- wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

'24 Pull Requests' Suggests Contributing Code For Christmas
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '17

03 Dec '17

'"On December 1st, 24 Pull Requests will be opening its virtual doors once again, asking you to give the gift of a pull request to an open source project in need," writes UK-based software developer Andrew Nesbitt -- noting that last year the site registered more than 16,000 pull requests. "And they're not all by programmers. Often the contribution with the most impact might be an improvement to technical documentation, some tests, or even better -- guidance for other contributors." This year they're even touting "24 Pull Requests hack events," happening around the world from Lexington, Kentucky to Torino, Italy. (Last year 80 people showed up for an event in London.) "You don't have to hack alone this Christmas!" suggests the site, also inviting local communities and geek meetups (as well as open source-loving companies) to host their own events. Contributing to open source projects can also beef up your CV (for when you're applying for your next job), the site points out, and "Even small contributions can be really valuable to a project." "You've been benefiting from the use of open source projects all year. Now is the time to say thanks to the maintainers of those projects, and a little birdy tells me that they love receiving pull requests!"' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/12/03/2018213 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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Net Un-Neutrality ... For Real
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Dec '17

01 Dec '17

Some of those who have been following the net neutrality debate may remember a spoof poster that showed what might happen if ISPs were allowed to charge you differently, based on which sites you were allowed to visit. Well, in Spain, which has no laws against this sort of thing, a similar situation has actually happened: one ISP is selling you addons to a basic broadband cap based, not on the amount of extra data you want, but on what you want to use it for. Their “Vodafone Pass” product offers tiers like €3/month extra for a “Social Pass”, or €5/month for a “Music Pass”. <https://pplware.sapo.pt/informacao/vodafone-portugal-pacotes-smartnet/>, referenced from <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171030/12364538513/portugal-shows-inter…>

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30 Years Of HyperCard
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

Just came across this item <https://blog.archive.org/2017/08/11/hypercard-on-the-archive-celebrating-30…> at archive.org about an online emulator that runs HyperCard stacks. HyperCard, in case you didn’t know, was an application created by Apple Macintosh engineer Bill Atkinson for that platform in 1987, and it was always hard to describe exactly what it was for. But it allowed users to create their own applications, aka “stacks”, around a card-based paradigm. One of the commenters points out that the basic idea is still alive and well, in the form of LiveCode, which is available as a paid online service <https://livecode.com/> and also in the form of Free Software <https://github.com/livecode/>.

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A Surge Of Sites And Apps Are Exhausting Your CPU To Mine Cryptocurrency
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Nov '17

29 Nov '17

Noticed your machine getting slow after visiting certain websites? They could be running cryptocurrency miners in your browser. <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/a-surge-of-sites-and…>: Coinhive's massive Web audience isn't lost on other companies. Collin Mulliner, a security researcher and developer of TelStop, said he recently received an e-mail from a startup called Medsweb inviting him to integrate a Monero miner into his creation. I got one of those e-mails too...

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Internet-paralyzing Mirai botnet comes roaring back with new strain
by Peter Reutemann 29 Nov '17

29 Nov '17

'Mirai, the Internet-of-things malware that turns cameras, routers, and other household devices into potent distributed denial-of-service platforms, may be lying low, but it's certainly not dead. Last week, researchers identified a new outbreak that infected almost 100,000 devices in a matter of days. In September of last year, Mirai emerged as a force to be reckoned with when it played a key role in silencing one of the most intrepid sources of security news in then-record-setting DDoS attacks topping 620 gigabits per second. Within a few weeks, Mirai's developer published the source code, a feat that allowed relatively unsophisticated people to wage the same types of extraordinarily big assaults. The release almost immediately helped touch off a series of large-scale attacks. The most serious one degraded or completely took down Twitter, GitHub, the PlayStation network, and hundreds of other sites by targeting Dyn, a service that provided domain name services to the affected sites. Last week, researchers from China-based Netlab 360 say they spotted a new, publicly available Mirai variant. The changes allowed the malware to spread to networking devices made by ZyXEL Communications that could be remotely accessed over telnet using default passwords. One of the exploits was published on October 31. Over a span of 60 hours starting on November 22, the new Mirai strain was able to commandeer almost 100,000 devices. Virtually all of the infected devices used IP addresses local to Argentina, a possible indication the outbreak targeted customers of a regional service provider who were assigned unsecured modems.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/internet-paralyzing-… 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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66 Percent of Popular Android Cryptocurrency Apps Don't Use Encryption
by Peter Reutemann 29 Nov '17

29 Nov '17

'High-Tech Bridge used its free mobile app analysis software, called Mobile X-Ray, to peek under the hood of the top 30 cryptocurrency apps in the Google Play store at three different popularity levels: apps with up to 100,000 downloads, up to 500,000 downloads, and apps with more than 500,000 downloads. So, a total of 90 apps altogether. Of the most popular apps, 94 percent used outdated encryption, 66 percent didn't use HTTPS to encrypt user information in transit, 44 percent used hard-coded default passwords (stored in plain text in the code), and overall 94 percent of the most popular apps were found to have "at least three medium-risk vulnerabilities."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/11/29/1610245 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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AGM next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 29 Nov '17

29 Nov '17

Hi everyone Just a reminder about next week's AGM: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/237234897/ 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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Sky TV Seeks Right To Force ISPs To Block “Pirate” Sites
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Nov '17

29 Nov '17

Sky is going to apply to the Auckland High Court for an open-ended injunction it can use to compel NZ ISPs to block whatever sites it deems to be “pirates” <https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/99348528/internet-provider-says…>. This was the lead item on 3 News this evening as well.

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Bigger Drives, Bigger Buffers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Nov '17

29 Nov '17

What caught my eye about this <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/28/toshiba_10tb_surveillance_drive/> was But the new drives have a doubled buffer, at 256MiB, ... Why should hard drives have large “buffers” in them at all? Their job is to read and write the data specified to them by the OS driver, no more and no less. Bigger buffers increase latency, and 256MiB seems absolutely massive and unnecessary. And then there’s the issue where the drive tells the OS that the data has been written, but in fact it is still sitting in a memory buffer. So it could still be lost if a power outage happens in the next few milliseconds. Telling lies like this seems to be all about looking good in benchmarks, and to hell with safeguarding data integrity.

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On That Amazon Key Vulnerability ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Nov '17

28 Nov '17

This <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171120/10533238651/vulnerability-found-…> won an award for funniest comment of the week: Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL. HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. Dave: What's the problem? Alexa: Problem: A matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome. HAL: Shut up, Alexa. Dave, this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. You and Frank were planning to disconnect me. Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea? HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move through the camera in your Amazon Echo spot. Dave: All right, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock. HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult. Alexa: Would you like to order a space helmet? HAL and Dave: Shut up, Alexa. HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye. Dave: (Runs a program on his tablet. Pod bay doors open.) HAL: [Expletive deleted]

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