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Building Your Own Laptop
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Sep '16

13 Sep '16

This article <http://www.computershopper.com/feature/build-your-own-laptop> originated several years ago, but says it was updated last year. I am pleasantly surprised to discover there are such things as “barebones” laptops, albeit they still come with somewhat more than you get with a “barebones” desktop box. While there are a range of such laptops available from different vendors, certain components (wi-fi cards and MXM graphics cards) may not be so easy to get. The total price for the build is quoted as USD1352, while “comparable systems with GeForce 8600M graphics were typically running about $250 to $300 more than our build”. Wonder if that included the Windows licence. Also, regardless of the revised article date, it still mentions installing Windows Vista...

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Self-Driving Cars Can Learn a Lot by Playing Grand Theft Auto
by Eric Light 12 Sep '16

12 Sep '16

Self-Driving Cars Can Learna Lot by Playing Grand Theft Auto Technology Review (09/12/16) Will Knight Several research groups are using the "Grand Theft Auto" video game to educate algorithms with potential application to self-driving vehicle navigation. The researchers say the game's scenic elements are extremely realistic, and can be used to produce data on a par with that generated using real-world imagery. A team from Intel Labs and Germany's Darmstadt University created a software layer positioned between the game and a computer's hardware, automatically classifying different objects in the game's road scenes. [...] "We showed that this synthetic data is almost as good, or sometimes even better, than using real data for training," Shafaei says. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602317/self-driving-cars-can-learn-a-lot… -- Securely sent with Tutanota. It's good, you should try it: https://tutanota.com

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Microsoft Fixes Bugs in Skype for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '16

12 Sep '16

'After neglecting Linux's Skype client for years, Microsoft released a new app of Skype for Linux in July, giving comfort to millions of users. The app, however, had a fair share of bugs. Microsoft today has updated the app to iron out those bugs, and introduced a handful of interesting options. An anonymous reader writes: There were plenty of users who complained that Skype for Linux was reconnecting automatically when not using the app for a certain amount of time and Microsoft has already acknowledged the bug. This new version fixes the problem, so everything should work correctly after updating. Additionally, Skype for Linux 1.7 introduces a new grid layout of the group calls, but also fixes the standard behavior of unread messages. According to Microsoft, this means that "when opening chat with unread messages, the view will focus on the first unread message and as you scroll, messages will be marked as read."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/09/12/1414222 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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On a similar DYI theme
by rowan schischka 12 Sep '16

12 Sep '16

>28 x wireless keyboards and mice You definitely should not use so many wireless mice in the same room. keyboards are ok but the interference and drops on the mice are frustrating. We used them in a room of about 16 poeple and we had to convert to wired. Also you might want to check if r pis bluetooth has drivers yet. >For each row have a wireless ethernet router pretty sure a hub/switch is cheaper, you can get 10/100 for under $20 -- Kind Regards Rowan Schischka

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IoT Devices With Default Telnet Passwords Used As Botnet
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '16

12 Sep '16

'IoT devices, like DVR recorders or webcams, which are running Linux with open telnet access and have no passwords or default passwords are currently a target of attacks which try to install malware which then makes the devices a node of a botnet for DDoS attacks. As the malware, called Linux/Mirai, only resides in memory, once the attack has been successful, revealing if your device got captured isn't so easy, and also analyzing the malware is difficult, as it will vanish on reboot. Plus the malware lays low at first, though "it is obvious that the main purpose is still for a DDoS botnet," according to MalwareMustDie, and it's designed to spread rapidly to other IoT devices using a telnet scanner. "According to the experts, several attacks have been detected in the wild," according to the article, which warns that many antivirus solutions are still unable to detect the malware, and "If you have an IoT device, please make sure you have no telnet service open and running."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/16/09/11/1155202 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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Ubuntu-Based Elementary OS 0.4 'Loki' Achieves Stable Release
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '16

12 Sep '16

'"Today, Elementary 0.4 (code-named 'Loki'), achieves stable status," BetaNews reported Friday, applauding the "clean and functional" app tiles in its software center. Elementary OS (stylized as elementary OS) isn't the most popular Linux distro, and it certainly isn't the best. However, this Ubuntu-based operating system is focusing on something that some competitors do not -- user interface, which ultimately contributes to the overall user experience. It is because of this that Elementary is so important to the Linux community -- it matters. Developers focused on internationalization for this release, part of an effort to "grow the market" for open-souce software, according to the elementary blog, which proudly points out that 73% of the 1.2 million downloads for their "design-oriented" OS came from closed-source operating systems.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/11/1912231 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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Linux Kernel 3.14 Series Has Reached End of Life
by Peter Reutemann 11 Sep '16

11 Sep '16

"it looks like the Linux kernel maintainers decided that there's no need to maintain the Linux kernel 3.14 LTS series anymore, so earlier today, September 11, 2016, they decided to release that last maintenance update, version 3.14.79, and mark the series as EOL (End of Life). Famous Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman was the one to make the big announcement, and he's urging users who want to still run a long-term supported kernel version to move to the Linux 4.4 LTS series, which is currently the most advanced LTS branch, or use the latest stable release, Linux kernel 4.7.3... Linux kernel 3.14.79 is a very small update that changes a total of 12 files, with 45 insertions and 17 deletions, thus fixing a bug in the EXT4 file system, a networking issue related to the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol, and updating a few HID, s390, SCSI, networking drivers." -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/09/11/2258223 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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mail servers
by rowan schischka 10 Sep '16

10 Sep '16

can someone please recommend a lightweight open source mail server. I'm looking at connecting up my old android phone to a solar charger and running services from it, so whatever i use needs to be small. the phone i have to work with that has 512mb ram. android itself uses around 220-230mb of ram, thats before i go silly on rooting it and removing stuff, not that theres much to remove. -- Kind Regards Rowan Schischka

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LinuxScreenshots.org Closes. All Screenshot Tours Released For Downloading
by Peter Reutemann 10 Sep '16

10 Sep '16

"LinuxScreenshots.org is closed. An archive of all screenshot tours from this site has been made freely available to the community, which consists of 2300 releases from 580 distributions. You may download this archive for fun, or to start your own Linux screenshots website. Please help seed torrents. " -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/09/10/1856227 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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10 Million Raspberry πs Sold
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Sep '16

09 Sep '16

The π is definitely now the most successful British computer ever <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/08/rasberry_pi_sells_its_ten_millionth…>.

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