- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

System76 Unveils Open Source 'Launch Configurable Keyboard' for Linux, Windows, and macOS
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '21

19 May '21

'System76 today unveiled its newest product -- the "Launch Configurable Keyboard." It is a mechanical keyboard made in the USA with a focus on open source. The Launch has both open source firmware and hardware. Even the configuration software -- which runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS -- is open source. From a report: "With a wide swath of customization options, the Launch is flexible to a variety of needs and use cases. The keyboard's thoughtful design keeps everything within reach, vastly reducing awkward hand contortions. Launch comes with additional keycaps and a convenient keycap puller, meaning one can swap keys based on personal workflow preferences to maximize efficiency. Launch also features a novel split Space Bar, which allows the user to swap out one Space Bar keycap for Shift, Backspace, or Function to reduce hand fatigue while typing. Launch uses only three keycap sizes to vastly expand configuration options," says System76. The keyboard, which has a removable USB-C cable for connectivity, is priced at $285.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/05/13/1727242 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 1

Chrome Now Uses Duplex To Fix Your Stolen Passwords
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '21

19 May '21

'Google announced a new feature for its Chrome browser today that alerts you when one of your passwords has been compromised and then helps you automatically change your password with the help of... wait for it ... Google's Duplex technology. From a report: This new feature will start to roll out slowly to Chrome users on Android in the U.S. soon (with other countries following later), assuming they use Chrome's password-syncing feature. It's worth noting that this won't work for every site just yet. As a Google spokesperson told us, "the feature will initially work on a small number of apps and websites, including Twitter, but will expand to additional sites in the future." Now you may remember Duplex as the somewhat controversial service that can call businesses for you to make hairdresser appointments or check opening times. Google introduced Duplex at its 2018 I/O developer conference and launched it to a wider audience in 2019. Since then, the team has chipped away at bringing Duplex to more tasks and brought it the web, too. Now it's coming to Chrome to change your compromised passwords for you.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/05/18/182218 Cheers, peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Microsoft Outlook Problem Was Microsoft Word’s Fault
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 May '21

18 May '21

The recent problem Outlook users were having with e-mails turning up blank was due to an interaction with Word <https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/17/outlook_incident_report/>. Why Word? Because management of HTML-format mails in Outlook used to be the responsibility of (an embedded instance of) Internet Explorer, until that was abandoned because of all the security holes. So now Word handles that feature: For those who wonder why Outlook makes it so hard to format emails sensibly when doing things like quoting parts of an email received in the reply and typing in-line comments, or putting the background of the incoming email behind the reply: it is the interaction with Word that is to blame. Fair warning: ... today's Windows and Office 365 users are one bad update away from hours of lost productivity.

1 0

Amid Public Pressure Audacity Says It Will Not Collect Telemetry Data From Users
by Peter Reutemann 18 May '21

18 May '21

'After its recent announcement about plans to add telemetry collection prompted backlash, popular audio editor Audacity has announced it won't go ahead with the plan to collect its users' data. BetaNews reports: Audacity's new owner, Muse Group, has bowed to pressure from users and privacy advocates, announcing that the planned telemetry collection will no longer be going ahead. The company is blaming "communication mistakes" and public "misunderstanding" for the negative response to its previous data collection announcement.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/21/05/17/191201 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

AT&T To Spin Off WarnerMedia
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 May '21

18 May '21

Another questionable mega-acquisition bites the dust <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/att-to-spin-off-warnermedia-wil…>, with AT&T admitting it made a mistake by trying to become a media conglomerate. There is a local element to this story. The company called Discovery, that is planning to buy these assets, also owns Three (aka TV3, aka NewsHub). So there will inevitably be some impact in our own little neck of the woods, though whether that will be for better or worse is the question <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the-spinoff-a-blockbuster-media-deal-co…>.

1 0

Apple’s M1: Throughput Versus Latency
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 May '21

18 May '21

An old lesson gets learned yet again <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/apples-m1-is-a-fast-cpu-but-m1-macs…>: efficiency and responsiveness in a computer system are often at odds, and improving one can hurt the other. We can also see a negative example—one in which the fastest throughput corresponded to distinctly unhappy users—with the circa-2006 introduction of the Completely Fair Queue (cfq) I/O scheduler in the Linux kernel. ... Unfortunately, while cfq did in fact measurably improve maximum throughput, it did so at the increase of task latency—which meant that a moderately loaded system felt sluggish and unresponsive to its users, leading to a large groundswell of complaints.

1 0

WLUG May 24 meeting
by Peter Reutemann 15 May '21

15 May '21

Hi everyone For our WLUG meeting on May 24, I was thinking of an evening aimed at people new to Linux or ones that would like to give it a go. Attendees could bring their laptops and a 4GB+ USB stick to the meeting. Then we can put various OSes on the sticks for them to try (and they don't have to download and dd these themselves). With a bunch of more experienced Linux users there to give them a hand, it should be a more rewarding evening for most newcomers. I would also announce it a bit earlier here at uni then and maybe attract some students. What are your thoughts? Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 4

Scheme-Flooding Browser Attack
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 May '21

15 May '21

A company that makes a browser-fingerprinting library (ostensibly for fraud prevention) claims to have found <https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/14/browser_fingerprinting_flaw/> a (admittedly fiddly and not entirely reliable) way to uniquely fingerprint your machine even though you might be using a range of different browsers. This is done by trying to access custom URL schemes as installed by various custom apps, since the presence of these apps is independent of which browser you might be using. So I tried their schemeflood.com proof-of-concept site, it churned away for a few seconds, with a little extra window flickering at the bottom, then I got a message saying “The clearkey plugin has crashed”. It also showed me the identifier it computed for me, which was “0FVVVV”, based on “0 applications you have installed ... out of 24 applications in our database”. Apparently that’s only been seen 1471 times out of 17496 tests so far, which makes it “91.59% unique”.

1 0

The Stats On Microsoft’s Azure Data Centre Switch Failures
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 May '21

13 May '21

Microsoft has put out a paper <https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/05/12/microsoft-does-the-math-on-azure-da…> detailing its experiences with the reliability of various vendors’ switches within its Azure data centres. It has a total of over 180,000 switches, and many of them are running “SONiC”, which is a Microsoft-developed Linux variant as an alternative to the vendors’ own proprietary switch OSes. The adoption of SONiC made a major difference to the reliability of the switches: ... in the aggregate, the switches in the Azure network had a 98 percent uptime during those three months, and if Microsoft moved to SONiC on all of its machines, that would boost that to around 99 percent. And if Microsoft is not doing that, we suspect that SONiC has some scale and performance issues. In the future we may be writing about how Microsoft tossed out all other NOSes, but that is not what is happening now, and we suspect for good reasons.

2 1

Google Says Docs Will Now Use Canvas Based Rendering, Warns Impact on Some Chrome Extensions
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '21

13 May '21

'Google, making the announcement in a blog post: We're updating the way Google Docs renders documents. Over the course of the next several months, we'll be migrating the underlying technical implementation of Docs from the current HTML-based rendering approach to a canvas-based approach to improve performance and improve consistency in how content appears across different platforms. We don't expect this change to impact the functionality of the features in Docs. However, this may impact some Chrome extensions, where they may no longer work as intended. Some Chrome extensions rely on the way the backend of a Google Doc is structured or specific bits of HTML to function properly. By moving away from HTML-based rendering to a canvas-based rendering, some Chrome extensions may not function as intended on docs.google.com and may need to be updated. Admins should review the current extensions deployed in their organization. [...] If you are building your own integrations with Google Docs, we recommend using Google Workspace Add-ons framework, which uses the supported Workspace APIs and integration points. This will help ensure there will be less work in the future to support periodic UI implementation changes to Docs.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/05/12/165216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 1