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Debian May Need To Re-Evaluate Its Interest In 'Init System Diversity'
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

'"Debian Project Leader Sam Hartman has shared his August 2019 notes where he outlines the frustrations and issues that have come up as a result of init system diversity with some developers still aiming to viably support systemd alternatives within Debian," reports Phoronix: Stemming from elogind being blocked from transitioning to testing and the lack of clarity into that, Hartman was pulled in to try to help mediate the matter and get to the bottom of the situation with a lack of cooperation between the elogind and systemd maintainers for Debian as well as the release team. Elogind is used by some distributions as an implementation of systemd's logind, well, outside of systemd as a standalone daemon. Elogind is one of the pieces to the puzzle for trying to maintain a modern, systemd-free Linux distribution. Various issues were raised that are trying to be worked through albeit many Debian developers face time limitations and other factors like emotional exhaustion. Hartman noted in his August notes, "I think we may be approaching a point where we need to poll the project -- to have a GR and ask ourselves how committed we are to the different parts of this init diversity discussion. Reaffirming our support for sysvinit and elogind would be one of the options in any such GR. If that option passed, we'd expect all the maintainers involved to work together or to appoint and empower people who could work on this issue. It would be fine for maintainers not to be involved so long as they did not block progress. And of course we would hold the discussions to the highest standards of respect."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/21/042213 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Phrase Of The Week: “Tab Bankruptcy”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

What happens when you accumulate a growing bunch of open pages in your browser, meaning to look at them in the next few days, but never get around to it? Until you have so many tabs open, you realize you will never have time to check them out, so you abandon them all and start again? That’s called “declaring tab bankruptcy”. And here <https://github.com/jsvine/tab-bankrupter> is a Chrome extension that lets you do that, while preserving pinned tabs, but saves a record of all the tabs you’ve abandoned. So, you know, you can change your mind and come back to them later ... Then you’ll probably want another extension to let you declare saved-bankruptcy bankruptcy, where you wipe all your bankruptcy saves and start again ...

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A Novel Use For GitHub
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

Came across this GitHub repo <https://github.com/tewhalen/bmw_e30>, which doesn’t actually contain any code. Instead, the owner is using the issues feature to keep track of servicing items for his car. Why do it on a public server? Well, the guy is a BMW owner ...

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At The Open-Core Summit
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

A bunch of companies <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/20/open_source_companies_cloud/> have met to share a common annoyance: that big corporations like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are able to profit from their open-source software without giving anything back. I’m not sure what you can do about it, though. Attempts to impose more restrictive conditions on licences seem to have backfired. The AGPL seems to have been the only one of these efforts to have any legs, and I’m doubtful it has really achieved much.

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German Interior Ministry Wants To Ensure “Digital Sovereignty”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

Germany wants to avoid having too much reliance on specific software/service vendors, like Microsoft and cloud suppliers <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/19/german_government_report_digital_s…>. How to deal with this? Answers suggested were * Negotiate new contracts with those same suppliers that get rid of the objectionable things, like telemetry * Diversify: stick with proprietary software, just get it from more suppliers * Use Open Source. Real-world results seem mixed? (Munich was cited as a “failure”). Also, Open Source software can end up acquired by proprietary vendors anyway. But then again, why should such acquisitions be such a big deal? Have they not heard of “forks”? Word I learned today: “Schmerzpunkt”.

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How the Internet Archive is Waging War on Misinformation
by Peter Reutemann 19 Sep '19

19 Sep '19

'San Francisco-based non-profit is archiving billions of web pages in a bid to preserve web history. From a report: Since the 2016 US election, as fears about the power of fake news have intensified, the archive has stepped up its efforts to combat misinformation. At a time when false and ultra-partisan content is rapidly created and spread, and social media pages are constantly updated, the importance of having an unalterable record of who said what, when has been magnified. "We're trying to put in a layer of accountability," said founder Brewster Kahle. Mr Kahle founded the archive, which now employs more than 100 staff and costs $18m a year to run, because he feared that what was appearing on the internet was not being saved and catalogued in the same way as newspapers and books. The organisation is funded through donations, grants and the fees it charges third parties that request specific digitisation services. So far, the archive has catalogued 330bn web pages, 20m books and texts, 8.5m audio and video recordings, 3m images and 200,000 software programs. The most popular, public websites are prioritised, as are those that are commonly linked to. Some information is free to access, some is loaned out (if copyright laws apply) and some is only available to researchers. Curled up in a chair in his office after lunch, Mr Kahle lamented the combined impact of misinformation and how difficult it can be for ordinary people to access reliable sources of facts. "We're bringing up a generation that turns to their screens, without a library of information accessible via screens," said Mr Kahle. Some have taken advantage of this "new information system", he argued -- and the result is "Trump and Brexit." Having a free online library is crucial, said Mr Kahle, since "[the public is] just learning from whateverâ...âis easily available."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/09/19/1858249 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Protocol found in webcams and DVRs is fueling a new round of big DDoSes
by Peter Reutemann 19 Sep '19

19 Sep '19

'Hackers have found a new way to amplify the crippling effects of denial-of-service techniques by abusing an improperly implemented tool found in almost 1 million network-connected cameras, DVRs, and other Internet-of-things devices. The technique abuses WS-Discovery, a protocol that a wide array of network devices use to automatically connect to one another. Often abbreviated as WSD, the protocol lets devices send user datagram protocol packets that describe the device capabilities and requirements over port 3702. Devices that receive the probes can respond with replies that can be tens to hundreds of times bigger. WSD has shipped with Windows since Vista and is one of the ways the operating system automatically finds network-based printers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/in-the-wild-ddoses-a… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Adobe Raking It In
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

That rentware business model continues to pay off very handsomely <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/18/adobe_results/>. Users may grumble, but as long as they don’t actually do anything about it, why should Adobe worry?

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OBS Studio
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

Came across the OBS Studio project last night by accident (never heard of it before!): "Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Download and start streaming quickly and easily on Windows, Mac or Linux. High performance real time video/audio capturing and mixing. Create scenes made up of multiple sources including window captures, images, text, browser windows, webcams, capture cards and more. Set up an unlimited number of scenes you can switch between seamlessly via custom transitions. Intuitive audio mixer with per-source filters such as noise gate, noise suppression, and gain. Take full control with VST plugin support." -- source: https://obsproject.com/ I'll give it a go for my next video recording project. :-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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MITRE’s Latest Common Weakness Enumeration List
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

The CWE is not a list of security vulnerabilities as such, but of factors which commonly lead to security vulnerabilities <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/18/the_25_most_dangerous_software_wea…>. The methodology of the list has changed from the previous one (from back in 2011), so it’s hard to say that the changes are down to different (improved?) coding practices. Still, two thirds of the entries are the same in both lists.

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