flex doesn't, including Android app support via Google Play, automated firmware updates, and a few other security and device management features. Framework says that the Chromebook Edition laptop will be available for preorder starting today—a version with a Core i5-1240P CPU will cost $999, although you'll only need to put down $100 to reserve your preorder. Orders begin shipping in December. Framework is also putting parts specific to the Chromebook Edition laptop into its Framework Marketplace parts store.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/repairable-upgradeable-framework-la… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Document Foundation Starts Charging For 'Free' LibreOffice
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '22

22 Sep '22

'The Document Foundation, the organization that tends the open source productivity suite LibreOffice, has decided to start charging for one version of the software. The Register reports: LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice and is offered under the free/open source Mozilla Public License Version 2.0. A Monday missive from the Document Foundation reveals the org will begin charging 8.99 euros for the software -- but only when sold via Apple's Mac App Store. That sum has been styled a "convenience fee ... which will be invested to support development of the LibreOffice project." The foundation suggests paying up in the Mac App Store is ideal for "end users who want to get all of their desktop software from Apple's proprietary sales channel." Free downloads of LibreOffice for macOS from the foundation's site will remain available and arguably be superior to the App Store offering, because that version will include Java. The foundation argued that Apple does not permit dependencies in its store, so it cannot include Java in the 8.99 euro offering. The version now sold in the App Store supersedes a previous offering provided by open source support outfit Collabora, which charged $10 for a "Vanilla" version of the suite and threw in three years of support. The foundation's marketing officer Italo Vignoli said the change was part of a "new marketing strategy." "The Document Foundation is focused on the release of the Community version, while ecosystem companies are focused on a value-added long-term supported versions targeted at enterprises," Vignoli explained. "The distinction has the objective of educating organizations to support the FOSS project by choosing the LibreOffice version which has been optimized for deployments in production and is backed by professional services, and not the Community version generously supported by volunteers." "The objective is to fulfil the needs of individual and enterprise users in a better way," Vignoli added, before admitting "we know that the positive effects of the change will not be visible for some time. Educating enterprises about FOSS is not a trivial task and we have just started our journey in this direction."' -- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/22/09/20/2039208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linus Torvalds: Rust Will Go Into Linux 6.1
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '22

20 Sep '22

'As previously indicated on Slashdot, Rust was slated to be coming to the Linux Kernel sometime in the 6.x version. Well wonder no longer on which version of kernel 6.x will have the first bits of Rust officially in the kernel, as Linus has confirmed that 6.1 will be the first with the new NVMe kernel drivers being in Rust. The first version non-production ready code for the NVMe Rust based kernel drivers were already producing performance comparable to C code. So the final drivers to hit 6.1 are already looking promising. It also helped Rust's case that, thanks to the ground-breaking work of Linux kernel and Rust developer Miguel Ojeda, Rust on Linux has gotten much more mature. Kernel maintainers were convinced it is time to move forward with Rust in Linux. In short, they agreed that Rust on Linux was ready for work.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/09/19/205239 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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meeting next *Tuesday*
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '22

20 Sep '22

Hi everyone We have a meeting next *Tuesday* (since Monday is remembrance day) with the following topic: 'People that never learned to touch type find that typing can severely impede creativity. Rod Aldridge will talk about his experience of getting Google's speech-to-text working on his computer to speed up his writing, what to look out for, how it works and how well it works.' Details: https://www.meetup.com/waikatolinuxusersgroup/events/283776705/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '22

20 Sep '22

Hi everyone We have a meeting next week on Monday but no speaker so far. Anyone keen on demoing or presenting (distro/software/etc)? Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Chrome for Android gets fingerprint-protected Incognito tabs
by Peter Reutemann 19 Sep '22

19 Sep '22

'Here's a fun new feature for Chrome for Android: fingerprint-protected Incognito tabs. 9to5Google discovered the feature in the Chrome 105 stable channel, though you'll have to dig deep into the settings to enable it at the moment. If you want to add a little more protection to your private browsing sessions, type "chrome://flags/#incognito-reauthentication-for-android" into the address bar and hit enter. After enabling the flag and restarting Chrome, you should see an option to "Lock Incognito tabs when you leave Chrome." If you leave your Incognito session and come back, an "unlock Incognito" screen will appear instead of your tabs, and you'll be asked for a fingerprint scan. Chrome on iOS has had a biometrics-backed Incognito feature, called "Privacy Screen," for a few years. This is a first for Android, though. Chrome's "flags" menu is technically for experiments and in-development features, so this isn't guaranteed to become a readily accessible user feature, but making it to the stable channel—plus the feature already existing on iOS—is a good sign.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/chrome-for-android-gets-fingerprint… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Beloved browser extension acquired by non-beloved antivirus firm
by Peter Reutemann 19 Sep '22

19 Sep '22

'Browser extension I don't care about cookies does one job and does it well. It automatically removes the annoying-but-mandated "This website uses cookies" notices from websites. People like it, donate to it, and don't ask more of it, a rare find for free software. "Damn, this is the **** bro, it saved like 50 minutes of my gaming time lol," reads one review on the tool's Microsoft Edge Add-Ons page. The tone changed when the solo developer posted "GREAT NEWS" on the extension's website. Avast, a giant in cybersecurity that just completed an $8.1 billion merger with NortonLifeLock, will acquire the 10-year-old software for an undisclosed price.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/beloved-browser-extension-acquired-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Ubuntu Aims To Support the $16+ Sipeed LicheeRV and Other RISC-V Boards
by Peter Reutemann 19 Sep '22

19 Sep '22

'"In addition to Ubuntu supporting the StarFive VisionFive and Nezha RISC-V boards, Canonical engineers are also working on supporting the Sipeed LicheeRV board too for next month's 22.10 release," reports Phoronix. "The Sipeed LicheeRV is notable in being one of the cheapest RISC-V boards out there: pricing starts at $16.90 USD...." The Sipeed LicheeRV uses the Allwinner D1 SoC and is powered by a single-core XuanTie C906 64-bit RISC-V processor. This single-core RISC-V processor runs at just 1.0GHz. Yes, this is a very cheap but slow board. The LicheeRV is primarily for networking purposes and other IoT use-cases.... The Sipeed LicheeRV was announced last year and initially targeting support for OpenWrt-based Linux distributions, but Canonical recently has been working on getting support for this RISC-V board squared away in time for Ubuntu 22.10. This appears to be part of an increasing focus by the Ubuntu maker for being a leading distribution contender for RISC-V hardware.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/09/17/1728244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Fun Mistake Of The Week
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Sep '22

17 Sep '22

Yesterday I was writing a simple, harmless little Python script. I tried running it for the first time, and my terminal session seemed to lock up. A crosshair cursor appeared. I tried clicking in various places and hitting CTRL/C (and other keystrokes) several times. After several tries, I managed to stop the script and get my terminal session back. This happened a couple of times, until I realized my Python script was missing the “#!/usr/bin/python3” “shebang” line at the top. So when I executed it, the system assumed it was a shell script. And the very first command it saw was an “import” statement, which it interpreted as an attempt to call the ImageMagick “import” command <https://imagemagick.org/script/import.php>. This command lets you capture screenshots of selected windows or the entire screen, or parts thereof. Which is where the crosshair cursor came from. And because I had several of these import statements, after I managed to terminate one, it went on to the next one. Once I added the missing script-interpreter line, my script started behaving a bit more sensibly. ;)

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Trojanized versions of PuTTY utility being used to spread backdoor
by Peter Reutemann 17 Sep '22

17 Sep '22

'Researchers believe hackers with connections to the North Korean government have been pushing a Trojanized version of the PuTTY networking utility in an attempt to backdoor the network of organizations they want to spy on. Researchers from security firm Mandiant said on Thursday that at least one customer it serves had an employee who installed the fake network utility by accident. The incident caused the employer to become infected with a backdoor tracked by researchers as Airdry.v2. The file was transmitted by a group Mandiant tracks as UNC4034.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/trojanized-versions-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Nearly One In Two Industry Pros Scaled Back Open Source Use Over Security Fears
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '22

16 Sep '22

'The Register: About 40 percent of industry professionals say their organizations have reduced their usage of open source software due to concerns about security, according to a survey conducted by data science firm Anaconda. The company's 2022 State of Data Science report solicited opinions in April and May from 3,493 individuals from 133 countries and regions, targeting academics, industry professionals, and students. About 16 percent of respondents identified as data scientists. About 33 percent of surveyed industry professionals said they had not scaled back on open source, 7 percent said they had increased usage, and 20 percent said they weren't sure. The remaining 40 percent said they had. By industry professionals, or commercial respondents as Anaconda puts it, the biz means a data-science-leaning mix of business analysts, product managers, data and machine-learning scientists and engineers, standard IT folks such as systems administrators, and others in technology, finance, consulting, healthcare, and so on. And by scale back, that doesn't mean stop: 87 percent of commercial respondents said their organization still allowed the use of open source. It appears a good number of them, though, are seeking to reducing the risk from relying on too many open source dependencies. Anaconda's report found that incidents like Log4j and reports of "protestware" prompted users of open source software to take security concerns more seriously. Of the 40 percent who scaled back usage of open source, more than half did so after the Log4j fiasco. Some 31 percent of respondents said security vulnerabilities represent the biggest challenge in the open source community today. Most organizations use open source software, according to Anaconda. But among the 8 percent of respondents indicating that they don't, more than half (54 percent, up 13 percent since last year) cited security risks as the reason. Other reasons for not using open source software include: lack of understanding (38 percent); lack of confidence in organizational IT governance (29 percent); "open-source software is deemed insecure, so it's not allowed" (28 percent); and not wanting to disrupt current projects (26 percent).' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/09/15/003243 Any library/tool, whether proprietary or not, on which many other systems rely has that same potential "security" problem (plenty of exploits in Windows/Mac, supply-chain corruptions, etc). Just because your code is proprietary doesn't make it any safer. You could simply spend some of your internal budget (that you didn't spend on developing these libraries), to do some code review on them and contribute back. Otherwise you're just a whinging freeloader... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Microsoft Teams Stores Auth Tokens As Cleartext In Windows, Linux, Macs
by Peter Reutemann 15 Sep '22

15 Sep '22

'Security analysts have found a severe security vulnerability in the desktop app for Microsoft Teams that gives threat actors access to authentication tokens and accounts with multi-factor authentication (MFA) turned on. BleepingComputer reports: "This attack does not require special permissions or advanced malware to get away with major internal damage," Connor Peoples at cybersecurity company Vectra explains in a report this week. The researcher adds that by taking "control of critical seats -- like a company's Head of Engineering, CEO, or CFO -- attackers can convince users to perform tasks damaging to the organization." Vectra researchers discovered the problem in August 2022 and reported it to Microsoft. However, Microsoft did not agree on the severity of the issue and said that it doesn't meet the criteria for patching. With a patch unlikely to be released, Vectra's recommendation is for users to switch to the browser version of the Microsoft Teams client. By using Microsoft Edge to load the app, users benefit from additional protections against token leaks. The researchers advise Linux users to move to a different collaboration suite, especially since Microsoft announced plans to stop supporting the app for the platform by December. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/22/09/14/1939242 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Exploring GNOME-Based UIs For Mobile Linux Devices
by Peter Reutemann 15 Sep '22

15 Sep '22

'"The GNOME desktop environment is one of the most popular user interfaces and suites of apps available for desktop Linux distributions," writes Liliputing. "Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems." GNOME Shell for mobile provides a touch-friendly user interface optimized for smartphones and tablets. And while it looks a bit like Android or iOS at first glance, there are a few key differences. The GNOME team have outlined some of them in an article about recent updates to GNOME Shell on mobile. Like other modern mobile user interfaces, you interact with GNOME shell using taps, swipes, and other gesture-based navigation. What's different is that Android has three different views for navigation: a home screen, app drawer, and multitasking view. iOS has two: home screen and multitasking. But GNOME Shell has a single screen that allows you to view and launch apps and switch between running apps using gestures. There's no need to wait for a new screen to load. In a nutshell, you can swipe up from the bottom of the any screen to view a list of installed apps, thumbnail images showing all currently running apps, and a search box. You can tap an app icon to launch a new app, enter a term in the search box to find an app, or swipe between running apps to switch which app runs in the foreground. You can also keep swiping upward to shrink the multitasking thumbnails and provide more room for app icons. And you can flick thumbnail previews upward to remove an app from the multitasking section. Typing in the search box will bring up relevant results including apps and settings. "One interesting new feature here is that notifications can be swiped away horizontally to close, and notification bubbles can be swiped up to hide them..." the developers point out. "While the current version is definitely still work in progress, it's quite usable overall, so we feel it would make sense to start having experimental GNOME OS Nightly images with it." But Liliputing also notes that it's not the only GNOME-based UI for mobile devices. There's also Purism's Phosh UI — the default UI for the PureOS on its Librem 5 smartphone (and available for other mobile Linux distros including Debian). And Purism recently bragged that its smartphone is now also "the first mobile computer with a truly convergent OS" — meaning it can run on multiple hardware platforms, with apps adapting to their hardware. The Librem 5 [smartphone] uses the same convergent PureOS as our Librem 14 laptop and Mini PCs, with the same adaptive applications that make the Librem 5 more than merely a phone, it's a mobile computer in your pocket that can shape shift into a laptop, tablet, desktop, or even a server.... Scale your Librem 5 up to be a full laptop by attaching the Nexdock. Because our core apps are adaptive, they are ready to run on whatever screen you have.... With phosh-mobile-settings installed, you can flip the nexdock around and use the big screen just like a tablet.... Don't have a laptop dock? The Librem 5 can also act like a desktop computer when connected to a screen, keyboard, and mouse using our USB-C dock. Using the beta phom virtual mouse app, you can turn your Librem 5 into a touchpad mouse while it's connected to the big screen. With the Librem 5, you can keep your desktop computer in your pocket and connect to a bigger screen at home or at the office and use the same apps on the bigger screen without restarting.... With the Librem 5 phone, you're getting much more than smartphone to run mobile-only apps; you're getting a laptop, tablet, desktop, all running software that respects your privacy and freedom.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/09/11/047224 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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DuckDuckGo, Proton, Mozilla Throw Weight Behind Bill Targeting Big Tech 'Surveillance'
by Peter Reutemann 15 Sep '22

15 Sep '22

'A group of privacy-focused organizations have signed a letter imploring US Congress leaders to schedule a vote on a bill that would hamper data collection by tech giants and promote user access to online privacy tools. From a report: In its letter to Congress, addressed to the likes of Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, the alliance argued that the continued suppression of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) allows "dominant firms" to "limit competition and restrict user choice" when accessing privacy-focused technologies and products. It also accused tech giants of forcing users into accepting their policies of "perpetual surveillance" because of their positions as "gatekeepers," and of using their "influence in society" to steer users away from rival services more committed to privacy. Signatories included the likes of DuckDuckGo, Proton, Brave and Mozilla, among others, representing sectors ranging from VPN and search to web browsers, office software, and more. The letter to Congress fighting for the revival of the AICOA hit back at the idea that the US technology industry is a free market. The 13 signatories, all of which are relatively small in stature, claim the tech giants deliberately wield the depth and breadth of their product portfolios to establish unassailable monopolies.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/22/09/14/1644244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux Foundation Announces the OpenWallet Foundation To Develop Interoperable Digital Wallets
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '22

14 Sep '22

'The Linux Foundation has announced plans for a new collaborative initiative designed to support interoperability across digital wallets, built on an open source bedrock. From a report: The OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), as the new effort is called, is the brainchild of Daniel Goldscheider, CEO of open banking startup Yes.com, though today's announcement reveals a broad gamut of buy-ins from multiple industry players including Okta, Ping Identity, Accenture, CVS Health, OpenID Foundation, among several other public and private bodies. With the Linux Foundation serving as the project's host, this gives OWF sizeable clout as it strives to enable what Goldscheider calls a "plurarity of wallets based on a common core," according to a press release. The news also comes as regulatory bodies across the globe are moving to support competition through enforcing interoperability across systems, including Europe which is currently trying to make messaging interoperability a thing.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/09/13/1350232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Raspberry Pi OS improves menus, networking, camera possibilities
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '22

14 Sep '22

'The latest Raspberry Pi OS version adds menu search, a more mainstream network and VPN manager, and plenty of camera and machine learning possibilities through a new open source camera package.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/raspberry-pi-os-adds-easier-network… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Article: 10 Best Self-Hosted Apps for Your Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '22

12 Sep '22

It's actually 10 categories with several applications listed for each: 1. Media Server 2. File Sync Server 3. Virtualization Platform 4. Ads Blocker 5. Image Hub 6. Home Automation 7. Security Center 8. News Aggregator 9. Password Manager 10. Gaming Console Full details in the following article: https://linuxiac.com/best-self-hosted-raspberry-pi-apps/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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New Linux malware combines unusual stealth with a full suite of capabilities
by Peter Reutemann 11 Sep '22

11 Sep '22

'Researchers this week unveiled a new strain of Linux malware that's notable for its stealth and sophistication in infecting both traditional servers and smaller Internet-of-things devices. Dubbed Shikitega by the AT&T Alien Labs researchers who discovered it, the malware is delivered through a multistage infection chain using polymorphic encoding. It also abuses legitimate cloud services to host command-and-control servers. These things make detection extremely difficult. "Threat actors continue to search for ways to deliver malware in new ways to stay under the radar and avoid detection," AT&T Alien Labs researcher Ofer Caspi wrote. "Shikitega malware is delivered in a sophisticated way, it uses a polymorphic encoder, and it gradually delivers its payload where each step reveals only part of the total payload. In addition, the malware abuses known hosting services to host its command and control servers."' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/new-linux-malware-co… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Android 13 Raises Minimum System Requirement To 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage
by Peter Reutemann 10 Sep '22

10 Sep '22

'Android 13 has recently hit the streets, and with it, Google is raising the minimum requirements for Android phones. From a report: Google's latest blog post announced that the minimum amount of RAM for Android Go, the low-end version of Android, is now 2GB for Android 13, whereas previously, it was 1GB. Esper's Mishaal Rahman and Google Product Expert Jason Bayton also claim the minimum storage requirements have been bumped up to 16GB, though Google doesn't seem to have publicly documented this anywhere. The increase in system requirements means any phone that doesn't meet the minimum specs won't be able to update to Android 13. New phones launching with Android 13 will need to meet the minimum requirements to be eligible for Play Store licensing, though launching with an older version of Android (with lower requirements) will still be an option for a while. Technically, anyone can grab the Android source code and build anything with it, but if you want to license the Google apps and have access to the Google-trademarked brand "Android," you'll need to comply with Google's rules.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/09/09/1742200 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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New Zealand programming contest
by Peter Reutemann 09 Sep '22

09 Sep '22

Hi everyone I just got notified that the New Zealand programming contest is on tomorrow. More information on the Hamilton event is available from here: https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~tl108/nzpc-hamilton/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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New wave of data-destroying ransomware attacks hits QNAP NAS devices
by Peter Reutemann 08 Sep '22

08 Sep '22

'Network hardware-maker QNAP is urging customers to update their network-attached storage devices immediately to protect them from a new wave of ongoing ransomware attacks that can destroy terabytes of data in a single stroke. Singapore-based QNAP said recently that it has identified a new campaign from a ransomware group known as DeadBolt. The attacks take aim at QNAP NAS devices that use a proprietary feature known as Photo Station. The advisory instructs customers to update their firmware, suggesting there is a vulnerability that’s under exploit, but the company makes no explicit mention of a CVE designation that security professionals use to track such security flaws.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/new-wave-of-data-des… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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NASA Going RISC-V
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Sep '22

07 Sep '22

NASA’s space probes have been using a PowerPC-based computing architecture going back over two decades, so it’s about time for a refresh. So now SiFive <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/09/06/nasas_spaceflight_computer_risc_v/> is going to supply NASA with a new computing platform based on its X280 RISC-V CPU. “RISC” is supposed to stand for “Reduced Instruction Set Computing”. However, many current RISC architectures (including ARM and POWER/PowerPC) have seen a large blowout of their instruction-set size when they started adding SIMD vector operations. These instructions operate on fixed-length sets of around 4, 8 or 16 operands, performing the same operation on all operands simultaneously (hence “SIMD”, standing for “Single Instruction, Multiple Data”). Trouble is, you need a lot of different variants of each instruction for coping with different data types. While vector operations are important for many uses, RISC-V takes a different approach, harking back to the old supercomputers designed by the legendary Seymour Cray: instead of having to operate on all operands simultaneously, the instructions operate elementwise on variable-length arrays (the original Cray-1 design allowed for arrays of up to 64 elements at a time), with operands being processed sequentially through a multi-stage pipeline. This should help keep things simpler, while still making it fast.

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Google Chrome Emergency Update Fixes New Zero-Day Used in Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 07 Sep '22

07 Sep '22

'Google has released Chrome 105.0.5195.102 for Windows, Mac, and Linux users to address a single high-severity security flaw, the sixth Chrome zero-day exploited in attacks patched this year. From a report: "Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2022-3075 exists in the wild," the company said in a security advisory published on Friday. This new version is rolling out in the Stable Desktop channel, with Google saying that it will reach the entire user base within a matter of days or weeks. It was available immediately when BleepingComputer checked for new updates by going into the Chrome menu > Help > About Google Chrome. The web browser will also auto-check for new updates and automatically install them after the next launch.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/22/09/06/1424200 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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