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Dell’s XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition gets Ubuntu 22.04 LTS certified
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '22

21 Jul '22

'Dell is extending its love for Linux to the Dell XPS 13 Plus. The Developer Edition of the laptop has been Ubuntu 22.04 LTS-certified, Canonical announced today. That means the laptop will be sold starting in August with the latest version of Ubuntu, and owners of the XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition can download Ubuntu 22.04 LTS today (even if they bought it with Windows 11) for guaranteed performance. The XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition is the first 22.04 LTS-certified laptop, joining only some Raspberry Pi devices in certification. However, Dell has been certifying some of its XPS laptops, as well as other machines, for Ubuntu for generations. HP and Lenovo also have Ubuntu-certified systems. Of course, Ubuntu certification means all the components will "work as expected," as Canonical's announcement today put it. Further, Ubuntu LTS certification means the device will have support for at least 10 years. Ubuntu's release cycle page states that LTS (long-term support) releases include 10 years of "Base Package" maintenance and security updates. "Certified devices also include specific software or drivers that differ from the default distribution where required. These are defined in a meta-package that automatically [installs] the optimal configuration of packages, drivers, and kernel to deliver the best experience on that device," Canonical's announcement said.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/dells-xps-13-plus-developer-edition… 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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Google, Oracle Cloud Servers Wilt in UK Heatwave, Take Down Websites
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

'Cloud services and servers hosted by Google and Oracle in the UK have dropped offline due to cooling issues as the nation experiences a record-breaking heatwave. From a report: When the mercury hit 40.3C (104.5F) in eastern England, the highest ever registered by a country not used to these conditions, datacenters couldn't take the heat. Selected machines were powered off to avoid long-term damage, causing some resources, services, and virtual machines to became unavailable, taking down unlucky websites and the like. Multiple Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources are offline, including networking, storage, and compute provided by its servers in the south of UK. Cooling systems were blamed, and techies switched off equipment in a bid to prevent hardware burning out, according to a status update from Team Oracle. "As a result of unseasonal temperatures in the region, a subset of cooling infrastructure within the UK South (London) Data Centre has experienced an issue," Oracle said on Tuesday at 1638 UTC. "As a result some customers may be unable to access or use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources hosted in the region.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/22/07/19/204256 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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Denmark Bans Chromebooks, Google Workspace In Schools Over Data Transfer Risks
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

'Denmark is effectively banning Google's services in schools, after officials in the municipality of Helsingor were last year ordered to carry out a risk assessment around the processing of personal data by Google. TechCrunch reports: In a verdict published last week, Denmark's data protection agency, Datatilsynet, revealed that data processing involving students using Google's cloud-based Workspace software suite -- which includes Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and Google Drive -- "does not meet the requirements" of the European Union's GDPR data privacy regulations. Specifically, the authority found that the data processor agreement -- or Google's terms and conditions -- seemingly allow for data to be transferred to other countries for the purpose of providing support, even though the data is ordinarily stored in one of Google's EU data centers. Google's Chromebook laptops, and by extension Google Workspace, are used in schools across Denmark. But Datatilsynet focused specifically on Helsingor for the risk assessment after the municipality reported a "breach of personal data security" back in 2020. While this latest ruling technically only applies to schools in Helsingor for now, Datatilsynet notes that many of the conclusions it has reached will "probably apply to other municipalities" that use Google Chromebooks and Workspace. It added that it expects these other municipalities "to take relevant steps" off the back of the decision it reached in Helsingor. The ban is effective immediately, but Helsingor has until August 3 to delete user data. A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement: "We know that students and schools expect the technology they use to be legally compliant, responsible, and safe. That's why for years, Google has invested in privacy best practices and diligent risk assessments, and made our documentation widely available so anyone can see how we help organizations to comply with the GDPR. Schools own their own data. We only process their data in accordance with our contracts with them. In Workspace for Education, students' data is never used for advertising or other commercial purposes. Independent organizations have audited our services, and we keep our practices under constant review to maintain the highest possible standards of safety and compliance."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/07/18/2059204 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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Disentangling The Debian Derivatives: Which Should You Use?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

Intro to just a few <https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/18/disentangling_the_debian_derivatives/> members of the sprawling family of Debian derivatives. I think one of the reasons it has spawned so many offshoots is because the maintainers have made a point of ensuring the tools they use to create the distro itself are easy to use, adapt and configure, not just for themselves, but for others, too.

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Servers running Digium Phones VoiP software are getting backdoored
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

'Servers running the open source Asterisk communication software for Digium VoiP services are under attack by hackers who are managing to commandeer the machines to install web shell interfaces that give the attackers covert control, researchers have reported. Researchers from security firm Palo Alto Networks said they suspect the hackers are gaining access to the on-premises servers by exploiting CVE-2021-45461. The critical remote code-execution flaw was discovered as a zero-day vulnerability late last year, when it was being exploited to execute malicious code on servers running fully updated versions of Rest Phone Apps, aka restapps, which is a VoiP package sold by a company called Sangoma. The vulnerability resides in FreePBX, the world's most widely used open source software for Internet-based Private Branch Exchange systems, which enable internal and external communications in organizations' private internal telephone networks. CVE-2021-45461 carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10 and allows hackers to execute malicious code that takes complete control of servers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/07/servers-running-digi… 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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Apple’s Windows 10
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

Fred Brooks predicted long ago that complex pieces of software would eventually reach the point of irreducible entropy, where any attempt to fix a bug would simply introduce a new one. Microsoft’s Windows 10 seems to be about there, and it’s now clear that Apple’s macOS 10.15 “Catalina” has also joined that elite group <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/27/apple_catalina_update/>: The first spin of Catalina, officially released in October 2019, was a mess. ... The biggest issue was that all kinds of apps simply stopped working. ... Peripherals like mice, keyboards and printers stopped working. Email went missing; iCloud backups failed; users were constantly harassed by login requests; updates didn’t update ... ... So came for the first update to its new system one week after the main launch which fixed some, but not all, of the issues. ... Version two came in December 2019 and fixed some of those issues, but not all. ... More bug fixes came with version three in January 2020, but the OS seemed to have finally stabilized; something that was then spectacularly undone with version .4. ... Then we had the “supplemental update” to version 10.15.4, which fixed some, but not all, of the problems – most significantly the problem with Finder and transferring large files. And, amazingly, appeared to undo the good work that had been done with website security and broke SSH for some users. But now, with version point-five this week, that problem appears to have been sorted and, of course, your battery might last longer too.

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Linux distro for Apple silicon Macs is already up and running on the brand-new M2
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

'Unlike Intel Macs, Apple silicon Macs were designed to run only Apple's software. But the developers on the Asahi Linux team have been working to change that, painstakingly reverse-engineering support for Apple's processors and other Mac hardware and releasing it as a work-in-progress distro that can actually boot up and run on bare metal, no virtualization required. The Asahi Linux team put out a new release today with plenty of additions and improvements. Most notably, the distro now supports the M1 Ultra and the Mac Studio and has added preliminary support for the M2 MacBook Pro (which has been tested firsthand by the team) and the M2 MacBook Air (which hasn't been tested but ought to work). Preliminary Bluetooth support for all Apple silicon Macs has also been added, though the team notes that it works poorly when connected to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network because "Wi-Fi/Bluetooth coexistence isn't properly configured yet." There are still many other things that aren't working properly, including the USB-A ports on the Studio, faster-than-USB-2.0 speeds from any Type-C/Thunderbolt ports, and GPU acceleration, but progress is being made on all of those fronts. GPU work in particular is coming along, with a "prototype driver" that is "good enough to run real graphics applications and benchmarks" already up and running, though it's not included in this release.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/linux-distro-for-apple-silicon-macs… 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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In Defence Of Swap: Common Misconceptions
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

Came across this page <https://chrisdown.name/2018/01/02/in-defence-of-swap.html>, which gives an overview of the point of swap space. Some people (including myself) think “we have so much RAM on our systems nowadays, why bother allocating any swap space at all?” But really it’s more than just an overflow area for when you run out of RAM, it is a basis for more efficiently managing that RAM, no matter how much you might have. Actually I found the above linked from this <https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-oomd.service.html> manual page on systemd-oomd. This service (available via an additional package on Debian) tries to take corrective action when the system starts running low on memory, before things get bad enough to wake up the kernel’s dreaded “OOM-killer”.

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topic for next Monday?
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up next Monday, but no topic/speaker at this stage. Any suggestions/volunteers? 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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Report: Facebook has Started Encrypting Links to Counter Browsers' Anti-Tracking Measures
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

'"Facebook has started to use a different URL scheme for site links," writes the technology blog Ghacks, "to combat URL stripping technologies that browsers such as Firefox or Brave use to improve privacy and prevent user tracking." Some sites, including Facebook, add parameters to the web address for tracking purposes. These parameters have no functionality that is relevant to the user, but sites rely on them to track users across pages and properties. Mozilla introduced support for URL stripping in Firefox 102, which it launched in June 2022. Firefox removes tracking parameters from web addresses automatically, but only in private browsing mode or when the browser's Tracking Protection feature is set to strict. Firefox users may enable URL stripping in all Firefox modes, but this requires manual configuration. Brave Browser strips known tracking parameters from web addresses as well.... It is no longer possible to remove the tracking part of the URL, as Facebook merged it with part of the required web address.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/07/18/0433238 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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