- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Slack Now Strips Location Data From Images
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '20

16 May '20

'Slack has started to strip uploaded photos of their metadata. What may seem like an inconsequential change to how the tech giant handles storing files on its servers, it will make it far more difficult to trace photos back to their original owners. From a report: Almost every digital file -- from documents on your computer to photos taken on your phone -- contains metadata. That's data about the file itself, such as how big the file is, when it was created, and by whom. Photos and videos often include the precise coordinates of where they were taken. But that can be a problem for higher-risk Slack users, like journalists and activists, who have to take greater security precautions to keep their sources safe. The metadata inside photos can out sources, deanonymize whistleblowers, or otherwise make it easier for unfriendly governments to target individuals. Even if a journalist removes the metadata from a photo before publishing, a copy of the photo -- with its metadata -- may remain on Slack's servers. Whether a hacker breaks in or a government demands the data, it can put sources at risk' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/05/11/2051209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 5

ddr2 ram
by john 16 May '20

16 May '20

Some years ago, Windows Vista offered users who plugged in a USB flash drive the option of using the device as extra ram. I never actually tried this due to large amount of doubt about the functional ability of the claim. However I now have a number of Linux machines with DDR2 that I am unable to increase the physical memory of and wonder if this is a feasible option for these machines. Cheers John

5 6

Standby Fares For Those Flying Cloud
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 May '20

14 May '20

New concept: “Spot” VMs on cloud services <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/13/azure_spot_vms/>. These are offered for a very low price, but equally the jobs run at very low priority, and are liable to be evicted at short notice--as little as 30 seconds, according to the article. They are there to fill up unused capacity that cannot be sold at the regular rate. But as soon as a customer appears willing to pay that rate, out you go.

1 0

3D File Manager As A Service
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 May '20

13 May '20

This company called Saganworks is offering a navigable 3D world for accessing your files stored on their servers <https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/05/12/saganworks-virtual-reality-rooms-for-…>. This sort of thing has been done lots of times before, famously on SGI workstations (and seen in the “Jurassic Park” movie). I suppose Microsoft Bob also counts, in a way. Quote: “We don’t live in a 2D world, yet that’s how we’ve been retaining knowledge and memories from the time of early cave dwellers until now.” Speak for yourself, non-command-line user. Yes, the name is a contrived acronym, and also a homage to Carl Sagan ...

1 0

Ventoy USB Image Multi-Bootloader
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 May '20

13 May '20

Been watching this video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYJ8du9TaxE> about a bootloader called “Ventoy”. Basically you install it onto a suitably-large USB stick, then you can just copy .iso image files of all the distros you want to try, and when you boot off that stick, it will offer a list of which OS image you want to start up. This even includes some Microsoft Windows installation images. Not everything is fully-compatible, though.

1 0

Commercial Use Of Open Source: Good & Bad
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 May '20

13 May '20

<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/12/open_source_bugs/> The good news: commercial adoption of Open Source is on the up: ... almost all (99 per cent) of the codebases examined have at least one open source component and that 70 per cent of the code overall is open source. That's about twice as much as the company's 2015 report, which found only 36 per cent of audited code was open source. The bad news: the companies concerned seem to have few or no procedures in place for keeping those open-source components up to date: Ninety-one percent of the audited applications had components that are either four years out of date or have exhibited no active development for two years. In 2019 – the time-period covered by the 2020 report – the percentage of codebases containing vulnerable components rose to 75 per cent, up from 60 per cent in 2018. They also seem to be a little bit careless about the legalities: The Synopsys report also found that 68 per cent of codebases exhibited an open source license conflict and that 33 per cent of them had no identifiable license.

1 0

Eclipse Foundation Moving Base To Europe
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 May '20

13 May '20

The Eclipse Foundation is “re-domiciling the legal entity that controls The Eclipse Foundation from the US to Europe” <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/12/eclipse_moves_to_europe/>. Seems like Europe is already accounting for a much bigger chunk of contributions than the US: Membership dues will eventually be stated in Euros and a new version of the membership agreement will be coming down the line to reflect the foundation's new status as a Belgian entity. This reader comment <https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2020/05/12/eclipse_moves_to_euro…> gives some other examples of Open Source projects where either their organizations or the bulk of their contributors are not (or no longer) US-centric. E.g. The Document Foundation (which runs the LibreOffice project) is based in Berlin.

1 0

Apache 101: 0-WordPress in 15 minutes
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '20

13 May '20

'Recently, we took a look at the Caddy Web server. Today, we're going to back things up a little bit and look at the A from the classic LAMP stack: the Apache Web server. Apache has a bad reputation for being old, crusty, and low-performance—but this idea mostly stems from the persistence of ancient guides that still show users how to set it up in extremely antiquated ways. In this guide, we're going to set up an Ubuntu 20.04 droplet at Digital Ocean with an Apache Web server set up properly and capable of handling serious levels of traffic.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/apache-101-0-wordpre… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Thunderbolt Bug Lets Hackers Steal Your Data in 'Five Minutes'
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '20

13 May '20

'A new set of flaws discovered in the Intel Thunderbolt port has put millions of machines at risk of local hacking. This new research by Eindhoven University's Bjorn Ruytenberg suggests that if a hacker gains access to a machine for just five minutes, they could bypass login methods to gain full data access. From a report: Thunderbolt ports are present in machines with Windows, Linux, and macOS. So, that covers a lot of computers. Ruytenberg said all Thunderbolt versions and systems shipped between 2011 to 2020 are affected and no software patch can fix these vulnerabilities. So, Intel would need to redesign silicon in order to fix these flaws. There's not much you can do here. However, with open-source software called Thunderspy, developed by Ruytenberg and their team, you can check if you're affected by the Thunderbolt bug.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/05/11/1450208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 2

Microsoft Wants Notebooks
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 May '20

12 May '20

One of the plans announced for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code development environment <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/11/visual_studio_code_145_released/> is “notebooks” à la Jupyter: The team is also working on native support for notebooks, though rather than just support Jupyter notebooks (for which support already exists as part of the Python tools) the intention is to "build a Notebook solution that is unbiased and supports different styles of Notebooks". Of course, Jupyter itself already allows you to use other programming languages, not just Python. By the way, interesting to note that Jupyter is becoming the recognized reference for the notebook paradigm, as opposed to Mathematica which is where the idea originated.

1 0