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The World's First Blockchain Smartphone Is In Development
by Peter Reutemann 28 Sep '17

28 Sep '17

'A company called Sirin Labs is developing an open-source smartphone that runs on a fee-less blockchain. "The Finney -- named in honor of bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney -- will be the only smartphone in the world that's fully secure and safe enough to hold cryptographic coins," reports Engadget. The company is launching a crowdsale event this October (date to be confirmed) to support the phone's development. >From the report: According to Sirin, all Finney devices (there's an all-in-one PC coming, too) will form an independent blockchain network powered by IOTA's Tangle technology. The network will operate without centralized backbones or mining centers cluttering up the transaction process, using the SRN token as its default currency (only SRN token holders will be able to purchase the device). And it'll all run on a Sirin operating system specially designed to support blockchain applications such as crypto wallets and secure exchange access. The phone comes with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a device with a $1,000 price tag, including a 256GB internal memory and 16MP camera, plus a hefty suite of security measures. ' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/17/09/27/0749240 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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Mozilla's 'Firefox Quantum' Browser Challenges Chrome In Speed
by Peter Reutemann 28 Sep '17

28 Sep '17

'The next version of Firefox, aptly named Firefox Quantum, is getting a big speed boost. "The idea, of course, is that the upcoming version 57 is a quantum leap over predecessors -- or, in the words of Mozilla CEO Chris Beard, a 'big bang,'" reports CNET. While Mozilla stopped short of declaring victory over Chrome, Nick Nguyen, vice president of Firefox product, said Firefox Quantum's page-load speed "is often perceivably faster" while using 30 percent less memory. From the report: The new Firefox revamp includes lots of under-the-covers improvements, like Quantum Flow, which stamps out dozens of performance bugs, and Quantum CSS, aka Stylo, which speeds up website formatting. More obvious from the outside is a new interface called Photon that wipes out Firefox's rounded tabs and adds a "page action" menu into the address bar. It also builds in the Pocket bookmarking service Mozilla acquired and uses it to recommend sites you might be interested in. A screenshot tool generates a website link so you can easily share what you see by email or Twitter. Mozilla even simplified the Firefox logo, a fox wrapping itself around the globe. More improvements are in the pipeline for later Firefox versions, too, including Quantum Render, which should speed up Firefox's ability to paint web pages onto your screen. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/09/27/0727226 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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Distrowatch opinion piece about DRM in browsers
by Ian Young 27 Sep '17

27 Sep '17

Some may not have seen an opinion piece in this week's Distrowatch Weekly. Link on front page to article by one Jesse Smith who does most of the reviews on DW. The W3C, encrypted media and software freedom ~ Ian Y

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Manjaro Linux Discontinues 32-bit Support
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '17

26 Sep '17

'Recently, Philip, the lead developer of Manjaro Linux, announced that the project would be dropping support for the 32-bit architecture. He said that the reason for the move was “due to the decreasing popularity of i686 among the developers and the community”. While Manjaro 17.0.3 is the last release to have a 32-bit ISO, current 32-bit installs will receive a short window of continued support. During September and October, 32-bit package will continue to be updated. However, starting in November, packages will be limited to 64-bit. After that period, 32-bit installs of Manjaro will essentially be unsupported.' -- source: https://itsfoss.com/manjaro-drops-32-bit-support/ 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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Krita 3.3 Digital Painting App Promises Better HiDPI Support on Linux & Windows
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '17

26 Sep '17

'In the release announcement, Krita devs reveal the fact that they were forced to bump the version number from 3.2.x to 3.3.x because the upcoming Krita 3.3 release will be introducing some important changes for Windows platforms, such as support for the Windows 8 event API, thus supporting the n-trig pen in Surface laptops. "Alvin Wong has implemented support for the Windows 8 event API, which means that Krita now supports the n-trig pen in the Surface line of laptops (and similar laptops from Dell, HP and Acer) natively. This is still very new, so you have to enable this in the tablet settings," said the devs.' -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/krita-3-3-digital-painting-app-promises-bett… 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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Clear Linux Project Announces the Next Generation of Intel's Clear Containers
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '17

26 Sep '17

Since I mentioned Clear Linux at last night's meeting... 'Rewritten in the Go language, Intel Clear Containers 3.0 introduces support for leveraging code used for namespace-based containers and better integrates into the container ecosystem, allowing support for Docker container engine and Kubernetes. It also improves the compatibility with the POSIX family of standards. "Today’s release presents a generational and architectural shift to utilize virtcontainers, a modular and hypervisor agnostic library for hardware virtualized containers. Clear Containers 3.0 is written in Go language and boasts an OCI compatible runtime implementation (cc-runtime) that works both on top of virtcontainers, and as a platform for deployment," said Amy L Leeland, Technical Program Manager, Intel Corporation. Additionally, this release ships with a new agent based on the libcontainer library that has been designed from the offset to let users apply filters and policies, such as the well-known SELinux and seccomp security facilities found in the Linux kernel, inside the Clear Containers guests.' -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/clear-linux-project-announces-the-next-gener… 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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Tiny PocketBeagle is the RPi Zero of the BeagleBone world
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '17

25 Sep '17

'BeagleBoard.org’s tiny $25 PocketBeagle is a BeagleBone SBC clone, based on Octavo’s OSD3358-SM SiP module and offering micro-USB, microSD, and 72 I/O pins. BeagleBoard.org has released its smallest BeagleBone variant yet. The COM-like, 56 x 35 x 5mm PocketBeagle is a USB key-fob SBC built on the Octavo Systems OSD335x-SM System-In-Package (SiP) module that was announced earlier this week. Octavo’s 21 x 21mm SiP module, which packs a 1GHz Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 SoC and nearly all the functions of a BeagleBone Black SBC into a BGA form factor, is 40 percent smaller than the original 27 x 27mm OSD335x.' -- source: http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-pocketbeagle-is-the-rpi-zero-of-the-beaglebone-… 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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Richard Stallman vs. Canonical's CEO: 'Will Microsoft Love Linux to Death?'
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '17

25 Sep '17

' TechRepublic got different answers about Microsoft's new enthusiasm for Linux from Canonical's founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth, and from Richard Stallman. Stallman "believes that Microsoft's decision to build a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) amounts to an attempt to extinguish software that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve." "It certainly looks that way. But it won't be so easy to extinguish us, because our reasons for using and advancing free software are not limited to practical convenience," he said. "We want freedom. As a way to use computers in freedom, Windows is a non-starter..." Stallman remains adamant that the WSL can only help entrench the dominance of proprietary software like Windows, and undermine the use of free software. "That doesn't advance the cause of free software, not one bit," he says... "The aim of the free software movement is to free users from freedom-denying proprietary programs and systems, such as Windows. Making a non-free system, such Windows or MacOS or iOS or ChromeOS or Android, more convenient is a step backward in the campaign for freedom..." For Shuttleworth, Windows' embrace of GNU/Linux is a net positive for open-source software as a whole. "It's not like Microsoft is stealing our toys, it's more that we're sharing them with Microsoft in order to give everyone the best possible experience," he says. "WSL provides users who are well versed in the Windows environment with greater choice and flexibility, while also opening up a whole new potential user base for the open source platform..." Today Shuttleworth takes Microsoft's newfound enthusiasm for GNU/Linux at face value, and says the company has a different ethos to that of the 1990s, a fresh perspective that benefits Microsoft as much as it does open-source software. "Microsoft is a different company now, with a much more balanced view of open and competitive platforms on multiple fronts," he says. "They do a tremendous amount of engineering specifically to accommodate open platforms like Ubuntu on Azure and Hyper-V, and this work is being done in that spirit." The article also points out that Microsoft "does seem to be laying the groundwork for WSL to extend what's possible using a single GNU/Linux distro today, for instance, letting the user chain together commands from different GNU/Linux distros with those from Windows."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/09/24/2132218 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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ARM TrustZone Hacked By Abusing Power Management
by Peter Reutemann 24 Sep '17

24 Sep '17

'Many CPUs these days have DVFS (Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling), which allows the CPU's clockspeed and voltage to vary dynamically depending on whether the CPU is idling or not. By turning the voltage up and down with one thread, researchers were able to flip bits in another thread. By flipping bits when the second thread was verifying the TrustZone key, the researchers were granted permission. If number 'A' is a product of two large prime numbers, you can flip a few bits in 'A' to get a number that is a product of many smaller numbers, and more easily factorable. "As the first work to show the security ramifications of energy management mechanisms," the researchers reported at Usenix, "we urge the community to re-examine these security-oblivious designs."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/09/23/2113243 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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Sublime Text 3.0 is Here! See, How to Install it on Linux
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '17

22 Sep '17

Not an open-source editor, but still a favorite of a lot of people... 'The stable version of Sublime Text 3.0 has been released with major changes seen in almost every aspect of version 2.0. According to the release statement, “virtually every aspect of the editor has been improved in some way, and even a list of the major changes would be too long.”' -- source: https://itsfoss.com/sublime-text-3-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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