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Tip Of The Week: Controlling The Battery Charge Threshold
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Feb '22

21 Feb '22

Came across this rather interesting reader comment <https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/02/18/something_for_the_weeke…> about (supposedly) prolonging the life of your laptop battery by reducing the limit to which it is charged. This is configured by creating a systemd service file (called, for example, /etc/systemd/system/battery-charge-threshold.service) that automatically sets the threshold at boot time. Its contents are [Unit] Description=Set the battery charge threshold After=multi-user.target StartLimitBurst=0 [Service] Type=oneshot Restart=on-failure ExecStart=/bin/bash -c 'echo 50 > /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold' [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target You then use the usual “systemctl start” command to invoke this immediately, plus “systemctl enable” to ensure it runs at every subsequent boot. Regardless of whether it actually prolongs the life of your battery (try at your own risk!), it shows how easy it is to customize aspects of your system behaviour with systemd. As of this writing, that comment has garnered 7 upvotes and no downvotes, on a site where the readers are notorious for being a nest of systemd-haters.

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Is Firefox OK?
by Peter Reutemann 21 Feb '22

21 Feb '22

'At the end of 2008, Firefox was flying high. Twenty percent of the 1.5 billion people online were using Mozilla’s browser to navigate the web. In Indonesia, Macedonia, and Slovenia, more than half of everyone going online was using Firefox. “Our market share in the regions above has been growing like crazy,” Ken Kovash, Mozilla’s president at the time, wrote in a blog post. Almost 15 years later, things aren’t so rosy. Across all devices, the browser has slid to less than 4 percent of the market—on mobile it’s a measly half a percent. “Looking back five years and looking at our market share and our own numbers that we publish, there's no denying the decline,” says Selena Deckelmann, senior vice president of Firefox. Mozilla’s own statistics show a drop of around 30 million monthly active users from the start of 2019 to the start of 2022. “In the last couple years, what we've seen is actually a pretty substantial flattening,” Deckelmann adds.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/is-firefox-ok/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Millions of WordPress sites get forced update to patch critical plugin flaw
by Peter Reutemann 21 Feb '22

21 Feb '22

'Millions of WordPress sites have received a forced update over the past day to fix a critical vulnerability in a plugin called UpdraftPlus. The mandatory patch came at the request of UpdraftPlus developers because of the severity of the vulnerability, which allows untrusted subscribers, customers, and others to download the site’s private database as long as they have an account on the vulnerable site. Databases frequently include sensitive information about customers or the site’s security settings, leaving millions of sites susceptible to serious data breaches that spill passwords, user names, IP addresses, and more.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/02/millions-of-wordpres… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux Developers Patch Bugs Faster Than Microsoft, Apple, and Google, Study Shows
by Peter Reutemann 21 Feb '22

21 Feb '22

'Linux programmers fixed bugs faster than anyone — in an average of just 25 days (improving from 32 days in 2019 to just 15 in 2021). That's the conclusion of Google's "Project Zero" security research team, which studied the speed of bug-fixing from January 2019 to December 2021. ZDNet reports that Linux's competition "didn't do nearly as well." For instance, Apple, 69 days; Google, 44 days; and Mozilla, 46 days. Coming in at the bottom was Microsoft, 83 days, and Oracle, albeit with only a handful of security problems, with 109 days. By Project Zero's count, others, which included primarily open-source organizations and companies such as Apache, Canonical, Github, and Kubernetes, came in with a respectable 44 days. Generally, everyone's getting faster at fixing security bugs. In 2021, vendors took an average of 52 days to fix reported security vulnerabilities. Only three years ago the average was 80 days. In particular, the Project Zero crew noted that Microsoft, Apple, and Linux all significantly reduced their time to fix over the last two years. As for mobile operating systems, Apple iOS with an average of 70 days is a nose better than Android with its 72 days. On the other hand, iOS had far more bugs, 72, than Android with its 10 problems. Browsers problems are also being fixed at a faster pace. Chrome fixed its 40 problems with an average of just under 30 days. Mozilla Firefox, with a mere 8 security holes, patched them in an average of 37.8 days. Webkit, Apple's web browser engine, which is primarily used by Safari, has a much poorer track record. Webkit's programmers take an average of over 72 days to fix bugs.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/02/20/1915222 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Why I Don’t Like Checking Version Numbers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Feb '22

18 Feb '22

Some major web browsers will soon be hitting version 100. The rollover to a 3-digit version number is going to trigger a repeat of what happened when version numbers rolled from 9 to 10 -- some sites turned out to have buggy version checking based simplistically on strings rather than numeric values, and misbehave <https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/browsers_version_100_websites_bug/>. As a matter of habit, I have long been reluctant to condition behaviour in my own code based on writing code to look up version numbers of things. I prefer to include some kind of check that more directly determines the existence of relevant functionality.

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Ransomware-As-A-Service
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Feb '22

10 Feb '22

From <https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/uk_us_au_ransomware_warning/>: Ransomware attacks are proliferating as criminals turn to gangs providing turnkey post-compromise services, Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned. So, ransomware has become so routine, it has spawned specialists who will take care of many of the technical details for you. For a fee, of course. I think “turnkey post-compromise services” shall be my phrase of the week ...

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Listening To The Radio Killed My Car Stereo!
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Feb '22

10 Feb '22

From <https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/radio-station-snafu-in-seattle-bricks-…>: ... the problem began on January 30 and afflicted Mazdas from model years 2014 to 2017 when the cars were tuned to the local NPR station, KUOW 94.9. At some point during the day's broadcast, a signal from KUOW caused the Mazdas' infotainment systems to crash—the screens died and the radios were stuck on 94.9 FM. The problem was image files† in the HD radio stream that the infotainment system didn’t know how to decode (they were lacking filename extensions). So it crashed. But the files were still in its cache on reboot, so it tried to decode them again. And crashed again. And it appears, there is no way to get rid of those files or reset the system to a safe state without major hardware surgery. And a replacement unit costs USD1,500 -- if you can get one. Luckily, Mazda has advised that it knows about the problem, and will replace the affected units free of charge -- once supplies are available. †Radio with pictures? Who knew?

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System76 Linux workstation looks ready for gaming, too
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '22

04 Feb '22

'System76's latest Linux laptop combines one of AMD's most powerful 5000 series mobile CPUs with Nvidia's mid-range RTX 3060. Configurable to up to $3,442, the Kudu targets Linux users who have a lot of work to do, while quietly nodding at those who like to play games every now and then, too. The 15.6-inch Kudu is the second-priciest offering in System76's laptop lineup. It comes with an octa-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, which has a base clock speed of 3.3 GHz and a boost of up to 4.6 GHz.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/system76-linux-laptop-unites-amd-nv… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Mozilla is Shutting Down Its VR Web Browser, Firefox Reality
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '22

04 Feb '22

'A top VR web browser is closing down. Today, Mozilla announced it's shutting down its Firefox Reality browser -- the four-year-old browser built for use in virtual reality environments. The technology had allowed users to access the web from within their VR headset, doing things like visiting URLs, performing searches, and browsing both the 2D and 3D internet using your VR hand controllers, instead of a mouse. >From a report: Firefox Reality first launched in fall 2018 and has been available on Viveport, Oculus, Pico, and Hololens platforms through their various app stores. While capable of surfing the 2D web, the expectation was that users would largely use the new technology to browse and interact with the web's 3D content, like 360-degree panoramic images and videos, 3D models, and WebVR games, for example. But in an announcement published today, Mozilla says the browser will be removed from the stores where it's been available for download in the "coming weeks." Mozilla is instead directing users who still want to utilize a web browser in VR to Igalia's upcoming open-source browser, Wolvic, which is based on Firefox Reality's source code. This browser will be available for download starting next week, so users won't have to go without -- they'll just have to make the switch.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/02/03/1653218 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Slackware, the Oldest Actively Maintained Linux Distro, Releases Version 15.0
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '22

04 Feb '22

'Slackware, the oldest actively maintained Linux distribution, released version 15.0 yesterday after a long release cycle that goes all the way back to 2016 where the last version (14.2) was released. According to the release notes, the whole spirit of this release is: "Keep it familiar, but make it modern." Among the news, this release offers kernel 5.15.19, PAM, PipeWire and PulseAudio, Wayland and X11 graphical systems, and Rust and Python 3. As graphical environments, both Xfce 4.16 and the latest Plasma 5 (Plasma 5.23.5, Frameworks 5.90, KDE apps 21.12 running under Qt 5.15.3) are available, with Cinnamon and Mate also available from third parties. The main compilers are gcc-11.2 and llvm 13.0. The default browser is Firefox 91.5esr, with Chromium available as a third-party repository. And... no systemd at all. Slackware can be downloaded from a variety of mirrors. BitTorrent downloads are going to be available too. I've used Slackware for 20 years and it's always impressed me with its stability and speed. I encourage everyone interested to try it.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/02/04/027213 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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