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BBC Releases Computer History Archive
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jun '18

28 Jun '18

'A slice of computing history has been made public, giving people the opportunity to delve into an archive that inspired a generation of coders. The Computer Literacy Project led to the introduction of the BBC Micro alongside programs which introduced viewers to the principles of computing. It included interviews with innovators such as Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak. The BBC hopes the 1980s archive will encourage today's youngsters to become involved in computing. With the release of the archive, viewers can now search and browse all of the programmes from the project. The archive includes 267 programs, and 166 BBC Micro programs that were used on-screen.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/06/27/2037216 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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Finally, It's the Year of the Linux... Supercomputer
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jun '18

27 Jun '18

'From ZDNet: "The latest TOP500 Supercomputer list is out. What's not surprising is that Linux runs on every last one of the world's fastest supercomputers. Linux has dominated supercomputing for years. But, Linux only took over supercomputing lock, stock, and barrel in November 2017. That was the first time all of the TOP500 machines were running Linux. Before that IBM AIX, a Unix variant, was hanging on for dear life low on the list." An interesting architectural note: "GPUs, not CPUs, now power most of supercomputers' speed."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/06/27/152216 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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Anonymizing Printed Documents
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jun '18

27 Jun '18

It’s been known for a while that many printer vendors add extra hard-to-detect dots to their printouts to make a pattern that can be used to identify the source of the document later. Now a research group <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/27/german_researchers_defeat_printer_t…> has found a way to stymie this process by adding extra dots that fit the patterns, but confuse the identification system. They even have source code on GitHub.

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OpenBSD Chief De Raadt Says No Easy Fix For New Intel CPU Bug 'TLBleed'
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jun '18

26 Jun '18

'Recompiling is unlikely to be a catch-all solution for a recently unveiled Intel CPU vulnerability known as TLBleed, the details of which were leaked on Friday, the head of the OpenBSD project Theo de Raadt says. iTWire reports: The details of TLBleed, which gets its name from the fact that the flaw targets the translation lookaside buffer, a CPU cache, were leaked to the British tech site, The Register; the side-channel vulnerability can be theoretically exploited to extract encryption keys and private information from programs. Former NSA hacker Jake Williams said on Twitter that a fix would probably need changes to the core operating system and were likely to involve "a ton of work to mitigate (mostly app recompile)." But de Raadt was not so sanguine. "There are people saying you can change the kernel's process scheduler," he told iTWire on Monday. "(It's) not so easy." He said that Williams was lacking all the details and not thinking it through. "They actually have sufficient detail to think it through: the article says the TLB is shared between hyperthreading CPUs, and it is unsafe to share between two different contexts. Basically you can measure evictions against your own mappings, which indicates the other process is touching memory (you can determine the aliasing factors)." De Raadt said he was still not prepared to say more, saying: "Please wait for the paper [which is due in August]."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/06/25/2219217 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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Likely NSA Data-Collection Facilities
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Jun '18

26 Jun '18

Further to the mention last night of secret facilities operated by AT&T in the US where the NSA has access, this article <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/meet-the-8-spooky-att-buildings…> reports on a list of eight likely places as detailed by The Intercept <https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/>. While the NSA is not technically allowed to spy on wholly “domestic” communications, there seem to be no limits on any “incidental collection” as a result of targetting some foreign communication. That means they can grab the contents of entire mailboxes just for the sake of one message. Then keep the lot for whatever use they like.

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How Should Open Source Development Be Subsidized?
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jun '18

24 Jun '18

'"Open source maintainers are exhausted and rarely paid," writes TechCrunch's editorial manager. "A new generation wants to change the economics." An anonymous reader quotes their report: [Patreon] is increasingly being used by notable open source contributors as a way to connect with fans and sustain their work... For those who hit it big, the revenues can be outsized. Evan You, who created the popular JavaScript frontend library Vue.js, has reached $15,206 in monthly earnings ($182,472 a year) from 231 patrons... While Patreon is one direct approach for generating revenues from users, another one is to offer dual licenses, one free and one commercial... Companies care about proper licensing, and that becomes the leverage to gain revenue while still maintaining the openness and spirit of open source software... Tidelift is designed to offer assurances "around areas like security, licensing, and maintenance of software," CEO Donald Fischer explained... In addition, Tidelift handles the mundane tasks of setting up open source for commercialization such as handling licensing issues... Open Collective wants to open source the monetization of open source itself. Open Collective is a non-profit platform that provides tools to "collectives" to receive money while also offering mechanisms to allow the members of those collectives to spend their money in a democratic and transparent way. TechCrunch warns that "It's not just that people are free riding, it's often that they don't even realize it. Software engineers can easily forget just how much craftsmanship has gone into the open source code that powers the most basic of applications... "If you work at a for-profit company, take the lead in finding a way to support the code that allows you to do your job so efficiently. The decentralization and volunteer spirit of the open source community needs exactly the same kind of decentralized spirit in every financial contributor. Sustainability is each of our jobs, every day."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/06/23/2113222 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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The Birth Of PDF
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Jun '18

21 Jun '18

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/21/how_a_tax_form_kludge_gave_us_25_ye…>: [In 1985] ... both Apple and Adobe wanted to show off the LaserWriter's abilities with some sample files. Warnock thought it would be great to have the printer producing something complex but familiar so he personally hand-programmed an IRS tax form in PostScript. ... all those boxes and form fields required Warnock to code in lots of subroutines and utilities. The page took 2 minutes 45 seconds to print. Jobs was horrified at how slow that was. ... His new version of the IRS tax form printed on the LaserWriter in 22 seconds. In other words, by abandoning all the programming-language constructs (subroutines, conditionals, looping etc) in PostScript and just writing out a straight sequence of imaging commands, the code ran a lot faster, even if it was bigger. The article mentions the release of PDF 2.0, which is now being managed by ISO. Unfortunately, unlike Adobe, ISO do not make their specs available for free.

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OpenBSD Disables Intel CPU Hyper-Threading Due To Security Concerns
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jun '18

21 Jun '18

'The OpenBSD project announced today plans to disable support for Intel CPU hyper-threading due to security concerns regarding the theoretical threat of more "Spectre-class bugs." Bleeping Computer reports: Hyper-threading (HT) is Intel's proprietary implementation of Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), a technology that allows processors to run parallel operations on different cores of the same multi-core CPU. The feature has been added to all Intel CPUs released since 2002 and has come enabled by default, with Intel citing its performance boost as the main reason for its inclusion. But today, Mark Kettenis of the OpenBSD project, said the OpenBSD team was removing support for Intel HT because, by design, this technology just opens the door for more timing attacks. Timing attacks are a class of cryptographic attacks through which a third-party observer can deduce the content of encrypted data by recording and analyzing the time taken to execute cryptographic algorithms. The OpenBSD team is now stepping in to provide a new setting to disable HT support because "many modern machines no longer provide the ability to disable hyper-threading in the BIOS setup." ' -- source: https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/18/06/19/2327212 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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Widely used D-Link modem/router under mass attack by potent IoT botnet
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jun '18

21 Jun '18

'Malicious hackers are mass exploiting a critical vulnerability in D-Link DSL routers in an attempt to make them part of Satori, the potent Internet-of-things botnet that is used to take down websites and mine digital coins, researchers said. Since making its debut late last year, Satori has proven to be a particularly versatile and sophisticated botnet. It made a name for itself in December when it infected more than 100,000 Internet-connected devices in just 12 hours by exploiting remote code-execution vulnerabilities in Huawei and RealTek routers. A month later, Satori operators released a new version that infected devices used to mine digital coins, proving that the IoT botnet could also take control of more traditional computing devices. In February, Satori resurfaced when it infected tens of thousands of routers manufactured by Dasan Networks.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/06/widely-used-d-link-m… 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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TPP Versus Free-Software Licensing
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Jun '18

20 Jun '18

Seems like the “CPTPP” aka “TPP-11” (TPP minus the USA) may not be entirely free of objectionable provisions. A submission to the Australian ratification process <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180615/09090440050/open-source-industry…> has pointed out the following problematic clause: No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory. As you may know, such an access requirement is an integral part of copyleft licences like the GPL. What this clause seems to be saying is that such a requirement is unenforceable under the TPP.

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