For quite a while now, I’ve been annoyed by the system notification
volume going to 100% on my Debian systems, regardless of my attempts to
set it to a lower level. For example, when I open the KDE System
Settings app, change something, then try to close the window, the sound
that accompanies the save/discard/cancel alert is always startlingly
loud.
I think I have finally found a fix: in your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf,
put in a line saying
flat-volumes = no
(You should find an existing comment “; flat-volumes = yes” that
indicates the default.)
You can make this new setting take effect in the current session
immediately without having to logout or reboot, by executing the
following as the currently-logged-in user:
pulseaudio -k
(This kills and restarts the PulseAudio daemon for your user session.)
There are several discussions of the pros and cons of this issue online,
going back some years. For example, here
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1265267>. Also a mention
about the “flat-volumes” setting in the ever-reliable Arch Linux Wiki
here <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio>.
Been looking at various settings changes you can make in the
“about:config” page in Firefox. Here are a couple I have found useful:
* keyword.enabled -- set to false to stop Firefox trying to
do a search on the contents of the address box if it doesn’t match
a URL. This is why I have a search box separate from the address
box.
* browser.fixup.alternate.enabled -- set to false to stop it
helpfully tacking on “www.” and “.com” if the original URL you type
doesn’t work. I have occasionally been confused by it complaining
about not finding a URL, but showing a different one from the one I
typed.
By the way, when you first try to view this page, Firefox shows you a
warning to ensure you understand the consequences of messing
about with settings at this level. It remembers it has shown you this
warning by adding the following line to the prefs.js file in your
profile:
user_pref("browser.aboutConfig.showWarning", false);
Firefox seems to overwrite this file when it quits, and reloads it when
it is launched again.
'Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux Foundation fellow currently responsible
for stable Linux kernel releases, shared the lessons he's learned as a
kernel developer that are applicable to other developers at this
year's Linux App Summit. He started by showing how he could succinctly
distill the essence of the talk into a single five-word slide:
"Don't make your users mad...."
Kroah-Hartman explains that one of Linus Torvalds' most deeply-held
convictions: don't break userspace. "Other operating systems have this
rule as well — it's a very solid rule — because we always want you to
upgrade. And we want you to upgrade without worrying about it. We
don't want you to feel scared. If you see a new release, and we say,
'Hey, this fixes a bunch of problems,' we don't want you to feel
worried about taking that. That's really really important — especially
with security...."
If you do make a change, make sure there truly is a compelling reason.
"You have to provide enough reason and enough goodness to force
somebody to take the time to learn to do something else. That's very
rare."
His example of this was systemd, which unified a variety of service
configurations and initialization processes. "They did it right. They
provided all the functionality, they solved a real problem that was
there. They unified all these existing tools and problems in such a
way that it was just so much better to use, and it provided enough
impetus that everybody was willing to do the work to modify their own
stuff and move to the new model. It worked. People still complain
about it, but it worked. Everybody switched... It works well. It
solves a real problem.
"That was an example of how you can provide a compelling reason to
move on — and make the change."'
-- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/11/28/0714229
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'According to this Tom's Hardware story, a Belgian PhD student managed
to wrest full control of a Tesla Model X SUV, by way of hijacking the
Bluetooth keyfob and reprogramming it, using a Raspberry Pi.
Tesla has since issued a software update to protect against that kind of attack
Since the attack is done via Bluetooth, control could be gained
wirelessly from 5 meters away.
According to the article this is the third time the same student "has
managed to exploit the key fob and gain access to the car. Previously
he was able to clone the fob..."
Computer Weekly also got an interesting quote from a senior security
consultant at the electronic design automation company Synopsys, who
argues that the research "demonstrates the impacts of security
requirements and security features not having proper validation."'
-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/11/28/2325210
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'"PHP version 8.0 has arrived, bringing with it a major update to the
25-year-old programming language..." writes Tech Republic.
New language features include the nullsafe operator and attributes
(commonly known as annotations in other languages) to add metadata to
classes — and more:
The JIT compiler is designed to bring performance improvements to web
applications by turning code into instructions for the CPU at runtime.
Meanwhile, union types is a feature that allows data of more than one
type to be held by a variable. Named arguments allow developers to
assign values to a function by specifying the value name, allowing
optional parameters to be ignored. Alongside these, version 8.0 of PHP
brings optimizations and enhancements to the language's type system,
syntax, error handling and consistency....
Commenting on PHP 8.0, PHP programmer and stitcher.io developer, Brent
Roose, noted that the latest version of the language may require
developers to review code for any breaking changes.'
-- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/11/28/1030246
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'Developer Alexander Graf has successfully virtualized the Arm version
of Windows on an M1 Mac, proving that the M1 chip is capable of
running Microsoft's operating system. From a report:
Currently, Macs with the M1 chip do not support Windows and there is
no Boot Camp feature as there is on Intel Macs, but support for
Windows is a feature that many users would like to see. Using the
open-source QEMU virtualizer, Graf was able to virtualize the Arm
version of Windows on Apple's M1 chip, with no emulation. Since the M1
chip is a custom Arm SoC, it is no longer possible to install the x86
version of Windows or x86 Windows apps using Boot Camp, as was the
case with previous Intel-based Macs. However, he said in a Tweet that
when virtualized on an M1 Mac, "Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications
really well. It's not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close."'
-- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/20/11/27/2343223
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
Hi everyone
Since we had our last meeting for the year, I just want to announce
our upcoming AGM on January 25th.
Agenda (preliminary)
• President's Report
• Treasurer's Report
• Election of 2021 Committee
• General business
• Consumption of pizza
Details:
https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/274861121/
Don't worry, there will be another announcement closer to the date. ;-)
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'Windows Central reports:
Microsoft is working on a software solution that would allow app
developers to bring their Android apps to Windows 10 with little to no
code changes by packaging them as an MSIX and allowing developers to
submit them to the Microsoft Store. According to sources familiar with
the matter, the project is codenamed 'Latte' and I'm told it could
show up as soon as next year. The company has toyed with the idea of
bringing Android apps to Windows 10 before via a project codenamed
Astoria that never saw the light of day. Project Latte aims to deliver
a similar product, and is likely powered by the Windows Subsystem for
Linux (WSL.) Microsoft will need to provide its own Android subsystem
for Android apps to actually run, however.
Microsoft has announced that WSL will soon get support for GUI Linux
applications, as well as GPU acceleration which should aid the
performance of apps running through WSL. It's unlikely that Project
Latte will include support for Play Services, as Google doesn't allow
Play Services to be installed on anything other than native Android
devices and Chrome OS. This means that apps which require Play
Services APIs will need to be updated to remove those dependencies
before they can be submitted on Windows 10.'
-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/11/27/2027234
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'ZDNet:
Security researchers have discovered a major security flaw in cPanel,
a popular software suite used by web hosting companies to manage
websites for their customers. The bug, discovered by security
researchers from Digital Defense, allows attackers to bypass
two-factor authentication (2FA) for cPanel accounts. These accounts
are used by website owners to access and manage their websites and
underlying server settings. Access to these accounts is critical, as
once compromised, they grant threat actors full control over a
victim's site.
On its website, cPanel boasts that its software is currently used by
hundreds of web hosting companies to manage more than 70 million
domains across the world. But in a press release today, Digital
Defense says that the 2FA implementation on older cPanel & WebHost
Manager (WHM) software was vulnerable to brute-force attacks that
allowed threat actors to guess URL parameters and bypass 2FA -- if 2FA
was enabled for an account. While brute-forcing attacks, in general,
usually take hours or days to execute, in this particular case, the
attack required only a few minutes, Digital Defense said today.
Exploiting this bug also requires that attackers have valid
credentials for a targeted account, but these can be obtained from
phishing the website owner. The good news is that Digital Defense has
privately reported the bug, tracked as SEC-575, to the cPanel team,
which has already released patches last week.'
-- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/11/25/2227200
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'This Monday, WireGuard founder and lead developer Jason Donenfeld
announced a new WireGuard release for the Windows platform. The
release is something of a godsend for administrators hoping to
implement WireGuard as a replacement for more traditional end-user
VPNs in a business environment, adding several new features that will
make their lives easier—or simply make its implementation possible, in
environments where it otherwise would not.
If you haven't heard about WireGuard yet, it's a relatively new VPN
protocol featuring advanced cryptography. It's implemented from the
ground up as an exercise in cleanly written, minimalist, maximally
secure and performant code—and it succeeded at those goals well enough
to get Linus Torvalds' own rarely-seen stamp of approval. '
-- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/wireguard-for-windows-0-3-1-is-the-…
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/