- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

How To Protect A Small Organization Against Electronic Adversaries
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Oct '17

25 Oct '17

About to have a look at the document posted here <https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/10/25/howto-protect-your-small-organizat…>. Unfortunately, for a document that’s about security, wget tells me the link is (currently) not secure: WARNING: The certificate of ‘www.cs.rice.edu’ is not trusted. WARNING: The certificate of ‘www.cs.rice.edu’ hasn't got a known issuer. WARNING: The certificate of ‘www.cs.rice.edu’ was signed using an insecure algorithm.

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Why Computing Devices Slow Down Over Time
by rowan schischka 25 Oct '17

25 Oct '17

> So trying to speed things up can make things slower?? Its a repost from another outlet. This is just filler article in the tech section. Stuff has one today about mobile battery advice that contradicts last months article about mobile batteries.

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When You Have To Have An Entire Conference On Software Licensing...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Oct '17

24 Oct '17

Choice quotes from <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/24/oracle_users_meets_behind_closed_do…>: The emphasis on anonymity comes from firms’ fear that vendors are always poised to launch an audit or bump up fees. Sessions will offer advice on ... why customers shouldn’t be too reliant on licensing tools.

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Why Did Ubuntu Drop Unity? Mark Shuttleworth Explains
by Peter Reutemann 24 Oct '17

24 Oct '17

Since we talked about Canonical ditching Mir/Unity on Monday night, here's some more insight from Shuttleworth himself: 'Ubuntu's decision to ditch Unity took many of us by surprise earlier this year. Now Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth shares more details about why Ubuntu chose to drop Unity. From a report: Shuttleworth says he, along with the other 'leads' at Canonical, came to a consensual view that they should put the company on the path to becoming a public company. And to appear attractive to potential investors the company has to focus on its areas of profitability -- something Unity, Ubuntu phone, Unity 8 and convergence were not part of: "[The decision] meant that we couldn't have on our books (effectively) very substantial projects which clearly have no commercial angle to them at all. It doesn't mean that we would consider changing the terms of Ubuntu for example, because it's foundational to everything we do. And we don't have to, effectively," he said. Money may have meant Unity's demise but the wider Ubuntu project is in rude health. as Shuttleworth explains: "One of the things I'm most proud of is in the last 7 years is that Ubuntu itself became completely sustainable. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and Ubuntu could continue. It's kind of magical, right? Here's a platform that is a world class enterprise platform, that's completely freely available, and yet it is sustainable. Jane Silber is largely to thank for that." While it's all-too-easy for desktop users to focus on, well, the desktop, there is far more to Canonical (the company) than the 6-monthly releases we look forward to. Losing Unity may have been a big blow for desktop users but it helped to balance other parts of the company: "There are huge possibilities for us in the enterprise beyond that, in terms of really defining how cloud infrastructure is built, how cloud applications are operated, and so on. And, in IoT, looking at that next wave of possibility, innovators creating stuff on IoT. And all of that is ample for us to essentially put ourselves on course to IPO around that." Dropping Unity wasn't easy for Mark, though: "We had this big chunk of work, which was Unity, which I really loved. I think the engineering of Unity 8 was pretty spectacularly good, and the deep ideas of how you bring these different form factors together was pretty beautiful.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/10/24/1854254 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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Install Let's Encrypt and Secure Nginx with SSL/TLS in Debian 9
by Peter Reutemann 24 Oct '17

24 Oct '17

'This tutorial will show you how to install and secure a Nginx web server on Debian 9 with a TLS certificate issued for free by the Let’s Encrypt Certificate Authority. Furthermore, we will configure automatic renewal of Lets’ Encrypt TLS certificates using a cron job before the certificates expire.' -- source: https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/install-letsencrypt-and-secure-nginx-in… 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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Librem 5 Privacy-Focused Linux Phone Crowdfunding Campaign Ends with $2 Million
by Peter Reutemann 24 Oct '17

24 Oct '17

Since we talked about this phone last night... 'Librem 5 was successfully crowdfunded about two weeks ago when it surpassed its goal of $1.5 million, but the campaign continued to run, and now it appears to have gathered half million dollars more, ending with $2 million, which we believe is more than enough to build world's first truly free mobile device. Powered by PureOS, Purism's own GNU/Linux distribution based on the popular Debian GNU/Linux operating system, but focused on offering users a privacy-focused and more secure desktop solution, Librem 5 will be using KDE's Plasma Mobile and GNOME's GNOME Shell user interfaces, along with powerful open source software. During its crowdfunding campaign, Librem 5 saw an amazing feedback from the Open Source community as Purism partnered not only with big names like KDE and GNOME, but also with Nextcloud, which will bring its end-to-end encrypted file sync, sharing and cloud-based storage solution by default to the Linux smartphone.' -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/librem-5-privacy-focused-linux-phone-crowdfu… 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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3 Simple, Excellent Linux Network Monitors
by Peter Reutemann 24 Oct '17

24 Oct '17

'You can learn an amazing amount of information about your network connections with these three glorious Linux networking commands. iftop tracks network connections by process number, Nethogs quickly reveals what is hogging your bandwidth, and vnstat runs as a nice lightweight daemon to record your usage over time.' -- source: https://www.linux.com/learn/intro-to-linux/2017/10/3-simple-excellent-linux… 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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4 Reasons Building A Gaming PC Sucks Right Now
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Oct '17

23 Oct '17

Just saw this video on the current high prices of GPUs, RAM and variable-refresh monitors <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh8tZ_qkY1o>. What’s surprising to me is the reason why GPU prices are currently high: because they are being snapped up for cryptocurrency mining.

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Why Computing Devices Slow Down Over Time
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Oct '17

23 Oct '17

Entertaining opinion piece <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11935838>: To make their apps run faster, some designers make them store copies of things in RAM ... Known as cacheing, this makes things work much faster - until your system starts to run out of memory. For cacheing to be effective, the amount of space devoted to it must be carefully managed by the application and the device's operating system. Some app developers don't put the effort that they should into doing this well, and their applications not only slow down over time, but can drag the rest of the system down with them too. So trying to speed things up can make things slower??

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Android getting “DNS over TLS” support to stop ISPs from knowing what websites you visit
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '17

23 Oct '17

'DNS (Domain Name Server) is what translates a website address from a URL that you enter to an IP address which your computer actually connects to. For example, when you type “www.xda-developers.com” into your browser, your computer queries a DNS which looks up and returns the IP address “209.58.128.90” to the client. This process is hidden from the user, but every website you visit (so long as it has a human-readable URL) will go through this same process. The problem for those security conscious out there is that these requests are done in plain text through UDP or TCP protocols which are readable by anyone that can see your connection, including your ISP. This is where DNS over TLS comes in.' -- source: https://www.xda-developers.com/android-dns-over-tls-website-privacy/ 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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