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Linux 4.15 Becomes Slowest Release Since 2011
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jan '18

23 Jan '18

'Linus Torvalds has decided that Linux 4.15 needs a ninth release candidate, making it the first kernel release to need that much work since 2011. Torvalds flagged up the possibility of an extra release candidate last week, with the caveat that "it obviously requires this upcoming week to not come with any huge surprises" after "all the Meltdown and Spectre hoopla" made his job rather more complicated in recent weeks. Fast-forward another week and Torvalds has announced "I really really wanted to just release 4.15 today, but things haven't calmed down enough for me to feel comfy about it."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/01/22/2035228 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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Ex-NSA Hacker Runs Christmas Lights With Raspberry πs And Dodgy NZ-Made Radio Kit
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Jan '18

22 Jan '18

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/22/rob_joyce_hacking/>: Joyce uses a couple of Raspberry Pis to control the light show and a slightly dodgy FM transmitter to broadcast the soundtrack to visiting folks. The transmitter, bought as a kit from New Zealand, has the capability to broadcast illegally on FM frequencies, so is sold without the power supply attached to get around regulations, but Joyce said he keeps it low power and within FCC regulations because "I'm very legal."

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Has the Decades-Old Floating Point Error Problem Been Solved?
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jan '18

22 Jan '18

'Wednesday a company called Bounded Floating Point announced a "breakthrough patent in processor design, which allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit for the first time in computer history. This bounded floating point system is a game changer for the computing industry, particularly for computationally intensive functions such as weather prediction, GPS, and autonomous vehicles," said the inventor, Alan Jorgensen, PhD. "By using this system, it is possible to guarantee that the display of floating point values is accurate to plus or minus one in the last digit..." The innovative bounded floating point system computes two limits (or bounds) that contain the represented real number. These bounds are carried through successive calculations. When the calculated result is no longer sufficiently accurate the result is so marked, as are all further calculations made using that value. It is fail-safe and performs in real time. Jorgensen is described as a cyber bounty hunter and part time instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas teaching computer science to non-computer science students. In November he received US Patent number 9,817,662 -- "Apparatus for calculating and retaining a bound on error during floating point operations and methods thereof." But in a followup, HPCwire reports: After this article was published, a number of readers raised concerns about the originality of Jorgensen's techniques, noting the existence of prior art going back years. Specifically, there is precedent in John Gustafson's work on unums and interval arithmetic both at Sun and in his 2015 book, The End of Error, which was published 19 months before Jorgensen's patent application was filed. We regret the omission of this information from the original article.' -- source: https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/01/21/0157230 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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Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook: It works! It actually works!
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '18

21 Jan '18

'Google currently has two OSes on the market: Android and Chrome OS. The company is never one to leave a successful product alone in the marketplace, though, so it's also developing a third operating system called "Fuchsia." When we last checked in on the experimental OS in May 2017, calling it an "OS" was a bit of a stretch. We only got the system UI up and running on top of Android, where it then functioned like an app. The UI offered a neat multi-window system, but mostly it was just a bunch of placeholder graphics. Nothing worked. It has been hard to check in on Fuchsia since. The Fuchsia system UI, which was written with a cross-platform SDK called "Flutter," quickly shut down the Android (and iOS) compatible builds. Fuchsia has a Vulkan-based graphics stack, and no emulator supports the new-ish graphics API. The only way to get Fuchsia up and running again was with actual hardware, and the only supported devices were Intel NUC PCs from 2015 and the Acer Switch Alpha 12 laptop. So after the recent news that the Fuchsia team picked the Chrome OS-powered Google Pixelbook as a supported device, we jumped at the chance to get it up and running. And after a little elbow grease, it actually booted. Now, we're not just running the system UI on top of Android like last time, we're running Fuchsia directly on a piece of hardware! This means it's finally time for a deep dive on what Fuchsia looks like in early 2018. Our usual in-development OS testing caveats apply: Fuchsia only started development in 2016 and probably has several years of development time ahead of it. Everything can—and probably will—change between now and release (if a release ever even happens). Google won't even officially acknowledge the OS exists—Fuchsia is a bunch of code sitting on fuchsia.googlesource.com.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-on-the-pixelbook… 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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“Kernel Memory Leaking” Intel Processor Design Flaw Forces Linux, Windows Redesign
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Jan '18

20 Jan '18

A pretty serious-sounding security hole has been found in recent Intel CPUs, which will require performance-sapping workarounds in both Linux and Windows to fix <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/>. The details are not public yet, but AMD, in its announcement that its products are not affected, would seem to have divulged some important clues.

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Trying To Fix Windows Security Problems Breaks Security Software
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Jan '18

20 Jan '18

Microsoft is having a tough time coming out with good patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. The main trouble is, these patches cause third-party anti-malware software to malfunction, and so the vendors of those products have to rush out their own patches to work with the fixes <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/08/meltdown_fix_security_problems/>.

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Introducing The Cryptocurrency-Mining Operating System
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jan '18

19 Jan '18

Mentioned in passing in this article <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/cryptocurrency-boom-creates-ins…> explaining why high-end graphics cards are currently in short supply (they’re being snapped up by cryptocurrency miners) is the existence of a “mining-centric operating system called PIMP OS”. Presumably they’re Linux-based, I thought. And checking the T&Cs <https://getpimp.org/terms/> reveals yes, it’s built on Debian, with a bunch of other pieces, some closed-source, some open.

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Wine 3.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jan '18

18 Jan '18

'The Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project has been updated today to version 3.0, a major release that ends 2017 in style for the open-source compatibility layer capable of running Windows apps and games on Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. Almost a year in the works, Wine 3.0 comes with amazing new features like an Android driver that lets users run Windows apps and games on Android-powered machines, Direct3D 11 support enabled by default for AMD Radeon and Intel GPUs, AES encryption support on macOS, Progman DDE support, and a task scheduler. In addition, Wine 3.0 introduces the ability to export registry entries with the reg.exe tool, adds various enhancements to the relay debugging and OLE data cache, as well as an extra layer of event support in MSHTML, Microsoft's proprietary HTML layout engine for the Windows version of the Internet Explorer web browser. You can read the full list of features and download Wine 3.0 from WineHQ's website.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/01/18/2054205 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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NHoS/NHSBuntu Gives Up After NHS Trademark Bullying
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '18

18 Jan '18

The small team of volunteers behind the NHoS project (formerly NHSBuntu) are giving up. They wanted to offer an alternative to the current NHS smartcard implementation system, currently running on Windows, using open-source software. First they rebranded from “NHSBuntu” to “NHoS” (along with “overhauling the previous tooling and branding”), which they thought would address trademark concents from the NHS. But now it seems even this name is considered unacceptable. One of the developers, Marcus Baw, ... said openhealthhub had numerous conversations that had led to "several cancelled-at-the-last minute meetings" with NHS England (NHSE) CIO Will Smart and Paul Rice, head of technology strategy in the Digital Health team. Baw alleged the pair "(unbeknown to us) were also duplicitously negotiating with Microsoft about a new NHS Enterprise Wide Agreement". He added: "In fact I now strongly suspect that the reason we were getting any engagement at all at these levels was in order to strength NHSE negotiating position with Microsoft, by being able to say to M$ 'There is a competitor, we are meeting with them next week'." <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/18/nhs_thanks_for_all_the_free_work_li…>

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Apple Rejects Net-Neutrality-Testing App
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '18

18 Jan '18

A researcher who has published papers on “traffic differentiation” by ISPs tried to submit an app to perform tests to detect this happening on behalf of Iphone users, only to have Apple turn it down on the grounds that it “has no direct benefits to the user”. That is, until word got around about the rejection. Now it seems they are reconsidering. <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/apple-rejects-app-th…>

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