Virtual meetings?
by Peter Reutemann
Hi everyone
Our last meeting moved to virtual Google Hangout on short notice, which probably explained the low turnout.
My question is, whether speakers and attendees would be willing to move to virtual ones, to keep our little community together and going?
The last meeting was done with Google Hangouts, as it allows sharing the screen as well. Doesn't have to be Hangouts, it was simply convenient as a lot of people have gmail accounts. Open to viable alternatives.
Stay safe!
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/
1 month, 1 week
Edge TV Now Online-Only
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
If there is anybody else besides me who wondered what happened to Edge
TV, as of the beginning of this month it is no longer on Freeview, it
can now only be viewed as an online stream
<https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/113928839/the-edge-tv-remo...>.
In the last few days of June, there was a promo announcing that it
was going HD, but I don’t recall it mentioning that it was leaving the
broadcast airwaves.
Quote:
MediaWorks chief executive Michael Anderson says the move is in
line with audience trends, which show people primarily consume
music videos online.
While that may be mostly true, personally I would go look for videos on
YouTube after seeing them first on Edge TV.
1 month, 1 week
Discord Switching From Go To Rust
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Came across this blog post
<https://blog.discordapp.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust-a190...>
explaining why Discord, which has been using Google’s Go language to
implement its services, has now decided to rewrite them in Mozilla’s
Rust.
The problem was garbage collection. Go has a similar memory-allocation
model to Java or LISP, where you can create objects and simply forget
about them when you don’t need them any more, and a background process
will automatically reclaim the storage at some point. The trouble is,
that reclamation process (the “garbage collector”) tends to be the
source of performance bottlenecks in the system. Not to mention that
the memory usage of your program can grow to fill all available space,
unless you impose arbitrary limits on it.
Languages like Perl and Python use a hybrid model, where objects have
reference counts attached to them, keeping track of how many other
objects or variables still point to them, so they can be automatically
freed when the count goes to zero. There are cases where this isn’t
enough, and in those cases a full garbage-collection process kicks in.
One benefit that I certainly observe with this is that memory usage for
a program can remain reasonable, even after it has been running for a
long time.
Rust avoids the whole issue in a clever way, by having the compiler
enforce memory-ownership restrictions in the language itself, so memory
can be correctly allocated and freed without resorting to a garbage
collector.
The result is that Rust can achieve significantly higher performance
than Go, while avoiding most of the attendant risks of dumping the whole
responsibility for memory management on the programmer, as is done in
languages like C++ and C.
1 month, 1 week
Firefox To Remove Support For the FTP Protocol
by Peter Reutemann
'Mozilla has announced plans to remove support for the FTP protocol
from Firefox. Going forward, users won't be able to download files via
the FTP protocol and view the content of FTP links/folders inside the
Firefox browser. From a report:
"We're doing this for security reasons," said Michal Novotny, a
software engineer at the Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the
Firefox browser. "FTP is an insecure protocol and there are no reasons
to prefer it over HTTPS for downloading resources," he said. "Also, a
part of the FTP code is very old, unsafe and hard to maintain and we
found a lot of security bugs in it in the past." Novotny says Mozilla
plans to disable support for the FTP protocol with the release of
Firefox 77, scheduled for release in June this year.'
-- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/03/19/169246
There's always FileZilla...
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/
1 month, 2 weeks
Linux Mint 20 is 64-bit Only, Based on Ubuntu 20.04, and Named 'Ulyana'
by Peter Reutemann
'Today, we learn some new details about the upcoming Linux Mint 20.
While most of the newly revealed information is positive, there is one
thing that is sure to upset many Linux Mint users. First things first,
Linux Mint 20 will be based on the upcoming Ubuntu 20.04. This
shouldn't come as a surprise, as Mint only uses Long Term Support
versions of Ubuntu, and 20.04 will be an LTS. We also now know the
name of Linux Mint 20. The Mint team always uses female names, and
this time they chose "Ulyana." This is apparently a Russian name
meaning "youthful." So far, all of the news is positive, so what
exactly will upset some users? The Linux Mint developers are finally
dropping 32-bit support and will only produce 64-bit ISOs.'
-- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/03/31/1842216
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/
2 months
Zoom Meetings Aren't End-to-End Encrypted, Despite Misleading Marketing
by Peter Reutemann
'Zoom, the video conferencing service whose use has spiked amid the
Covid-19 pandemic, claims to implement end-to-end encryption, widely
understood as the most private form of internet communication,
protecting conversations from all outside parties. In fact, Zoom is
using its own definition of the term, one that lets Zoom itself access
unencrypted video and audio from meetings. With millions of people
around the world working from home in order to slow the spread of the
coronavirus, business is booming for Zoom, bringing more attention on
the company and its privacy practices, including a policy, later
updated, that seemed to give the company permission to mine messages
and files shared during meetings for the purpose of ad targeting.
Still, Zoom offers reliability, ease of use, and at least one very
important security assurance: As long as you make sure everyone in a
Zoom meeting connects using "computer audio" instead of calling in on
a phone, the meeting is secured with end-to-end encryption, at least
according to Zoom's website, its security white paper, and the user
interface within the app. But despite this misleading marketing, the
service actually does not support end-to-end encryption for video and
audio content, at least as the term is commonly understood. Instead it
offers what is usually called transport encryption.'
-- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/03/31/1526250
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/
2 months
Zoom is Leaking Peoples' Email Addresses and Photos To Strangers
by Peter Reutemann
'Popular video-conferencing Zoom is leaking personal information of at
least thousands of users, including their email address and photo, and
giving strangers the ability to attempt to start a video call with
them through Zoom. From a report:
The issue lies in Zoom's "Company Directory" setting, which
automatically adds other people to a user's lists of contacts if they
signed up with an email address that shares the same domain. This can
make it easier to find a specific colleague to call when the domain
belongs to an individual company. But multiple Zoom users say they
signed up with personal email addresses, and Zoom pooled them together
with thousands of other people as if they all worked for the same
company, exposing their personal information to one another.'
-- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/03/31/201237
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/
2 months
HPE, Intel and Linux Foundation Team Up For Open Source Software for 5G Core
by Peter Reutemann
'HPE announced on Tuesday it's working with Intel and the Linux
Foundation on a new open source software project to help automate the
roll out of 5G across multiple sites. From a report:
The new partnership, which will be under the Linux Foundation
umbrella, is called the Open Distributed Infrastructure Management
Framework. The partnership represents HPE's move into the 5G core
network space as it branches out from its enterprise roots. Other
partners for the open source project include AMI, Apstra, IBM's Red
Hat, Tech Mahindra and World Wide Technology. HPE will also introduce
an enterprise offering, the HPE Open Distributed Infrastructure
Management Resource Aggregator.'
-- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/03/31/1947203
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/
2 months
The Keyring Concept in Ubuntu: What is It and How to Use it?
by Peter Reutemann
'f you use automatic login in Ubuntu or other Linux distributions, you
might have come across a pop-up message of this sort:
Enter password to unlock your login keyring
The login keyring did not get unlocked when you logged into your computer.
It keeps on popping up several times before disappearing if you keep
on clicking cancel. You may wonder why do you keep seeing this keyring
message all the time?
Let me tell you something. It’s not an error. It’s a security feature.
Surprised? Let me explain the keyring concept in Linux.'
-- source: https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-keyring/
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/
2 months
Internet Pioneer Vint Cerf Tests Positive For Covid-19
by Peter Reutemann
'Tech pioneer Vint Cerf, one of the co-creators of the modern
internet, has tested positive for covid-19, according to a tweet Cerf
sent out Monday morning. The 76-year-old tweeted out a clip from HBO's
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about the U.S. response to the
global pandemic. "I tested positive for COVID-19 and am recovering,"
Cerf tweeted. "Listen to what John Oliver has to say about our
national response so far."
Cerf helped create the modern internet in the 1970s while working at
UCLA with other pioneers like Bob Kahn and Leonard Kleinrock. Cerf
worked on packet switching for the APRANET under Kleinrock and TCP/IP
protocols with ARPA (now DARPA), the plumbing that makes the internet
function. DARPA tweeted its support of Cerf, telling him to get well
soon.'
-- source: https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/03/30/214250
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/
2 months
