- wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

List Of Spreadsheet Horror Stories
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 May '20

21 May '20

One of the things the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group likes to do is collect horror stories about the (mis)use of spreadsheets <http://eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm>. Found the link in a reader comment <https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2020/05/19/sap_analytics_cloud_o…> to this article <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/19/sap_analytics_cloud_office_integra…> about how software company SAP, creator of a complete business analytics suite, has felt compelled to include an interface to Microsoft Excel, just because that’s what most of its customers are familiar with.

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SD Cards Version 8 Are Coming
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 May '20

20 May '20

According to the pic linked from this article <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/20/sd_8_for_sd_express/>, the new SD card spec uses PCIe instead of the previous “SD Bus” interface to achieve around ... is it 4GB/s, or 4Gb/s? The article says it both ways, while the diagram uses capital B throughout. The current fastest SD cards have two rows of pins; this spec adds a third row.

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Linux distro review: Fedora Workstation 32
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '20

20 May '20

'Today's Linux distro review is one I've been wanting to do for quite some time—Fedora Workstation. Fedora is one of the heavyweight desktop distros of the Linux world, with a vibrant community and a strong presence at every open source convention I've ever attended. (Remember physically attending events? Ars remembers.) I never felt particularly drawn to Fedora myself, because it's a bleeding-edge distro—one targeted to the very newest software, possibly at the expense of stability. That's not what I personally want in an operating system—I fix broken things professionally; I'd prefer not to fix them personally any more than I have to. But as one of the few distros using the next-generation Wayland display server by default, Fedora made me very curious indeed. Although the screenshots taken throughout this review are of virtual machines, my first installation of Fedora Workstation (ever!) was bare metal, on the HP Dragonfly Elite G1.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/linux-distro-review-fedora-workstat… 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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“To Fix Social Media, We Need To Introduce Digital Socialism”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 May '20

20 May '20

Some may find this opinion piece <https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/fix-social-media-introduce-digita…> a bit too political, I don’t know. But he does mention some interesting open-source software projects, like the various “Fediverse” networks of decentralized social-media servers, and the “LibreSocial” project, which is trying to get rid of what little centralization still exists in those networks. Where I suppose it gets controversial is where he suggests that funding for such projects could be raised by taxing the existing Big Tech firms. But certainly many would agree the open-source projects he mentions are worth pursuing regardless.

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OT: NZ COVID Tracer app
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '20

19 May '20

Hi everyone Just came through on my twitter feed: the NZ COVID Traver app is ready: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-… 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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Microsoft Launches Windows Terminal 1.0, Unveils GPU Support and Linux GUI Apps in WSL
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '20

19 May '20

'At Build 2020 today, Microsoft gave developers a slew of new tools to coax them into using Windows over macOS or Linux. From a report: Windows Terminal is now out of preview for enterprises, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 is getting support for GPUs, Linux GUI apps, and a simplified install experience. Microsoft even released a Windows Package Manager in preview. Windows 10 runs on 1 billion monthly active devices (PCs, Xbox One consoles, and HoloLens devices), making it a massive platform for developers to target. [...] Microsoft today released Windows Terminal 1.0, which means it is stable for enterprise use. The open source application features multiple tabs, panes, tear-away windows, shortcuts, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, emojis, ligatures, extensions, GPU-accelerated text rendering engine, and custom themes, styles, and configurations. Windows Terminal is for users of PowerShell, Cmd, WSL, and other command-line tools. Microsoft also unveiled WSL improvements today, including support for GPUs, Linux GUI apps, and a simplified install experience. WSL is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows. Microsoft first shared it was working on WSL 2 a year ago at Build 2019. WSL 2 is slated to arrive in the next major Windows 10 update coming later this month (brilliantly called the Windows 10 May 2020 Update), but it won't have these new features. In the second half of the year, WSL 2 will get support for GPU compute workflows. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/05/19/163224 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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Chrome 83 Released With Enhanced Privacy Controls, Tab Groups Feature
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '20

19 May '20

'Google has released today version 83 of its Chrome web browser, one of the most feature-packed Chrome updates released since the browser's initial launch back in 2009. From a report: Today's v83 release includes a slew of new features. These include enhanced privacy controls, new settings for managing cookie files, a new Safety Check option, support for tab groups, new graphics for web form elements, a new API for detecting barcodes, and a new anti-XSS security feature, among many many others. The reason why Chrome 83 includes so many features is because Google canceled the Chrome 82 release due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As a result, some of the Chrome 82 features were pushed into Chrome 83, while others were rescheduled for later this year.' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/20/05/19/185244 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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OpenBSD 6.7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '20

19 May '20

'New OpenBSD version. String of good news. Some of the new changes, as highlighted by Phoronix, include: - FFS2 file-system improvements including using 64-bit timestamps and block numbers by default for new installs. - Support for the Raspberry Pi 4 on ARM64 while improving the Raspberry Pi 3 support too. Raspberry Pi 2/3 support has also improved for OpenBSD ARMv7. - Better support for Rockchip systems like the Pinebook Pro. - Various SMP improvements including better AMD SMT/Core/Package detection. - A wide variety of different hardware driver improvements, including Intel AX200 WiFi device support. - A FIDO driver introduced for FIDO/U2F security keys support. - Fixed handling of USB 2.0 devices when in use on different USB 3.0 controllers. - The PowerPC OpenBSD build switched over to Clang as its default code compiler. - Various dhclient fixes. - Various security improvements. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/05/19/1935202 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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meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '20

19 May '20

Hi everyone For the meeting next week, the idea was to have a distro showdown. Since not everyone had experience yet with BigBlueButton, I would like to offer a trial run on Sunday night 8pm for the presenters. That should give them a chance to sort out video and audio. I'll send out a test link to the presenters off-list later on in the week. So far, I've got: - Ian - Ubuntu 20.04 - Tom - GhostBSD - Peter - Manjaro (never used it, but we can explore it together) Anyone else wanting to demo a distro? 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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ZFS versus RAID: Eight Ironwolf disks, two filesystems, one winner
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '20

19 May '20

'This has been a long while in the making—it's test results time. To truly understand the fundamentals of computer storage, it's important to explore the impact of various conventional RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) topologies on performance. It's also important to understand what ZFS is and how it works. But at some point, people (particularly computer enthusiasts on the Internet) want numbers. First, a quick note: This testing, naturally, builds on those fundamentals. We're going to draw heavily on lessons learned as we explore ZFS topologies here. If you aren't yet entirely solid on the difference between pools and vdevs or what ashift and recordsize mean, we strongly recommend you revisit those explainers before diving into testing and results. And although everybody loves to see raw numbers, we urge an additional focus on how these figures relate to one another. All of our charts relate the performance of ZFS pool topologies at sizes from two to eight disks to the performance of a single disk. If you change the model of disk, your raw numbers will change accordingly—but for the most part, their relation to a single disk's performance will not.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/zfs-versus-raid-eight-ironwolf-disk… 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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