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Fedora QA Lead Pans Canonical 'Propaganda' On Snap Apps
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jun '16

18 Jun '16

'...and how it's going to unite all distributions and kill apt and rpm! This is, to put it diplomatically, a heaping pile of steaming bullshit... The press release and the stories together give you the strong impression that this thing called Snappy is going to be the cross-distribution future of application delivery, and it's all ready for use today and lots of major distributions are buying into it... The stories have headlines like "Adios apt and yum? Ubuntu's snap apps are coming to distros everywhere" and "Snap Packages Become Universal Binary Format for All GNU/Linux Distributions"... Now, does Snappy actually have the cross-distribution buy-in that the press release claims (but never outright states) that it has? No... The sum total of communication between Canonical and Fedora before the release of this press release was that they mailed us asking about the process of packaging snappy for Fedora, and we told them about the main packaging process and COPR. They certainly did not in any way inform Fedora that they were going to send out a press release strongly implying that Fedora, along with every other distro in the world, was now a happy traveler on the Snappy bandwagon... They just decided to send out a wildly misleading press release and actively encourage the specialist press to report that Snappy was all set to take over the world and everyone was super happy with that.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/06/18/1550249 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 Biggest Maker of Raspberry Pis Has Been Acquired For $871 Million
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jun '16

14 Jun '16

'The biggest manufacturer of the Raspberry Pi minicomputer, Premier Farnell, has been acquired by Swiss industrial component supplier Daetwyler Holding AG for roughly $871 million. According to Bloomberg, the deal will reportedly help both companies compete better in the components market. "By combining forces, we significantly increase our competitiveness and extend our product range," Daetwyler Chairman Ulrich said in a statement, "facilitating a one-stop shopping experience for our wide range of customers from a multitude of industries." Premier Farnell is one of the only companies with a license to design and distribute Raspberry Pis. The Wall Street Journal says the Raspberry Pi devices are a big part of the company's business, as the division in charge of the Pi raked in 16 percent of the company's total revenue last year.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/06/14/2044241 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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Adios apt and yum? Ubuntu’s snap apps are coming to distros everywhere
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jun '16

14 Jun '16

'Ubuntu's "snappy" new way of packaging applications is no longer exclusive to Ubuntu. Canonical today is announcing that snapd, the tool that allows snap packages to be installed on Ubuntu, has been ported to other Linux distributions including Debian, Arch, Fedora, and Gentoo, among others.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/goodbye-apt-and-yum-u… 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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Thousands of Email Addresses Accidentally Disclosed By Let's Encrypt Anonymous
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '16

12 Jun '16

'"Let's Encrypt, the certificate authority best known for offering free SSL/TLS certificates, has reported that it accidentally disclosed thousands of user email addresses due to a bug with an automated emailing system." Executive Director Josh Aas posted this announcement: On June 11 2016 (UTC), we started sending an email to all active subscribers who provided an email address, informing them of an update to our subscriber agreement. This was done via an automated system which contained a bug that mistakenly prepended between 0 and 7,618 other email addresses to the body of the email... The problem was noticed and the system was stopped after 7,618 out of approximately 383,000 emails (1.9%) were sent. Each email mistakenly contained the email addresses from the emails sent prior to it, so earlier emails contained fewer addresses than later ones. We take our relationship with our users very seriously and apologize for the error... If you received one of these emails we ask that you not post lists of email addresses publicly.' -- source: http://m.slashdot.org/story/312355 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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Trimming etc continued
by Michelle 11 Jun '16

11 Jun '16

I am posting this here under a new heading because it's late and I can't seem to figure out how to send a reply to the mailing list without also sending it to the person who posted it. Or is that what is supposed to happen? Eric, thanks for reposting that for me and for your continued input. Wolf, I appreciate all that info. You've both sent me so much information I'm gonna take a little while to look at it. Paul, apology accepted, it's hard to know on the internet sometimes what's meant. Michelle

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Attention: HAL 9000 Owners
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Jun '16

11 Jun '16

We have just received word of an important new book: *Programming Instructions for the HAL 9000 Computer*, revised edition. The new edition of the HAL 9000 handbook has been updated to incorporate improvements suggested by this versatile machine’s surviving users. In particular, the manufacturers suggest that priority be given to the retrofitting of small explosive charges at strategic points in the central memory unit. Authorized by Arthur C Clarke Chief Semantic Controls Engineer Colombo SRI LANKA (Found in the December 1978 issue of BYTE Magazine, downloaded from archive.org.)

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Firefox Finally Confirms 'Largest Change Ever' Featuring Electrolysis In v48
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jun '16

09 Jun '16

'With Electrolysis, Firefox can use child processes for content (tabs), media playback and legacy plug-ins. This is some way short of Google Chrome, which uses a different process for each tab. However, the result is that Chrome is a huge resource hog: Chrome uses roughly twice as much memory as Firefox on Windows and Linux. Eric Rahm has run some browser tests with Electrolysis, and says: "Overall we see a 10-20 percent increase in memory usage for the 1 content process case (which is what we plan on shipping initially). This seems like a fair trade-off for potential security and performance benefits." With 8 content processes, Rahm says: "we see roughly a doubling of memory usage on the TabsOpenSettled measurement. It's a bit worse on Windows, a bit better on OS X, but it's not 8 times worse."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/06/08/1635231 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 Web's Creator Thinks We Need a New One That Governments Can't Control
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jun '16

09 Jun '16

'The web has created millions of jobs, impacted nearly every industry, connected people, and arguably made the world a better place. But the person who started it all isn't exactly pleased with the way things have turned out to be. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, believes that the way it works in the present day "completely undermines the spirit of helping people create." The Next Web reports: "Edward Snowden showed we've inadvertently built the world's largest surveillance network with the web," said Brewster Kahle, who heads up Internet Archive. And he's not wrong: governments across the globe keep an eye on what their citizens are accessing online and some censor content on the Web in an effort to control what they think. To that end, Berners-Lee, Kahle and other pioneers of the modern Web are brainstorming ideas for a new kind of information network that can't be controlled by governments or powered by megacorporations like Amazon and Google.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/06/08/196225 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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Re: [wlug] TRIMMING POSTS -- PLEASE ???!!!
by Eric Light 07 Jun '16

07 Jun '16

(Michelle you sent this to me directly, but I believe you intended to send it to the whole mailing list, so I'll include that here. I've left the history included, in spite of Ian's entreaties otherwise, for the benefit of those who want to see what I'm replying to) Ah, I understand a bit better now. By and large, Linux is relatively untouched by garden variety malware. However, your browser (cross-platform, JavaScripty, etc) can still fall prey to security issues, which sounds the case here. I note you said you were running NoScript, so it comes as a surprise, but I suppose they're always thinking up new avenues. That said, I don't think the Oprah thing is related to your missing files! I can't say what happened, but its vanishingly unlikely that a browser hijack could have deleted files on a LINUX system... On Windows, sure, but to perform that action on a Linux pc, the malware would need to be designed FOR Linux - and that's particularly unlikely. Okay so we've established that you want privacy, but overall you want a system where you can easily recover from corruption... Is that correct? I'm sticking with my recommendation for Debian - probably Linux Mint Debian Edition, because it's:- got a solid base (Debian) - got a wide user base (thus lots of testing) - got a lovely UI (Cinnamon) - specifically designed to be easy to use On top of this, you can install Sophos Antivirus for Linux... It's free, and it has some of the highest detection rates in the industry (note, solving a problem that barely even exists in a Linux environment, but which you may have encountered nonetheless). Since your threat profile sounds like browser-based malware, it might be worth looking into specifically sandboxing your browser. I know Chrome already does sandboxing between tabs and threads, so that might already be in place, but it sounds plausible. Alternatively, putting your /home partition on a filesystem that supports snapshots might be a good idea... Maybe ZFS? That sounds like a good solution to me, but I'll have to defer to the wizards in the group. ☺ Good luck!Eric -- Securely sent with Tutanota. It's good, you should try it: https://tutanota.com 7. Jun 2016 20:08 by michelle400(a)orcon.net.nz: > > Woops. Sorry. I used the wrong term, I used BUG when I should have used > MALWARE. Biological viruses are bugs and so instead of the term malware, > I've used bug for viruses, trojans etc.....So in other words I think I > caught some malware on my Toshiba despite those safety measures. And I > think the safest thing for a non computer expert like myself to do to keep > it from happening again is to install the safest and secure distros that > I've heard of. (I'm now not sure whether that person I mentioned was > talking about bug(s) or malware). > > William, thanks for looking out for me back there. > > Eric, thank you for going out of your way to make me feel better. You're a > clss act. I couldn't figure out why you were recommending a very stable > distro, and then I got it - I used the wrong term. Thanks again for your > input. > > > > On 2016-06-07 16:25, Eric Light wrote: >> Hi Michelle, >> >> I'm sorry that you feel you've been maligned and attacked. We do try >> hard to make this a safe forum for everyone. For what it's worth, most >> of us here ARE a bit batty, each in our own way. >> >> Security and safety, along with reliability and usability, are also >> the reasons I use Linux. You're in good company there. >> >> I feel that Whonix+Qubes is over-engineering. I haven't had any >> responses to my email last night re TAILS+grsecurity (ALSO >> over-engineering), but TAILS' lack of persistence makes it a drag for >> day-to-day use; Whonix sacrifices some security for usability there. >> >> What problem are you trying to solve? What is your threat profile that >> you're trying to defend yourself against? If you're just trying to >> avoid bugs in your distro, you could just go with Debian Stable, which >> will give you a reliable, secure, and well-known system, with very few >> "tricky bits". >> >> E >> >> -- >> Securely sent with Tutanota. It's good, you should try it: >> https://tutanota.com>> [1] >> >> 7. Jun 2016 15:43 by >> michelle400(a)orcon.net.nz>> : >> >>> Well when I looked at the mailing list page today I was totally >>> shocked to find I'd been maligned and attacked. I know that that >>> happens on other forums (yes I realize this is a mailing list) but I >>> didn't think it would happen here. I guess that I just got schooled. >>> >>> Perhaps I should say a few things. The only reason for me choosing >>> Linux over windows is security and safety. It may be different for >>> computer experts, but that's it for me. >>> >>> So anyway I have Mint on my Toshiba and some months back I clicked >>> to a page with info on Oprah Winfrey. The site then clicked on and >>> off and on and off etc. I closed the page and opened history. Here >>> the site was listed maybe 25 to 50 times. Then say that day or the >>> next, my most used folder disappeared from it's space. I found it in >>> the thrash. And that happened with maybe another couple of folders. >>> Someone said that Mint had had problems with a bug/bugs this >>> year/last year? >>> >>> So anyway I presume that I caught a bug and that it's still there. >>> (Don't worry,the emails I send on this phone and not the Toshiba). >>> This happened inspite of the fact that I use Mozilla, adblock and >>> NoScript, although they may not have been up to date. Computer >>> experts, if their machine gets infected may be able to debug it and >>> be confident that it's clear, but I can't. I figure the best way to >>> protect myself from now on is to have the safest set up from the >>> start. And from a bit of research I did on the net it appears that >>> that maybe Whonix and Qubes. >>> >>> On 2016-06-07 06:53, Paul Wilson wrote:I would be trending to a tent >>> inside a faraday cage, at least 50kms >>> from the nearest populated town. :p >>> >>> Sent from my iPhone >>> >>> On 6/06/2016, at 11:41 PM, Eric Light <>>> eric(a)ericlight.com>>> > wrote: >>> YES I FIND THIS MUCH LESS ANNOYING, THANKS WILLIAM �� >>> >>> Battiness aside, I suspect the answer to Michelle's problem isn't >>> Whonix on Qubes on an old laptop. It sounds like excessive >>> engineering for no good reason. Did anyone else have similar >>> thoughts? >>> >>> If I were going full-on paranoia mode, I'd be running TAILS, >>> probably with a grsecurity-patched kernel, and probably through an >>> offshore VPN. What do you guys think? >>> >>> E >>> >>> -- >>> Securely sent with Tutanota. It's good, you should try it: >>> https://tutanota.com>>> [1] [2] >>> >>> 6. Jun 2016 23:32 by >>> will(a)artcontrol.me>>> : >>> IS THIS BETTER? >>> _______________________________________________ >>> wlug mailing list | >>> wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz >>> Unsubscribe: >>> https://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug>>> [2] >>> [1] >>> _______________________________________________ >>> wlug mailing list | >>> wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz >>> Unsubscribe: >>> https://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug>>> [2] >>> [1] >> >> Links: >> ------ >> [1] >> https://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug>> [2] >> [2] >> https://tutanota.com>> [1] >> >> _______________________________________________ >> wlug mailing list | >> wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz >> Unsubscribe: >> https://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug>> [2] >> _______________________________________________ >> wlug mailing list | >> wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz >> Unsubscribe: >> https://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug>> [2] >> >> Links: >> ------ >> [1] >> https://tutanota.com >> [2] >> https://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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TRIMMING POSTS -- PLEASE ???!!!
by Ian Young 07 Jun '16

07 Jun '16

The saga of 'Michelle' (iirc) and her Linux problems is no doubt fascinating but could we possibly stop wasting bandwidth by broadcasting the entire sorry saga time and time again ... just asking. Aside from any other considerations it makes it difficult to determine whether there is any new data on the case. Far be it from me to speculate on whether the poster is just a wee bit batty .....

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