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Learn FPGAs With a $25 Board and Open Source Tools
by Peter Reutemann 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

"Hackaday has a 3 part tutorial with videos of using open source tools with a cheap ($25) FPGA board. The board isn't very powerful, but this could be the 'gateway drug' to FPGAs for people who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars and install 100s of megabytes of software and license keys just to get their feet wet. The videos are particularly good--like watching them over their shoulder. As far as I know, this is the only totally open source FPGA toolchain out there." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/08/27/226232 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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Ddrescue-GUI: Front-End for Ddrescue Command-line Tool
by Peter Reutemann 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

"DDRescue-GUI is a simple GUI application written in Python 2 and designed to provide users with an easy-to-use GUI (Graphical User Interface) front-end for the awesome GNU ddrescue command-line tool which dedicated to recovering data from hard drive, USB flash drive, cd, dvd corrupt." -- source: http://ubuntuportal.com/2015/08/ddrescue-gui-ubuntu.html 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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was: Engaging Newbies In Email Encryption and Network Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '15

26 Aug '15

Hi everyone Great to see people discussing topics on the mailing list! How about we have a discussion about email encryption (incl signing) and network privacy at the next meeting? If I remember correctly, Hieu's Pi presentation will be relatively short, so we should have plenty of time. 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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Happy Birthday, Linux! An OS At 24
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '15

26 Aug '15

"It has been 24 long years since the first ever release of the Linux project on August 25, 1991, which is the core component of any GNU/Linux distribution. With this occasion we want to remind everyone that Linux is everywhere, even if you don't see it. You use Linux when you search on Google, when you use your phone, when buy metro tickets, actually the whole Internet is powered by Linux. Happy Birthday, Linux!" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/08/25/1333201 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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Major Android remote-access vulnerability is now being exploited
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

"Based on anonymized data collected from users of an app designed to check for a newly revealed vulnerability in many Android devices, Check Point discovered that one application in the Google Play store is exploiting the vulnerability to gain a high level of access to the Android OS, bypassing user permissions—and bypassing Google’s security scans of Play applications to do so. Update: A Google spokesperson told Ars that the offending app has been suspended in the Play store. While the app was discovered installed on an infinitesimal percentage of devices checked by Check Point, it shows that the vulnerability caused by insecure OEM and cell carrier software meant to provide remote access to devices for customer service engineers has already been exploited by “legitimate” phone applications—and the method used to bypass Google’s security checks could be used for more malicious purposes on millions of devices. And there’s no easy way for Google or phone manufacturers alone to patch the problem." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/major-android-remote-access-vulnera… 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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Engaging Newbies In Email Encryption and Network Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

"All six parts of my series introducing beginners to PGP encryption and network privacy are now freely available. I hope it's useful for Slashdot readers to share with their less-technical acquaintances. There's an introduction to PGP, a guide to email encryption on the desktop, smartphone and in the browser, an introduction to the emerging key sharing and authentication startup, Keybase.io, and an intro to VPNs. There's a lot more work for us to do in the ease of use of communications privacy but this helps people get started more with what's available today." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/08/20/2041235 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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Which Other OS...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

After my latest laptop update: ldo(a)vodell:~> conv-date now '' Asia/Seoul Asia/Pyongyang Pacific/Auckland........: Tue Aug 25 17:58:22 NZST 2015 Asia/Seoul..............: Tue Aug 25 14:58:22 KST 2015 Asia/Pyongyang..........: Tue Aug 25 14:28:22 KST 2015 North Korea only announced its new time zone two weeks ago. What other OS could be this quick without any actual code patches?

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Mozilla sets plan to dump Firefox add-ons, move to Chrome-like extensions
by Peter Reutemann 23 Aug '15

23 Aug '15

"Back in July, Mozilla disclosed plans to modernize its Firefox browser. Today, the organization made those plans more concrete, with a tentative timeline for introducing long-desired improvements such as the creation of a process per tab—and with it, a timeline for the end of support for traditional Firefox add-ons. Mozilla has been working on a multi-process architecture for years. Called the Electrolysis project, work started in 2009, but was put on hold in 2011. Work was resumed in 2013, and it's finally getting near to a release. Over the next few months, Mozilla plans to flip the switch and enable Electrolysis in its various release channels. Tentatively, it'll be an opt-in feature in the beta channel from September 22nd, on-by-default in the beta channel from November 3rd, and on-by-default in the release channel from December 15th." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/mozilla-sets-plan-to-… 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 Core Gets Support For Raspberry Pi 2 GPIO and I2C
by Peter Reutemann 23 Aug '15

23 Aug '15

"Ubuntu Core is a tiny Ubuntu distribution aimed at the Internet of Things, using a new transactional packaging format called Snappy rather than the venerable Debian packaging format. It recently gained support for I2C and GPIO on the Raspberry Pi 2, and a quick demo is given here." "Ubuntu's Core support site says that the support for Raspberry Pi 2 isn't yet official, but provides some handy tips for anyone who wants to try it out." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/15/08/22/2214256 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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Please, OpenOffice, Die Already
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Aug '15

20 Aug '15

Well, maybe not in so many words, but some are saying <http://lwn.net/Articles/654776/> that OpenOffice has reached (i.e. declined) to the stage where it is getting in the way of people looking for a powerful Free Software office suite. They never hear of LibreOffice, find OpenOffice instead, and are disappointed with its (lack of) capabilities.

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