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Half of Tor Sites Compromised, Including TORMail
by Peter Reutemann 05 Aug '13

05 Aug '13

"The founder of Freedom Hosting has been arrested in Ireland and is awaiting extradition to USA. In a crackdown the FBI claims to be about hunting down pedophiles, half of the onion sites in the TOR network have been compromised, including the e-mail counterpart of TOR deep web, TORmail. The FBI has also embedded a 0-day Javascript attack against Firefox 17 on Freedom Hosting's server. It appears to install a tracking cookie and a payload that phones home to the FBI when the victim resumes non-TOR browsing. Interesting implications for The Silk Road and the value of Bitcoin stemming from this. The attack relies on two extremely unsafe practices when using TOR: Enabled Javascript, and using the same browser for TOR and non-TOR browsing. Any users accessing a Freedom Hosting hosted site since 8/2 with javascript enabled are potentially compromised." -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/08/04/2054208/half-of-tor-sites-compromise… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Calligra and Krita Release 2.7
by Peter Reutemann 04 Aug '13

04 Aug '13

"KDE applications Calligra and Krita both made 2.7 release announcements in the last 24 hours. Calligra is actually 2.7.1 because a last minute bug crept in after tagging 2.7.0. Both demonstrate lots of exciting new features and improvements." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/calligra-and-krita-release-2-7 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Firefox OS Phones Spread Out in Latin America
by Peter Reutemann 04 Aug '13

04 Aug '13

"Marking yet another milestone for Mozilla's Firefox OS mobile phone platform, devices based on it have arrived in Venezuela and Colombia, and Mozilla has just announced hat Firefox OS phones will arrive in Brazil in the fourth quarter of this year. When we covered Mozilla's mobile plans back in April, the company was targeting five countries to deliver the phones in: Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. It's quickly becoming clear, though, that these phones will show up in many more markets." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/firefox-os-phones-spread-out-in-latin-america Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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With Microsoft Office on Android, Has Linus Torvalds Won?
by Peter Reutemann 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

"The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, once said, 'If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.' Microsoft yesterday released one of its cash cows, Microsoft Office, for Android. Since Microsoft has a very vague idea of what users want and is suffering from lock-in, the app is just an Android front end of Office 365 and is accessible only by the paid users. There are already quite a lot of office suites available on Android including Office Pro, QuickOffice and KingSoft, so Microsoft will have to struggle there. Still it's a Microsoft core application coming to Linux. So, it looks like Linus has won." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/08/01/1413252/with-microsoft-office-on-a… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Report: Linux is Driving Innovation and Affordability in Supercomputing
by Peter Reutemann 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

"When most of us think about supercomputers, we think about closet-sized machines loaded with exotic and expensive technologies developed at great expense. However, if you actually look at the state of supercomputing, off-the-shelf components and open source platforms are playing an important role. In fact, The Linux Foundation has released an analysis paper on 20 years of data collected by the Top500.org supercomputer list. The Top500 list has ranked the world’s fastest supercomputers since 1993. The paper shows that Linux has become the dominant OS running on Top500 machines over the past decade." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/report-linux-is-driving-innovation-and-affordabilit… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Kiwi PyCon 2013 has made its way to Auckland!
by Tim Knapp 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

Kiwi PyCon is an annual conference aimed at promoting and educating people about the Python programming language. The event is going to be held at the Sir Paul Reeves Building at Auckland University of Technology, in the Wellesley Street campus on September 6-8. A particular target audience we’re trying to reach is entrepreneurs, developers, professionals, students in the IT & Technology sector who aren’t too familiar with Python. We’d like them to come along and see how Python is being used in various areas and therefore how they could make use of it. This year we're featuring 2 keynotes: Michael Foord, the father of mock and the testing libraries in Python, as well as Jessica McKellar, one of the people behind the largest Python User Group in the world, Boston Python, as well as a proponent of using Python to teach computer programming to beginner programmers. As with other years, there will also be an excellent line up of talks but this year we're also featuring for the first time some exciting new events, such as a full day of tutorials on the Friday prior to the conference, as well as a Recruitment Track, where companies seeking Python developers and people looking for Python-related work can meetup. For further information and to register, please go to http://nz.pycon.org. For media or conference enquiries please contact: Danny Adair, NZPUG President Phone: (09) 9555 101 Email: kiwipycon(a)nzpug.org

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A year of Linux desktop at Westcliff High School
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

"Around a year ago, a school in the southeast of England, Westcliff High School for Girls Academy (WHSG), began switching its student-facing computers to Linux, with KDE providing the desktop software. The school's Network Manager, Malcolm Moore, contacted us at the time. Now, a year on, he got in touch again to let us know how he and the students find life in a world without Windows." -- source: http://opensource.com/education/13/7/linux-westcliff-high-school Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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4 text editors for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

"This is a short list of my favorite graphical text editors for Linux that can be classified as IDE (integrated development environment). Here, I give the pros and cons of working with the following: - gedit - Geany - Sublime Text - jEdit" -- source: http://opensource.com/life/13/7/4-text-editors-linux I'm kinda missing vi/vim/gvim and emacs here. But maybe I'm getting old... ;-) http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Use_Vim_like_an_IDE http://emacs-ide.tuxfamily.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

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Darling: Wine for OS X Applications
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

"The latest in the "interesting, but perhaps misguided" department, Darling is a project that aims to build a WINE-like environment for running OS X applications on Linux. As with many projects that deal with reverse engineering proprietary systems, Darling faces significant challenges. However, if Darling is successful, the Linux desktop would have access to some of the best desktop applications available. Darling is still in very early stages; if you believe in this vision, I'm sure there is a place for you to help in moving the project forward. " -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/darling-wine-for-os-x-applications Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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LibreOffice 4.1.0 is Here with New Goodies
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jul '13

26 Jul '13

'LibreOffice 4.1 arrived today right in its projected release window. This release brings several nice new features and probably the most mentioned in today's headlines was the AOO sidebar. Italo Vignoli said this release is a landmark in interoperability because it brings "compatibility with proprietary and legacy file formats to the next level."' -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/libreoffice-4-1-0-is-here-with-new-goodies Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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