- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Man Builds DIY Cellphone Using Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '14

26 Apr '14

"Photographer and software engineer Dave Hunt has posted an article about his most recent project: a DIY cellphone based on a Raspberry Pi (he calls it a PiPhone). It has a touchscreen dialing interface for making calls, and it's built with off-the-shelf components. The total bill of materials clocks in at about $158: $40 for the rPi, $35 for the 320x240 touchscreen, $15 for the LiPo battery, $48 for the GSM module, and about $20 for miscellaneous other minor parts. Hunt says, '[The GSM/GPRS module] allow us to send standard AT commands to it to make calls, hang up, send texts, data etc. Overall a very clever module. Towards the bottom of the white PCB, you can see the SIM Card, which allows the module to associate with my local GSM network, and it’s using a regular prepaid SIM card, bought in my local phone store for €10. Below the GSM module, you can see the on.off switch and a DC-DC converter, which converts the 3.7volts from the LiPoly battery to 5volts needed by everything else.' He points out that the phone is not terribly practical, but it's a neat project. Hunt has done several others, including turning the Raspberry Pi into a controller for time-lapse photography. He'll be publishing the code he wrote for the PiPhone next week." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/25/2220250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Lumina: PC-BSD's Own Desktop Environment
by Peter Reutemann 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

"The PC-BSD project is developing a new open source (BSD license) desktop environment from scratch. The name of the project is Lumina and it will be based around the Qt toolkit. The ultimate goal is to replace KDE as the default desktop of PC-BSD. Lumina aims to be lightweight, stable, fast-running, and FreeDesktop.org/XDG compliant. Most of the Lumina work is being done by PC-BSD's Ken Moore. Even though Lumina is still in its early stages, it can be built and run successfully, and an alpha version can already be obtained from PC-BSD's ports/package repositories." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/24/1544216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

OpenSSL Forked By OpenBSD Into LibreSSL
by Peter Reutemann 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

"LibreSSL is a FREE version of the SSL/TLS protocol forked from OpenSSL" -- source: http://www.libressl.org/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Private Keys Stolen Within Hours From Heartbleed OpenSSL Site
by Peter Reutemann 20 Apr '14

20 Apr '14

"It was reported when heartbleed was discovered that only passwords would be at risk and private keys were still safe. Not anymore. Cloudfare launched the heartbleed challenge on a new server with the openSSL vulnerability and offered a prize to whoever could gain the private keys. Within hours several researchers and a hacker got in and got the private signing keys. Expect many forged certificates and other login attempts to banks and other popular websites in the coming weeks unless the browser makers and CA's revoke all the old keys and certificates." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/04/13/1553258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

How To Reset A Forgotten Root Password With Knoppix
by Peter Reutemann 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

Today, I had the problem that I could no longer remember the user/password for one of my Xubuntu installations in Virtualbox. So I downloaded Knoppix 7.0 and had a look what the names of the installed users were. After that, I had to figure how to reset them. Here is the HOWTO that I used to reset my user's password (doesn't have to be "root"). It's scarily easy, to be honest... "This guide explains how you can reset a forgotten root password with the help of the Knoppix Linux Live-CD. Afterwards you can log in to your system as root again." -- source: http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-reset-a-forgotten-root-password-with-knopp… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr Released
by Peter Reutemann 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

"Ubuntu Linux version 14.04 LTS (code named "Trusty Tahr") has been released and available for download. This updated version includes the Linux kernel v3.13.0-24.46, Python 3.4, Xen 4.4, Libreoffice 4.2.3, MySQL 5.6/MariaDB 5.5, Apache 2.4, PHP 5.5, improvements to AppArmor allow more fine-grained control over application, and more. The latest release of Ubuntu Server is heavily focused on supporting cloud and scale-out computing platforms such as OpenStack, Docker, and more. As part of the wider Ubuntu 14.04 release efforts the Ubuntu Touch team is proud to make the latest and greatest touch experience available to our enthusiast users and developers. You can install Ubuntu on Nexus 4 Phone (mako), Nexus 7 (2013) Tablet (flo), and Nexus 10 Tablet (manta) by following these instructions. On a hardware front, ARM multiplatform support has been added, enabling you to build a single ARM kernel image that can boot across multiple hardware platforms. Additionally, the ARM64 and Power architectures are now fully supported. See detailed release notes for more information. Aquick upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu is possible over the network." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/04/17/1756254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money
by Peter Reutemann 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

"The GNOME Foundation is running out of money. The foundation no longer has any cash reserves so they have voted to freeze non-essential funding for running the foundation. They are also hunting down sponsors and unpaid invoices to regain some delayed revenue. Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can become a friend of GNOME." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/13/1454215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

The Ubuntu smartphone actually looks pretty great
by Peter Reutemann 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

"It has been a long time since Canonical announced the Ubuntu Edge smartphone campaign on Indiegogo. It raised an incredible $12 million dollars, but -- equally incredible -- it still fell around $20 million short of its lofty goals. However, that didn't derail Canonical's agenda of bringing its desktop Linux OS, Ubuntu, to mobile devices. In fact, judging by this video demo, the project is still going strong." -- source: http://bit.ly/1kIP1rU Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux 3.15 Will Suspend & Resume Much Faster
by Peter Reutemann 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

"The Linux 3.15 kernel now in its early life will be able to suspend and resume much faster than previous versions of the Linux kernel. A few days ago we saw ACPI and Power Management updates that enable asynchronous threads for more suspend and resume callbacks. Carrying out more async operations leads to reduced time for the system suspend and then resuming. According to one developer, it was about an 80% time savings within one of the phases. On Friday, work was merged that ensured the kernel is no longer blocked by waiting for ATA devices to resume. Multiple ATA devices can be woken up simultaneously, and any ATA commands for the device(s) will be queued until they have powered up. According to an 01.org blog post on the ATA/SCSI resume optimization patches, when tested on three Intel Linux systems the resume time was between 7x and 12x faster (not including the latest ACPI/PM S&R optimizations)." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/04/12/1833244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Princeton Students Develop Open Source Voice Control Platform For Any Device
by Peter Reutemann 09 Apr '14

09 Apr '14

"Two Princeton computer science students have created an open source platform for developing voice-controlled applications that are always on. Created by Shubhro Saha and Charlie Marsh, Jasper runs on the Raspberry Pi under Raspbian, using a collection of open source libraries to make up a development platform for building voice-controlled applications. Marsh and Saha demonstrate Jasper's capability to perform Internet searches, update social media, and control music players such as Spotify." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/09/1432244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0