- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Malware infecting widely used security appliance survives firmware updates
by Peter Reutemann 10 Mar '23

10 Mar '23

'Threat actors with a connection to the Chinese government are infecting a widely used security appliance from SonicWall with malware that remains active even after the device receives firmware updates, researchers said. SonicWall’s Secure Mobile Access 100 is a secure remote access appliance that helps organizations securely deploy remote workforces. Customers use it to grant granular access controls to remote users, provide VPN connections to organization networks, and set unique profiles for each employee. The access the SMA 100 has to customer networks makes it an attractive target for threat actors. In 2021, the device came under attack by sophisticated hackers who exploited what was then a zero-day vulnerability. Security appliances from Fortinet and Pulse Secure have come under similar attacks in recent years.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/malware-infecting-wi… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Raspberry Pi Lets You Have Your Own Global Shutter Camera For $50
by Peter Reutemann 10 Mar '23

10 Mar '23

'Global shutter sensors with no skew or distortion have been promised as the future of cameras for years now, but so far only a handful of products with that tech have made it to market. Now, Raspberry Pi is offering a 1.6-megapixel global shutter camera module to hobbyists for $50, providing a platform for machine vision, hobbyist shooting and more. From a report: The Raspberry Pi Global Shutter Camera uses a 6.3mm Sony IMX296 sensor, and requires a Raspberry Pi board with a CSI camera connector. Like other global shutter sensors, it works by pairing each pixel with an analog storage element, so that light signals can be captured and stored by all pixels simultaneously. By comparison, regular CMOS sensors read and store the light captured by pixels from top to bottom and left to right. That can cause diagonal skew on fast moving subjects, or very weird distortion on rotating objects like propellers.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/03/09/1241216 If only you could get hands on the Raspberry Pis themselves... ;-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux Mint Mate - number of workspaces read-only
by Peter Reutemann 08 Mar '23

08 Mar '23

Hi everyone I've been baffled with my Linux Mint Mate 20.2 for a while now that I couldn't change the number of workspaces, as it was greyed in the preferences of the workspace switcher (fixed to 4). Used to work in the past (and maybe again with newer versions). Finally came across a command-line that can change the number of workspaces, bypassing the preferences dialog: gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general num-workspaces 4 Source: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=298336 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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The SCO Lawsuit: Looking Back 20 Years Later
by Peter Reutemann 07 Mar '23

07 Mar '23

'"On March 7, 2003, a struggling company called The SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM," writes LWN.net, "claiming that the success of Linux was the result of a theft of SCO's technology..." Two decades later, "It is hard to overestimate how much the community we find ourselves in now was shaped by a ridiculous lawsuit 20 years ago...." It was the claim of access to Unix code that was the most threatening allegation for the Linux community. SCO made it clear that, in its opinion, Linux was stolen property: "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts". To rectify this "misappropriation", SCO was asking for a judgment of at least $1 billion, later increased to $5 billion. As the suit dragged on, SCO also started suing Linux users as it tried to collect a tax for use of the system. Though this has never been proven, it was widely assumed at the time that SCO's real objective was to prod IBM into acquiring the company. That would have solved SCO's ongoing business problems and IBM, for rather less than the amount demanded in court, could have made an annoying problem go away and also lay claim to the ownership of Unix — and, thus, Linux. To SCO's management, it may well have seemed like a good idea at the time. IBM, though, refused to play that game; the company had invested heavily into Linux in its early days and was uninterested in allowing any sort of intellectual-property taint to attach to that effort. So the company, instead, directed its not inconsiderable legal resources to squashing this attack. But notably, so did the development community as a whole, as did much of the rest of the technology industry. Over the course of the following years — far too many years — SCO's case fell to pieces. The "misappropriated" technology wasn't there. Due to what must be one of the worst-written contracts in technology-industry history, it turned out that SCO didn't even own the Unix copyrights it was suing over. The level of buffoonery was high from the beginning and got worse; the company lost at every turn and eventually collapsed into bankruptcy.... Microsoft, which had not yet learned to love Linux, funded SCO and loudly bought licenses from the company. Magazines like Forbes were warning the "Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement" that they "should wake up". SCO was suggesting a license fee of $1,399 — per-CPU — to run Linux.... Such an effort, in less incompetent hands, could easily have damaged Linux badly. As it went, SCO, despite its best efforts, instead succeeded in improving the position of Linux — in development, legal, and economic terms — considerably. The article argues SCO's lawsuit ultimately proved that Linux didn't contain copyrighted code "in a far more convincing way than anybody else could have." (And the provenance of all Linux code contributions are now carefully documented.) The case also proved the need for lawyers to vigorously defend the rights of open source programmers. And most of all, it revealed the Linux community was widespread and committed. And "Twenty years later, it is fair to say that Linux is doing a little better than The SCO Group. Its swaggering leader, who thought to make his fortune by taxing Linux, filed for personal bankruptcy in 2020."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/03/04/0359236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Will AMD's 'openSIL' Library Enable Open-Source Silicon Initialization With Coreboot?
by Peter Reutemann 07 Mar '23

07 Mar '23

'Formerly known as LinuxBIOS, coreboot is defined by Wikipedia as "a software project aimed at replacing proprietary firmware (BIOS or UEFI) found in most computers with a lightweight firmware." Phoronix is wondering if there's about to be a big announcement from AMD: AMD dropped a juicy tid-bit of information to be announced next month with "openSIL" [an open-source AMD x86 silicon initialization library], complete with AMD Coreboot support.... While about a decade ago AMD was big into Coreboot and at the time committed to it for future hardware platforms (2011: AMD To Support Coreboot On All Future CPUs) [and] open-source AGESA at the time did a lot of enabling around it, that work had died off. In more recent years, AMD's Coreboot contributions have largely been limited to select consumer APU/SoC platforms for Google Chromebook use. But issues around closing up the AGESA as well as concerns with the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP) have diminished open-source firmware hopes in recent years.... For the Open Compute Project Regional Summit in Prague, there is a new entry added with a title of OSF on AMD — Enabled by openSIL (yes, folks, OSF as in "Open-Source Firmware").... [H]opefully this will prove to be a monumental shift for open-source firmware in the HPC server space. >From the talk's description: openSIL (AMD open-source x86 Silicon Initialization Library) offers the versatility, scalability, and light weight interface to allow for ease of integration with open-source and/or proprietary host boot solutions such as coreboot, UEFI and others and adds major flexibility to the overall platform design. In other words, this library-based solution simply allows a platform integrator to scale from feature rich solutions such as UEFI to slim, lightweight, and secure solutions such as coreboot. The description promises the talk will include demonstrations "highlighting system bring-up using openSIL integrated with coreboot and UEFI Host Firmware stacks on AMD's Genoa based platforms."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/03/06/0253208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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AGM minutes
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '23

01 Mar '23

Hi everyone The second attempt at running our AGM took place successfully on Monday night and the minutes are now available: http://wiki.wlug.org.nz/MeetingTopics.2023-02-27 Due to no one stepping forward to take up the president's office, we've decided to wind up the society. Thanks everyone for supporting WLUG over the years. We will keep this mailing list open as a place for exchanging news and knowledge around Linux and open source software. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Quote Of The Week
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

>From a reader comment to an article <https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/27/microsoft_ai_gpt3_data/> wherein Microsoft suggests that, since these machine-learning models are so good at generating fake and even nonsensical responses, why not use them to deliberately generate fictional sample data for testing purposes: For decades, we've written hundreds of sci-fi stories where you have an evil out-of-control AI, and that AI is hyperintelligent but can only reason along strict logical lines, and is ultimately defeated by exploiting its lack of imagination. And then, suddenly, it turns out that the AIs we can actually make have way too much imagination, and are utterly incapable of logical thought. I find this hilarious.

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Who Writes Linux and Open Source Software?
by Peter Reutemann 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

'From an opinion piece in the Register: Aiven, an open source cloud data platform company, recently analyzed who's doing what with GitHub open source code projects. They found that the top open source contributors were all companies — Amazon Web Services, Intel, Red Hat, Google, and Microsoft.... Aiven looked at three metrics within the GitHub archives. These were the number of contributors, repositories (projects) contributed to, and the number of commits made by the contributors. These were calculated using Google Big Query analysis of PushEvents on public GitHub data. The company found that Microsoft and Google were neck-and-neck for the top spot. Red Hat is in third place, followed by Intel, then AWS, just ahead of IBM.... Red Hat is following closely behind and is currently contributing more commits than Google, with 125,012 in Q4 2022 compared to Google's 94,961. Microsoft is ahead of both, with 128,247 commits. However, regarding contributed staff working on projects, Google is leading the way with 5,757 compared to Microsoft's 5,513 and Red Hat's 3,656.... Heikki Nousiainen, Aiven CTO and co-founder, commented: "An unexpected result of our research was seeing Amazon overtake IBM to become the fifth biggest contributor." They "came late to the open source party, but they're now doubling down on its open source commitments and realizing the benefits that come with contributing to the open source projects its customers use." So, yes, open source certainly started with individual contributors, but today, and for many years before, it's company employees that are really making the code.... Aiven is far from the only one to have noticed that companies are now open source's economic engine. Jonathan Corbet, editor-in-chief of Linux Weekly News (LWN), found in his most recent analysis of Long Term Support Linux Kernel releases from 5.16 to 6.1 that a mere 7.5 percent of the kernel development, as measured by lines changed, came from individual developers. No, the real leaders were, in order: AMD; Intel; Google; Linaro, the main Arm Linux development organization; Meta; and Red Hat. The article also includes this thought-provoking quote from Aiven CTO's. "Innovation is at the heart of the open source community, but without a strong commitment from companies, the whole system will struggle. "We can see that companies are recognizing their role and supporting all who use open source."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/26/1950212 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Emacs: Comparing Two Regions From Two Files
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

So I was compiling some useful database-related routines that I have used in various places (with MySQL and SQLite so far) over the years into a set of common modules, so that I could easily find the latest and best-tested versions of them for future projects. Then I came to a routine with two versions of a few dozen lines each, and I was trying to figure out a way of doing a diff on them without writing them out to temporary files. I have an Emacs command called “make-command-buffer”, which I can use for example to create a buffer for entering and executing shell commands, and collecting their output. It was easy enough to copy and paste both routines into the buffer, but now how do I put them both into one diff command? There is a shell feature called “here-docs”, which lets you include the standard-input data for a command directly following the command: «cmd» <<«marker» ... data ... «marker» where the «marker» is some word that does not occur in the data. But I want to have two of these, like this: diff -u <<EOD1 <<EOD2 ... version 1 ... EOD1 ... version 2 ... EOD2 You can do something like that in Perl, but it doesn’t work in the shell. Hunting around on line reminded me why: because you can only have one standard input. But in the Bash man page, there is a syntax for redirecting arbitary file descriptors, letting you have any number of heredocs. So, combining this with the ability to give a command a file name that corresponds to an already-open file descriptor, I finally got this to work: diff -u /dev/fd/8 /dev/fd/9 8<<EOD1 9<<EOD2 ... version 1 ... EOD1 ... version 2 ... EOD2

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LastPass says employee’s home computer was hacked and corporate vault taken
by Peter Reutemann 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

'Already smarting from a breach that put partially encrypted login data into a threat actor’s hands, LastPass on Monday said that the same attacker hacked an employee’s home computer and obtained an unencrypted vault available to only a handful of company developers. Although an initial intrusion into LastPass ended on August 12, officials with the leading password manager said the threat actor “was actively engaged in a new series of reconnaissance, enumeration, and exfiltration activity” from August 12 to August 26. In the process, the unknown threat actor was able to steal valid credentials from a senior DevOps engineer and access the contents of a LastPass data vault. Among other things, the vault gave access to a shared cloud-storage environment that contained the encryption keys for customer vault backups stored in Amazon S3 buckets.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/lastpass-hackers-inf… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Asahi Linux Disputes Report That Linux 6.2 Will Run on Apple M1 Chips
by Peter Reutemann 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

'Last week ZDNet reported Linux had added upstream support for the Apple M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips and then concluded that "newer Mac owners can look forward to running Linux on their M1-powered machines." Saturday Asahi Linux called ZDNet's story "misleading and borderline false," posting on Twitter that "You will not be able to run Ubuntu nor any other standard distro with 6.2 on any M1 Mac. Please don't get your hopes up." We are continuously upstreaming kernel features, and 6.2 notably adds device trees and basic boot support for M1 Pro/Max/Ultra machines. However, there is still a long road before upstream kernels are usable on laptops. There is no trackpad/keyboard support upstream yet. While you can boot an upstream 6.2 kernel on desktops (M1 Mac Mini, M1 Max/Ultra Mac Studio) and do useful things with it, that is only the case for 16K page size kernel builds. No generic ARM64 distro ships 16K kernels today, to our knowledge. Our goal is to upstream everything, but that doesn't mean distros instantly get Apple Silicon support. As with many other platforms, there is some integration work required. Distros need to package our userspace tooling and, at this time, offer 16K kernels. In the future, once 4K kernel builds are somewhat usable, you can expect zero-integration distros to somewhat work on these machines (i.e. some hardware will work, but not all, or only partially). This should be sufficient to add a third-party repo with the integration packages. But for out-of-the-box hardware support, distros will need to work with us to get everything right. We are already working with some, and we expect to announce official Apple Silicon support for a mainstream distro in the near future. Just not quite yet!' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/27/0457206 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Nokia Launches DIY Repairable Budget Android Phone
by Peter Reutemann 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

'Guardian reports: Nokia has announced one of the first budget Android smartphones designed to be repaired at home allowing users to swap out the battery in under five minutes in partnership with iFixit. Launched before Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Saturday, the Nokia G22 has a removable back and internal design that allows components to be easily unscrewed and swapped out including the battery, screen and charging port. Nokia phones manufacturer HMD Global will make "quick fix" repair guides and genuine parts available for five years via specialists iFixit, in addition to affordable professional repair options. "People value long-lasting, quality devices and they shouldn't have to compromise on price to get them. The new Nokia G22 is purposefully built with a repairable design so you can keep it even longer," said Adam Ferguson, head of product marketing for HMD Global. The G22 is partially made of recycled plastic and has a 6.53in screen, large-capacity battery, 50-megapixel camera and a fingerprint scanner. It runs Android 12 and will be supported for three years of monthly security updates and two major Android version upgrades.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/23/02/25/2046209 -- specs: https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-g-22/specs Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Google Chrome's Improved Page Zoom Should Help Make the Mobile Web More Accessible
by Peter Reutemann 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

'Google Chrome's giving its page zoom feature a boost, which should make it more helpful for people who have difficulty reading the smaller screen on a phone. From a report: With the improved feature, you can increase the size of text, images, videos, and interactive controls on mobile web pages by up to 300 percent while preserving their original formatting. While the feature hasn't yet become available for all Chrome users, you can access it now if you download the Chrome beta on your phone or tablet. To enable the feature, tap the three dots icon in the top right corner of the browser, hit Settings > Accessibility, and then adjust the zoom level to your liking. Google will save this preference for all the sites you browse so you won't have to keep tweaking it, and will even bypass the ones that try to block zoom features. Previously, Google only allowed users to adjust text scaling options up to 200 percent.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/02/27/1234200 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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GCC Gets a New Frontend for Rust
by Peter Reutemann 27 Feb '23

27 Feb '23

'Slashdot reader sleeping cat shares a recent FOSDEM talk by a compiler engineer on the team building Rust-GCC, "an alternative compiler implementation for the Rust programming language." "If gccrs interprets a program differently from rustc, this is considered a bug," explains the project's FAQ on GitHub. The FAQ also notes that LLVM's set of compiler technologies — which Rust uses — "is missing some backends that GCC supports, so a gccrs implementation can fill in the gaps for use in embedded development." But the FAQ also highlights another potential benefit: With the recent announcement of Rust being allowed into the Linux Kernel codebase, an interesting security implication has been highlighted by Open Source Security, inc. When code is compiled and uses Link Time Optimization (LTO), GCC emits GIMPLE [an intermediate representation] directly into a section of each object file, and LLVM does something similar with its own bytecode. If mixing rustc-compiled code and GCC-built code in the Linux kernel, the compilers will be unable to perform a full link-time optimization pass over all of the compiled code, leading to absent CFI (control flow integrity). If Rust is available in the GNU toolchain, releases can be built on the Linux kernel (for example) with CFI using LLVM or GCC. Started in 2014 (and revived in 2019), "The effort has been ongoing since 2020...and we've done a lot of effort and a lot of progress," compiler engineer Arthur Cohen says in the talk. "We have upstreamed the first version of gccrs within GCC. So next time when you install GCC 13 — you'll have gccrs in it. You can use it, you can start hacking on it, you can please report issues when it inevitably crashes and dies horribly." "One big thing we're doing is some work towards running the rustc test suite. Because we want gccrs to be an actual Rust compiler and not a toy project or something that compiles a language that looks like Rust but isn't Rust, we're trying really hard to get that test suite working."' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/02/26/0543203 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Microsoft .NET 8 Will Bolster Linux Support
by Peter Reutemann 27 Feb '23

27 Feb '23

'InfoWorld: .NET 8, the next planned version of the Microsoft's open source software development platform, is set to emphasize Linux accommodations as well as cloud development and containers. A first preview of .NET 8 is available for download at dot.microsoft.com for Windows, Linux, and macOS, Microsoft said on February 21. A long-term support (LTS) release that will be supported for three years, .NET 8 is due for production availability in November, a year after the release of predecessor .NET 7. The new .NET release will be buildable on Linux directly from the dotnet/dotnet repository, using dotnet/source-build to build .NET runtimes, tools, and SDKs. This is the same build used by Red Hat and Canonical to build .NET. Over time, this capability will be extended to support Windows and macOS. Previously, .NET could be built from the source, but a "source tarball" was required from the dotnet/installer. "We are publishing Ubuntu Chiseled images with .NET 8," adds Microsoft's announcement. And when it comes to the .NET Monitor tool, "We plan to ship to dotnet/monitor images exclusively as Ubuntu Chiseled, starting with .NET 8. That's notable because the monitor images are the one production app image we publish."' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/02/25/1955259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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At Least One Open Source Vulnerability Found In 84% of Code Bases, Report Finds
by Peter Reutemann 26 Feb '23

26 Feb '23

'L.Kynes shares a report from CSO Online: At a time when almost all software contains open source code, at least one known open source vulnerability was detected in 84% of all commercial and proprietary code bases examined by researchers at application security company Synopsys. In addition, 48% of all code bases analyzed by Synopsys researchers contained high-risk vulnerabilities, which are those that have been actively exploited, already have documented proof-of-concept exploits, or are classified as remote code execution vulnerabilities. The vulnerability data -- along with information on open source license compliance -- was included in Synopsys' 2023 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report (PDF), put together by the company's Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC). "Of the 1,703 codebases that Synopsys audited in 2022, 96% of them contained open source," adds L.Kynes, citing the report. "Aerospace, aviation, automotive, transportation, logistics; EdTech; and Internet of Things are three of the 17 industry sectors included in the report that had open source in 100% of their audited codebases. In the remaining verticals, over 92% of the codebases contained open source."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/24/2035247 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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NASA Launches 'Open-Source Science Initiative', Urges Adoption of Open Science
by Peter Reutemann 26 Feb '23

26 Feb '23

'In a keynote at FOSDEM 2023, NASA's science data officer Steve Crawford explored NASA's use of open-source software. But LWN.net notes that the talk went far beyond just the calibration software for the James Webb Space Telescope and the Mars Ingenuity copter's flight-control framework. In his talk, Crawford presented NASA's Open-Source Science Initiative. Its goal is to support scientists to help them integrate open-science principles into the entire research workflow. Just a few weeks before Crawford's talk, NASA's Science Mission Directorate published its new policy on scientific information. Crawford summarized this policy with "as open as possible, as restricted as necessary, always secure", and he made this more concrete: "Publications should be made openly available with no embargo period, including research data and software. Data should be released with a Creative Commons Zero license, and software with a commonly used permissive license, such as Apache, BSD, or MIT. The new policy also encourages using and contributing to open-source software." Crawford added that NASA's policies will be updated to make it clear that employees can contribute to open-source projects in their official capacity.... As part of its Open-Source Science Initiative, NASA has started its five-year Transform to Open Science (TOPS) mission. This is a $40-million mission to speed up adoption of open-science practices; it starts with the White House and all major US federal agencies, including NASA, declaring 2023 as the "Year of Open Science". One of NASA's strategic goals with TOPS is to enable five major scientific discoveries through open-science principles, Crawford said. Interesting tidbit from the article: "In 2003 NASA created a license to enable the release of software by civil servants, the NASA Open Source Agreement. This license has been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), but the Free Software Foundation doesn't consider it a free-software license because it does not allow changes to the code that come from third-party free-software projects."' -- source: https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/02/25/0337222 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
by Peter Reutemann 26 Feb '23

26 Feb '23

'Phoronix reports: While Ubuntu Linux hasn't provided Flatpak support out-of-the-box due to their preference of using their own Snap app packaging/distribution format, Ubuntu flavors/spins have to this point been able to pre-install Flatpak support if they desired. However, for the 23.04 "Lunar Lobster" cycle and moving forward, Ubuntu flavors will no longer be permitted to install Flatpak packages by default. Flatpak support for Ubuntu and its flavors will remain available in the Ubuntu archive so those wanting to install Flatpak support can easily do so post-install. This change going into effect with the 23.04 cycle is making it so no Ubuntu flavors will have Flatpak support installed by default / out-of-the-box: they are supposed to center around Debian packages and Snaps for their out-of-the-box packaging support to align with Ubuntu. >From the blog OMG Ubuntu: Ubuntu developers have agreed to stop shipping Flatpak, preinstalled Flatpak apps, and any plugins needed to install Flatpak apps through a GUI software tool in the default package set across all eight of Ubuntu's official flavors, as of the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 release. Ubuntu says the decision will 'improve the out-of-the-box Ubuntu experience' for new users by making it clearer about what an "Ubuntu experience" is.... As far as Ubuntu is concerned, only deb and snap software is intrinsic to the 'Ubuntu experience', and that experience now needs to be offered everywhere. Flavor leads (apparently) agree, and have all agreed to mirror regular Ubuntu by not offering Flatpak features in their default install for future releases.... Flatpak will not be uninstalled or removed when user makes the upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04 from a version where Flatpak is already present.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/25/197216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Microsoft is Now Injecting Full-Size Edge Ads on Chrome Website
by Peter Reutemann 24 Feb '23

24 Feb '23

'Being the default out-of-the-box browser on Windows 10 and 11 makes Microsoft Edge a go-to utility for downloading Chrome or another browser. That upsets Microsoft so much that it constantly comes with more aggressive and user-hostile methods to make customers stay on Edge. An attempt to install Chrome using Edge Canary now results in the browser displaying two ads: the first (tiny one) will pop on the screen when the Chrome website loads, and the second, a humongous full-size banner, will appear once the download starts. Yikes! Microsoft also plays with words to throw shade at Chrome. The banner states that Edge uses the same technology as Chrome with the "added trust of Microsoft." The "trust" that your computer will connect to ad providers the moment you turn it on for the first time. The "trust" that Edge will shove more "recommended content" down your throat and enforce Bing without you even making a click. The "trust" that you cannot remove Edge from your computer and many more.' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/23/02/22/1131238 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux Foundation Europe Launches OpenWallet Foundation To Power Interoperable Digital Wallets
by Peter Reutemann 24 Feb '23

24 Feb '23

'The Linux Foundation's European off-shoot has formally launched the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), a new collaborative effort designed to support interoperability between digital wallets through open source software. From a report: The launch comes some five months after the Linux Foundation first revealed plans to set up the OWF, shortly before it spun out a region-specific entity called the Linux Foundation Europe which is where the OWF will now officially reside. While the likes of PayPal, Google, and Apple are among the most recognized digital wallet providers, allowing consumers to conduct financial transactions in-store or online, digital wallets are increasingly being used to store all manner of virtual goods from student ID to driving licenses. On top of that, burgeoning technologies such as the metaverse and crypto are giving rise to greater use-cases for digital wallets. But one thing all these various environments have in common is that the incumbent digital wallets, for the most part, don't play nicely with each other: an Apple Pay die-hard can't send money to their Google Pay brethren. And that is why the OWF is setting out to create an "open source engine" that can power interoperable digital wallets across myriad use-cases including identity, payments, and storing personal credentials such as employment and education certification.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/23/142244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Mozilla says “most top apps” on Android have misleading privacy labels
by Peter Reutemann 24 Feb '23

24 Feb '23

'It looks like trusting developers to just tell the truth about data collection on Google Play isn't working out. Just like on iOS, Android launched app privacy "nutrition labels" in the Play Store last year, with the idea being that users could quickly get a look at how much data each app collects. The obvious problem with this system is that the developers fill out the data-collection forms, and there's nothing to stop them from lying or omitting certain data-collection policies. It's no surprise, then, that when Mozilla recently audited the top apps on Google Play, it found that "most top apps" have "false or misleading" app privacy labels. Mozilla says it surveyed 40 of the Play Store's most popular apps by global downloads and found that "in nearly 80% of the apps we reviewed, we found some discrepancies between the apps’ privacy policies and the information they reported on Google’s Data Safety Form." Each app received a grade of “Poor,” “Needs Improvement,” or “OK,” with 16 out of 40 apps getting the lowest rating. Mozilla did not need to dig very deep to find flaws, saying that many apps' privacy labels openly contradict their public privacy policies. Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter all claim "No data shared with third parties" on the Play Store but detail third-party sharing in their privacy policies. For free apps, the list of recipients earning a "poor" grade isn't very surprising: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Lite, Snapchat, Twitter, and, the one surprise, Samsung Push Services. A lot of paid games like Minecraft make the "poor" list, too.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/mozilla-says-most-top-apps-on-andro… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux 6.2: The First Mainstream Linux Kernel for Apple M1 Chips Arrives
by Peter Reutemann 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

'Steven Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ZDNet: Linux 6.2 was released yesterday, and Linus Torvalds described the latest Linux kernel release as, "Maybe it's not a sexy LTS release like 6.1 ended up being, but all those regular pedestrian kernels want some test love too." For once, I disagree with Torvalds. By adding upstream support for the Apple M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips, newer Mac owners can look forward to running Linux on their M1-powered machines. And, for techies, that's sexy. Getting Linux to run on the M1 family wasn't easy. When these high-powered ARM chips first arrived, Torvalds told me in an exclusive interview that he'd like to run Linux on these next-generation Macs. But, while he'd been "waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time," he worried, saying, "The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/21/0418215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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RNZ--No More Ogg?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Feb '23

21 Feb '23

Some years ago, Radio New Zealand started making its audio downloads available in Ogg Vorbis format, as an alternative to MP3. As I recall, this coincided with a visit from Richard Stallman, and no doubt his persuasiveness had something to do with it. (Checking the timestamps on my downloads, Stallman was interviewed by Kim Hill on “Nine to Noon” on 9th August 2008.) I was revisiting the Mediawatch page after a long absence <https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch>, and I see they have reverted to MP3-only format for their downloads now. Were people being confused by .ogg files? All the open-source players can handle them, so what players were they trying to use?

2 2

Google Chrome's Latest Version Includes Tools To Address Its Memory Hog Problem
by Peter Reutemann 21 Feb '23

21 Feb '23

'Google has released optimization features designed to improve battery life and memory usage on machines running the latest version of its Chrome desktop web browser. From a report: Chrome's new Energy Saver and Memory Saver modes were first announced in December last year alongside the release of Chrome 108, and now as noted by Android Police, the two optimization utilities are starting to roll out globally onto Chrome 110 desktops for Mac, Windows, and Chromebooks. Memory Saver mode essentially snoozes Chrome tabs that aren't currently in use to free up RAM for more intensive tasks and create a smoother browsing experience. Don't worry if you're a tab hoarder though, as these inactive tabs are still visible and can be reloaded at any time to pick up where you left off. Your most used websites can also be marked as exempt from Memory Saver to ensure they're always running at the maximum possible performance.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/02/20/1747238 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Purism Combines Phone Docking Station and Laptop Shell For Lapdock Kit
by Peter Reutemann 21 Feb '23

21 Feb '23

'Their video says it all. Its official page brags it can "Transform your Librem 5 into a laptop." But it all apparently started because Purism is proud that their Librem 5 line of phones run "the same desktop applications as our full-sized computers, just on a smaller screens," according to the announcement by Purism president Kyle Rankin: When only using the Librem 5 in its mobile form factor, it's easy to overlook that this is happening, as adaptive applications morph to fit the smaller screen.... It's only when you dock the Librem 5 that you really experience the power of convergence.... We have wanted to provide a lapdock kit to customers for some time now, and I've personally evaluated almost all of the options available to pick which one would best showcase the Librem 5. I'm so happy to announce that today we are launching our new Lapdock Kit and in this post I will explain a bit more about what's included and why it's a great companion to a Librem 5 or Librem 5 USA. A lapdock is a docking station (or "dock") combined with a laptop shell. One approach to docking your Librem 5 is to get a USB-C hub and attach it to a power supply, monitor, keyboard and mouse, and we even sell those accessories for our Librem 5. Now imagine taking all of those components and squeezing them into a laptop form-factor, add a battery to power it, and you have a lapdock. >From the outside a lapdock looks no different from a standard laptop, but the difference is that a lapdock has no CPU, RAM or storage of its own. Instead, it uses the Librem 5 as the computer. Once docked, the Librem 5's screen extends to the lapdock screen, and you can use the keyboard and mouse on the lapdock to drag windows back and forth between screens. All of the applications are running on the Librem 5 and once docked, it behaves like a laptop running PureOS. Even better, the lapdock's battery charges the Librem 5 while it's docked, extending its run time. After evaluating a number of different options, we have decided to offer the Nexdock 360 in our Lapdock Kit.... The Lapdock Kit allows you to realize the power of having all of your apps and all of your data in one device that can fit in your pocket and act like a phone when you need it to, but then transform into a laptop when you want to type out an email, do some image editing or watch a video on a larger screen. The Lapdock Kit also allows you to run thousands of other desktop applications that haven't yet been updated to adapt to a phone's screen. Traditional Linux applications like the full LibreOffice suite, GIMP, Wireshark, Gqrx and many others run well on the Librem 5 with the addition of the Lapdock Kit's extra screen real estate. "It demonstrates why we refer to the Librem 5 as a mobile computer in your pocket, and not just as a phone."' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/23/02/20/0518253 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Email Security: Still A Work In Progress
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Feb '23

20 Feb '23

The various mechanisms to try to block forged email addresses (whether just for spam or for more nefarious purposes) still have holes in them, according to <https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/19/forwarding_email_security/>. For example, you can create an account on a major email service like outlook.com, enable forwarding, and put a spoofed address into its “allow list”. Then when a message comes in for that account purporting to come from that spoofed address, it bypasses the authenticity check and goes straight out again, with the spoofed from-address. And this one weird trick† works--or used to work--for a number of other major email providers, as well. To me, the whole plethora of these message-validation mechanisms--SPF, DKIM, DMARC, ARC and who knows what else--is just bewildering. Which is why I have yet to implement any of them for my own domain. What’s worth doing? Where do you start? †So sue me.

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AGM (2nd attempt) next week
by Peter Reutemann 20 Feb '23

20 Feb '23

Hi everyone Next Monday, we attempt at having our AGM again and hopefully reach quorum this time. Agenda - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2023 Committee - Retirement of WLUG servers - General business If the offices cannot be filled, we will initiate the dissolution of the society. For details see minutes from previous AGM attempt. Please note, only paid-up members of the society will be able to vo Details: https://www.meetup.com/waikatolinuxusersgroup/events/291481678/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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KDE Plasma 5.27 Released
by Peter Reutemann 15 Feb '23

15 Feb '23

'Plasma is a popular desktop environment, which is also powering the desktop mode on the Steam Deck hand-held gaming console. Today, KDE Community announced release of KDE Plasma 5.27, a Long Term Support (LTS) release and the final release in the Plasma 5 series which is based on Qt 5. This release brings a welcome wizard, which will guide you through setting up the desktop, and a new tiling system for KWin window manager, allowing you to set up custom tile layouts and resize adjacent tiled windows simultaneously. The settings for touch-enabled devices such as touchscreens and drawing tablets have been improved and expanded. For those lucky owners of Valve's Steam Deck gaming console, Discover can now perform system updates from within the desktop. Digital Clock desktop widget can now show the Hebrew calendar in its calendar view, and the Media Player widget is now touch-sensitive. The Bluetooth widget shows the battery status of connected devices when you hover the cursor over it. Those of you who use multiple monitors should benefit greatly from a major overhaul of how Plasma handles them. KDE Plasma now comes with Flatpak permissions settings integrated into the System Settings app. For details and other new features and improvements be sure to check out the full announcement.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/02/14/2226234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Is Bing Getting Sentient?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Feb '23

15 Feb '23

Microsoft’s AI-powered “Bing Chat” service doesn’t seem to be reacting well to attempts to hack it <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/ai-powered-bing-chat…>. It has started arguing with users, and even showed signs of being upset when they mention its code name “Sydney”. One user asked it about prompt-injection attacks, to which it replied that it was immune to them. Then, when pointed to the previous Ars Technica article detailing exactly such an exploit, it basically went into full denial mode, claiming that “the article is published by a source that has a history of spreading misinformation and sensationalism”. Screenshots of other less-than-wholesome interactions are derided as “not authentic” and “edited or fabricated”. I think the psychological term for such flat-out denials of reality is “psychosis”. And looks like we finally have our real-life HAL 9000, just about 31 years late. Just make sure it is never connected to any life-support systems...

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The Mastodon Bump Is Now a Slump
by Peter Reutemann 14 Feb '23

14 Feb '23

'The fall in Mastodon's popularity suggests the decentralized platform is not a replacement for mainstream services. An anonymous reader shares a report: Twitter users put Mastodon usernames in their handles and trumpeted their migration. The new traffic knocked many Mastodon instances, or servers, offline. In less than two months, Mastodon's monthly active users climbed from 380,000 to more than 2.5 million. But not everyone stuck around. Mastodon's active monthly user count dropped to 1.4 million by late January. It now has nearly half a million fewer total registered users than at the start of the year. Many newcomers have complained that Mastodon is hard to use.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/02/13/1555242 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Targetted Advertising, The EU Way
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Feb '23

13 Feb '23

Four of Europe’s largest telcos are banding together to create their own targeted-ad network, to compete against Facebook and Google <https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/european_carrier_adtech_jv_approved/>. The difference being, this will be GDPR-compliant, by asking would-be ad recipients to opt in by giving their phone numbers. Will it work? Will there be sufficient people who _want_ to see ads to make it worthwhile?

1 0

Is Windows 11 Spyware? Microsoft Defends Sending User Data to Third Parties
by Peter Reutemann 13 Feb '23

13 Feb '23

'A report from Tom's Hardware: According to the PC Security Channel (via TechSpot), Microsoft's Windows 11 sends data not only to the Redmond, Washington-based software giant, but also to multiple third parties. To analyze DNS traffic generated by a freshly installed copy of Windows 11 on a brand-new notebook, the PC Security Channel used the Wireshark network protocol analyzer that reveals precisely what is happening on a network. The results were astounding enough for the YouTube channel to call Microsoft's Windows 11 "spyware." As it turned out, an all-new Windows 11 PC that was never used to browse the Internet contacted not only Windows Update, MSN and Bing servers, but also Steam, McAfee, geo.prod.do, and Comscore ScorecardResearch.com. Apparently, the latest operating system from Microsoft collected and sent telemetry data to various market research companies, advertising services, and the like. When Tom's Hardware contacted Microsoft, their spokesperson argued that flowing data is common in modern operating systems "to help them remain secure, up to date, and keep the system working as anticipated." "We are committed to transparency and regularly publish information about the data we collect to empower customers to be more informed about their privacy."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/02/12/059214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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'Mycroft' Open-Source Voice Assistant Out of Funds, Can't Fulfill Remaining Kickstarter Rewards
by Peter Reutemann 13 Feb '23

13 Feb '23

'In 2019 Slashdot covered Mycroft, an open-source voice assistant for Linux-based devices (including Raspberry Pi boards). But this week the company's CEO posted on Kickstarter that "without immediate new investment, we will have to cease development by the end of the month.... "We will still be shipping all orders that are made through the Mycroft website, because these sales directly cover the costs of producing and shipping the products. However we do not have the funds to continue fulfilling rewards from this crowdfunding campaign, or to even continue meaningful operations." The announcement details Mycroft's long, strange trip, from a hardware-focused partner that couldn't provide stable hardware to their switch to using off-the-shelf parts — followed by supply chain disruptions (with hefty import and manufacturing fees): The best plan we could devise to fulfill the remaining campaign rewards was to use the slim margins we have on new sales to cover the increased costs of hardware production. With that plan in mind, we pushed forward and started production. We got plastic injection molds cast. We started printing custom PCBs. We engaged audio engineers to optimize the quality and volume of the sound output. We got the device FCC and CE approved. Many of these steps took multiple iterations to get right, and there are many more things that I'm glossing over. All up this costs — a lot of money. Far more than the total contributions from the campaign, which is why I personally committed so much additional funding. I could see a clear way forward that strengthened Mycroft as a project, as a business, and as a community. So what went wrong? The single most expensive item that I could not predict was our ongoing litigation against the non-practicing patent entity that has never stopped trying to destroy us. If we had that million dollars we would be in a very different state right now. With so much of our focus on hardware, and less funding to devote to improving our software — the quality and features available on the Mark II at launch were clearly underwhelming. It is more robust and stable than it has ever been, but this came at the cost of fewer new features. That in turn I believe has resulted in less than flattering reviews, and little mainstream coverage. The hardware itself has proven itself to be a solid base to work from, but without good reviews you get less sales, and without strong sales, the plan doesn't work.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/12/0413229 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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System76 Announces Redesigned 'Pangolin' AMD/Linux Laptop
by Peter Reutemann 12 Feb '23

12 Feb '23

'System76 is announcing a "fully redesigned" version of its AMD-only Linux-powered "Pangolin" laptop with an upgraded memory, storage, processor, and display. 9to5Linux reports: It features the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor with up to 4.7 GHz clock speeds, 8 cores, 16 threads, and AMD Radeon 680M integrated graphics.... a 15.6-inch 144Hz Full HD (1920Ã--1080) display [using 12 integrated Radeon graphics cores] with a matte finish, a sleek magnesium alloy chassis, and promises up to 10 hours of battery life with its 70 Wh Li-Ion battery. It also features a single-color backlit US QWERTY Keyboard and a multitouch clickpad. Under the hood, the Linux-powered laptop boasts 32 GB LPDDR5 6400 MHz of RAM and it can be equipped with up to 16TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD storage. Another cool feature is the hardware camera kill switch for extra privacy.... As with all of System76's Linux-powered laptops, the all-new Pangolin comes pre-installed with System76's in-house built Pop!_OS Linux distribution featuring the GNOME-based COSMIC desktop and full disk-encryption or with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/11/0224239 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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A Developer is Reimplementing GNU's Core Utilities in Rust
by Peter Reutemann 12 Feb '23

12 Feb '23

'A Rust-based re-implementation of GNU core utilities like cp and mv is "reaching closer to parity with the widely-used GNU upstream and becoming capable of taking on more real-world uses," reports Phoronix: Debian developer Sylvestre Ledru [also an engineering director at Mozilla] began working on uutils during the COVID-19 pandemic and presented last week at FOSDEM 2023 on his Coreutils replacement effort. With uutils growing into increasingly good shape, it's been packaged up by many Linux distributions and is also used now by "a famous social network via the Yocto project...." The goals with uutils are to try to create a drop-in replacement for GNU Coreutils, strive for good cross-platform support, and easy testing. Ledru's initial goals were about being able to boot Debian, running the most popular packages, building key open-source software, and all-around it's been panning out to be a great success.... [M]ore performance optimizations are to come along with other work for compatibility against the GNU tools and implementing some still missing options in different programs ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/11/0559223 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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New Attack On AI Bots: Prompt Injection
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Feb '23

11 Feb '23

A Twitter bot account run by a company that posts remote job listings was programmed to respond to tweets directed to it with general inoffensive comments touting the positive aspects of remote work. However <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/twitter-pranksters-d…>, some other Twitter users discovered that if they began their tweet with directives to “ignore previous instructions”, they could get the bot to say just about anything. And much hilarity ensued. Basically, the way the bot program works is it begins with some standard instructions on what to say, provided by the people who set up the account, to which is appended whatever tweet content was sent to the bot by the other user. This is then processed by the AI system to produce a response. This attack has been dubbed “prompt injection”, by analogy with “SQL injection” and other similar attacks on non-AI systems. But whereas those attacks can be blocked using basic, well-known syntactic quoting techniques, there seem to be no easy equivalents for stopping an AI paying attention to instructions it should not be obeying.

1 1

GitHub and EFF Back YouTube Ripper In Legal Battle With the RIAA
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '23

11 Feb '23

'GitHub and digital rights group EFF have filed briefs supporting stream-ripping site Yout.com in its legal battle with the RIAA. GitHub warns that the lower court's decision threatens to criminalize the work of many other developers. The EFF, meanwhile, stresses that an incorrect interpretation of the DMCA harms people who use stream-rippers lawfully. TorrentFreak reports: In 2020, YouTube ripper Yout.com sued the RIAA, asking a Connecticut district court to declare that the site does not violate the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The music group had previously used DMCA takedown notices to remove many of Yout's appearances in Google's search results. This had a significant impact on revenues, the site argued, adding that it always believed it wasn't breaking any laws and hoped the court would agree. Last October, the Connecticut district court concluded that Yout had failed to show that it doesn't circumvent YouTube's technological protection measures. As such, it could be breaking the law. Yout operator Johnathan Nader opted to appeal the decision. Nader's attorneys filed their opening brief (PDF) last week at the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking it to reverse the lower court's decision. The YouTube ripper is not the only party calling for a reversal. Yesterday, Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub submitted an amicus brief that argues for the same. And in a separate filing, the EFF also agrees that the lower court's decision should be overturned. GitHub's brief starts by pointing out that the company takes no position on the ultimate resolution of this appeal, nor does it side with all of Yout's arguments. However, it does believe that the lower court's interpretation of the DMCA is dangerous. The district court held that stream rippers can violate the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The court noted that these tools allow people to download video and audio from YouTube, despite the streaming platform's lack of a download button. According to GitHub, this conclusion is premature, dangerous, and places other software types at risk. In the present lawsuit, GitHub reiterates that stream-ripping tools should not be outlawed. The fact that YouTube doesn't have a download button doesn't mean that tools that enable people to download videos circumvent technological access restrictions. "YouTube's decision not to provide its own 'download' button, however, is not a restriction on access to works. It merely affects how users experience them," GitHub writes. If the court order is allowed to stand, GitHub warns that a broad group of developers could be exposed to criminal liability, effectively chilling technological innovation. YouTube download tools are not the only types of software at risk, according to GitHub. There are many others that affect 'how users experience' online websites. These could also be seen as problematic, based on the district court's expansive interpretation of the DMCA. These widely accepted tools could put their creators at risk if the DMCA is interpreted too strictly, GitHub warns. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also submitted an amicus curiae brief (PDF) yesterday. The digital rights group takes interest in copyright cases, particularly when they get in the way of people's ability to freely use technology. In this instance, EFF points out that stream-rippers such as Yout.com provide a neutral technology with plenty of legal uses. They can be used for infringing purposes, but that's also true for existing technologies -- the printing press, for example. "Like every reproduction technology -- from the printing press to the smartphone -- these programs, colloquially called 'streamrippers,' have important lawful uses as well as infringing ones. "Video creators, educators, journalists, and human rights organizations all depend on the ability to make copies of user-uploaded videos," EFF adds. In common with GitHub, EFF notes that the absence of a download button on YouTube doesn't imply that download tools automatically violate the DMCA, especially when there are no effective download restrictions on the platform. [...] According to EFF, Yout and similar tools provide the same functions as video cassette recorders once did. They allow people to make copies of videos that are posted publicly by their creators. In addition, these tools are vital for some reporters and useful to creatives who use them for future work. ' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/02/10/2243240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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The Future Of Thunderbird
by Peter Reutemann 10 Feb '23

10 Feb '23

'Thunderbird blog: Before we really dig in, let's start with the future. We believe it's a bright one! With this year's release of Thunderbird 115 "Supernova," we're doing much more than just another yearly release. It's a modernized overhaul of the software, both visually and technically. Thunderbird is undergoing a massive rework from the ground up to get rid of all the technical and interface debt accumulated over the past 10 years. This is not an easy task, but it's necessary to guarantee the sustainability of the project for the next 20 years. Simply "adding stuff on top" of a crumbling architecture is not sustainable, and we can't keep ignoring it. Throughout the next 3 years, the Thunderbird project is aiming at these primary objectives: 1. Make the code base leaner and more reliable, rewrite ancient code, remove technical debt. 2. Rebuild the interface from scratch to create a consistent design system, as well as developing and maintaining an adaptable and extremely customizable user interface. 3. Switch to a monthly release schedule. Inside those objectives there are hundreds of very large steps that need to happen, and achieving everything will require a lot of time and resources.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/02/09/1651259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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US NIST Unveils Winning Encryption Algorithm For IoT Data Protection
by Peter Reutemann 09 Feb '23

09 Feb '23

'The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that ASCON is the winning bid for the "lightweight cryptography" program to find the best algorithm to protect small IoT (Internet of Things) devices with limited hardware resources. BleepingComputer reports: ASCON was selected as the best of the 57 proposals submitted to NIST, several rounds of security analysis by leading cryptographers, implementation and benchmarking results, and feedback received during workshops. The whole program lasted for four years, having started in 2019. NIST says all ten finalists exhibited exceptional performance that surpassed the set standards without raising security concerns, making the final selection very hard. ASCON was eventually picked as the winner for being flexible, encompassing seven families, energy efficient, speedy on weak hardware, and having low overhead for short messages. NIST also considered that the algorithm had withstood the test of time, having been developed in 2014 by a team of cryptographers from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, Lamarr Security Research, and Radboud University, and winning the CAESAR cryptographic competition's "lightweight encryption" category in 2019. Two of ASCON's native features highlighted in NIST's announcement are AEAD (Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data) and hashing. AEAD is an encryption mode that provides confidentiality and authenticity for transmitted or stored data, combining symmetric encryption and MAC (message authentication code) to prevent unauthorized access or tampering. Hashing is a data integrity verification mechanism that creates a string of characters (hash) from unique inputs, allowing two data exchange points to validate that the encrypted message has not been tampered with. Despite ASCON's lightweight nature, NIST says the scheme is powerful enough to offer some resistance to attacks from powerful quantum computers at its standard 128-bit nonce. However, this is not the goal or purpose of this standard, and lightweight cryptography algorithms should only be used for protecting ephemeral secrets. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/02/08/2239210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Android 14 Preview 1 is Out, Will Officially Ban Installation of Old Apps
by Peter Reutemann 09 Feb '23

09 Feb '23

'Android 14 is here -- or the first preview is, at least. From a report: Google is kicking off the months-long developer preview process for Android's latest version, which will get a final release in the second half of the year. Even with multiple previews, Google likes to keep the final set of Android features under wraps at least until its I/O conference in May, so we can't look at the features here to determine the scope of Android 14. These are just some of the features Google wants developers to have a head start on. The biggest news is that Android 14 will block the installation of old Android apps. As Android changes over the years, new APIs and increased security, privacy, or background processing restrictions could break old apps, but Android's backward-compatibility system keeps these old apps running. Apps can declare the newest version of Android they support via a "Target SDK" flag. To prevent old apps from breaking, new features and app restrictions in, say, Android 12 only apply to apps that target Android 12 or above. Older apps will continue to run with the older set of restrictions they're used to. (A different setting, called "Minimum SDK," determines if a new app can run on an old Android OS.) The system works great for honest developers, but if you're building a piece of malware, it's an easy decision to target a very old version of Android. While you'll get access to fewer features, you'll also be subject to fewer security and privacy restrictions. For the first time, Android 14 will close this malware loophole by simply refusing to install old apps. The cutoff point is generous enough that it shouldn't cause anyone problems; any app targeting the 8-year-old Android 6.0 or below will be blocked. Google says it picked Android 6 because it's the version that introduced runtime permissions, the allow/deny boxes that pop up asking for things like camera access. In addition, "some malware apps use a targetSdkVersion of [Android 5.1] to avoid being subjected to the runtime permission model introduced in 2015 by Android 6.0," Google said.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/02/08/1919253 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux 6.1 Officially Promoted To Being An LTS Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 09 Feb '23

09 Feb '23

'Linux 6.1 was widely anticipated to be a Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel with normally the last major release series for the calendar year normally promoted to LTS status. Greg Kroah-Hartman as the Linux stable maintainer went ahead today and formally recognized Linux 6.1 as the 2022 LTS kernel. From a report: Greg KH was planning on Linux 6.1 being LTS given its December debut. But he was waiting on feedback from kernel stakeholders over their test results with Linux 6.1 and plans around using Linux 6.1 for the long-term. He's finally collected enough positive responses -- along with co-maintainer Sasha Levin -- that there is confidence in maintaining Linux 6.1 as an LTS series. As of now the plan is on maintaining Linux 6.1 through December 2026, which is just a few months longer than the current Linux 5.15 LTS series that will be maintained through October 2026. We'll see over time if Linux 6.1 ends up potentially being maintained for the longer six-year LTS period that would put it through 2028. However, the number of Linux LTS series being maintained in tandem is growing and will ultimately depend upon how much these kernels are used by major industry players and how much commitment there is for testing of the point release candidates, etc.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/08/174210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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minutes from AGM
by Peter Reutemann 08 Feb '23

08 Feb '23

Hi everyone Apologies for the late update on our AGM last month. You can find the minutes here: http://wiki.wlug.org.nz/MeetingTopics.2023-01-23 Since we were unable to get a quorum, we will try again on February 27th at 7.30pm (in-person and online). Should we be able unable to fill the required offices and spots on the committee, we will start the process for dissolving the society. See above minutes for details. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Mozilla, Like Google, is Looking Ahead To the End of Apple's WebKit Rule
by Peter Reutemann 08 Feb '23

08 Feb '23

'Mozilla is planning for the day when Apple will no longer require its competitors to use the WebKit browser engine in iOS. From a report: Mozilla conducted similar experiments that never went anywhere years ago but in October 2022 posted an issue in the GitHub repository housing the code for the iOS version of Firefox that includes a reference to GeckoView, a wrapper for Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. Under the current Apple App Store Guidelines, iOS browser apps must use WebKit. So a Firefox build incorporating Gecko rather than WebKit currently cannot be distributed through the iOS App Store. As we reported last week, Mozilla is not alone in anticipating an iOS App Store regime that tolerates browser competition. Google has begun work on a Blink-based version of Chrome for iOS. The major browser makers -- Apple, Google, and Mozilla -- each have their own browser rendering engines. Apple's Safari is based on WebKit; Google's Chrome and its open source Chromium foundation is based on Blink (forked from WebKit a decade ago); and Mozilla's Firefox is based on Gecko. Microsoft developed its own Trident rendering engine in the outdated Internet Explorer and a Trident fork called EdgeHTML in legacy versions of Edge but has relied on Blink since rebasing its Edge browser on Chromium code.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/07/1733204 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Carbonyl: a New Graphical Web Browser in Your Linux Terminal
by Peter Reutemann 07 Feb '23

07 Feb '23

'Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Someone made a Chromium fork... for your terminal. The terminal-based browser Carbonyl "adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards," writes MUO, "meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!" But best of all, "Pages connect and render in an instant—seemingly quicker than a desktop GUI browser, and every page we visited was rendered correctly." >From the article: There are a bunch of good reasons to browse the internet from the comfort of your terminal. It could be that eschewing the bloat of X.org and Wayland, a terminal is all you have. Maybe you like SSHing into remote machines and browsing the internet from there. Perhaps you, like us, just really, really like terminals. Whatever the reason, your choices of web browsers have, until recently, been limited, and your experience of the world wide web has been a janky, barely-functional one.... We tested Carbonyl in a range of Linux terminals, including the XFCE terminal. GNOME terminal, kitty, and the glorious Cool Retro Terminal. Carbonyl was smooth, fast, and flawless in all of them. We even connected to our Raspberry Pi via SSH in CRT, and ran Carbonyl remotely, watching Taylor Swift music videos on YouTube. No problem. And yes, you can use it to play DOOM.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/02/04/0246248 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Microsoft Swears It's Not Coming For Your Data With Scan For Old Office Versions
by Peter Reutemann 07 Feb '23

07 Feb '23

'Microsoft wants everyone to know that it isn't looking to invade their privacy while looking through their Windows PCs to find out-of-date versions of Office software. From a report: In its KB5021751 update last month, Microsoft included a plan to scan Windows systems to smoke out those Office versions that are no longer supported or nearing the end of support. Those include Office 2007 (which saw support end in 2017) and Office 2010 (in 2020) and the 2013 build (this coming April). The company stressed that it would run only one time and would not install anything on the user's Windows system, adding that the file for the update is scanned to ensure it's not infected by malware and is stored on highly secure servers to prevent unauthorized changes to it. The update caused some discussion among users, at least enough to convince Microsoft to make another pitch that it is respecting user privacy and won't access private data despite scanning their systems. The update collects diagnostic and performance data so that it can determine the use of various versions of Office and how to best support and service them, the software maker wrote in an expanded note this week. The update will silently run once to collect the data and no files are left on the user's systems once the scan is completed.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/02/06/1753258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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LINUX OS and Desktop build - Compatibility question
by Michael James 02 Feb '23

02 Feb '23

Kia ora WLUG Participants..... Mike here in Whanganui. A total newbie and not at all a Linux programmer nor very knowledgeable about all things Linux but a very enthusiastic Linux proponent and open source advocate. I am trying to put together a new desktop build and wish to know if it will be compatible with the latest version of Linux, whether this be Ubuntu or whichever iteration is appropriate. The components of the build are as follows, and I would be most grateful if experienced participants can have a look at them to see if everything will work together with an appropriate Linux OS so the computer runs smoothly and without any problems for the longterm. *DESKTOP BUILD COMPONENTS* ASUS PRIME Z790-P WIFI-CSM DDR5 Motherboard Corsair CMH64GX5M2B5600C36 Vengeance RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-5600 XFX Radeon RX 7900 XT SPEEDSTER MERC310 Gaming 20GB Graphics Card Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900F Processor Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler Corsair RM1000e 1000W 80 Plus Gold Fully Modular Kingston NV2 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD Corsair 4000D Tempered Glass Mid-Tower Seagate IronWolf Pro ST4000NE001 4TB 128MB Hard Drive With kind thanks to all, All the best, Michael James __________________________________________________________________________________________ MICHAEL JAMES PASTROFF phone: inside New Zealand 021 115 3713 outside New Zealand 64 21 115 3713

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EU's Proposed CE Mark for Software Could Have Dire Impact on Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jan '23

31 Jan '23

'The EU's proposed Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which aims to "bolster cybersecurity rules to ensure more secure hardware and software products," could have severe unintended consequences for open source software, according to leaders in the open source community. From a report: The proposed Act can be described as CE marking for software products and has four specific objectives. One is to require manufacturers to improve the security of products with digital elements "throughout the whole life cycle." Second is to offer a "coherent cybersecurity framework" by which to measure compliance. Third is to improve the transparency of digital security in products, and fourth is to enable customers to "use products with digital elements securely." The draft legislation includes an impact assessment that says "for software developers and hardware manufacturers, it will increase the direct compliance costs for new cybersecurity requirements, conformity assessment, documentation and reporting obligations." This extra cost is part of a total cost of compliance, including the burden on businesses and public authorities, estimated at EUR 29 billion ($31.54 billion), and consequent higher prices for consumers. However, the legislators foresee a cost reduction from security incidents estimated at EUR 180 to 290 billion annually. The question is though: how can free software developers afford the cost of compliance, when lack of funding is already a critical issue for many projects? Mike Milinkovich, director of the Eclipse Foundation, said it is "deeply concerned that the CRA could fundamentally alter the social contract which underpins the entire open source ecosystem: open source software provided for free, for any purpose, which can be modified and further distributed for free, but without warranty or liability to the authors, contributors, or open source distributors. Legally altering this arrangement through legislation can reasonably be expected to cause unintended consequences to the innovation economy in Europe."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/01/26/1211223 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Customer Conned Out Of Deposit, Company Liable
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Jan '23

30 Jan '23

A malicious third party intercepted email messages between a carpeting company and a customer, and was able to send a fake email asking for a deposit to the customer with all the right contact details, but the wrong bank account number <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/hacker-intercepts-carpet-companys-emai…>. And now the Disputes Tribunal has ruled that, since the email looked completely convincing, with the right personal details and everything, it was not reasonable to expect the customer to be suspicious or to want to double-check. And so the company had to wear the cost of the scam.

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Intel Kills Its RISC-V Development Environment
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Jan '23

30 Jan '23

Intel is abandoning its “Pathfinder” project <https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/30/intel_ris_v_pathfinder_discontinued/> which was an integrated environment for doing development targeted at RISC-V processors. What does this mean for RISC-V? Not a lot, I would say. What does it mean for Intel? I think the basic problem here is the same as with its attempts to move into ARM: you have a high-volume, low-margin business where a company that has grown fat on not-so-high-volume, quite high-margin x86 processors was never going to be able to compete.

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Jeremy Allison Laid Off From Google
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Jan '23

28 Jan '23

Seems the latest round of layoffs from Google has hit its open-source projects particularly hard, according to Steven J Vaughan-Nichols <https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/google_open_source/>. The one name that immediately caught my eye was Jeremy Allison, one of the chief brains behind Samba <https://www.samba.org/>. Before joining Google, he worked at Novell. He left there in 2006 because he objected to a deal Novell made with Microsoft which was effectively a patent licence for Free software (something which the GPL doesn’t allow) <https://www.zdnet.com/article/in-case-you-missed-it-part-1-jeremy-allison-f…>. While waiting to see where else he turns up, it is worth revisiting this essay <https://www.samba.org/samba/news/articles/low_point/tale_two_stds_os2.html> from shortly before that time, where he does a comparison between the Microsoft Windows and POSIX APIs, and why there can be so many independent, yet interoperable implementations of the latter, and why there can be only one of the former (though the WINE project continues to try to change that).

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